The tariff tribe

 

When the Woke are for closed borders and tariffs...

Influencers new threat to uncontacted tribes

Throw it back into the sea

 

No rare whales were harmed
when generating this picture

A dead specimen of a rarely seen whale has washed ashore a beach in New Zealand. Best line from the BBC´s news article: "New Zealand's Māori people regard whales as a sacred treasure, and DOC said local Maori communities would take part in deciding the whale's fate."

Ahem, are these the same Maori who exterminated the New Zealand charismatic mega-fauna and genocided the Chatham Islanders? Not sure why they should have any say in the matter, but if you insist...

I hope the Maori tell the scientists to throw the whale carcass back into the sea. I mean, the tears from the cryptozoology nerds on Reddit would be *epic*, LOL. 

World´s rarest whale species washes up on NZ beach

 

It´s official

 

If Sabine Hossenfelder says it, it´s official. I blogged about this before. The *really* interesting (and disturbing) question is: why? These claims have been made throughout my lifetime, and probably earlier too. Why haven´t they been questioned before freakin´ 2024?

Replication crisis, indeed. 

But how far does it go? How many professors and experts out there got their lucrative positions due to outright research fraud? Of course, other reasons do come to mind. Tabloid sensationalism coupled with some kind of romantic longing for the primitive and "natural", perhaps. Or a stunning naïvety. High trust society, anyone? 

When in reality it was (of course) just bad records and pension fraud, all the way down!     

The centenarian conspiracy

 

From a somewhat, ahem, controversial blog. Still, this *would* explain a thing or two. Always wondered about it myself! So the explanation isn´t fresh air, exotic fruit, youghurt or clean country livin´, nah, it´s pension fraud or bad records all the way down. 

A bit like the Tasaday, the 100th monkey, the Aquatic Ape Theory, Billy Meier, Sai Baba, Elvis sightings...all the urban legends of my childhood and teenhood.

Or am I just getting old and slightly jaded?    

The Extreme Elderly Don´t Exist

Indigenous ways of knowledge

 

But "natives" are natural conservationists, right?  

Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany

Searching for the Mothers

 

The Carnac stones 
Credit: Steffen Heilfort 

You think you know everything. And then you read “Europas mödrar. De senaste 43 000 åren” and realize that you really didn´t know anything. Anything.At.All. This Swedish book, published last year and written by science reporter Karin Bojs, attempts to summarize the current state of mainline archeological research on the European Stone Age (with some landfalls in the Bronze Age). In translation, the title means “The Mothers of Europe. The last 43,000 years”. The main themes of the book include the role of female labor in Stone Age cultures and (of course) whether or not matriarchy existed, and if so, where patriarchy comes from. Controversial Lithuanian archeologist, the late Marija Gimbutas, plays center stage. Bojs believes that DNA research has vindicated at least some of Gimbutas´ speculations. There is also an undertone of criticism against political correctness in archeology (any political correctness – I assume Bojs is a liberal and Gimbutas was a feminist icon). Bojs believes that objective research into the origins and expansion of the Indo-Europeans has been hampered by some kind of irrational fear of said research being “Nazi”.

Although the book is intended for a mass audience, it covers a lot of ground in little under 300 pages. My main take away from it is that “pre-history” really is a ridiculous term (and so is His-Story). Human history (and herstory) begins at the very least the moment Homo sapiens acquires the ability to speak and communicate through a complex language – which we did already during the Paleolithic. The rest of the so-called Stone Age (in itself a problematic term) includes complex patterns of migrations, cultural interactions and ditto changes. In other words, what we would call “history” if it had happened after the invention of writing.

And speaking of that writing…

Bojs believes that the first writing system might have been invented by the Vinca culture in the Balkans, rather than by Egyptians or Sumerians. The Vinca people also invented metallurgy, yet their culture is weirdly still classified as “Stone Age”. At Carnac in Brittany, a Neolithic culture of megalith-builders apparently had the ability to cross the Bay of Biscay in boats, loaded with 100 tonne stone slabs! The yoke, the plow and the wheel were invented in northern Europe, perhaps in Denmark, rather than in the Middle East. Which doesn´t mean those guys were stupid. At the famed Göbekli Tepe (in today´s Turkey), people were producing ale and porridge in massive quantities, suggesting they must have had agriculture, despite being a hunter and gatherer culture otherwise. That, and they built rather large monuments – Göbekli Tepe itself. The Stone Age has never been so advanced…

DNA research has more or less conclusively proven that the Indo-Europeans really did come from the area north of the Black Sea and then expanded westward into the rest of Europe. Or invaded, if you like that term better. There were several waves of Indo-European expansion. The first one didn´t involve horses, but “only” large cattle herds, overrunning the settlement areas of pre-Indo-European farmers. One reason why the expansion was successful was that “Old Europe” had been devastated by a plague pandemic, presumably depopulating large areas. The old stereotype of Indo-Europeans on horseback (but without chariots) conquering stable Neolithic cultures never sounded very believable, but now we have a more realistic picture.

But what about patriarchy? Marija Gimbutas´ main claim to fame, after all, was the theory that “Old Europe” was matriarchal, and that patriarchy was a foreign imposition of the invading Indo-European hordes. On this point, DNA evidence disproves some of her takes. While it´s true that the Indo-Europeans were indeed strongly patriarchal, patriarchy and class society already existed in Neolithic Europe. It seems to have emerged in northern France, including Carnac in Brittany, where a complex society with a privileged male elite built grandiose tombs for their rulers. They even had implements made of jade! (Apparently, jadeite does exist in Europe. I had no idea.) While the Vinca culture and even the Bronze Age Minoan culture may have been more matriarchal or matrifocal, the megalith-builders weren´t. Patriarchy and hierarchy was further entrenched with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. DNA studies suggest that while non-IE genetic lineages survived among females, they eventually died out among the males. This suggests that the newcomers monopolized power and resources, making it more likely they would survive and pass on their genes. Note also that the Indo-Europeans often married non-IE females, while the opposite (non-IE males marrying IE females) was presumably extremely rare, suggesting some kind of caste society.

