Originally posted by CasualOne
The idea that early humans lived a "green" life in harmony with nature is a very common mis-notion.
Sure is but it was certainly closer to green than what we are doing now!
Our "green" forefathers used many "over-kill" hunting techniques on the worlds megafauna, with many sites in North America. This combined
with very drastic climate changes, yes they had bigger suv's back then also 
, and a very good possibility of diseases from mass migrations
drove the largest mass extinction in human history.
I don't know how about largest but i do know that big game did supposedly as good as disappear from the North American continent within i think a
thousand years after we arrived. The people did notice their effect on nature and did change their ways afterwards resulting , as i understand, in the
modern far 'greener' North American Indian approach to living off the land.
Don't forget in North America there is growing evidence of a comet "hit" just under 13,000 years ago also.
I will take your word for that at this time.
I agree with Byrd that you should really see for yourself what it is like working a midden heap, or a kill pit. Very scary thought to live in
the paleolithic world. Upper paleolithic life expectancy was mid 20's with "old" being in the 30's, how many of you want to trade our 70+ years
for a fast 20 something?
Thus not so different from the life expectancies of the early industrial age, yesterday ? Will anyone argue that life on the open plains of North
American was not in fact better than Britain for most of the last four hundred odd years?
Easy life you say? Take a long hard look at the bones of our leisure time stroll to and fro ancestors and you will see the evidence of a harsh
often brutal reality.
Far, FAR less brutal than Britain in 17th and 18th centuries...
Abscessed teeth, and other "minor" injuries or infections claimed many of them.
We have perfectly good evidence that they knew how to deal with minor injuries and their sanitary conditions were very good hence the devastation
European disease wrought on them later on.
Megafauna was not docile either! Oh, remind me once again why wolves were hunted to near extinction in Europe and most of North America in
"modern" times. Try living in a world with mega-predators!
Rather Mega fauna than a factory boss with well armed goons, your still better armed than predator and smarter too and the biggest threat to you will
always be those few humans who wish to exploit you to death.
Did we even talk about infant mortality rates or maternal mortality?
Far, far higher for most of industrial age.
Well then we need to remember that with no canning or refrigeration very few foods keep well.
You can preserve meat for a very long time if you understand some basics and people still did it fifty years ago.
Did we even talk about infant mortality rates or maternal mortality?
Both lower then than during most other periods of modern ( last ten thousand years or so) history...
Well then we need to remember that with no canning or refrigeration very few foods keep well.
Meat was consumed relatively quickly and since meat was rarely anything but the difference between living well and prospering it's not as critical as
some would like to suggest.
So just a few hours a day hunting and cooking, you're crazy.
Actually hunter gatherers gathered far more than they hunted and as always women gathered and basically provided the constant sustenance that enabled
hunting excursions and male pride in general.
Famine and starvation were the norm not the exception!
Famine and starvation become the norm when people stopped living within the means of their environments and instead bargained on consistent high
yields which the land never could sustain in the long or even short run.
The growth plates of our paleolithic pals show many more lean times than feast times.
There is a vast difference between lean times and the outright and consistent episodes of starvation that plagued humanity the last few thousand
years.
Our ancestors had to compete for survival not tree-hug for survival.
Compete with who? I don't like the Utopian nonsense about history some Greens wants to indoctrinate people with but we don't have misrepresent
history either...
They did not have speed, claws, teeth, strength or size. They had intelligence and a sophisticated social/cultural system.
And in certain parts of Africa grown male Lions are hunted as part of a initiation rite...
My Masters Dissertation was about human evolution and the idea that we are not descendants of the big dumb "Ugh" brute but from the "geek
caveman". Thinking and planning not brute force or strolling up and down the mountains led to our existence.
Keep it, Casual
And that must have been a while ago as the books i have read strongly suggest to me that this issue was settled some time ago.
Stellar
