Random Thoughts

[chris_gerrib]

The events at work that were expected to occupy my day were postponed, so I have a little time to blog. Herewith, some Random Thoughts:

1) The frequently-interesting blog Obsidian Wings has a good historical overview of the New World's post-apocalyptic landscape. Basically, European diseases killed 90% of Native Americans. These peoples had been actively managing "wilderness" areas in places like the Amazon basin and central California. When everybody died off, the management stopped. What we see as "nature" is actually what the local ecology collapsed into.

2) My publisher, in an ongoing effort to improve marketing and move to the next level, has set up a monthly e-newsletter.

3) My primary first reader, Jackie Powers, had to move to Texas for (lack of) job reasons. She now reports that there are glimmers of hope on that front. I wish her well.

4) My friend Jim Hines is having a discussion on banning and moderating comments on blogs on his site. He gets a lot more traffic than I do; even so, I've had to freeze comments on a post. Moderation is an art, not a science, and the very term "moderation" implies that one is operating in the mushy middle without bright lines. At the end of the day, you call 'em like you see 'em and remind people that they are getting everything they are paying for.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

These peoples had been actively managing "wilderness" areas

I love the 'rectification' of history. Who Controls the Present, Controls the Past. After all - haven't there always been seven billion people on this planet? I mean, there were yesterday, right?

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Well, the actual number for North America circa 1490 was 100 million. That's about what was in Europe at the time, and several hundred million less than what's in America now.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Basically, European diseases killed 90% of Native Americans. These peoples had been actively managing "wilderness" areas in places like the Amazon basin and central California. When everybody died off, the management stopped. What we see as "nature" is actually what the local ecology collapsed into.

Indeed. This is a major aspect of the history and ecology of the New World which most treatments miss. You should check out 1491, by Charles C. Mann, which goes into this topic in very great detail.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

What happened in the New World was that the American Indians developed a suite of biotechnologies, some of them remarkably different from those developed in the Old World, and used them to swell to a total population in the hundreds of millions. Then people from the Old World came, bearing diseases to which the New Worlders had little immunity, and the population of the American Indians crashed to something like 1-10% of their previous numbers over a matter of 100-250 years.

Some of the Native biotechnology (corn, potatoes, etc.) was picked up by the Europeans. Some was ignored. Some was even lost. Some of the lost technology is being rediscovered.

It's silly to scorn the process -- why should we toss the results of their millennia of development on the scrap heap? To do so would merely be cutting off our noses to spite our faces.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

No, just the other day I had someone give me that same Clan of the Cave Bear / Dances With Wolves horseshit about how the Noble Savages were all Caretakers of the Earth© until the white devil phallocentric male-hegemonist European Republicans showed up, &c., &c.

Yeah, yeah… Get a haircut and a job, you clown.

The simple truth is that the natural world was terrifying, people had no control over the environment, it was the environment which had control, that the entire purpose of shamanistic religions was to placate the gods so they wouldn't kill all of your people, and that was no sure bet… There were simply not enough people to affect the environment in any meaningful way, even if they thought they should or could, which they did not. (Why would they? That would be like believing you can reshape the Moon. “… Don't quit your day job,” y' know?)

“Some ideas are so preposterous that only an intellectual could believe them.” - George Orwell

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've read 1491, and thought I'd reviewed it on this blog, but if so I can't find the link.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

There were a lot of things out of the control of primitive peoples, nor were they entirely conscious of their management actions. Also, in places like the US Southwest, those decisions proved bad.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Why do you refer to native (or presumably native) flora as technology?

Agrarian improvements such as clover or turnips might be called “biotechnology” in the same sense that a janitor is a “custodial engineer,” but likewise it just degrades the proper meaning of the term. Corn ain't biotechnology, it's a domesticated plant - and to people who already had wheat and rice and barley and emmer and oats, not to mention peas and carrots and yams, well, y' know, okay, thanks.

Potatoes, peanuts - that's more like it, but it's still not 'technology.' Tobacco, okay, NOW you're talkin'! Not only does that require technology to properly employ - fire, pipes - but it exhausts the soil, requiring fertilizer.