Many other topics are touched upon in this book, too many to go through here: “Neanderthal activism” in the media, the skin color of Paleolithic hunters-gatherers, the myth and reality of the Männerbund, and “the female Viking chief and warrior” recently found at Birka in Sweden (hint: probably not true). Bojs is clearly very well read, at one point even making an oblique reference to “The Arctic Home in the Vedas”! At times, however, her colloquialisms annoy me. But then, the Swedish language in general has been dumbed down and colloquialized lately. The book is still at a much higher level than any tabloid…

Well worth reading, if Swedish happens to be your first language.

The Great Daoist Disharmony

An oversized gavialid crocodilian, which may have feasted on fresh human flesh, was hunted to extinction by said humans, and even ritualistically beheaded. Or so new research suggests. 

And yes, it all happened in China. You know, the harmonious Yin-Yang civilization of Daoism and Buddhism...not!  

At least we now know where Chinese dragon legends come from. May you live in interesting times...

Off with their heads!

Croc with his head!

Hanysuchus

In the land of meat and honey

 

A White explorer asks a group of ancient hunters and gatherers questions about their deep spiritual insights and wisdom. It doesn´t go very well...

Kill all the brutes

 

"Mystery of the Ice Giants" is a German documentary about the relatively sudden disappearence of the Paleolithic megafauna at the end of the "Ice Age". Was it due to naturally occuring climate change? Or did humans hunt the mammoths and other megafaunal species to extinction? The film team follows a group of paleontologists as they trek around the world, trying to shade some light on the mystery. White Sands in New Mexico, the Yukon in Canada and Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic are visited. The culprit is soon identified: yes, it was Stone Age human hunters. 

The megafauna had already survived several periods of severe climate change. When a glacial period ended, the so-called mammoth steppe where most of the megafauna lived shrank considerably, replaced by huge forests. However, the animals dependent on a steppe habitat simply moved to the few refugia where such an environment still existed, staging a comeback when the interglacial was over and the steppes became great again. Why didn´t this happen again at the end of the latest glaciation? The new factor simply must be Homo sapiens. At Dolne Vestonice, virtual "mass graves" filled with mammoth bones (usually from young specimens) have been found. There is also evidence from North America that humans hunted ground sloths and cave bears. Personally, I was fascinated by the Yukon, where the paleontologists can simply pick up fossils as they walk around the riverside, including well preserved mammoth tusks! 

Mammoths were hunted for the meat, but also for the fat, apparently a necessity in a cold climate with very little plant-based food available Over 60% of the food intake of Paleolithic humans was mammoth meat. One of the scientists featured speculate that the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe were dark-skinned (they were originally from Africa, after all) and therefore couldn´t produce enough vitamin D naturally from the sun light. This made it even more necessary to hunt mammoths, presumably to harvest the fatty tissue. (I suppose somebody somewhere might find it uncomfortable that Blacks and the ancestors of the American Indians were behind the first mass extinction in human history, but there you go.) 

When mammoths and other large herbivores were gone, the carnivores preying on them also went extinct. The sabre-toothed tiger known as smilodon was evidently specially adapted to hunt and kill such animals. With them gone, the weird-looking feline with its huge canines (sorry, couldn´t help myself) was doomed. Climate change also played a role, however. What made the impact of human hunters extra severe was that the end of "the Ice Age" reversed the climate yet again, dramatically shrinking the traditional grazing and hunting grounds of the megafauna. A few mammoths actually survived in Siberia, but where stuck on Wrangel Island when sea levels rose, eventually starving to death when food sources got scarce. 

But I´m sure "primitive" peoples have something important to teach us about "conservation ethics", right? Right.  

Environmental destruction began during the Stone Age. 

Gorillas against guerillas

"Primates" is a 2020 BBC mini-series about apes, monkeys and prosimians. Some humans (mostly primatologists) have been thrown in for good measure, too! Most of the documentary is standard fare: spectacular footage of non-human primates from all over the world, and calls to save them for posterity. Good for a boring Christmas holiday, but perhaps not *that* interesting...

However, I did notice a few things. 

In the Congolese hills, the Virunga National Park - with a rare population of mountain gorillas - is protected by "park rangers", actually a heavily armed uniformed militia. The park rangers have been repeatedly attacked by rebel groups operating in the region. But why would humans volunteer to protect gorillas against guerillas, risking their lives in the process? The BBC interviews a ranger who claims to have a spiritual bond with the gorillas. Maybe he has. 

However, there is a much more mundane explanation. The rangers are recruited from the local population and paid by international organizations. Eco-tourism from Western nations is another source of income. Also, the local communities get a share of the profits. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but it *does* mean that the rangers have a very vested *human* (Homo sapiens sapiens) interest in protecting the gorillas. They are simply protecting their own sources of income. Since the rebels are presumably Hutu expats or expellees from Rwanda, some kind of ethnic dimension can´t be ruled out either. The people in the Virunga area are literally defending their homeland against foreign intruders. See how I managed to de-romanticize the whole situation? When the Western money stops coming, the mountain gorillas are bush meat, if you ask me...

Another uncomfortable fact. As I have repeatedly pointed out on this blog, even Native peoples deplete their resource bases if given half the chance. Research carried out at Koram Island off the coast of Thailand shows that monkeys, specifically crab-eating macaques, do exactly the same thing! The monkeys are tool-users: they use heavy stones to crack open oysters. The tool-use leads to over-exploitation of the oysters, which tend to become smaller and less abundant as a result. Imagine what would happen if some primate started to use tools consistently...wait... 

