Subject: Re: native peoples
Date: Nov 20 09:43:21 1995
From: Eugene Hunn - hunn at u.washington.edu


Gene Hunn takes up the thread once again:

On Fri, 17 Nov 1995, David Wright wrote:

> Didn't several Native American cultures switch from a hunter-gather
> economy to agriculture (which supports higher pop density)? If so,
> what drove that change? Was it population density exceeding capacity
> of unmodified environment (i.e., change or suffer increased mortality),
> change in religious belief, becoming bored with hunting and gathering,
> or what? I would bet on population density, but confess to ignorance
> here. I would also bet that changes in religion follow, not precede,
> changes in lifestyle/economy. But at any rate, my previous assertion
> was simply that when a human population reaches a critical density,
> other organisms will become extinct, regardless of the "race, creed,
> or color" of the humans involved.

That's the vexed issue of the "origins of agriculture" that is still the
subject of much debate. I tend to favor also population "pressure"
theories, but the agricultural "revolution" took several thousand years
to accomplish. I imagine a complex feedback system involving gradual
demographic changes -- often scarcely perceptible -- and shifts in
subsistence strategies, technology, and religious beliefs. Clearly, the
end result is a progressive monopolization of the earth's energy
resources in support of human life at the expense of the rest of the
biosphere.

> > Getting back *toward* birds, at least, this brings up a question
> someone asked Dennis: what is the largest (body size) species of
> vertebrate (was it terrestrial vert?) extant that equals or exceeds
> that of Homo sapiens in number of individuals?
>
Bos taurus?

> David Wright
> dwright at u.washington.edu
>
>