Charles C. Mann, writing for the Atlantic:
Crediting Indians with the role of keystone species has implications for the way the current Euro-American members of that keystone species manage the forests, watersheds, and endangered species of America. Because a third of the United States is owned by the federal government, the issue inevitably has political ramifications. In Amazonia, fabled storehouse of biodiversity, the stakes are global.
Guided by the pristine myth, mainstream environmentalists want to preserve as much of the world’s land as possible in a putatively intact state. But “intact,” if the new research is correct, means “run by human beings for human purposes.” Environmentalists dislike this, because it seems to mean that anything goes. In a sense they are correct. Native Americans managed the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same. If they want to return as much of the landscape as possible to its 1491 state, they will have to find it within themselves to create the world’s largest garde
I hate to just excerpt a conclusion, but in this case the conclusion is simply mind-bending.
Mann argues that the Americas were ecologically managed on a massive scale — at least as massive as Eurpean agriculture, but with completely different inputs.
Butt here’s something I wonder about: why were there no diseases of the Americas that wiped out European setlers? Is it simply because of the differences in animal domestication? A matter of luck?