Edenic ecological balance doesn´t even exist among tool-using freakin´ *animals*, it seems. 

"Primates" does contain other interesting information, to be sure. We get to meet a team of animal rescuers trying to "retrain" young orphaned orangutans for a life in the wild (the orphans are used to human "foster parents" and have therefore lost these skills). As part of their project, the human trainers have to take climbing lessons in really tall trees! Another team tries to reintroduce pet gibbons into the wild. Gibbons are popular as exotic pets, but many of them are snatched from the wild and essentially trafficked as part of the illegal animal trade. The gibbons shown in the docu are rescued and taken back to their original habitat. 

So perhaps there is some hope, after all. However, I have to say that what really caught my attention was the somewhat more pessimistic facts, some of which BBC doesn´t really want the viewers to confront...  

Where giants walked

"Easter Island: Where Giants Walked" is a combined pod cast and visual documentary available on YouTube. It was posted there in 2020. 

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the Pacific Ocean is mostly known for its mysterious stone statues (moai). For centuries, Europeans have speculated about their origins, often refusing to believe that the native Easter Islanders themselves (who are of Polynesian stock) could have raised them. One example is Thor Heyerdahl´s somewhat wild idea (mentioned in passing in the docu) that the moai must have been built by White-skinned people from South America! Another (not mentioned) is the speculation about a connection to Mu or Lemuria (a kind of Pacific Atlantis). "Where Giants Walked" isn´t particularly interested in these alternative ideas, however. Rather, it´s main target is the "official" narrative, popularized by Jared Diamond in his bestselling book "Collapse", according to which the islanders destroyed their own complex society long before the arrival of Europeans by a combination of ecocide, warfare and rampant cannibalism. The narrator, Paul M M Cooper, believes that there is essentially no real evidence for this standard narrative, and that it really represents a projection of our own modern fears of environmental destruction. One obvious example is the claim that the natives cut down all the island´s trees in order to transport the gigantic stone statues from the quarries to the coast (perhaps by using the logs as rollers or to build sledges), and that this project in turn was completely irrational in nature, being essentially a status-driven conflict between different tribal war chiefs. This, of course, is how a certain kind of moralist sees *our own* present predicament...

So what actually happened, then? 

First, even Cooper has to admit that the Polynesian settlement on the island (which recent research estimates at around 1200 AD, much later than hitherto believed) wasn´t a particularly "harmonious" affair, ecologically speaking. Polynesian settlers introduced their own favored flora and fauna at the islands they settled. At Easter Island, rats were introduced quite deliberately, since they were eaten by the common people! (I always assumed the rats were accidental stove aways rather than an inplanted food source.) The rats - which bred exponentially -  probably destroyed the palm tree forests, by simply eating the palm nuts. Also, slash and burn agriculture was practiced, with similar devastating results. So yes, there really was an "ecocide" of sorts on Easter Island, although the narrator doesn´t want to use that term. However, since humans are resourceful creatures, the loss of forest vegetation didn´t kill their society. The Easter Islanders simply adapted to the new conditions, building a vast network of "rock gardens" across the island, which prevented the loss of top soil and captured rain water. When the first Europeans arrived on the island, they spotted large fruit orchards, and the natives even gave them food to eat, which doesn´t exactly sound like a starving remnant population. As for the moai, they could be transported to their intended locations on the coast by rocking them forward in standing position with the help of ropes, so no trees were needed. (This is why the islanders said that the statues "walked".) As for warfare, no real archeological evidence for such seems to exist: no hill forts, weapons, skeletons with spear marks, and so on (such evidence can be found on other Polynesian islands). This, obviously, suggests that no war took place. The obsidian "spear points" (mata´a) found all over the island probably weren´t used for war, according to recent research, but mostly for agriculture. 

Thus, the real "pre-contact" history of Rapa Nui is a story of a devastating human impact on the local environment - quite similar to that on many other islands, or indeed mainlands, around the world already before modern civilization - but also of human ingenuity and resilience in the face of adversity (whether or not it´s caused by humans). What makes Easter Island fairly unique is that it seems to have been relatively peaceful. Cooper suggests that there were two reasons for this peacefulness. One was that the islanders may have been closely related, being descended from a relatively small group of original settlers (note the socio-biologic slant of this explanation). Another is ingenious ways to "blow off steam" and let people (mostly males, by the look of it) compete against each other in other ways than through warfare. The carving, transportation and raising of the moai might have been a peaceful way of gaining status. Another was the curious "birdman cult", an annual ritual during which the young men were supposed to swim to a small island off the coast and steal eggs from the nests of terns. 

So why did the Easter Island society eventually collapse, then? The story turns out to be an over-familiar one: yes, it was European (and Euro-South American) colonization, more specifically a combination of introduced diseases and slave-raiding. The most devastating slave raid took place in 1862, when 1,500 natives were forced into slavery in Peru. This triggered a chain of events that destroyed the last remnants of the old Rapa Nui culture. For instance, the entire priestly class was wiped out, and with them the only people who could read the unique Rongorongo script, the only writing system developed by Polynesians. When the island came under Chilean control, most of it was turned into a gigantic sheep farm. The bizarre semi-barren landscape characteristic of Easter Island today is the result of relatively recent sheep grazing, not some ancient ecocide. The surviving natives were forced to live in a town cordoned off from the rest of the island, and work for the capitalist agri-business that had taken over their homeland...

Cooper ends by pointing out that if Easter Island´s fate has some kind of lesson to teach us, or warning to convey, maybe we should be very careful about what that warning might be! 

