OK, this is one that caught my attention, and less than half way through reading it I knew it was a completely garbage article and mostly made up. First, here is the headline. And it certainly got my attention. OK, what exactly was it covering? Somehow capturing the deaths of WWII? And able to remove that from all the other data during that time period? Nope, something even more worse... OK, wait a minute, colonization? 56 million people dead? OK, I want to learn more. And at that point the article sinks into absolute bat guano crazy. OK, hold on a cotton picking minute, those deaths were all American Indians? A group that before Europeans arrived never measured more than 54 million on the very top end of the extreme, and in most of North America there were less than 4 million. So what, the Europeans arrived, killed every single native on two continents... then what, moved in another 2 million slaves in order to kill them as well? Of course, the vast majority died of disease, something which actually has not a damned thing to do with colonization. But I am curious, in a single decade a century and a half prior to that, half of the population of Europe died from the Black Death, over 50 million people. Oh, and add to that another 15 million or so who died in China and India. But back to the original article, talking about 56 million American Indians. Uh, she is aware that the majority of those in the Americas were hunter-gatherer societies, right? A very thinly populated people, who did not deforest huge amounts of land for agriculture. So where exactly where these supposed tracts of "agricultural land" located that reverted back to forest? Here is the entire article, I invite all to take a read. https://bigthink.com/the-past/antarctic-ice-colonization/ But if people wonder why I tend to take so little science reporting seriously anymore, that is a perfect example of why. I find more and more that when they are examined with the eye of a skeptic, Occam's Razor simply rips them to shreds. The claims of deaths are ludacris in the extreme, and nowhere even remotely possible. The vast areas of "farmland" simply do not exist. And yes, I know that Central Mexico had a huge and very dense population that was feed by agriculture. However, I also am aware that most of it was from reclaimed land that had once been Lake Texcoco. So guess what? That had never been forest in the first place to cut down, and it sure as hell never reverted back to forest afterwards. And shortly after those die-offs due to disease, the areas of the continents that had the closest to large scale agriculture had populations exceeding their pre-disease levels. In short, the article makes absolutely no sense at all. And it fails the smell test on many levels, because none of their claims actually make sense. This is yet another example of a political attack article trying to hide itself as "science". But inquiring minds want to know, what exactly was the scientific method that enabled them to pull out this 56 million deaths over a century and a half, and allowed them to tell that from the 65 million that had died just a century before over a period of under a decade? And I would love to see that data, and exactly how each of them can be seen, and how they are separated one from the other. Oh, and considering most Indians who died of those diseases never saw a European, how exactly is that "colonization"? Does that also mean the Black Death was a colonization disease?
I saw a great example yesterday. An article attempting to sound informed about snakes in Florida said that the cane break or timber rattlesnake was very common in Tampa Bay area when it is extremely rare to see one even 200 miles north of there. I quit reading the rest of the garbage article right there. On the weather channel the other day they stated that there were 35,000 to 40,000 humpback whales left on the planet. And then the next breath they told us about some guy that knows an expert when he sees one and then he began to discuss what the expert was involved in. So here we have a guy that's an expert that actually identifying an expert. Needless to say I would probably sound like an idiot if I pretended I knew what I was talking about and some actual scientific circle and said that there were 35,000 to 40,000 humpbacks left. But yet because the TV told me so so many people will run with that and think that they are educated on the topic. It is the same with the internet " If you read it on the internet it has to be true " ~ George Washington
"My bias"? And please, tell us what exactly is my bias? Come on, you have to actually be able to explain what my bias is before that can have any kind of validity at all. So please, what is my bias?
Eagerly awaiting the answer because it should be very interesting.... Fatback kicks back and slowly ruminates some popcorn....
Especially as that figure is less than half the true figure of around 100,000 humpback whales. Although that is about the right figure if only counting the Northern Hemisphere, split between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific.
