Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA18234 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 6 Feb 2002 02:31:39 GMT Message-ID: <20020206022618.82662.qmail@web12307.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 02:26:18 +0000 (GMT) From: John Croft <jdcroft@yahoo.com> Subject: Sustainable memes versus selfish ones To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk In-Reply-To: <200202052100.VAA17331@alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Wade wrote to Jeremy's point
> >In the longer term, maybe 150 years, the planet
> >will not support humans. Does that not make our >
>carelessness and corruption crimes against humanity?
>
> I don't, at all, disagree with this. (See Wilson's
> new Future of Life for a wonderful compendium of
> support.) I was more disagreeing with the
> 'western' bias you gave ecological destruction. The
> world is littered, on all fronts, with examples of
> man-made ecological disasters, many from
> indigenous peoples, who, having ruined one island,
> have to move to another. For every aborigine
success,
> there are pairs of failures by other native dwellers
> or colonial arrivers.
Yes, but this is exactly the kind of Darwinian
evolution for success that occurs to make sure culture
does respect the integrity of its environment. Those
cultures that do not "live within their means" destroy
the environment in which they live and collapse,
leaving those others that do behind. Thus to use Tim
Flannery's phrase, over time "Future Eaters" get
replaced by "Future preservers". Because cultural
memory of the dangers of exceeding the carrying
capacity result in death and suffering, cultural
impediments to exceeding carrying capacity (eg. late
marriage, child-spacing and extended lactation, food
taboos, infanticide, voluntary euthenasia of the
elderly, even headhunting and cannibalism) act in such
a way as to reduce population pressures to what the
environment can support.
>
> >aberration in the human mythscape as all other
> >early cultures were directed to exist in nature,
not
> > above it.
>
> Nature is often more powerful. And then, something
> makes it less so. Any agricultural endeavor has no
> place in that mythscape, and that mythscape
> was left behind, by all but a few tribes, long ago.
Wade, agriculture can and has been sustainable in many
environments. For instance, the latest evidence
suggests that a mixed gardening-hunting-fishing
culture has been sustainable in Papua New Guinea for
at least 25,000 years until modern times. The
Australian landscape, it is now recognised, is not a
"natural wilderness" but was in fact a cultural
product of Aboriginal management practices. North and
South America too, far from being the "untamed
wilderness" that people with European eyes saw, was in
fact being actively managed by many hundreds of
indigenous cultures. Just before the time of
Columbus, for instance, it has been estimated that the
Amazon Rainforest was the home of possibly as many as
30 million. A 95% death rate from the Portugese
introduced diseases, wiped out these cultures which
had previously found a way to live sustainably within
a rainforest environment - a feat that modern
Brazilians have not managed. When Pizarro arrived in
Peru, more land was under cultivation and more food
was being produced in the Andean region than is today.
http://www.mongabay.com/ref07.htm for instance states
"Estimates for Amerindian population before the
arrival of Europeans are found in A. Roosevelt,
Parmana. New York: Academic Press, 1980; Smith, N.J.H.
"Anthrosols and human carrying capacity in Amazônia,"
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70:
553-566, 1980; Dobyns, H., Their Numbers Became Thin,
University of Tennessee Press: Knoxville, 1983;
MacDonald, T., "People of the Central and South
American Forests," Rainforests: The Illustrated
Library of the Earth. ed. N. Myers, Emmaus,
Pennsylvania: Rodale Press, 1993; Smith, N.J.H. et
al., Amazonia - Resiliency and Dynamism of the Land
and its People, New York: United Nations University
Press, 1995; and Diamond, J., Guns, Germs, and Steel
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.
The history of settlement in the Amazon, including the
development of pottery and agriculture is discussed in
A. Roosevelt, Parmana, New York: Academic Press, 1980;
Roosevelt, A., "Resource management in Amazônia before
the conquest: Beyond ethnographic projection,"
Advances in Economic Botany 7: 30-62, 1989; Bush, M.
A., D. R. Piperno, and P. A. Colinvaux, "A 6,000 year
history of Amazonian maize cultivation," Nature 340:
303-305, 1989; Roosevelt, A., Moundbuilders of the
Amazon: Geophysical archaeology on Marajo Island,
Brazil, San Diego: Academic Press, 1991; Smith, N.J.H.
et al., Amazonia - Resiliency and Dynamism of the Land
and its People, New York: United Nations University
Press, 1995; Nishizawa, T. and J. I. Uitto, eds., The
Fragile Tropics of Latin America: Sustainable
Management of Changing Environments, New York: United
Nations University Press, 1995; A.C. Roosevelt, et
al., "Paleoindian cave dwellers i n the Amazon: The
peopling of the Americas," Science 272:373-384, 1996;
and Diamond, J., Guns, Germs, and Steel New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1998.
Large-scale forest clearing and management by
pre-Colombian populations is reviewed in Richards,
P.W.," Tropical forests and woodlands: An overview,"
Agro-Ecosystems 3: 225-238, 1977; Dufour, D.L., "Use
of tropical rainforests by native Amazonians,"
Bioscience 40: 652-659, 1990; Denevan, V.M., "The
pristine myth: The landscape of the Americas in 1492,"
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82:
369-385, 1992; and Meggers, B.J., "Archaeological
perspectives on the potential of Amazonia for
intensive exploitation," in Nishizawa, T. and J. I.
Uitto, eds., The Fragile Tropics of Latin America:
Sustainable Management of Changing Environments, New
York: United Nations University Press, 1995. At least
11.8% of terra firme forests are believed to be of an
anthropogenic form according to Balée, W., "The
culture of Amazonian forests," Advances in Economic
Botany 7: 1-21, 1989; and Nishizawa, T. and J. I.
Uitto, eds., The Fragile Tropics of Latin America:
Sustainable Management of Changing Environments, New
York: United Nations University Press, 1995.
The notion of a sparsely populated Amazon is a
testament to the best weapon possessed by Europeans in
their conquering of the New World: their diseases.
These diseases, especially smallpox, devastated
unsuspecting native populations native populations,
killing as much as 95%. The massive Amerindian die-off
is described in innumerable works, but this book draws
on the following sources: Prescott W.H., History of
the Conquest of Peru, New York 1847; McNeill W.H.,
Plagues and Peoples, New York: History Book Club,
1976; H. Dobyns, Their Numbers Became Thin, Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1983; Caufield, C., In
the Rainforest, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984; A.W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism-The
Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986; Nishizawa, T. and J.
I. Uitto, eds., The Fragile Tropics of Latin America:
Sustainable Management of Changing Environments, New
York: United Nations University Press, 1995; and
Diamond, J., Guns, Germs, and Steel New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1998."
Regards
John
>
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