writes:
If the evidence of humans being responsible for the extinction of species
5,000-15,000 years ago holds up, then it would seem very hard to argue for a
human biological imperative to preserve potential food sources.
It is reasonable to argue that after the great leap forward in human
evolution (the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens) about 100,000 years ago
that we wiped out most of the large land mammals. Wherever we appear the big
beasts disappear and disappear fast. It is a fairy tail that hunter gatherers
live in harmony with nature taking only what they need and that if we modern
western humans could get in touch with this innate environmentalism that
everything would be all right. The Indians of the west used to drive buffalo
herds of cliffs. They could not eat all that they killed. The Maui wiped out
the large flightless birds of New Zealand in about three generations. We do a
bit better with plants but even here the evidence is grim. Remember the Gulf
War? All that desert that the tanks were plowing through? That was the
fertile crescent folks, a place of such natural abundance of plant and animal
life that western human society was born there. Same is true in the south
pacific. We all know about the famous heads on Easter Island. But where are
the creative geniuses who who carved these heads? What happened to the Anasi,
whose society flourished in what is now the deserts of the southwest? All of
these civilizations disappeared because of their own actions. Now these
agricultural disasters took longer than hunting disasters. Hundreds to
thousands of years as opposed to a 100 or so. These civilizations probably
tried to preserve their resources but did not have the knowledge to do so. It
remains an open question as to whether we can modify our behavior
sufficiently to prevent a disaster that destroys our species.
