[Note: This is the fifty-ninth sample from my rough draft of
a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy. The Search field on the right side will find
words in the full contents of all rants and reviews. These samples are not freestanding
pieces. They will be easier to
understand if you start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE — if you
happen to have some free time. If you
prefer audiobooks, Michael Dowd is in the process of reading and recording my
book HERE.
ISLANDS
The saga of the family of life is several billion years
old. It’s a story of evolution, from
single celled organisms to a fantastically complex and diverse collection of
living beings. It’s a story of climate
change which, for better or worse, never tires of pulling the rug out from
under eras of stability. Craig
Childs noted that drill cores of lake sediments in northern New Mexico
showed droughts that lasted up to ten centuries. Six thousand years ago, the Sahara Desert was
a lush grassland.
The saga is also a story of migration and colonization. All plant and animal species are sometimes nomadic,
remaining in comfortable habitats until conditions become challenging. When their home becomes harsh, the lucky ones
are able to migrate to better locations.
The horse family originated in North America about 4.5 million years ago. It was a wonderful place to live — until hungry
humans from Eurasia arrived. Pita
Kelekna noted that the last wild American horse perished in Patagonia 9,000
years ago.
The horse family remains alive and well today because, long
ago, some adventurous herds happened to wander across the land bridge to
Asia. They migrated into new regions, and
found lots of delicious places to live. Like
the horses, many other groups of megafauna species have colonized large
portions of the world — the elephant-like family, and the bears, cats, canines,
camels, hominins…. They migrated from
one continent to the next by walking across dry land. Of these globetrotting megafauna, only one species
has a reputation for causing numerous extinctions, and severely damaging
ecosystems.
Paul Martin was a pioneer in the study of megafauna
extinctions. Offshore islands were the
last places to be colonized by species that did not fly or swim. He noted that ground sloths were eventually
driven to extinction from Alaska to Patagonia — except on islands. For example, on the islands of Cuba, Haiti,
and Puerto Rico, ground sloths survived 6,000 years longer than on the continental
mainland. Why? The mainland and islands had the same climate.
The critical variable was human
presence. When watercraft technology enabled
hunters to visit islands, the sloths were finally doomed.
After reading a pile of books and papers, I was convinced
that climate change was not the primary cause for many of the extinctions that
have happened since humans migrated out of Africa. Martin wrote that the megafauna species that
went extinct had been around for a very long time, and had survived a number of
surging and fading glacial cycles.
Ongoing research largely supports the human impact hypothesis.
In his book Europe,
Tim Flannery discussed the vast mammoth steppe of northern Europe. Oddly, with the rise and fall of temperature
trends, warmth loving species were not more likely to vanish during periods of
frigidity. Cold loving species were not
more likely to vanish when the steppe got hotter. Uncomfortable animals were inspired to
migrate to more pleasant locations. Unlike
today, ice age climate swings happened gradually. Living generations would not have been aware
of the changes.
Earlier, I mentioned that megafauna extinctions could
sometimes take a thousand years or more.
Living generations were unlikely to actually notice the slow decline of
large game species in a wild frontier. As
humans colonized new regions, and unintentionally encouraged extinction spasms,
the largest mammals were usually the first to blink out. They were easy to find, provided lots of
meat, and had low reproduction rates. Thus,
human impact. A climate whammy would
have hammered critters of all shapes and sizes indiscriminately. David
Burney and Tim Flannery described a 50,000 year pattern of extinctions
corresponding with the arrival of humans.
Fernando
Fernandez wrote an unusually readable paper that described six significant
problems with the climate change theory.
Bernardo
Araujo and team agreed. They
concluded that if we disregarded all evidence of human impacts, nobody would be
talking about megafauna extinctions today.
Over the years, Paul Martin rejected flimsy arguments that blamed
climate shifts, but by 2005, he acknowledged that the climate could have led to
a few extinctions. Big Mama Nature may
have sometimes played a direct role, and that’s OK. We can’t complain. She will always do whatever she wishes,
because this is her circus, and we are her clowns.
Most of the world’s woolly mammoths were extinct by 10,500
years ago. A few lasted longer. Saint Paul Island is off the coast of
Alaska. Graham Russell
and team noted that woolly mammoths survived there until about 5,600 years
ago. A warming climate had elevated sea
levels, which shrank the land area of the island. The climate got dryer, and sources of fresh
water became scarce. The thirsty mammoths
vanished. The first evidence of human
presence on the island dates to just 230 years ago. Here, climate is clearly a primary suspect.