The internet and television have been a lot of good things for mankind but producing legions of pseudo experts is not one of them. Someone watches a TV program or a 5-minute YouTube and now they think they are educated on a subject
The problem with a great many things like this is they themselves become an example of "Confirmation Bias". And in the article I quoted you can see that in action. And I am sure that a lot of people will endorse that, not because the science behind it is sound but because it confirms to them something they believe. I simply pointed out factual inaccuracies in the report, and asked if it could be repeated to show a previous example where even more people died. That is not bias at all, in fact that challenge is a key component of the Scientific Method. Can the results be replicated? Then I was told I had a bias. Which I think is absurd, and why I am waiting to see if that individual can even explain why they made that claim in the first place. But that is typical of people I have found that fall into that "Confirmation Bias" area, and get pissed at anybody when they challenge their own bias. I wonder if they also think I have a confirmation bias when pointing out facts to flat earthers? I am obviously biased, as I buy into the US Space-Industrial Complex.
I predict you're going to be waiting an incredibly long time for his answer.... Call it a hunch formed from previous experience. It's very easy for people to make allegations but hard for them to say that they were wrong.
To be honest, I pretty much dismiss people like that automatically. Who instead of trying to debate on the merits of each side of the debate simply throw out baseless accusations on the individual themselves. And I indeed noticed they did not bring up the facts or science of anything I pointed out, they simply attacked me with the ultimate in vague accusations. Which is why I am now waiting to find out exactly in what way I am biased. But I agree, I will likely never get an actual response. Other than another attack, probably along the lines of "You know why you're biased". And the thing is, I actually encourage and enjoy honest debate. As I honestly do believe it allows both sides to not only see both sides of an issue, but to discover new things and maybe even reach a compromise. But an outright attack on the individual and not the science is not even "pseudo-science". It is akin to screaming that somebody believes that the Sun and not the Earth is the center of everything is a witch. Especially as in the case of those that supported the heliocentric model which replaced the geocentric model were equally wrong. That is a classic case where two theories where the supporters attacked each other were both wrong.
It's hard to quickly verify such an article, but it doesn't seem too crazy. Yes, most native societies were farmers. What they lacked was animal husbandry, having no good large domesticable animals, so they supplemented farming with hunting. Native American - Tribes, Culture, History | Britannica The high estimate of pre-colonial north America was 18 million people. If that were true, 56 million would be about 3 full generations of people (but just in north america). Considering they were talking about deaths over a long period of time, it doesn't seem impossible. The methods make some sense, but I am not sure how precise they could be. Humans exhale CO2 in proportion to metabolic needs, which are pretty predictable over a large population, but back in those times you'd have some more contribution from things like campfires, which would vary by climate and culture. I don't think there's any need for judgement in these findings, if true. It was just a fact of life that they were isolated and disadvantaged. Naturally, when they came into contact with Europeans, the diseases decimated them because they didn't have the long tradition of fighting those diseases. Even if the europeans had been nicer to them, the results would still have been devastating.
But it likely is not farming as you are thinking of. There were no beasts of burden, there were no plows. There were no fields of 10 acre plots of a crop one after another stretching for miles as in Europe, Africa or Asia. It was more akin to the earliest forms of agriculture along the Nile and Euphrates rivers. Where they simply scattered the seeds if they wanted something specific that did not grow there, or did not grow enough. It is not the kind of tilling agriculture that was seen in Africa and Eurasia. The only real exceptions were in Mesoamerica and South America, where they either reclaimed banks of a lake with fill for corn, or terraced it for quinoa. But they did have animal husbandry. We know for a fact because of their domestication and variety of canines throughout both continents. As well as the llama, the turkey, ducks, and even guinea pigs. However, very few areas had enough of a population density to bother with it. When your population is low and widely dispersed, there is simply no reason to develop things like farming and animal husbandry for food. And the most ubiquitous example was the canine, not bred for food in most tribes but for hunting and protection. But yes, the fauna of the Americas was one of the biggest things that held them back. Other than the llama, all beasts of burden went extinct on the continent, along with all of the apex predators that ate them. And those ecological holes left them with nothing really to step to the next level of agriculture even when they did have the population densities. In the same way the large deposits of native copper did the opposite and stunted their metallurgy growth. With almost pure native copper at the surface, there was simply no reason to learn things like refining and smelting, and without that no need to develop alloys. And something else, does their evidence show the same thing with the collapse of the Mississippian Culture? Once again a population crash, large areas of land abandoned and allowed to go fallow and return to the habitat that it had been in before. Do their studies show this as well? Remember, for science to be valid, one has to be able to replicate it. In this case, they have to be able to find the same indicators in previous and following layers pointing to the same results but being able to link them to other similar events. So once again, I would love to know is if their study can be replicated. Can they point out the exact same evidence from the Black Death? That was an even larger die off, over a drastically shorter period of time. So if they are correct, then the evidence for that should be even more obvious, and even more striking. Because to be honest, I bet it can not be replicated. And this is just an example of chasing the data. And the very fact that they have not mentioned the Black Death producing similar results along with any of the other previous plagues tends to tell me it is not replicable. Or they would have mentioned it as verification of their findings.