But it's not food, either, so it's somewhat off the subject.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Agriculture most certainly is technology. You need tools and knowledge.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Why do you refer to native (or presumably native) flora as technology?

Because the Amerindians selectively-bred the native flora into new and more useful varieties. In the case of maize, they took teosinte, which could at most have been a food seasoning due to the small size of its ears, and bred it for greater ear size until it could be used as a staple dietary item. This is "technology," because it is a form of tool-making. Not only that, but it's a very vital technology, because it made possible much larger settled population, and consequently complex cultures and even civilizations. Agricultural technologies, everywhere in human history, has been the bases on which civilizations have been founded.

You could take away metalworking and still have civilizations. Old Dynastic Egypt had few or no metal tools (though they did have metal ornaments) and yet managed to build great cities and monuments, and write down complex religious and philosophical ideas. But without her grain and the Nilometers which helped her grow them, Egypt would have little more than a gaggle of fishing villages strung out along the Nile.

Agrarian improvements such as clover or turnips might be called “biotechnology” in the same sense that a janitor is a “custodial engineer,” but likewise it just degrades the proper meaning of the term.

"Biotechnology" has to start somewhere. Likewise, a formation of archers or a spear phalanx is "military technology," even if there's nary a laser-guided bomb to be had in the army.

Agrarian improvements are the basis of civilization, at least among humans. To scorn them is silly, and means that you're missing some of the most important factors in the development of civilization. No food, no writing or architecture or philosophy.

Corn ain't biotechnology, it's a domesticated plant ...

The domestication of plants and animals are among the first steps of "biotechnology" (the very first steps are systematic hunting and gathering). It sounds simple to us, but that's because we stand on the shoulders of many giants who did the hard work already. Oh, and because we aren't ourselves farmers. Farming is a much more complex art than you imagine.

... and to people who already had wheat and rice and barley and emmer and oats, not to mention peas and carrots and yams, well, y' know, okay, thanks.

Aside from the fact that these, too, are "biotechnologies," that no one is claiming that the Amerindians were more advanced than the Old Worlders (they weren't, save in some very specialized fields), you have just jammed together the biotechnologies of the whole Old World to compare against one New World biotechnology, which is unreasonable. You're also ignoring the fact that maize comes in many specialized varieties.

Potatoes, peanuts - that's more like it, but it's still not 'technology.' Tobacco, okay, NOW you're talkin'! Not only does that require technology to properly employ - fire, pipes - but it exhausts the soil, requiring fertilizer.

The Amerindian cultures also developed complex irrigation and fertilization practices. Their irrigation techniques were especially interesting -- instead of digging canals they often used rock walls and small ditches to divert rainwater to or away from areas, allowing them to manage the character of the landscape. They were also accomplished at game management, to the point that they sometimes had extensive game parks threading through their farming areas, allowing their towns to both hunt and farm, the better to vary their diets.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The simple truth is that the natural world was terrifying, people had no control over the environment, it was the environment which had control, that the entire purpose of shamanistic religions was to placate the gods so they wouldn't kill all of your people, and that was no sure bet… There were simply not enough people to affect the environment in any meaningful way, even if they thought they should or could, which they did not.

The shamans studied their environment and counseled the political leadership on policies to change it to better suit the people. When the Paleoindians came to the New World, the first thing they did was to overhunt and exterminate numerous large and useful species: they seem to have learned from this error and developed principles of land management. Being technologically-primitive, they of course expressed these principles in terms of religious ideas, including duties and taboos, rather than scientific papers, but the intent and effects were similar.

Your notion of shamans as parasites whose contributions (if any) to society were purely psychological founders on anthropological studies of modern primitives. Shamans are the keepers of tribal traditions, and these traditions include fairly serious amounts of survival technology, such as medicine, land management, and game-keeping. Has it never occurred to you that -- if shamans were as useless as you claim, it would be very atrange that shamanic traditions appear and flourish in virtually every known tribal culture? Or that when chiefdoms become kingdoms, the shamans (instead of vanishing) found priesthoods? Apply some basic principles of cultural evolution, please!