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Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 11:45 pm
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:Since native Californian were in California for about 20,000 years and reached approximately 500,000 people, it is fairly reasonable to assume that they reached their limit, their carrying capacity; at that point they were limited by food.
Well that's what I'm saying, they grew as much as they could and they stopped when they had no more food.

Just as the Aztec, Maya, and Inca grew as much as they could and they stopped when they had no more food.

It's just that the farmers could obtain orders of magnitude more food than the hunter-gatherers could, and their numbers were, correspondingly, orders of magnitude larger.

The differences in growth rate due to medicine or technology (outside of agriculture) are trivial when you are looking at 650+ generations. Do the math: even a miniscule growth rate will fill up the area in that time.

If you assume 500,000 people in California, that might sound like a lot, but California is also a really big place (over 160,000 square miles). A hunter gatherer might have a home range of 10-15 square miles, maybe even less in a lush area. So most of them lived and died in very small communities, not knowing that any of the others existed, except maybe a few of the neighboring ones. It's very likely that some of these people only saw 100 or so other people in their entire lives.

By comparison, Tikal had a population of least 50,000, and the greater Tikal area was populated by hundreds of thousands of Mayans. Teotihuacan was even more populated in its day. These weren't people spread out over a large area. They were large metropolises, some of the largest in the world at that time.

The major difference between the two groups was simply the availability of food.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 11:39 am
by Fyyr
Tudamorf wrote:Well that's what I'm saying, they grew as much as they could and they stopped when they had no more food.
No, you are not saying what I have said.

I am saying that if at year 1600 native Californians were at the food carrying capacity of 500,000(or whatever number they were actually at), then unless their growth was linear(which we both agree is implausible), 233 years before that they were at, say, 250,000 people in total; using Barlett's number of 70/growth percentage to double or half size, with a very small conservative growth factor of 0.3% per year. You may pick any numbers you like, I don't care; whatever the max actually was, 200 years(or 2000) before that, it was much less.

If California natural food supply could supply 500,000 at limit, then the food supply was in surplus at 250,000. Or any other smaller number than that, down to the few bands of people who came here in the first place.

You keep bringing up the Meso/South American agriculturalists for comparison with hunter gatherers. I don't see how that is useful, it does not change anything about what was, nor does it give any insight as to how prehistoric European, Fertile Crescent, and Mediterranean hunter gatherers lived.

Native Californians are as good a model of what Western Civilization ancestor hunter gatherers could have been like, as any. They had no domesticated cattle, nor horses, but had domesticated dogs. They were stone age, with no metallurgy, nor medicine. And did not plant grains for food. And they lived in their untouched state until about 300-400 years ago(where our stone age hunter gather ancestors died out centuries ago, though a late night visit to Walmart makes this arguable).

If you have a banquet table set for 30 people, and their are 3 people eating, food is in excess. No one will go hungry.
At 25, food is in excess, no one will go hungry.
At 30 people, food is at limit, no one is going hungry.
At 40, some people's tummies are rumbling.
At 60, people will start killing and eating each other.
And it does not really matter if the room happens to be 160,000 square miles. If there is enough food to feed 500,000, there there would be enough food to feed any lesser amount than that. The borders or square miles of California did not exist to native Californians anyway, you know that.

Now, IF you have reliable evidence that native Californians were above carrying capacity, your point would be valid.
But I know of no evidence that native Californians practiced ritual suicide, ritual sacrifice, or cannibalism. Or any other practices commonly seen in over population. Native Californians were not known for being particularly warlike either.
If you have evidence of those, then your point that native Californian hunter gatherers starved to death could be considered plausible.

I previously left out two other forms of population control, lactational amenorrhea and possibly some other form of rhythm method.
Hypothermia and dehydration would be other forms of accidental death injury previously left out.

Pre Conquest native Californians were not at all like Meso and South Americans.
Pre Conquest native Californians are a plausible model for what European, Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean, and North African hunter gathers were like.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 11:45 am
by Fyyr
Tudamorf wrote:It's just that the farmers could obtain orders of magnitude more food than the hunter-gatherers could, and their numbers were, correspondingly, orders of magnitude larger..
Everyone knows that to the point of DUH.
It seems to be very important for you to make a point(for you continue to repeat it) that everyone already knows.

I don't understand why it's that important to you. That's a pretty obvious given.
Do the math: even a miniscule growth rate will fill up the area in that time.
Just do the math in reverse, it takes the same minuscule growth rate the same amount of time to half the population, same as doubling it.
And every halving backward into the past meant more and more food would have been available per person.

