forastero
Posts: 458 Joined: Oct. 2011
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Quote (Indiumas @ Nov. 24 2011,10:42) | Quote | Forastero: You are assuming there was no agriculture and you are assuming that the carrying capacity in uniformitarian terms. Your assumptions are wrong because the evidence shows that Africa's carrying capacity was much stronger in the past and agriculture was present |
No, I am not. This has been independently determined, see for example this paper and the references therein. Of course you can easily prove me (and all those stupid scientists working in this field) wrong: Show me that agriculture has been a major factor more than let´s say 15000 years ago. The funny thing, of course, is that according to you, humans don´t even have a history that goes back 15000 years! :D So, when you demonstrate that humans had a thriving agriculture 15000 years ago, be sure to point out that you actually don´t mean 15000 years but 6000 years, which would of course make your point invalid again. I can´t even begin to imagine how you can cope with mental dissonances like this.
Also, I am not assuming that carrying capacity is "uniformitarian", whatever you mean by that anyway. I even mentioned that a better model should reflect that the carrying capacity can be time-dependent. Do you actually read what people write?
So, you are wrong on both accounts. |
Been out of town so I just got a chance to read your paper by Belovsky. He claims that there is little evidence that hunter gathers will take measures against overkill and the last sentence of his paper says: “Therefore, humans will always hunt their prey to extinction in these models: there is no other alternative.”
Like most evolutionist, he stereotypes prehistory stereotypical rationalizations on some Kung people
Belovsky fails to understand the power of traditional knowledge. The Koihsan people are great agrforesters with vast knowledge about animals and hundreds of different plants. Like the Aborigines, The Khoisan really are keystones to improving desert fertility and production via planting, transplanting, crossbreeding, amending, irrigating etc. etc.. etc…. They have great respect for the animals they hunt that includes a deeply spiritual understanding of cause and effect. This can also be said about so many other indigenous peoples around the world. In fact the most biodivers regions on earth are known to have undergone thousands of years of human manipulation.
Humans have indeed caused mass overkill but archeology shows that it was a time before indigenous people such as the Native Americans, Aborigines and Khoisan—groups who suffered from the same survival of the fittest greed, genocide and predator control, etc.. that are leading to ecocide as we speak.
Modern evolutionists still cook up phylogenies and and IQ scores to project people like the Kung Bushmen as the epitome of prehistoric man and/or missing link between modern society and chimpanzee clans. Pygmies, Khoisan, and and Indians with so called archaic features were exhibited with zoo animals but little did the mob mentality realize the great variability, complexities, knowledge, and individualism of these people. Heck, I personally know several a so called primitive who have fit right into modern society. Indigenous people who stick with their traditional ways do so because they love it and because it affords the more free time to be with the people they love and laugh with. Throughout time individuals and groups specialize in either hunting, fishing, pastoralism or swidden yet they have always had a symbiotic trade with each other. This trade has always been observed even among the khoisan and Pygmies and archeology shows that even their supposed sangoan ancestors domesticated melons, used grain-grindstones and exploited cattle; as did those cultures who inhabited the Sarah before it became a desert.
Moreover technology and invention most often builds upon itself and once severe perturbations cause man to become separated from their technical society, he often finds himself less technical than the seasoned hunter gatherer. For example, the golden ages of most empires had pretty much degraded its ecology and society out of a lust for power and materials, and thus in great part, often broke up into relatively unknown tribes. In cases like this, its the so called barbarians whom have been living off the land and collecting the endlessly vast knowledge of nature who end up as the dominant social force. So dont be so quick to diss indigenous knowledge. Yes, kingdoms come and go and you really dont know the ancient history of the pygmy or San or aborigine, etc… Facts are stranger than fiction.
Belovsky is also in error in his failure to consider fisheries, especially when most of Africa’s human populations have always straddled oceans, lakes, rivers and swamps. Even the Kung often favor the Okavango swamps. Concerning population rates, he is also wrong to put so much weight on nursing mothers because agroforestry people are all about community and family time that often includes communal child care.
Oh and exponential growth among Indians, Aborigines, and Khoisan . http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content....bstract http://www.pnas.org/content....53.long http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstre....uence=1
Of course there has been some some drift and genocide via the progressive retrogressive social Darwinist
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