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In which the History Wars go cross-continental
So, one of the things that keeps being brought up in the discussion around Racefail09, Racefail the Thirteenth Child II is this:
The justification given for the deletion of the entire native populations of the Americas is this: in order for magic megafauna to survive, the natives need not to have moved in, because, it is claimed, "archaeology" says that the megafauna were rendered extinct by the hunting of humans.
As I quoted in my last post on this topic:
This, then, is the actual current mainstream view. Now, orthodoxy is not automatically accuracy, but where the bulk of research is in agreement, a radically opposed view must bring the weight of evidence to bear in its favour.
The book that keeps getting cited on this is 1491, by Charles C. Mann. Allegedly a really convincing source; certainly, as it's the one that they all bring up, I'm going to treat it as a sufficient source for this argument, as far as pointing out why this is wrong goes.
First of all: Yes, it's a book. A published one. That doesn't mean it's right, doesn't mean it's not in fact purest excrement. David Irving writes books. Keith Windschuttle writes books. Not-even-slightly coincidentally, they're both racist revisionists.
One paragraph summary of Mann:
Setting aside Mann's political aim - which is, as I understand it, more about better land management than about writing the native populations out of existence, so don't judge him by the people who cite him - we have, as the central relevant claim, the idea that the various native American populations were vast and numerous before 1492 and European invasion. His contention is that up to 95% of the population were wiped out by European diseases, factional warfare, and overexploitation of available resources; the wild lands into which the colonists moved were much wilder than they had been.
Right.
1) There were tens of millions of native folk, but they all died around the 16th century of European plagues.
This argument? It is not clever.
a) If this were the case, the oral histories of the relevant peoples, which are not extinct and which record other instances of plague, would include it.
b) If diseases like smallpox (the one specifically cited) had ravaged the populace previously, subsequent generations, being descended from the survivors, would have an inherited resistance to it - they would not have been as susceptible to it the way they were when smallpox was being used as a biological weapon a few generations later.
c) Smallpox would have been extant on the continent. Diseases don't disappear. Even smallpox, the only disease now nominally eradicated by humanity, occasionally recurs in isolated areas, but it's not endemic, so it's kept in check. Without serious and advanced vaccination-based medical intervention, these diseases persist. Consider that, despite modern medical technology and the widespread availability of preventive vaccines, a landmass as isolated as Australia still only recently eradicated endemic measles. It wasn't. Nor were other European diseases.
d) Plagues just don't hit that hard. Consider that worse diseases than smallpox have not had anywhere near that kind of kill rate. The Black Death killed between 30 and 60 percent of the population of Europe - which, at the time, was living in conditions pretty much perfectly designed to maximise its impact. The 1918 flu pandemic didn't get anywhere near those kinds of kill rates. Nor did the plague of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Zaire Ebola Virus, pretty much the deadliest disease in existence, doesn't get that high.
If your argument requires something to be deadlier than Ebola Zaire, you damn well better have some evidence. There is none - not historical, not epidemiological, nothing.
2) Those millions of native folk cultivated the land and modified the environment for their own benefit.
Okay. Assume they did. Why does this mean they exterminate useful animals? Remember, we are talking about the extinction of the megafauna - dragging in wider considerations of prehistoric living in the Americas is purest derailment.
:crickets:
The animals humans exterminate when we modify the environment to our own benefit are predators. Wolves, lions, tigers - they kill livestock and they kill people. The actual evidence is that native populations of the Americas hunted and ate large meaty beasts. This means that they have an active disincentive not to hunt them to extinction. The actual evidence is that they killed them if and when they wanted to - buffalo jumps aren't exactly the least wasteful way to bring down your dinner - but, as the actual evidence shows, this didn't cause buffalo extinction. Millions of buffalo were still wandering around North America after millennia of human habitation.
Please stop bringing Charles C. Mann into this.
The justification given for the deletion of the entire native populations of the Americas is this: in order for magic megafauna to survive, the natives need not to have moved in, because, it is claimed, "archaeology" says that the megafauna were rendered extinct by the hunting of humans.
