But perhaps there's a connection between their population densities and
their religious beliefs? More likely, there's an indirect link via their
economic systems. "Saturation" hunter-gatherer densities -- that is the
"carrying capacity" of Homo sapiens under the constraints of that mode of
production is in the range of .02 to 10/mi2, of agricultural systems
typically 50-2000/mi2 depending on intensity, etc., with the highest
densities limited to a few well situated areas such as river deltas...,
alluvial plains. Global market economies push local densities in cities
up to 50,000/mi2 (but drawing from a global hinterland). There are good
examples of high density rural farming systems that coexist with high
biodiversity, but a clear pattern showing a dramatic deterioration
associated with the pressures of commercial production for world
markets. Mexican Indian societies pre-Conquest achieved very high
densities but the worst environmental deterioration in Mexico seem
attributable to colonial and post-colonial land use patterns, driven by
external demand. My point is that it's not simply density but the nature
of the system: is it oriented toward competing in a global market or is
it more locally or regionally contained.

Gene Hunn.

On Fri, 17 Nov 1995, David Wright wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Nov 1995, Eugene Hunn wrote:
> > Islands are special cases, as I believe the island biogeography
> > literature shows.
>
> It may well be that critical human population densities are lower on
> islands, but surely no one would suggest that humans cannot reach
> critical densities on continents(?); the evidence would seem to argue
> otherwise. My point was simply that when human populations exceed
> the ability of unmodified habitat to sustain them, species will become
> extinct. If only a small number of extinctions (or even "none") were
> caused by Native Americans, this low impact is more directly attributable
> to their low population densities than to their religious beliefs.
>
> David Wright
> dwright at u.washington.edu
>