Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made myth

Re:Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made... by mc32 on Friday September 13, 2024 @10:56AM (#41531823)

Maybe the mythology is just a tool to get people on-board with the idea of preserving certain areas to the extent they are preserved.

Some American Indians loathe the patronizing idea that they were/are nobles in-tune with nature. They may not have exploited nature with mechanized efficiency, but at least some tribes took what they needed when they needed without the hippie vision of harmonious balance and they engaged in violence and war when it made sense to do so —kind of like other groups of humans elsewhere.

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Re:Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made... by merely-unlikely on Friday September 13, 2024 @12:16PM (#41532595)

Some native tribes in the Northeast (and probably elsewhere but I know of them specifically) conducted controlled burns of large sections of forest to clear them for farming.

There’s a theory the current state of the Amazon is the product of heavy cultivation. Hence its high quantity of edible plants. I’m not sure the degree of acceptance that theory has though.

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