I admit that he has a point there... 

Cycles of violence

1000 BC to 600 AD in the Atacama, northern Chile. Communities of farmers and fishermen engage in bloody tribal warfare. Yes, folks, welcome to another Native killing spree! But I´m sure these people were highly spiritual somehow, and could teach us something new agey about finding ourselves with meditation, homeopathy and hash? Or no?

Farming brought burst of extreme violence to the Atacama Desert

Come and see the D´sonoqua

 

"Sasquatch´n" is a 2017 Canadian documentary about Bigfoot observations from a Native (American Indian) angle. It supposedly reveals previously secret Native knowledge or lore about the elusive beast. I´m not sure if that´s true, though. I previously reviewed J Robert Alley´s book "Raincoast Sasquatch", which contains material about D´sonoqua and other Bigfoot-like creatures from West Coast Native folklore. (Or perhaps our modern idea of Bigfoot is D´sonoqua-like, at least broadly?) Apart from Native informers, the documentary also features the late John Bindernagel, one of the few scientists who took the Bigfoot phenomenon seriously.

The Natives unapologetically describe D´sonoqua and similar creatures as both physical and paranormal at the same time, using our definitions of those terms. The split between flesh-and-blood cryptozoologists and paranormal researchers would be incomprehensible to them. Above all, "Bigfoot" has been part of Native culture in British Columbia and other parts of western North America since time immemorial, as witnessed by petroglyphs, ceremonial masks and secret shamanic societies. The Natives interviewed (from the Namgis nations, among others) consider meeting "Bigfoot" to be a blessing, even if the encounter itself can be extremely scary. Interestingly, some nations consider the creature to be female (albeit with a small male companion), while others claim its male. 

The supernatural aspect includes "portals" in certain rock formations through which the creature is said to enter and leave our reality, but its not clear whether this is needed at all, since it´s also described as a shape-shifter that is impossible to catch even in "our" world. The creature is also said to protect Nature from Man, but the Natives interviewed seem to suggest the opposite: that it really protects *humans* from the wrath of animals!

Which brings me to the annoying last ten minutes of "Sasquatch´n", which is modern eco-warrior stuff pure and simple, complete with an apocalyptic angle, according to which Mother Earth is preparing to cleanse itself of humans, with the numerous Bigfoot sightings being some kind of warning. We are admonished to follow the Native way of life, which supposedly means balance with Nature. Yeah, if you regard overhunting, overfishing, and voluntarily participating in the White man´s fur trade "balance", I suppose you could argue that the Natives lived in "balance" with Gaia. Sorry, but I´m not buying this kind of noble savage romanticism! Still, I suppose there *would* be more "balance" if human population levels would crash to Paleolithic levels... 

That being said, "Sasquatch´n" could nevertheless be of some interest, if the interface between cryptozoology, mythology and the paranormal is your thing.

MELONHEADS: Was TEXAS ARCANE right?

I admit that I don´t believe this (if we have Neanderthal DNA, how come none of us looks like an Orc-human hybrid?), but it´s a fun read anyway.  

When Orcs were real

Among real men and man-eaters

This is a fascinating documentary about two of the largest and least accesible mines in the world, Ertsberg and Grasberg in New Guinea, more specifically the Indonesian-controlled western part of the island, here called Irian Jaya. The production has an almost entertaining "colonial" slant, with the White Man (or brave Americans with very distinct cowboy accents working for The Great Mining Company) cast in the role of masculine conquerors of Nature at its most hellish. The Natives of the area turn out to live on Stone Age level, and are rumored to be cannibals (although everyone interviewed claims they are "really quite nice"). Don´t watch this if your alma mater was a left-liberal community college! 

That being said, the engineering feats of the blancos (and the occasional Indonesian) *are* impressive. The mines in question are at an elevation of about 18,000 feet (circa 5,400 meters), being literally situated on top of mountains. The hills in turn are surrounded by dense jungle and swampland. Roads, seaports, pipelines and airstrips? Non-existent (until the mining company needed them and built them). The old mine at Ertsberg used a large aerial tramway to get workers and equipment up the mountain, while the Grasberg mine has an almost crazy road system crawling up the hillside. The enormous trucks used at the mine must be taken apart into smaller pieces and transported up the mountain, to be re-assembled at their end-destination. 

While the Ertsberg mine was depleted long ago, the Grasberg ditto is still operating. It´s the world´s largest gold mine and second largest copper mine. It´s worth is estimated to 40 billion dollars! 

The documentary also mentions a notorious hoax, involving the Canadian exploration company Bre-X, which claimed to have found an even bigger gold deposit in Borneo (also on Indonesian territory). When the fraud was exposed, Filipino geologist Guzman (who had worked for Bre-X) was found dead and the death declared a suicide, but one of the guys interviewed in this documenatary almost jokingly says that Guzman probably got away and is enjoying his money somewhere in the Philippines! 

Things *not* mentioned here, but found on Wikipedia, include the salient facts that the mines have been attacked by a local armed independence movement (yes, our old friends from the OPM), and that several strikes have broken out among the workforce. 

I´m sure leftist environmentalists would love to hate the Grasberg operation, if they even know about it. Unfortunately for the local Young Greens, in order to de-carbonize our modern economies, we need vast amounts of copper. And Grasberg is the second largest copper mine in the world, remember? 

There is no way around this: if you are an idealistic Green who thinks electric cars will save the world, you are just as responsible for Grasberg as the most based cornucopian. You own it now. This is yours. Unless, of course, you want to go back to the Stone Age and live like the Papuan Natives, in a 40,000-year perennial state of tribal war and cannibalism... 