The last mammoths on Earth perished about 4,000 years ago on
Wrangel Island, north of Siberia. DNA analysis suggests that the mammoths were
wrecked by a small population and inbreeding.
Lately, new research has found evidence of human presence about 3,700
years ago. The island is huge, and has
not been thoroughly studied. When more
is learned, this story may add a hunting chapter. Stay tuned.
I’ve been a technical writer for 35 years. Accuracy is essential. But in the realm of prehistory, experts express
theories and factoids that are consistently inconsistent. Truth can be a fairy mist. This gives me endless headaches. I still can’t understand why more than a few
folks continue to believe that the primary cause of the megafauna extinctions
was climate change, not human impacts.
Today, the world is buzzing with countless conspiracy
theories that throw truth under the bus.
Derrick
Jensen wrote the book on human supremacy, and the super-spooky mind-altering
power of unquestioned beliefs. Humans are
the only things that matter, a living planet does not. Earth is a disposable stage prop for the heroic
stars of the show, the comically clever primates.
From this mindset, the human colonization of Earth (a process
that has left behind a long and bloody trail of extinctions, spurred explosive
population growth, rubbished countless ecosystems, and triggered an onrushing
climate catastrophe) is seen as a wondrous achievement that should fill us with
glowing pride. We have blind faith that
technology will always sweep aside every challenge on our path. Indeed, the best is yet to come!
Was I missing something important? My muse was nervous and perspiring
heavily. She persistently insisted that
I take a deeper look at island extinctions, and butt heads with my doubts. So I did.
Wow! It has been a mind-blowing
experience. I now have no doubt that islands
have especially important stories to tell us.
So, let’s do some island hopping.
Enjoy!
Pangaea
the Supercontinent
I sometimes look out my window and see an opossum. One day, I was fascinated to discover the
saga of the opossum people. They are
marsupial mammals, and humans are placental mammals (see Google). Opossums originated in the vicinity of
Australia. Around 335 million years ago,
most of Earth’s dry land was clumped together into an enormous supercontinent
called Pangaea. It began to break apart
around 200 million years ago. Over time,
chunks of it drifted all over the place, and arranged themselves into the seven
continents we know today.
The plants and animals that had evolved on Pangaea continued
living on the drifting chunks, in varying assortments of species. The chunks migrated in different directions, sometimes
into different climate zones. Their
plant and animal communities continued adapting and evolving, creating unique
ecosystems. Opossums had lived on chunks
that used to be connected, now called Australia, Antarctica, and South
America. For a long time, South America
was far away from North America, but they eventually wandered close together,
and opossums boogied north across the border, and into my future back yard.
Until this morning, I believed that humans were the only
species associated with mass extinctions, but I was wrong. A wise woman has now informed me that, three
million years ago, when North and South America finally kissed at Panama, North
American carnivores charged southward, and exterminated numerous marsupial
species.
Anyway, the gradual breakup of Pangaea was rough and
messy. Offshore from the large land
masses were smaller chunks that had broken away from the edges — islands. Many islands were created. For example, Madagascar broke away from India
maybe 100 million years ago. East of
Madagascar is Mauritius, a different type of island, created by volcanic
activity (like Hawaii was).
Channel
Islands
Offshore from Santa Barbara, California are the five Channel
Islands. Around 20,000 years ago, when
sea levels were 300 feet (91 m) lower than today, the five islands were united
in one larger island that was just 6 miles (10 km) from the coast. Over time, rising seas altered the coastlines. Today, the islands are 22 miles from the
coast. About 80 percent of their former
dry land area is now submerged.
Among the former residents were pygmy mammoths. Their ancestors were the huge Columbian
mammoths that lived on the mainland, some of whom decided to swim several miles
to the islands. Swim? Yes! Even
when sea levels were low, there was no land bridge from the mainland to the
islands. Asian elephants have been known
to swim to islands 23 miles (37 km) away.
Their large bodies are buoyant, and their trunks can be used like
snorkels. Did you know that hippos in
the Old World have also been excellent long distance swimmers? No joke!
Anyway, over the passage of thousands of years on the Channel
Islands, the mammoths evolved into dwarfs, a unique new species. Maybe this was an adaptation to limited
resources. Or, maybe it was a lack of
predators. Jumbo size improves the odds
for survival when bloodthirsty carnivores live nearby. But when predators are not good swimmers, and
live far away, there is less need to be huge and powerful.