@dadoalex We are still eagerly awaiting for you to articulate how mushroom Man is full of confirmation bias... Please don't make such.. comments and run off because then when people have to use the mention function they get accused of singling you out or something.
Where did you get the 100,000 figure from other than from the internet? On the OP, at first reading I agree with you but haven't got time right now to read the link and think it through properly. However, before easterners came from Europe, the Bison population was massive. Bison consume a lot of vegetation releasing gases. The bison population rapidly collapsed with the arrival of Europeans meaning vegetation was allowed to flourish. Whether this is relevant to the OP I do not yet know.
Uh, no they did not. The population was actually still quite massive until the 1870s. By that time rail transportation made the carcass cheap and easy to transport, and there was a huge "fad" of buffalo skin coats. The meat and bones were generally sold for fertilizer. But the population crash of the animals was not related to the "arrival" at all, it was hundreds of years later. At the time of the Civil War, there were still over 8 million of them roaming the US. Within two decades there were only around 500 left in the wild.
The elimination of bison was related to a huge reduction in vegetation. The native grass prairies evolved in a symbiotic relationship with large ruminants like bison. Large ruminants are one of the best soil carbon sequestration and management tools nature has ever “invented”. Native prairie was home to grasses so tall a mounted man has trouble seeing over the top of the grass. Soil organic matter content was at least 5-6%. The Buffalo were eliminated to make it possible for immigrants to raise cattle and plow up the sod to grow crops. The stored organic matter in the soil was used up quickly so that by the 1930’s where there was horse high grass a few decades before there was nothing but blowing dust. Soil organic matter contents dropped to 1-2%. It was one of the fastest anthropogenic large scale release of CO2 related to land use change. Vegetation went from lush to essentially zero over a vast swath of Buffalo range. Even the parts that remained in grass never see productivity like there was when the Buffalo and natives managed it. The elimination of Buffalo and their native human dependents was a huge net CO2 loss to the atmosphere. The opposite of what much evidence shows happened when central and South American native populations were reduced by disease etc.
OMG, talk about complete and utter fail! For your information, I'm Potawatomie. In other words, I'm not "white". Yeah, that is about what I figured. You actually have nothing to offer in here but hate.
What? Grasses, and not that they were hunted to almost extinction in less than 2 decades? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904/ I think this is one of the things that makes me the most sad when it comes to "science". People believe the craziest things, with absolutely no basis in fact. It is what they believe, even if it makes no sense. But please, I would love to find some kind of source that validates your claim.
Especially considering my heritage is American Indian. Oh, wait. Obviously I mean "Native American". I can't tell you how often I have been yelled at for how I refer to myself. And the funny thing is, having actually lived on reservations I have never heard of another referring to themselves or others as "Native American". We are all pretty much proud we are "Indians". I wonder if that same poster goes around screaming at people who are black, Hispanic, Asian, and LGBTQABZXYZ because they decide they prefer to use one word over another? And I am old enough to remember all of those groups using different words than they use today. But to me, "Indian" was fine for my ancestors, so it is fine for me.
What claim? Be specific. Your post has nothing to do with what I posted. You don’t think the vegetation in the Midwest decreased after elimination of the Buffalo? LOL I think you may have had a reading comprehension problem. There’s no problem with the science behind my posts.
