From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Thu Apr 17 2003 - 23:33:07 MDT
From: gts [mailto:gts_2000@yahoo.com]
> Yes of course, the tendency to warfare and violence is part
> of human nature then and now. Again I was objecting only to
> the idea that the naive hunting of a species to extinction is
> evidence of that destructive nature. Are you really
> suggesting Diamond thinks it is? Or are you stating that the
> amazon reviewer was flatly mistaken to call it Diamond's
> view? I'm sorry your message is not very clear to me in this
respect.
I think the Amazon reviewer was twisting Diamond's view.
It's tough for me to give a simple response because the word
"destructive" just strikes me as imprecise in this case (and I think
would strike Diamond as imprecise as well). A human characteristic
isn't necessarily destructive in and of itself. In one environment a
characteristic can be useful and adaptive. In another environment it
can be dangerous.
Human hunting skills seem to have been just such a trait. In Eurasia
and Africa, the local animals had co-evolved with humans and
proto-humans and had thus developed survival traits of their own (like
fear of humans). The fauna in Australia and the Americas, by
contrast, had evolved in an environment that lacked humans. So early
hunters in Australia could literally walk up to a local animal and
knock it on the head.
So is the human hunting urge destructive? Not really - it was
necessary for our survival as a species. It was the combination of
this trait and the spread to a new environment that had lacked
predators as skilled as us that resulted in the extinction of the
Australian mega-fauna.
mez
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