Swiss dissident

"Peasants, Lords and State. Comparing Peasant Conditions in Scandinavia and the Eastern Alpine Region, 1000-1750" is a heavy scholarly tome edited by Tove Iversen, John Ragnar Myking and Stefan Sonderegger. It was published by Brill in 2020. It forms part of Brill´s series "The Northern World". In this blog post, I will concentrate on Sonderegger´s incredibly entertaining revisionist history "Switzerland - A `Peasant State´?". Apparently, the self-conception of the Swiss is still that their little "confederacy" is some kind of special case in Europe (or the world), a nation founded by medieval peasants who valiantly fought for their freedom and direct democracy against the Habsburgs and other tyrannical overlords. Everyone has heard the stories of William Tell, and in Switzerland itself, Uli Rotach is another folk hero, associated with the historical canton of Appenzell. Rotach is often depicted in peasant dress and is said to have perished in the flames of his own farm, after killing twelve Habsburg enemies in man-to-man combat. Another similarity with Tell is that Rotach probably never existed in the first place...

In his contribution, Sonderegger systematically deconstructs the Swiss peasant myth. The real movers and shakers of Swiss constitutional development were not assemblies of peasants or cowherds, but the burghers in the towns. In 1377, five districts (Ländlein) of the Appenzell joined the Swabian League of Cities - the only rural areas allowed to do so. The reason was that Appenzell was economically connected to the town of St Gallen. Both town and hinterland saught liberation from the rule of the abbey of St Gallen (the abbot was also a powerful secular lord). The towns of St Gallen and Konstanz were tasked with representing the Appenzell Ländlein in the Swabian League. They also set themselves up as a "Schutzmächte" (protective power) over the Appenzell, with comprehensive powers to act in the name of the League. The towns demanded that the four Ländlein unite into one territory, the Land Appenzell (the future Swiss canton Appenzell). They were also told to elect a council of thirteen men to represent the Land when negotiating with the towns. The council was also supposed to become a kind of internal government of the Land Appenzell itself. That is, the constitutional development had nothing to do with free peasants meeting in a direct democratic assembly, rather it was an initiative of the cities from above. This is further shown by Appenzell´s first seal. It was adopted shortly after the rural districts had joined the League and was obviously based on the seal of St Gallen. Seals were associated with towns or the royal power, not with rural Länder. 

The battle of the Stoss on 17 June 1405 during the Appenzell Wars of Liberation has aquired a near-legendary status in patriotic Swiss historiography as a victory of armed peasants against an imperial army. It was during this pivotal event that Rotach supposedly died the death of a national martyr. Sonderegger believes that the real story shows that the town of St Gallen and the armed peasants cooperated against the army of the Duke of Austria, Frederick IV. The duke was never at the Stoss (a mountain pass), instead he made an attempt to besiege St Gallen. In the skirmishes that followed, 30 men from St Gallen were killed - their mass grave has been found. Ironically, there is no archeological evidence for the battle of the Stoss, although Sonderegger doesn´t deny that it took place. His point is that the resistance of the townspeople might have made it easier for the peasants to gain the upper hand at the pass. 

There were definite material reasons for the close alliance between St Gallen and the Appenzell. While the town was of course dependent on the rural hinterland for food, there were also dependecies the other way. In certain parts of the Appenzell, specialization in livestock rearing and viticulture developed. These areas were dependent on the town markets for their food (since they didn´t grow any food themselves). Much of the grain sold to these areas was originally imported all the way from Swabia! Above all, the townspeople extended credit to the peasants and pastoralists. There were also estates in the countryside owned by townspeople. The point is that the economies of St Gallen and the Appenzell were closely integrated. There was no special "peasant interest", but rather a joint regional interest transcending the urban-rural divide. 

The article also attacks the romantic view of the Swiss Confederacy that emerged during the 18th century. As an example, the author takes Frankfurt professor Johann Gottfried Ebel´s depiction of Switzerland from 1798. The Swiss peasants and herdsmen are depicted as simple, pure and strong, practicing a direct democracy which reminded Ebel of the ancient Greeks! Except, of course, that they were not. Sonderegger doesn´t deny that there might have been some kind of direct democracy in the Appenzell during the early 15th century, but during the late 16th century, power had slipped away from the popular assembly to the council. While the council was nominally elected by the assembly, it was dominated for centuries by the Zellweger family, rich burghers with substantial interests in the textile industry (during the 18th century, Appenzell Auserrhoden was apparently one of the most industrialized regions in Europe). To show their wealth and power, the Zellwegers even had stone palaces erected around the cantonal assembly place in the town of Trogen. For 74 years, a Zellweger sat in the "chair" at the assembly, the symbolically most prominent position. And not just symbolically, apparently! The democracy of pristine peasant and pastoralist savages turns out to be the flamboyant rule of textile barons...

I can´t say I´m entirely surprised by any of the above, provided the historical revisions are accurate. I´m not an expert on Swiss history! What national legends are true, anyway? Next, I´m going to read the chapter on Tyrol... 

Stay tuned for more myth-bashing. 

On the spiral of humanity

Some stray pessimistic reflections... 

There doesn´t seem to be any strict or hard teleology in human history. Determinism isn´t the same thing as teleology (which requires inherent meaning in history, or perhaps meaning imposed from the outside, by an external divine force). 

History seems to consist of long periods av deterministic BAU, interfoliated by contingent events during which a completely different outcome would have changed the course of history radically (for better or for worse). 

