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Re: forgive me for jumping in here when I totally agree with your larger points about Wrede, but ...
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May 12th, 2009 - 03:24 am
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Yeah, that was a poorly phrased post at best, and the math was wrong too (though not by much). I think the relative estimates are Aztecs and south at 90% of the pre-Columbian population, and north of Aztecs 10% of the population.
My main point is that all four of the counterarguments in the above post about Native Americans and plague are at least slightly wrong, and for a lot of the pre-colonization dieoffs there is certainly evidence. The one in Massachusetts before the Pilgrims landed is very well attested.
As for megafauna, etc. - It's like the Neanderthals in Europe, or the hobbits in SE Asia. Sure, it's possible humans had nothing to do with all that, but it doesn't seem very plausible for animals that had survived a multitude of prior ice age cycles. Mammoths indeed survived many thousands of years past mainland extinction on an island north of Russia that was devoid of human habitation - until humans showed up. Much of the surviving non-domesticated megafauna in the world is in Africa, where it evolved alongside humanity. To blame overhunting specifically and exclusively seems invalid, but humans change their environment in other ways than mere hunting.
-Yrf |
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