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Some great points there, Louis. You know who made the same case re: superior indigenous stewardship over the land and its creatures? Yep, it was that contemptible green capitalist Cronon in his uber anti-Abby Changes in the Land... Ultimately, I doubt it's an either/or scenario. More likely than not, there was a dialectical process whereby changing climate conditions led to fewer animals which could indeed have led to "overhunting" if there was a relatively "sudden" reduction in the supply of food in relation to the local populations that had built themselves up on the previously abundant supply of megafauna. Marvin Harris' research (and his gloss on many others' work in this field) suggests that hunter-gatherer bands are quite adept at controlling their populations and managing their resources. That said, however, abrupt environmental change that overwhelms the local food sources' ability to adapt to significantly altered conditions might very well lead to the near collapse of the human communities that are dependent on them for survival. > 16 авг. 2015 г., в 16:51, Louis Proyect via Marxism > <[email protected]> написал(а): > > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > This week a study carried out by scientists at the University of Essex in > England got picked up far and wide. It purported to prove once and for all > that overhunting or some other excessive behavior by prehistoric man such as > setting out-of-control fires led to the extinction of many large-scale > mammals (megafauna) such as mammoths, woolly rhinos and sabertooth tigers. > Their computer-generated data supposedly now ruled out climate change as the > cause. The study is behind a paywall and probably too technical for the lay > reader (including me) but the takeaway is conveyed by this graph, which > indicates that there is a direct relationship between the rate of extinction > and geography. They occur most frequently on islands and the smaller the > island, the greater the risk. This should come as no surprise and it would > likely rule out woolly mammoths becoming extinct on some South Pacific island. > > full: > http://louisproyect.org/2015/08/16/racism-and-the-overhunting-hypothesis/ > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/shalva.eliava%40outlook.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