Examples of such contingent events could include the decision of the Arabs to listen to an obscure Judaizing preacher named Muhammad, the Great Plague in Europe circa 1350, the non-resistance of the American Native population to European diseases, the decision of a certain Chinese emperor to "burn the ships", the birth of a very smart and ruthless revolutionary known in underground circles as "Nikolai Lenin", the Nazi defeats at Stalingrad and El-Alamein, the fact that Oppenheimer and the Rosenbergs gave Stalin the secrets of the A-bomb, the US decisions to attack Iraq and Libya, and (perhaps) COVID-19 (if it was released from a lab, either deliberately or as a mistake). I´m less sure about the battle of Salamis...

There are also events which aren´t "contingent" in the above sense, but nevertheless have a profound impact on human history. One example is the existence of enormous deposits of oil and coal, and its exact distribution. Another is naturally occuring climate change, including the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. (Perhaps the pandemics mentioned above belong more in this category?) Another is the fact that certain seabirds shit a lot at small islands off the South American coast. 

At the same time, there *is* a kind of long-term direction in human history. For all we know, humans have *never* lived in "harmony" with Nature. Nor have they been able to control their population growth, despite valiant attempts to do so. Over time, the human population tends to grow. Since humans have a certain kind of dynamic intelligence, probably unique in the evolutionary tree, we can respond to population growth by technological innovations. We can expand our food production. Over the long run, this will lead to increased complexity and the formation of so-called high cultures. Note how high cultures arose independently of each other (as far as we know) in both the Old World and the New. Even in areas where no high cultures developed due to a variety of factors, such as Australia (before the White conquest), there was a tendency towards increased complexity in other ways. I´m less sure if "modernity" is inevitable, or just another (somewhat weird) high culture arising contingently from the ashes of the West Roman Empire and the soil of Medieval Europe, but its super-high degree of complexity arriving very late in the game proves my point regardless. 

Of course, this means that humans also have a built-in tendency to overshoot their resource base. So far, no known civilization has managed to solve this problem once and for all, and ours is no better in this regard (despite the dreams of cornucopians). There is zero indication that the world will stop using fossil fuels, certainly not before 2028 (the supposed year of no return), or even considerably cut the emissions. Fusion power will never be developed, there will be no manned mission to Mars, CCS doesn´t work either, and "electrification" is just a gimmick to make copper mining great again. Overpopulation is a stark reality. Modern civilization is therefore heading for decline, indeed, in many places, it is declining already. It might even crash and burn!

This seems to be the "Art Wesen" of Homo sapiens sapiens. Can humanity change? Maybe. I don´t see why it should be intrinsically impossible. However, it also seems highly unlikely. At least in the present epoch! 

The idea that we have somehow moved closer to "socialism", "a global society", "social justice", "the new consciousness" or whatever is the utopia du jour, is simply a conceit. Of course we haven´t. Even apart from the fact that most people promising a golden age of globalism, alter-globalization or anti-globalization are just grifters representing certain vested interests (or perhaps would-be such). In reality, very little seems to have changed since the late 19th century, except (of course) two world wars, even more people, even more environmental destruction, and tolerance towards trans-womyn being the law of the land. And, I suppose, drone deliveries ordered through Android phones. Otherwise, it´s still the liberal-global English-speaking Empire with its domesticated labor movement and hypocritical abolitionist elite versus Islam, India, China and Russia. And continental Europe? The more things change...

Human history seem to move in cycles, which in turn form a slowly moving upward spiral. However, this spiral isn´t really going anywhere either. Except maybe down. 

None of this is incompatible with a spiritual perspective. However, it *is* problematic if you are a very consistent materialist and/or atheist. 

Famine food

So I´ve been reading some more in "The Archeology of Global Change", a volume published by the Smithsonian in 2004. This time about the Hohokam. I´m not sure if the proponents of the "noble savage" myth include this particular culture in their list of Native American peoples who were supposedly "natural conservationists". The Hohokam, after all, were a kind of high culture. Or at least a proto-high culture. So perhaps environmental degradation is expected in their case?

The Hohokam culture existed from 1000 BC to 1500 AD. The place was the arid Sonora desert in what is today the US state of Arizona. The Hohokam are mostly known for their 500 miles long canal system which irrigated their main agricultural fields. The peak population is apparently difficult to gauge, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 150,000. The Hohokam also grew food (specifically agave) on marginal lands, at so-called rockpile fields. There is no doubt that the Hohokam were a clever group of people, and while the exact causes of their demise is unknown, it might not have been environmental degradation, but rather European diseases (which reached Arizona long before the actual Europeans). That being said, the Hohokam certainly didn´t live in some kind of Edenic balance with nature. 

The Hohokam hunted and consumed ungulates, but the abundance of these animals decrease in the archeological record over time, suggesting overhunting. One way to get meat was trade, either with Hohokam settlements in the marginal areas, or with Native peoples elsewhere. Another was long-distance hunting expeditions by the Hohokam themselves. This hunting was not for everyone, but was probably in the hands of hunting specialists, with their own buildings, access to animal-like outfits (perhaps used to sneak up on the game animals), and weapons made from obsidian (a material not readily available to the Hohokam). 

When ungulates became scarcer, the Hohokam turned more and more to lagomorphs, fish, beaver and muskrat. The lagomorphs and fish were always part of the local diet, but apparently the size of the fish decreased with time, suggesting that this resource was being over-exploited. Beaver and muskrat only shows up relatively late in the archeological record, despite both being edible animals. Perhaps there were cultural taboos against eating them? There are apparently such taboos among the present-day Native population in the area. If so, beaver and muskrat would be "famine food", animals hunted only when the Natives were forced to choose between eating and ideology. (They chose eating). Yet, at some archeological sites, the former inhabitants suffered from "subsistence stress and iron-deficiency anemia", suggesting that they nevertheless didn´t get enough protein. 

