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Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:36 pm
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:The Chumash were one of California's largest hunter gatherer societies, estimates at 10,000 are realistic. Pre Columbian.
But they were not 10,000 people living as one hunter-gatherer tribe.

They were 10,000 people living over about 7,000 square miles. That's a population density of 1.4 per square mile. (By comparison, the population density today of San Francisco is over 17,000 per square mile, and that of California as a whole, even with all its unused deserts and mountains, is over 200.)

So they must have been groups of hunter-gatherers, each with a smaller home range. Hunter-gatherers don't have a home range of 7,000 square miles, certainly not in an area rich in resources.

When I talk about limits of 30 or 300, I mean one tribe, or community, that lives together, usually with related individuals. Those didn't number 10,000.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 4:28 am
by Fyyr
What are you debating?

That the Chumash were not a hunter gatherer society numbering 10,000.
Or the Maidu-Nisenan were not a hunter gatherer society numbering 9,500.

Their expanse was what it was. What they were was what it was.
Lot fucking bigger than 30.

The vast majority of California tribes were about 300 or so. That would be the norm. And if 10,000 was the limit, limited by food, 300 tribes never really could have encountered famine. They had to be limited by another or other factors. There were hundreds of tribes living right where I live, and they were almost all 300 or so tribes. With NO limitation of food. Right now, I can go out and fish and hunt, irrespective of all modern laws, and catch or kill all the food I could ever want to eat. And they had no modern laws; they could kill or fish at night, for example.

Right now(in this day in age), if you let me have my bow and arrow, a spear, or a fishhook. Even with our modern damned rivers, in our managed forests(and only taking native game). I would never starve. I would have surplus food to share. And I'm not even a fucking Indian. I would be eating coyote, salmon, trout, and deer for years.

A pre-historic hunter gatherer society of 30 living next to a fertile river would never encounter starvation as a limiting population factor. Unless they were retarded. And if they were retarded, thank god, they died out from starvation.

"U'Ta fell in the river, hit his head, and Wuptallee ate him."

Wuptallee was the Nisenan female water creature which lived in the river.
Her hair was the green stuff you see next to the shore, on the rocks of the river.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 4:36 am
by Fyyr
Tudamorf wrote: the population density today of San Francisco is over 17,000 per square mile, and that of California
500 years ago, SF was a fucking barren sand dune, with marsh grass and heather growing.

No one lived in SF before the Spanish came there, and enslaved the neighboring Indians(Ohlones).

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 1:38 pm
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:What are you debating?
The maximum size of ONE tribe/band/village, whatever you want to call it.

Not the maximum size of a group of them spread out over a very large area.

(By "tribe" I don't mean the Native American notion of ethnicity, I mean the general notion of a small group of people living together as one unit.)
Fyyr wrote:And if 10,000 was the limit,
Were there 10,000 of them living in a single village, sharing the same food resources?
Fyyr wrote:There were hundreds of tribes living right where I live, and they were almost all 300 or so tribes.
Why weren't they 3,000? Or 30,000? Or 3 million?

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 12:35 pm
by Zute
Right now(in this day in age), if you let me have my bow and arrow, a spear, or a fishhook. Even with our modern damned rivers, in our managed forests(and only taking native game). I would never starve. I would have surplus food to share. And I'm not even a fucking Indian. I would be eating coyote, salmon, trout, and deer for years.
Right, but how long would that last with the entire population of CA doing that along-side you? Not very, methinks.

The few people who lived on Australia long before white-man came managed to hunt the mega-fauna into extinction, imagine what millions of humans.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 4:31 pm
by Tudamorf
Zute wrote:The few people who lived on Australia long before white-man came managed to hunt the mega-fauna into extinction, imagine what millions of humans.
Or the Clovis people in the Americas, whose appearance conveniently coincided with the disappearance of American megafauna, conveniently followed by their disappearance.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 9:38 pm
by Fyyr
Zute wrote: Right, but how long would that last with the entire population of CA doing that along-side you? Not very, methinks.
The point is we were discussing hunter gatherer societies.
Say 20,000 years ago, or before. If the entire population of California were 500,000(or whatever the pre Columbian population size was), and they were all hunter gatherers, most of them would have no limitation of food. What was the human population of California 5,000 year ago? 10,000 years ago.

