Re:Before ‘Dune,’ Frank Herbert learned from native Americans
by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday December 22, 2021 @07:47AM
(#29648546)
> it's still really important to recognize the deep ecological knowledge that indigenous peoples have of their environments
OP's point is that this is often overblown. Plenty of ancient civilizations ran themselves into the ground through environmental collapse. I'm currently reading The Big Oyster, which documents evidence of the native population over-harvesting the New York harbor.
Almost by definition, a colonist will be part of a more-powerful civilization than the indigenous populations she encounters. Bigger civilizations have bigger footprints. It takes care to disentangle which cultures are inherently more "at balance" with nature, i.e. could scale less destructively, versus those which are scale limited. (For example, Nordic versus Continental culture, for European examples.)
OP's point is that this is often overblown. Plenty of ancient civilizations ran themselves into the ground through environmental collapse. I'm currently reading The Big Oyster, which documents evidence of the native population over-harvesting the New York harbor.
Almost by definition, a colonist will be part of a more-powerful civilization than the indigenous populations she encounters. Bigger civilizations have bigger footprints. It takes care to disentangle which cultures are inherently more "at balance" with nature, i.e. could scale less destructively, versus those which are scale limited. (For example, Nordic versus Continental culture, for European examples.)