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a past predator for the Concho area | ||||||
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Hello friends, neighbors, and colleagues. I want to announce my new book, Wolf Land, is now available from Amazon, your favorite bookstores or directly from me. If you want a signed copy, send me your request along with a mailing address. For gifts to others, I can sign the book and send it directly to them if an address is provided.Wolf Land is a collection of nonfiction "campfire" stories sharing memorable field experiences about my interactions with wolves and people.If you know anyone interested in a package deal, we are selling signed copies of Wolf Land along with my first book, Wolfer, for $30 plus a minimal shipping cost.Thanks and happy reading,Carter
"The wolves move around in the veil of white, focused mostly-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
on a dark bump in the middle of the meadow – the elk carcass,
presumably. Big wolves and smaller wolves. Ravens swarm,
waiting for a turn. We watch for an hour or so, occasionally
turning on the telemetry receiver to check for the radio-collared
wolf. It’s not there. Soon the valley goes quiet. The wolves steal
away, disappearing one by one into the steep country to the east,
away from people like us who want to pry into their lives."
The Black Death reached England in August 1348. It first appeared in Dorset and had spread to London by November. It reached Norwich by January 1349, Dublin by the summer, and Edinburgh early in 1350.
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In the next eighteen months, between around 20 and 40 percent of the English population died.Heavily populated areas suffered worst. Half the monks of Westminster Abbey, for example, died. Whereas the normal number of wills registered in London each year was about twenty (only rich men made wills,) in 1348-9 the number was over 370.
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The psychological impact of this first outbreak of plague was immense, but its immediate economic consequences were less drastic than might be expected.
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The initial outbreak seems to have killed largely adult victims, and its first effect was to reduce the shortage of land and food.
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However, although the plague disappeared in 1350, it returned in 1361 in what was known as "The Pestilence of the Children." This outbreak killed the young disproportionately since they did not have the acquired immunity of those who had lived through 1348-50. Further outbreaks hit in 1368-9, 1374-5 and 1378.
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The subsequent outbreaks reduced the population of England by half, and did not begin to recover until after 1450.
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From: George Wuerthner <gwuerthner@gmail.com>
Date: March 21, 2016 at 11:46:54 AM PDT
To: "Meril, Rick" <Rick.Meril@warnerbros.com>
Subject: Re: estimates of Indians may be off
Rick
Abandoned villages? Yes, because they were living on crops. They only got 2-3 crops before soils were exhausted and they had to move on to a new location. Even sometimes exhausting wood supplies--remember you are carrying all this wood on your back. You also hunt out the local deer, etc. How far are you going to carry firewood? How far are you going to carry a deer? Slash and burn ag depends on continuous movement--every few years and guess what you have "abandoned" villages.So how many of those "abandoned" villages represented the natural process of exhausting local supplies of wood, game, and ag lands before moving to a new location? People can over consume especially when they have no way to increase their production.Think about how many abandoned villages would be evident if you had to up and move every 3-4 years.Then there were regular wars between tribes. Villages were abandoned just as we have empty zones around the world today on the battle lines between warring countries. Go to the old border between EAst and West Germany (which is now a big national park) because the villages there were abandoned. Now suppose you did not know the history and you came upon those villages--ah, the explanation must be they were wiped out by disease--if you wanted to use that excuse.Well maybe and maybe not. These historians act like Indians were somehow different than all other humans. Heck very likely our ancestors, including Indians, helped to wipe out Neanderthals. People are continuously at war and in the pre-European days, tribal conflicts often led to abandoned villages.Starvation was common as well. One harsh winter and entire villages could be depopulated, and/or so weak that adjacent tribes would push them into other territories. there is the winter of 1816 when summer did not come. Many New Englanders almost starved, but by then we had sailing ships, etc. so food could be moved. And then were are diseases that could affect food staples--a disease that wipes out deer for a few years or causes your corn crop to fail. Just like the potato famine in Ireland. What this never happened in North America?The problem is that since there is no written history, people make up stories that fits their preexisting narrative. The narrative is that there had to be a lot of Indians, and the Europeans were nasty folks who came and killed off all the Indians to take their lands. The second narrative is that Indians were not primitive and "managed" everything--somehow doing this with no technology to speak of--and all of NA was one big farmed landscape. Well then you have to have large human populations if you are going to affect everything as your story goes, so you have to figure out how large numbers of Indians were around for a long time, but disappeared suddenly--the simple answer is disease.Look at Europe where we have good histories. There were famines all the time that continuously that led to major population declines. One cold spring, crops failed, and people starved in mass.These environmental historians are selective in their causes of population decline and abandonment because they want to make it sound like Indian populations were much higher.But you have to think about it from an ecological perspective, and Indian people (as all low technology people) had natural limits on their populations. And they often fluctuated significantly due to events that today would seem inconsequential. For instance, I bet if the same drought now hitting California today happened 500 years ago, you would have seen a major population decline in Indians just as you would see in other wildlife. Almost all of the food resources except for food from the sea would be limited. People be dying from starvation, as well as wars between tribal units.It's just like wolf packs. If you have a population decline in elk, wolf packs fight each other. The population of wolves in Yellowstone declined by 50%. If it were environmental historians, they would have said diseases were responsible (and I know there was some disease in Y'stone wolves too--but the population decline was mostly due to declining prey base). Wolves are a perfect metaphor for humans.Again, you cannot support high human populations for very long on primitive technology. Without beasts of burden, without the wheel, without metal, without water and wind power, without fishing nets, in fact, until recently without even the bow and arrow. That is the question these people asserting such high human numbers must answer. How do you sustain high numbers without anything other than basic resource exploitive methods and equipment. You can't. Even the addition of metal knives, and axes greatly increased the ability of tribes to exploit their environment. Add in horses, and guns, and wow you have a regular population explosion.
On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 10:33 AM, Meril, Rick <Rick.Meril@warnerbros.com> wrote:
thanks George.........and the Hawaiians, decimate by the Pox?????????We see how the Indians were decimated by alcohol, their systems even today intolerant of "drink",,,,,,,,Do not the remaining hunter/gatherer tribes in the Amazon get medical assistance........I have seen this written about????Virtually every diary account of the colonial period mentions abandoned east coast Indian villages upon colonists coming off the boats and stepping onto North American land for the first time.........Your points about the plains Indians dragging bison without horses makes sense........Horses amongst the tribes during the mid 1500's after Spanish let many loose?????population explosion west of mississippi as this occurred?Eastern woodland Indians had enough "hands" to bring in deer to villages??
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