During the mid-19th century, wildlife in the Southwest was relatively abundant and diverse, something not seen in the archeological record. This suggests that the animals recovered after the downfall of the Hohokam culture. Widlife becomes scarce again due to White American hunting during the early 20th century. At the same time, modern human activity has allowed the spread of animal species which never lived in Arizona before. So when conservationists talk about preserving an original "Nature", what exactly do they have in mind? Nature is always changing, often in response to human interventions, including those of the Hohokam...

The Keystone Species

 

"The Archeology of Global Change: The Impact of Humans on Their Environment" is a book published in 2004 by the Smithsonian Institution. Yes, folks, it´s time for the Ashtar Command to bash the myth of the noble savage again! So far, I´ve "only" read the first part of the volume, which contains a somewhat eclectic blend of articles about Polynesia, the US Southwest and the Pacific Northwest. 

Humans have never lived in fundamental "harmony" with Nature, nor have they been "natural conservationists". The first evidence for overexploitation of natural resources comes from "archaic Homo sapiens". The size of tortoise shells and shellfish gradually decrease with time at Neanderthal sites around the Mediterranean, suggesting that our evolutionary siblings gathered (and consumed) the larger species or varieties first, making them go extinct! This also confirms the "optimum foraging" model, according to which humans should always harvest the most nutritious and easily accesible specimens first, and only then proceed to smaller, less nutritious and/or less accesible individuals. This pattern shows up again and again in the archeological record. In plain English, if forced to chose between eating and cultural ideology, most humans most of the time chose to eat. 

The contributors to this volume believe that humans were also responsible for the Pleistocene extinctions of "charismatic megafauna" in Eurasia, Australia and the Americas. I admit that I have no idea whodunnit, and the issue is only mentioned in passing, but some suggestive facts could be cited. For instance, that only a few species of megafauna went extinct in Africa, where humans and other animals presumably co-evolved for millions of years. By contrast, most megafaunal species went extinct in Australia and the Americas, where humans arrived comparatively late, and the animals hadn´t evolved any defenses against human predation. However, this assumes that received paleontological wisdom about human migrations is correct. What if humans arrived much earlier? An alternative hypothesis is that the megafauna went extinct due to climate change at the end of the Pleistocene. Of course, none of this has any impact on the conclusions of this book, which deals mostly with the Holocene (the present time period).

Patrick V Kirch´s article "Oceanic Islands: Microcosms of `Global Change´" deals with human impact on two Polynesian islands (Easter Island and Mangaia) and one ditto archipelago (Hawaii). The humans in question are the "Natives", the Polynesians, who colonized the islands long before the arrival of White Europeans or Americans. If pre-modern "Natives" are natural conservationists, islands should still be teeming with endemics (including flightless birds) and in general have the same biotopes as before colonization (except in cases of severe climate change). Unless, of course, evil Whites upset the balance! In reality, the Polynesians radically altered the island environments they encountered during their migrations in the Pacific. Nor is this surprising: the Polynesians practiced slash-and-burn agriculture and irrigation, introduced new food crops, and carried with them dogs, pigs and chicken. They were also followed by invasive species such as the Pacific rat or garden snails. And yes, they did hunt the animals already living on the islands...

Easter Island (Rapanui) was originally covered by parklandlike forests, with a canopy of palm trees. About 25 different species of seabird nested on the island. Rapanui was in effect a gigantic seabird rookery. There were also seven species of endemic landbirds. After 1,500 years of human habitation, Easter Island had changed completely: the forests had been cut down and replaced by grassland, the endemics were extinct, and most seabird species left the island, only a few remaining at small islets that are virtually unaccesible to humans. The Natives were fighting constant wars, which may have included cannibalism. 

The story of Mangaia (one of the Cook Islands) is similar. Probably colonized by Polynesians about 2000 years ago, the island´s environment had completely changed about 400 years ago. The interior of the island is covered by pyrophytic ferns and other fire-resistant plants, presumably in response to slash-and-burn agriculture. Of 17 documented landbird taxa in the archeological record, only four remained 600 years later. Some seabird species also left the island. Fish and gastropods found at archeological sites became progressively smaller over time, suggesting heavy exploitation of these particular resources. Mangaian society developed in a way similar to Rapanui, with constant tribal wars, widespread cannibalism, human sacrifice, and so on. (I won´t bother you with Hawaii.) 

The most fascinating contribution in the first section is titled "Revising the `Wild´ West: Big Game Meets the Ultimate Keystone Species" by Paul S Martin and Christine R Szuter. It meticulously analyzes the journals of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803-1806) to Montana and the Pacific Northwest. In Montana, the expedition encountered enormous flocks of bison and other game animals, one bison flock estimated to be 10,000 animals strong! The bison, elk, wolves and grizzly bears were also extremely tame. Clark managed to kill a wolf with his spontoon, suggesting that he managed to get very close to it (a spontoon is apparently a weapon about 2 meters long). The wolf was eating a drowned bison and seems not to have cared much about the human hunter, before it was too late! Lewis, Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" had no problem finding and killing animals for food east of the Rocky Mountains. West of the Rockies was a different story. There, game was virtually non-existent. At first, the expedition was forced to live on dried fish and roots provided by the Natives, something that made them sick. Later, they bought horses and dogs from various Native groups, with the intention of killing and eating them. Nor were the animals in the Pacific Northwest particularly docile. Killing a grizzly was considered an extremely heroic and manly act by the Natives, since these animals were so extremely aggressive. 

What could account for the peculiar difference between the two areas explored by the Lewis and Clark expedition? The two explorers themselves had no explanation, and many historians don´t give one either. However, the answer is right there, in the journals.

It´s the Natives, stupid.