Radiocarbon dating is accurate up to 50,000 years ago, and mammoths
were on the islands for at least that long.
Humans arrived on the islands around 13,000 years ago. The mammoths went extinct between 13,000 and
12,900 years ago. Coincidence? Wikipedia reports that mammoths
still lived on the islands when humans arrived. Two mammoth skulls with the brains removed were
found near a fire pit. Of the 100 fire
pits examined, at least a third contained mammoth bones. Climate pleads innocent.
Mediterranean
Jacques
Blondel was interested in habitat destruction on the Mediterranean islands during
the last 10,000 years. Population
pressure on the mainland encouraged folks to colonize the larger islands. Forests were pushed back to create cropland
and pasture. Humans deliberately
introduced livestock, and unintentionally released pests, like rats and mice.
Long, long ago, isolation from the mainland led several species
of large animals to become dwarfs on multiple Mediterranean islands. There were
pygmy hippos and deer, and at least 12 species of pygmy elephants. The smallest elephants were 39 inches (1 m)
tall. The scarcity of predators also led
to the evolution of giant rodents and flightless owls.
Blondel wasn’t sure if the pygmies were primarily eliminated
by hunting, or by feral pigs introduced from the mainland. Either way, this was not a climate bummer, it
was a human impact bummer. Bottom line: probably
all of the wild mammal species that originally inhabited the Mediterranean
islands were eventually driven extinct following human colonization.
Marco
Masseti was fascinated by the mammals of the Mediterranean islands, and his
report is long, exceedingly thorough, and includes cool maps and illustrations.
In the Mediterranean basin, several thousand
years of civilization have been fantastically successful at rubbishing the
ecosystem, taking a heavy toll on biodiversity.
Many islands were once vast jungles of oak trees, now
reduced to “little more than mineral skeletons.” It may be the most heavily destroyed region
on Earth.
The old theory was that when sea levels were low, large
mammals simply walked across dry land to what are now islands. When sea levels rose, and islands became cut
off, the isolated large mammals became dwarfs.
Experts now say that the land bridges never existed. Islands were only accessible by swimming,
rafting, or flying. Rising sea levels
increased the difficulty. Deer are
capable swimmers, and hippos and elephants are champions. Birds and bats can go where they wish. Masseti concluded that human impacts were the
primary cause of Mediterranean island extinctions. Again, climate pleads innocent.
Caribbean
There have been two recent studies of extinctions on islands
of the West Indies, in the Caribbean Sea.
The 2017 paper was written by Siobhán B. Cooke
and team. On multiple islands, it
compared the dates of human arrival with the extinction dates. It found that humans arrived on the islands
in four waves. The first three were
Amerindian hunter-gatherers, and the fourth was Europeans. Each wave generated increased eco-impacts. Access to the full paper is not free.
Luckily, Mindy
Weisberger wrote a news release that summarized the study, and is free to
one and all. Prior to human
colonization, there were 150 species of mammals on the islands, including sloths,
giant monkeys, bats, and jumbo rats. Humans
colonized the Caribbean basin mainland by 12,000 years ago, but they didn’t
begin colonizing the islands until 6,000 years ago. By this time the climate was stable, well into
the Holocene warm era. Most of the
extinctions on all of the islands happened after human arrival, not before.
Early in the game, hunting was probably the cause of
extinctions. Then came forest clearance
and agriculture, which eliminated wildlife habitat. Destruction accelerated 500 years ago, when
Europeans arrived, bringing invasive exotics like cats, rats, goats, and
mongooses. Indigenous rodent species got
hammered. This is not a climate story,
it’s another human impact tragedy.
In 2021, a second paper was published, written by Samuel Turvey and team. It’s online and free. This paper tracked the data on 89 species on
118 Caribbean islands, and explored the pattern of extinctions. All of these species were still alive at the
start of the Holocene warm era, which began 11,700 years ago, and has not
cooled off yet. Conclusion: “Hunting,
landscape transformation, and invasive mammal introduction by successive waves
of colonists following human arrival approximately 6000 years ago are
considered the primary drivers of Caribbean mammal loss.”
Larger animals had low reproduction rates, and small
populations. They were at the highest
risk of being driven to extinction by the growing human population. The smallest animals were hard hit by the introduction
of invasive predators, like black rats and mongooses. Their extinction dates correspond to the
arrival of these predators. Again,
climate pleads innocent.