As I quoted in my last post on this topic:
The extinction of megafauna around the world was probably due to environmental and ecological factors. It was almost completed by the end of the last ice age. It is believed that megafauna initially came into existence in response to glacial conditions and became extinct with the onset of warmer climates.Source: The Australian Museum, factsheet on megafauna extinction.
In temperate Eurasia and North America, megafauna extinction concluded simultaneously with the replacement of the vast periglacial tundra by an immense area of forest. Glacial species, such as mammoths and woolly rhinocerous, were replaced by animals better adapted to forests, such as elk, deer and pigs. Reindeers (caribou) retreated north, while horses moved south to the central Asian steppe. This all happened about 10 000 years ago, despite the fact that humans colonised North America less than 15 000 years ago and non-tropical Eurasia nearly 1 million years ago.
This, then, is the actual current mainstream view. Now, orthodoxy is not automatically accuracy, but where the bulk of research is in agreement, a radically opposed view must bring the weight of evidence to bear in its favour.
The book that keeps getting cited on this is 1491, by Charles C. Mann. Allegedly a really convincing source; certainly, as it's the one that they all bring up, I'm going to treat it as a sufficient source for this argument, as far as pointing out why this is wrong goes.
First of all: Yes, it's a book. A published one. That doesn't mean it's right, doesn't mean it's not in fact purest excrement. David Irving writes books. Keith Windschuttle writes books. Not-even-slightly coincidentally, they're both racist revisionists.
One paragraph summary of Mann:
Setting aside Mann's political aim - which is, as I understand it, more about better land management than about writing the native populations out of existence, so don't judge him by the people who cite him - we have, as the central relevant claim, the idea that the various native American populations were vast and numerous before 1492 and European invasion. His contention is that up to 95% of the population were wiped out by European diseases, factional warfare, and overexploitation of available resources; the wild lands into which the colonists moved were much wilder than they had been.
Right.
1) There were tens of millions of native folk, but they all died around the 16th century of European plagues.
This argument? It is not clever.
a) If this were the case, the oral histories of the relevant peoples, which are not extinct and which record other instances of plague, would include it.
b) If diseases like smallpox (the one specifically cited) had ravaged the populace previously, subsequent generations, being descended from the survivors, would have an inherited resistance to it - they would not have been as susceptible to it the way they were when smallpox was being used as a biological weapon a few generations later.
c) Smallpox would have been extant on the continent. Diseases don't disappear. Even smallpox, the only disease now nominally eradicated by humanity, occasionally recurs in isolated areas, but it's not endemic, so it's kept in check. Without serious and advanced vaccination-based medical intervention, these diseases persist. Consider that, despite modern medical technology and the widespread availability of preventive vaccines, a landmass as isolated as Australia still only recently eradicated endemic measles. It wasn't. Nor were other European diseases.
d) Plagues just don't hit that hard. Consider that worse diseases than smallpox have not had anywhere near that kind of kill rate. The Black Death killed between 30 and 60 percent of the population of Europe - which, at the time, was living in conditions pretty much perfectly designed to maximise its impact. The 1918 flu pandemic didn't get anywhere near those kinds of kill rates. Nor did the plague of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Zaire Ebola Virus, pretty much the deadliest disease in existence, doesn't get that high.
If your argument requires something to be deadlier than Ebola Zaire, you damn well better have some evidence. There is none - not historical, not epidemiological, nothing.
2) Those millions of native folk cultivated the land and modified the environment for their own benefit.
Okay. Assume they did. Why does this mean they exterminate useful animals? Remember, we are talking about the extinction of the megafauna - dragging in wider considerations of prehistoric living in the Americas is purest derailment.
:crickets:
The animals humans exterminate when we modify the environment to our own benefit are predators. Wolves, lions, tigers - they kill livestock and they kill people. The actual evidence is that native populations of the Americas hunted and ate large meaty beasts. This means that they have an active disincentive not to hunt them to extinction. The actual evidence is that they killed them if and when they wanted to - buffalo jumps aren't exactly the least wasteful way to bring down your dinner - but, as the actual evidence shows, this didn't cause buffalo extinction. Millions of buffalo were still wandering around North America after millennia of human habitation.
Please stop bringing Charles C. Mann into this.