You need lots of people to grow agriculture.
You don't need anyone to grow game, fish, fruits, berries, and acorns.
It just grows by itself. Whether there is a person there or not.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 4:52 pm
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:I am saying that if at year 1600 native Californians were at the food carrying capacity of 500,000(or whatever number they were actually at), then unless their growth was linear(which we both agree is implausible), 233 years before that they were at, say, 250,000 people in total; using Barlett's number of 70/growth percentage to double or half size, with a very small conservative growth factor of 0.3% per year. You may pick any numbers you like, I don't care; whatever the max actually was, 200 years(or 2000) before that, it was much less.
You're assuming that they only reached this "carrying capacity" -- as you call it -- in 1600.

More likely, they reached it millennia earlier, and stopped growing at that point.

And it grew from the initial colonizing group to that 500,000 very quickly, probably over the course of only a few hundred years.

If you were to graph population over time, the very left part would look like exponential growth, followed by a very long, mostly straight line.

That is the point: hunter-gatherers can only grow to a certain low density, then they simply must stop, because they will run out of food. That is why they gather in groups of 30, whereas farmers gather in groups of millions. Farmers can grow to a much higher density because they can get a lot more food.

Those 500,000 people were not all living together. They were broken up into small bands of people, with small numbers, each with their own home range, and oblivious to almost everyone but themselves.

There was never any Native Californian village of 500,000 people, all in one place, living and working together, like there was in Central America.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 7:06 pm
by Fyyr
Tudamorf wrote: You're assuming that they only reached this "carrying capacity" -- as you call it -- in 1600.
That's what biologists call it.
I am assuming that Bartlett is correct.
More likely, they reached it millennia earlier, and stopped growing at that point.
Then you are saying that growth was linear for 1000 years.
Zero population growth, exponent of 1 for 1000 years?
I think that's improbable.
And it grew from the initial colonizing group to that 500,000 very quickly, probably over the course of only a few hundred years.
That's improbable if exponential growth is normal.

You are saying here that growth was very exponential for a few hundred years. A large factorial.
And the linear with no growth for 1000s of years. At least 10000 years of linear zero growth, exponent of 1.

That would be remarkable if you could show that. That is in complete contradiction to the Barlett lecture.

The Chumash and Maidu Nisenan were groups of 10,000. Larger than 30. Even the smallest of their villages were about 300 or so. They did cooperate and trade with one another. And with other groups as well. There was a vast trade network from the sierras to the ocean.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 7:19 pm
by Fyyr
In addition to that.

You repeatedly have shown that you have definitions for how these people lived which is inconsistent with how they actually lived. You are bringing from somewhere else with you and trying to force it down on the situation, it appears.

I say they were groups of 10,000, because they were. And you say they were limited to 30. Ex, Hunter gatherers are limited to groups of 30, they were hunter gatherers; thus they were limited to groups of 30.
But then you say that Mezo Americans were a homogenous group in the millions. Ex, Agriculturalists can grow to millions, they were agriculturalists; thus they numbered in the millions.

That does not reflect what was.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 9:43 pm
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:Then you are saying that growth was linear for 1000 years.
Zero population growth, exponent of 1 for 1000 years?
I think that's improbable.
I'm saying the growth was zero once they reached the saturation point, beyond which there wasn't enough food to support them. And it was probably like that for a very long time.

This planet is also going to reach zero human population growth in the future, because even farmers can only produce so much food and feed so many people. It will not continue growing exponentially forever; it can't.

The above paragraph does not, however, negate the fact that we are currently experiencing exponential population growth.

The only difference between the hunter-gatherers of pre-conquest California and the planet today is the scope and timing. But eventually, each group is going to breed to the point where they can't get enough food to support more people.
The Chumash and Maidu Nisenan were groups of 10,000.
As I tried to explain to you: The Chumash were spread out over 7,000 square miles. Hunter-gatherers have a home range of maybe 0.1% of that area. They were not one group, living in one place, sharing the same resources.

Do you really think a hunter-gatherer would regularly walk from, say, San Francisco to Salinas just to get food?

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 9:51 pm
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:I say they were groups of 10,000, because they were. And you say they were limited to 30. Ex, Hunter gatherers are limited to groups of 30, they were hunter gatherers; thus they were limited to groups of 30.
But then you say that Mezo Americans were a homogenous group in the millions. Ex, Agriculturalists can grow to millions, they were agriculturalists; thus they numbered in the millions.

That does not reflect what was.
I don't know about the Chumash. I was taking your figures as a given.

I do know about Mesoamerican archaeology, and what it shows about the size of their cities. There are even eye witness reports, such as the conquerer Cortes, who was astounded when he first saw Tenochtitlan and wrote back to his king that it's as large as any city in Spain.

Re: Very Interesting Video

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 10:15 pm
by Fyyr
We are at empasse.