(February 1, 2019 at 11:23 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: They did keep livestock, but not the sorts of livestock that necessitated deforestation...and the cultures with the most dedicated livestock operations occupied lightly forested regions from the outset.
Dogs, turkeys (and other assorted fowl), guinea pigs, llamas, alpacas, and, ofc, fish.
Pre-columbian ag was massively sophisticated. They actually had a greater variety of cultivars under crop than europe did (alot of the veggies we eat today are native to the americas and were unknown to europe pre-contact)....
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...what they didn't have were plows, cattle and horses.
Yeah, I knew that someone was going to correct me about the livestock thing. I was hoping to be understood within the context of their livestock not being the sort that you clear a bunch of land for. Silly me.
And yeah, I can't imagine life without potatoes. I've read that the population of Ireland tripled in just one generation after the potato was introduced.
When I lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, I found feral sweet potato patches all over the place. I've heard that the Hawaiians already had the sweet potato before Cook's arrival. That seems incredible, and I really wish we knew how that came to be.
We do not inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
