Humans haven't just exterminated other humans,
but animals too and in much the same way and under much the same conditions. There are plenty of big animals in Africa. The lion, elephant, rhinocerous existed and developed along with earliest human development. However, when humans entered previously isolated areas centuries or millenia later, they did so with advanced hunting tools and techniques. Where are the big animals of Australia? Exactly. Fossil records show that there used to be lions and other big animals including a giant kangaroo, which all seemed to disappear at the same time human presence appeared. Either these animals didn't survive the drought that is archaeologically apparent just before human arrival or humans hunted them into extinction. Diamond tells me that the animals had survived many similar droughts over the years and so suspects that it was the arrival of the humans.
Over-hunting had an adverse effect on the humans as well. Without big animals, the Polynesians that settled the islands of the South Pacific had no native animal to domesticate. This meant less abundance of food, less craft/political specialists, less advanced societies.
Part of the reason of their technological disadvantage.
Over-hunting had an adverse effect on the humans as well. Without big animals, the Polynesians that settled the islands of the South Pacific had no native animal to domesticate. This meant less abundance of food, less craft/political specialists, less advanced societies.
Part of the reason of their technological disadvantage.
on a whim, chad was marco @ 12:33 PM
3 $BlogItemCommentCount$:
At 9:05 AM,
ClickNathan said…
There used to be rhinos and camels and sabre-toothed deer in North America. I have no idea why they went extinct, though I have no reason to believe that it was humans (other than "That's the likely conclusion.")
I went to Morris' Tavern in Sidman (on the way to Johnstown from Eburg). Some hunter had all of these amazing animals on display. Alligators and caribou and elk and even a bison. The bison was enormous. I've been up close to living ones, but I was two inches away from this dead one. I swear it could have moved at any moment.
I was just thinking about how the Native Americans would hunt these things down. I mean, they're taller than us and then really long and muscular. And all the Indians had were bows and spears. Not like this guy, who probably shot the thing from 100 yards away. The sign by it said that it was kept in a farm. It made me sad for him, the guy who shot them all, because he does it to prove what kind of hunter he is. Or so it would seem. Why else kill an animal with a weapon that is a guaranteed kill, on a ranch somewhere. The buffalo, too, of all animals, who was nearly extinct not so long ago.
Anyway, I was thinking about how the Indians would kill one of these huge things and eat every last strip of meat and use the tendons for string and the hide for clothes and shelter and the bones for weapons and even the head for a stylish hat. It seems to me that the biggest crimes of all time were committed by white people. We ruined a perfectly balanced culture where the natives lived off of the land in exactly the right propensity. We brought around slavery and disease and exploitation. Well, not you and I, but our people. It would seem that caucasians did this more than any other people.
I don't do research though, I just compile loose thoughts, so please feel free to correct.
At 1:45 PM,
chad was marco said…
haha, compile loose thoughts.
anyway, i think i will correct you.
this is new to my thoughts. i've been studying the movement of human beings in general and looking at it from a scientific perspective, of course with Diamond's guidance.
i'm not really correcting what you mean but what i see as implied behind what you say. when you say 'we' 'white people' 'caucasians,' there are racist implications, racist divisions; 'we' are separate from 'them.'
these divisions are inevitable because they are true in general. for brevity, i think it is ok to make these generalizations, but behind them you must be sure to understand how they became this way. the clearest way to generalize the groups would be to say, 'those humans who inadvertently settled in areas with more domestic plants and animals have inevitably and invariably conquered and destroyed those humans who aimlessly settled in less favorable environments. it so happens that on the largest scale the humans that developed complex socities first happened to live in a climate that had less constant direct sunlight and so their skin is lighter than not.
this is why diamond's example of the polynesian societies is so important. a group of polynesians who used to live with a different group of polynesians just centuries before unapologetically invaded their island neighbors and slaughtered them men women and children and made some fo them slaves. all because they could and all because of their environment. also, there is good evidence of those big animals on these many islands. the polynesians wiped them all out of existence when they arrived.
i arrived at a question while writing one of the earlier paragraphs. is there something to be said for those people that thought, 'nah, i'll keep roaming till i come to a place where there's more local animals and plants.' this question could be easily put in its place if only i had the right data.
anyway, 'we' did not commit atrocities, human beings did. now all human beings are trying to learn from that. from all the mistakes that we now have time to ponder and that are available to so many more people. if non-white people place blame on the 'white people' they are saying that they wouldn't have done the same thing. looking at it historically and scientifically, i think this is naive.
but, of course, there is a degree of rightness in what you said. overall, the people we call white were the ones to commit these morally incorrect acts on the largest scale. the most important thing here is that human beings in general see what was done as immoral, unjust, atrocious, and as long as a society is not threatened into dissolvement no society will do so again. but this now tries to lead me to so many more things and i don't care to go into them right now. and you already know them anyways.
At 1:51 PM,
chad was marco said…
hey, make sure you know i didn't mean it to sound how it might have sounded. i wasn't correcting you. what you said gave me a new image in my head and i wanted to expound on it.
anyway, hidey hoe!
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