New
Zealand
The islands of New Zealand were the last large landmass
colonized by humans. Polynesian settlers
began arriving somewhere between A.D. 1280 and 1350. Over time, almost half of New Zealand’s
original vertebrate species went extinct, including 51 species of birds. Alexandra
van der Geer wrote that nine species of huge flightless moas vanished in
less than a century, zapped by hunting and habitat destruction.
Moas shared the trait of gigantism with other flightless
birds, like the ostriches of Australia, and the elephant birds of Madagascar. In the extremely distant past, the moas lived
elsewhere, and still had wings that enabled flight. When they landed in New Zealand, maybe 60
million years ago, they were delighted to discover that there were no large
ground dwelling predators eager to eat them.
The only mammals on the islands were bats and seals, and they weren’t
interested in moas.
Until this morning, I believed that the gigantism of
flightless island birds was solely due to little or no predator risk. Today I learned that there was another
factor. Isolated islands had no large
herbivores that feasted on the greenery.
So, birds that could digest the greenery lived in a heavenly
all-you-can-eat buffet. They were free
to grow to jumbo proportions, in a normal and healthy way.
Flying is an energy-guzzling way for an animal to explore the
world. If you live in a place where
there is plenty to eat, and little or no risk of getting killed by ground-dwelling
predators, then you might have little or no need for wings. Over time, evolution completely eliminated
the tiny useless wing bones of the moas.
The largest moas stood 12 feet (3.6 m) tall, and weighed 510
pounds (230 kg). Many collections of moa
bones have been found, some containing the remains of up to 90,000 birds. Evidence suggests that a third of the meat
was tossed away to rot. Obviously, the
birds were super-abundant and super-easy to kill. Obviously, the hunters (like modern folks) did
not comprehend the vital importance of mindfully respecting limits.
Moas were the primary food source for the Haast’s eagle, the
largest eagle that ever lived. They weighed
up to 33 pounds (15 kg), and their wingspan was over 8 feet (2.6 m). Not long after the moas were hunted to
extinction, the eagles lost their meal ticket and vanished forever.
Polynesian settlers also brought with them domesticated food
plants, which required cleared land.
Originally, 80 percent of New Zealand was forest. Today, forest covers only 23 percent of the
land. Along with the trees, many forest
dwelling birds also got wiped out.
Europeans stumbled upon the islands in 1642, and substantially
accelerated the eco-destruction.
Folks who colonized islands sometimes brought with them rats,
mice, dogs, ferrets, pigs, and so on. Baz
Edmeades noted that exotic rodents exploded in number, and drove many
island birds to extinction. Their chicks
and eggs were no longer safe. Rodents
wiped out frogs, flightless songbirds, ground-dwelling bats, and large insects. Again, climate pleads innocent.
Madagascar
Alexandra
van der Geer described the ecological history of Madagascar, the world’s
fourth largest island. It’s located in
the Indian Ocean, 250 miles (400 km) east of the African mainland. Isolated from the outer world for maybe 100
million years, it was home to a unique collection of tropical fauna (see the
illustrations in her report).
Several types of exotic mammals mysteriously began arriving
on the island around 60 million years ago, maybe rafting in via ocean currents
— lemurs, tenrecs, fossas, and Malagasy mice.
More recently, just one or two million years ago, hippos arrived, and
eventually shrank to one fourth the size of mainland hippos.
Lemurs evolved into 17 varieties, including giant sloth
lemurs that could grow to the size of male gorillas. The island was also home to the elephant
bird, the heaviest bird in the world. It
was flightless, weighed up to a half ton, and stood 10 feet (3 m) tall. Their eggs could weigh 22 pounds (10 kg). When the European colonizers arrived in the
1600s, elephant bird eggshells still littered the beaches of the island’s southern
coasts. Conclusion: “The combined
evidence suggests that all mammalian species heavier than 10 kg (22 lbs) gradually
disappeared forever from Madagascar’s fauna list.”
Baz Edmeades wrote that Indonesian seafarers first visited Madagascar
sometime between A.D. 670 and 920. By
the end of the fourteenth century, many mammals, birds, and reptiles were
gone. Elizabeth
Kolbert wrote that the lemurs, elephant birds, and pygmy hippos survived
into the Middle Ages. All of them
blinked out. She noted that the
extinction spasms in North America, South America, Madagascar, New Zealand, and
elsewhere occurred in a series of pulses, each of which corresponded to the
arrival of human colonists. None of the
pulses seem to correspond with unusual climate events. Again, climate pleads innocent.
