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"I supplied a link to an article in my post that I found most convincing especially when I first read it in 2003. Nothing has persuaded me since to the contrary. In fact, as was indicated in the latest computer modeling that is being reported upon now, the overhunting/extinction nexus appears to be primarily an island-based issue. " Then perhaps you should read more. Better still, perhaps you should not try to deflect an argument based on the same thing you said--about "island-based" extinction--when someone, me in this case, does not even quibble with that point. Of course island-based extinctions are an inaccurate argument about megafaunal extinctions such as the ones discussed here on a large continent wide pre-history. As I mentioned, I believe you could start by examining Flannery's very comprehensive work, which, by the way, takes into account the fallacy of using "island-based" models. More to the point, that false arguments about incompatible models for extinctions is not really what I was arguing here. Rather, the idea that somehow native peoples are, or were, immune from contributing to megafaunal extinction because a) they were too small in number and b) some charlatans want to link past history of survival with a racist modern argument justifying human roles in extinctions and climatic change today. It doesn't take a large human footprint to cause problems and small problems have a way of contributing to larger problems. Native peoples--that is, the first human immigrants to this continent--have no altruistic high ground regarding the role that they played in creating ecological changes that likely led to larger extinctions of the megafauna. It doesn't make such first peoples "bad guys". It just make my ancestors (at least the non-white immigrant portion of my ancestry) what they are, humans trying to survive. Trying to obfuscate that role simply to oppose rac ist arguments today just makes revolutionaries look silly at worst, and prone to liberalistic (that is, bourgeois liberalistic) "guilty privileged" apologetics as a way to ingratiate oneself with "native [immigrant] people" at worst. _________________________________________________________ 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