The Native population was abundant *west* of the Rockies, where the game was most scarce. This would indeed suggest some kind of connection. The situation in Montana was more complex. An aggressive Native group known as the Blackfoot had virtually cleansed large areas of competing tribes by systematic attacks. Thus, the overall population density of Montana was probably lower than the areas further west. Of course, Blackfoot raiding had led other tribes to take defensive measures. Vast stretches of "no mans land" separated the various tribal territories from each other. In these areas, hunting was deemed difficult, due to the risk of being spotted and killed by scouts from the enemy tribe. Martin and Szuter believe that the abundant wildlife described by Lewis and Clark lived in these "DMZs". There is some later evidence for the same phenomenon, for instance Colorado circa 1820-1840, when the bison disappeared from the territory *when the Indian tribes made peace with one another*. A more recent example would be the border between North and South Korea, where wildlife is thriving.

These facts (plus the later disappearence of many Native groups) make it problematic to argue that current conservation efforts are about "restoring" an original, pristine wilderness. There simply isn´t such a thing. There hasn´t been a pristine wilderness sensu stricto since humans first arrived in North America 12,000 years ago. Animal numbers have been controlled by humans ever since. Humans are "the ultimate keystone species". The "balance" (if that´s the right word for it) between Native hunters and prey animals was disturbed when Natives aquired horses, but also when European diseases severly decimated the Native population. This led to all kinds of anomalous situations, often misreported as some kind of "Eden" where animals are super-abundant and tame. Something that is really the result of an atypical absence of human hunters, something seldom seen since the Pleistocene...

I will certainly continue reading this book with considerable interest. 

Pinnipeds are verily food

Not a pinniped 

 

I´ve read some more in "Wilderness and Political Ecology", a semi-technical scientific work edited by Charles Kay and Randy Simmons, published by the University of Utah Press in 2002. This time, I tried to digest the contribution by William R Hildebrandt and Terry L Jones, "Depletion of Prehistoric Pinniped Populations along the California and Oregon Coasts: Were Humans the Cause?". After analyzing archeological sites and later eye witness reports, the authors reach the conclusion that the answer is indeed yes. This is controversial, since the humans in question were pre-contact Native Americans (American Indians), who according to received wisdom were supposed to be deeply spiritual and live in perfect balance with Mother Nature. In reality, the coastal Native tribes hunted and killed sea lions and fur seals to such an extent that it impacted their numbers and breeding habits. 

Originally, there were pinniped rookeries (breeding colonies) on the actual coast, but after sustained Native hunting, the sea lions and fur seals abandoned the mainland and instead established themselves at offshore islands. Or left the area altogether! Natives living in areas that lacked offshore islands had to switch from hunting sea mammals to killing terrestrial game instead. In one particular area, permanent coastal settlements were abandoned as the Natives moved inland to hunt land mammals or harvest acorns, which permitted the pinnipeds to re-established rookeries along the coast. 

In areas where pinnipeds were breeding on islands to escape the human hunters, the Natives developed their technology to go after them. This included harpoons, which gradually become more sophisticated. Above all, it included the building of large canoes. This in turn led to increased stratification within the Native tribes, as only an elite could afford to invest in such an enterprise. The person owning the canoe was expected to distribute food and drink to the canoe-builders and the crew members. An 18th century Spanish explorer reported that the canoes carried a crew of about 30 people, and Native informers apparently have a tradition that the boats were about 30 feet long. The concept of private ownership seems to have developed among the Tolowa, Yurok, Hupa and Wiyot tribes. Wealthy elite families owned boats, acorn collection groves, eddies for netting fish, and shares in offshore rookeries. Native groups which concentrated on hunting terrestrial animals had less social stratification, perhaps because this could be done without the elaborate organization needed to hunt marine mammals. 

According to the "optimum foraging model" of hunter-animal interaction, hunters should take the most nutritious specimens first, regardless of whether it´s ecologically sound to do so. Cultural or religious ideas about "sacred animals" should have no power to stop this. In other words, the model predicts that Natives aren´t "natural conservationists". Hildebrandt and Jones believe that the archeological record proves the model. Native hunters seems to have primarily killed female and juvenile pinnipeds, which makes no sense if the mission is to conserve resources, but makes perfect sense if the goal of the hunt is to obtain optimum food with the smallest expenditure of energy possible. When the pinniped populations were depleted, the hunters switched to sea otters, a pelagic species which is more difficult to hunt down and kill. There is even an example of a Native group which switched to sea otters after first having depleted the elk population! The archeological record from the Channel Islands in southern California show that the pinniped population fluctuated in response to the density of human settlement. Life on these particular islands was always hard, leading many human sites to be abandoned, at which point the pinnipeds came back - once again, an inexplicable fact if you think American Indians were "natural" or "spontaneous" conservationists. 

Curiously, the ethnographic record *does* suggest that the Natives actually were conservationists. However, the authors believe that these are biased samples, showing how one particular group acted at one particular point in time. Archeology looks at the broader picture, including chronologically, and then a very different scenario emerges. Also, there is a difference between "conserving" certain plants and doing the same thing to animals. The plant species most often used as examples of Native conservation ethics are the ones that reproduce and spread most easily and swiftly, often benefitting from large scale human-induced burning. Thus, seemingly paradoxically, increased human use of such a plant can permit it to spread even faster, for instance by causal dispersal of seeds or bulbs, regardless of the ethical convictions of the humans involve. Game animals, alas, don´t follow such a pattern...

The article also points out that pinniped populations have virtually exploded during the 20th century, as large scale (Euro-American) hunting of these creatures ceased. The pinnipeds have even conquered areas where they haven´t lived historically. The most ironic fact is that some elephant seals have established themselves at coasts with archeological sites, destroying them in the process! These would be sites of Native settlement. Remove the apex predator, and soon you have pinnipeds dancing on your grave...

With that somewhat bizarre observation, I close this little blog post.