Mauritius
Mauritius is a tropical island, east of Madagascar, in the
Indian Ocean, about 1,200 miles (2,000 km) from the African
coast. It is one of the four
Mascarene Islands. They were created by
volcanic activity about eight million years ago. Because of its long isolation, Mauritius was inhabited
by an amazing assortment of unique species, including many flightless birds and
large reptiles.
It was home to the famous flightless dodos. The dodo lineage was more than 23 million
years old. So, they were originally from
somewhere else, and arrived in Mauritius by flying there, back when they still
had functional wings. Having no natural
enemies, dodos enjoyed a wonderful life.
For this reason, evolution long ago reduced the dodo’s wings to tiny
useless stubs. Dodos were unable to fly
or swim, but they did enjoy being alive.
They could grow up to 39 inches (1 m) tall, and weigh up to 37 pounds
(17 kg).
When the Portuguese visited in 1507, there were zero ground
dwelling mammal species on the island.
The only mammals were fruit bats and marine animals. In 1598, Dutch sailors were the first to
describe the existence of dodos. The
Dutch East India Company used Mauritius as a service station for trade
vessels. The last mention of dodos was
in 1662.
There used to be at least ten species of flightless birds on
the island, all are now extinct. Humans
imported dogs, pigs, macaques, cats, and rats.
Some think the imports may have killed more dodos than humans did, by
raiding their nests. There is also the
matter of habitat destruction. When
humans arrived, the island was entirely forested. Dodos were forest birds. Today, just two percent of the forest
remains. Again, climate pleads innocent.
There is an old saying that rude folks use to insult others,
calling them “dumb as a dodo.” Humans
could simply walk up to a happy dodo and club it to death. Dodos weren’t dumb, they were fearless. They had no concept of predators or
danger. To them, humans were mysterious
funny-looking weird-smelling space aliens.
Eight
Billion Fearless Dodos
Paul Martin focused much attention on the megafauna
extinctions. They were an ongoing process
that began in Africa more than two million years ago, then Australia, then
Eurasia, and then the Americas. Human
pioneers migrated from continent to continent by walking (except for the soggy trip
to Australia). Fifteen thousand years
ago, before the ice age softened, critters could theoretically walk north from
South Africa, through Eurasia, cross the land bridge to America, and go south
to Chile.
In these large interconnected continental landmasses, there
were many species of carnivorous animals, of every size and shape. They regularly enjoyed having lunch dates
with delicious prey. The endless bloody
dance of predator and prey could lead to evolution and/or extinction.
As discussed earlier, genetic evolution was something like a
nonstop escalating arms race, encouraging animals to become smarter, larger,
stronger, faster, and/or harder to find.
In this process, prey gradually got better (but not too good) at escape,
and predators gradually got better (but not too good) at capture. In continental ecosystems, the existence of these
predators would have made it impossible for flightless moas, elephant birds, or
dodos to survive. Islands provided a far
safer refuge, allowing lucky critters to enjoy a wonderful life to the fullest.
Genetic
evolution was an exceedingly slow balancing act. For savannah elephants to evolve into tundra-adapted
woolly mammoths took many thousands of years.
But for furless tropical primates to adapt to a frosty life in snow country
required a different, turbulent, and high speed process called cultural evolution,
which bypassed the limits set by genes. It
was driven by cleverness and technological innovation — campfires, shelters,
sewn clothing, food storage, deadly weaponry, and so on.
Cultural evolution, in countless ways, enabled folks to quickly
pound the crap out of an ecosystem.
Using a short spear, a single Mbuti pygmy could kill a full grown
elephant 20 times larger than the hunter.
With this clever new killing technology, the elephant’s great size and
thick hide suddenly lost all of its defensive benefits, and became a serious handicap. The improvements provided by millions of
years of genetic evolution were tossed out the window. No more safety nets.
A number of isolated islands were remarkably different from
continental mainland ecosystems. Some of
them existed for millions and millions of years without humans, spears, manmade
fire, religion, industry, money, cell phones, plastic garbage, and
eco-catastrophes. Imagine that!
Island critters did not have to live in a state of high
alert, in constant fear of life-threatening surprise visits from lions and
tigers and bears. Island birds could
grow huge, and eventually lose their wings, because flying had no useful
purpose. On islands, there were no two
ton elephants with thick hides and huge tusks, because elephants were perfectly
safe — no sabertooths. They were free to
slim down to pygmy size, so they could dance with ecstatic enthusiasm.
