Links to information about the myth of the "noble savage," the "Leavers" who lived within ecosystems without damaging them until the "Takers" arrived. Some peoples have undoubtedly lived more gently on the earth than others, but our species has yet to demonstrate an ability to live communally within an ecosystem. We still might be able to, and it's a noble goal to aspire to, but we sure can't do it with six or seven billion of us.

Whence the "Noble Savage"
by Patrick Frank
November 2001
If Neolithic peoples didn't treat one another with kindness, perhaps they were environmentally gentle. Perhaps not.

According to Jared Diamond the Easter Islanders, Anasazi, Creeks, Middle Easterners, Hawaiians, and sundry Polynesian societies wreaked large-scale and irreversible damage on their environments by destruction of forest, fauna, and flora.

He recounts how when Polynesians arrived around 400 CE, Easter Island was covered with palms, trees and shrubs. By 1500 CE the entire forest was extinct and the population, grown past the carrying capacity, resorted to warfare, tyranny, slavery and cannibalism.

Similarly, the Hawaiians drove to extinction at least 50 species of birds including sea eagles and several kinds of large flightless ibises, and completely wrecked the ecologies of the drier lowlands of the islands. In similar fashion, between 1000 CE and 1200 CE, the Anasazi at Chaco Canyon irreversibly deforested their surroundings to a distance of more than 75 km, contributing to the collapse of their society. So much for 30,000 years of eco-bliss.

In his book The Ecological Indian, Shepard Krech shows that the relationship between indigenous North Americans and the environment was ambiguous at best. For example, the Hohokam of southern Arizona powerfully modified the ecology of the Gila and Salt River valleys by way of huge irrigation works leading to the salinization and exhaustion of the soils, and the eventual collapse of their urban society.

To read the rest of this in-depth article, go to Skeptic Magazine and order a copy of Volume 9 Number 1 $6US.


Indigenous populations deforested New World rainforests before European contact
Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
February 28, 2007

Indigenous populations used fire to clear large areas of tropical forest well before the arrival of Europeans reports a new study published in Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. The research has important implications for understanding the impact of present forest development on biodiversity and forest regeneration in the tropics.

Using pollen, phytolith, and charcoal records to identify the distribution and composition of tropical vegetation and fire patterns over the past 11,000 years, Dolores R. Piperno of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, found evidence of widespread fire use for land-clearing by pre-Colombian populations in Latin America. Her work confirms earlier research suggesting the substantial impact native populations had on tropical forests long before European arrival in the New World. [more]