

Ancient Man Didn't Exactly Live in Harmony With the Land - scapegraced
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/science/earth/21ancient.html?_r=1&hpw

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blhack
I say this as an SUV driving republican voting nature lover:

A lot of people's first reaction to hearing this is something along the lines
of "haha, _see_ , hippies, see how stupid you are!??!".

Just because humans at one point blindly destroyed everything they came in
contact with does not mean that they should continue to, or should dismiss
doing so as acceptable.

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mmt
We humans like to think we're special, but we're not, even in the realm of
environmental damage.

It's part of why I love traveling through and around the state of Oregon: so
much is named after beavers.

~~~
davi
We're special in that we can decide what effects we want to have.

~~~
joe_the_user
... except when we fail to act on our supposed ideals, which seems to be most
of the time!

I suppose that if we assumed that humans were like some species of giant ant,
then our spread accross the globe, destroying species, altering coast lines
and spewing out poison, would be a marvel of nature!

If each complex species that enters and alters an area is "degrading" it, what
is the most desirable ecosystem? A giant mound of plankton?

~~~
unalone
Isn't it a marvel of nature? We're consciously shaping the world to suit
ourselves. We're being very destructive and savage in the process, but
destruction and loss is natural.

I most enjoy the comments one sees online made by people who talk about how
our biology is going to doom us to destruction. The point they miss is that
being aware of our biology allows us to circumvent it, to some degree, and
that's a part of evolution to. Mental/technological evolution still counts as
evolving.

~~~
joe_the_user
All the "environmental destruction" is natural. But, to the degree that we
even can choose, we should think about whether it's desirable.

~~~
mmt
That's a pretty tall order. After all, we often don't know what's desirable in
a much narrower context in the present.

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asdlfj2sd33
Is this really news? I mean someone very very confused might actually believe
that ancient man was magical. But doesn't everyone know about the Mammoths and
all the other giant fauna that went extinct when man arrived? Only Africa
still has giant mammals probably because they co-evolved with hominids.

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teeja
Related NPR story (& 5-minute audio):

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1121245...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112124572)

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DanielBMarkham
It might be interesting, and you guys might like it, but this isn't news.

Seriously. anybody really interested in environmental issues should have known
years ago that all creatures that live on this planet change it -- sometimes
to drastic effect. Some of the practices the article didn't go into are even
more devastating, such as the use of fire-hunting, or early attempts at mining
and smelting (which polluted vast areas of wetlands)

The real question is: what would we like our environment to be like today? I
think people get this romantic, mushy-headed feeling that somehow it's only
modern humans that have had a noticeable impact on things, and that "if it
were only like it were five thousand years ago" or some such that it would
idyllic. By having a slanted preconception like this, it actually hurts
conversations about where we want to go by adding a lot of finger-pointing and
posturing where none need exist.

(Sorry -- must have a bit of grumpiness to get out of my system today)

~~~
scott_s
Yes, this is news. It presents specific, _new_ evidence of the practice. The
general idea that ancient humans had negative impact on the land was
recognized as not being novel in the lead: "The idea that primitive hunter-
gatherers lived in harmony with the landscape has long been challenged by
researchers, who say Stone Age humans in fact wiped out many animal species in
places as varied as the mountains of New Zealand and the plains of North
America."

I see this tendency with scientific articles a lot. An article presents a new
finding within an existing framework, and someone feels compelled to point out
that the existing framework is old hat. This ignores that the news in the
article is the new finding, not the existing framework.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
It represents specific new evidence. Got me there.

My point, somewhat rhetorically put, was that the framework itself is what is
new for most readers here, not the specific piece of information. And that's
sad.

~~~
derefr
Actually, this might just be an important point in the discussion of what
exactly "does or doesn't belong" on HN. It seems like all the highly-voted,
well-liked, and highly-commented articles tend to discuss some sort of
revelation of _pattern_ , not revelation of fact. In other words, hackers like
to read about new, effective abstractions (for seeing the world in general,
not just for code.)

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thras
Well, of course. What else does anyone think happened to all of the ice-age
mega-fauna? Human beings moved in and ate everything that was big and slow.