Not present day California.
California Indians are a good model for past HG societies. The technologies were similar. The climate was similar. The numbers were similar. They had domesticated dogs, but had not domesticated cattle yet before migrating from Asia.

The 'brutal and short' qualification of past, I believe, was completely inaccurate.
And population would have been limited by other factors than food. Because food was plentiful, because there was no one else around, relatively, to compete with for food. Like even the Yanomamo, they probably had a sizable amount of leisure time, relative to us present day Californians.

There are almost 40 million people living in California right now. That is way above the carrying capacity to hunt and gather here, that is so obvious to even mention. That is known understood given.

Tudamorfs point, is that a small band of hunter gatherers in the area of California like climate and fertility would have starved to death. I disagree. California could support very large numbers of hunter gatherers(larger than his tribe of 30), just as the Mediterranean or Fertile Crescent and North Africa would have pre domestication and pre agriculture.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:12 pm
by Fyyr
Tudamorf wrote:
Zute wrote:The few people who lived on Australia long before white-man came managed to hunt the mega-fauna into extinction, imagine what millions of humans.
Or the Clovis people in the Americas, whose appearance conveniently coincided with the disappearance of American megafauna, conveniently followed by their disappearance.

You imply that they completely died out, yet humans lived here in America for 10s of thousands of years, to the first Spanish ship, to the present day. We have evidence of that.

We know that California and the rest of the America's could support large groups of hunter gatherers for thousands of years(10-20,000 years).

Regardless of the Clovis themselves, the ancestors of the Hopi, the Maidu, and the Chumash thrived here. Perhaps the Clovis are the ancestors of the Hopi.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 3:51 am
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:Tudamorfs point, is that a small band of hunter gatherers in the area of California like climate and fertility would have starved to death.
No, my point is that a large group would have starved to death.

That is why the groups were small, not large. Large groups could not exist as hunter-gatherers.

They may have been numerous over a huge area (like the modern day state of California), but on the level of each village with its home range, they were small.
Fyyr wrote:And population would have been limited by other factors than food. Because food was plentiful, because there was no one else around, relatively, to compete with for food.
So why didn't they keep breeding, if they had plenty of food to do so?

Exponential growth over several generations can produce a million humans pretty quickly. We can see that with the Inca, Maya, Aztec, and other agricultural societies.

Why wasn't there such growth in North American hunter-gatherers?

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:11 am
by Fyyr
Tudamorf wrote:So why didn't they keep breeding,
Because there were other limiting factors.
That's why.

Well, aside from the fact that Californian American Indians probably reached carrying capacity prior to European conquest. But I have said that, already.

I have already given you two Californian American Indian cultures which reached 10,000 in population(the Chumash and the Maidu/Nisenan), and starvation was not major factor in their cultures.

Famine occurs/occurred in post agricultural societies, not hunter gatherer societies.

I agree with your argument that these large groups, cultures, and societies were composed of much smaller groups. That is a given. Just like say your culture and lifestyle in SF or SD, respectively, is different than mine. But we do continue do and too share common culture, language, and lifestyle regardless, anthropologically speaking. We are still Californians, we do share a common culture.

These large groups, obviously, did not starve to death, Tudamorf. For they were evident in large groups, language, and culture when Europeans met them(and slaughtered them). Even if the large groups were comprised of many many smaller sub groups. They did not starve. That was not their limiting factor.

If you have evidence of mass or societal starvation of pre Columbian Californian Indians, please post a link. I am ignorant of such data.