It is very IMPORTANT to understand that the long term journey
of existence for ALL species is guided by genetic
evolution, but just ONE genus (Homo) has seriously fooled around
with cultural
evolution, which has become the curse of our existence.
Humans share 98.8 percent of our DNA with chimps, charming
beings that have not been bedeviled by the juju of cleverness. They have lived in the same place, in the
same way, for maybe a million years or more.
They haven’t trashed it. It has never
occurred to them to cleverly obliterate their home and future. Can you imagine living in a manner that could
glide along for a million years?
Like all wild nonhumans, chimps have a way of life that
remains within the limits defined by genetic evolution. In other words, they continue to live in
their ancient, time-proven traditional manner.
Chimps have not forgotten how to be chimps. The difference between humans and wild
nonhumans is that cultural evolution has enabled us to bypass the limits set by
genetic evolution, and become control freaks and loose cannons. Singh
and Zingg wrote a fascinating book about feral children — kids who had no
language, no tools, no fire, no self-awareness, no directed thinking, no sin,
no guilt, no greed. The only thing they
wanted was freedom.
Cultural evolution was born long ago, maybe ignited by the
fire-making Erectus, or another early ancestor.
If they had never domesticated fire, and discovered many clever ways of
exploiting its power, our ancestors may have remained something like ordinary
animals — brown skinned, wild, free, and happy tropical primates.
Snow country might still be home to mammoths, sabertooths,
dire wolves, short-faced bears, and so on.
Neanderthals were also addicted to cultural evolution. So is humankind. We can start fires, use projectile weapons,
drive species extinct, travel at high speeds, live underwater, fly around the
world, survive in polar bear country, and spend our lives entranced by glowing
screens.
Discovering new tricks can be thrilling — using rocks to
crack nuts. Wow! The discovery of fire making was mind
blowing! It blasted our ancestors
outside the community of ordinary animals, into a dangerously unstable realm of
existence. Cleverness snowballs over
time, at an accelerating pace. It never sleeps. Every day, countless new gizmos and ideas pour
into the world, like a devastating flash flood.
None are clean, green, and renewable.
With the emergence of plant and animal domestication, our
ability to control, exploit, and rubbish ecosystems soared to astonishing new
heights. More and more people got better
and better at living too hard and busting up everything. Forests were cleared to make space for
fields, pastures, cities, civilizations, freeways, landfills, and barren wastelands. This large scale destruction was turbocharged
by explosive surges in cultural evolution.
To varying degrees, every human society is addicted to clever
tricks inspired by cultural evolution. Indigenous cultures
were rooted in a specific region, which set firm limits on them. Smart groups paid close attention to reality. If they did not live mindfully, they were on
a slippery path. Nomadic cultures were
free to pack up and move. While passing
through a region, they might unintentionally damage an ecosystem without
knowing it. Consumer cultures, like the one I live
in, have no foresight. We live like
there’s no tomorrow.
Low impact does not mean no impact. The humans that colonized the mainland
regions of the Caribbean basin 12,000 years ago, were what we would consider to
be extremely low-tech hunter-gatherers.
So, what happened to the giant ground sloths, huge rodents, and jumbo
monkeys? They disappeared. Then, 6,000 years later, humans colonized the
offshore islands, and another extinction spasm commenced.
Sadly, low impact does not always mean safe and secure. Back country wild folks with bows and arrows
are not going to have a pleasant future when the folks with guns and diseases
discover them. In the painful words of
an old proverb, cultures have no right to what they cannot defend. The ancient Story of Ahikar says it more
elegantly, “Oh my son! Withstand not a
man in the days of his power, nor a river in the days of its flood.”
Unfortunately, the serpent in the Garden of Eden encouraged
the first couple to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. By doing so, “your eyes shall be opened, and
ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
The disobedient duo was immediately hurled out of paradise, and
condemned to spend the rest of their days tilling the soil. Bye-bye!
Unfortunately, our blind leap into hardcore cleverness also
inspired the development of mining, smelting, axes, plows, swords, spears, automobiles,
aircraft, toxic pollution, nuclear fission, and on and on. We have become techno-kamikazes, skilled at
using turbocharged cultural evolution to blindly zoom down a dead-end road.
I am an American consumer, and it’s extremely painful to
contemplate the enormous amount of stuff I’ve discarded during my life. I was simply living as Americans are expected
to live (like spoiled two year olds). Other
cultures are far less clever, and far less destructive. No culture is cleverness free. None live with the sustainable simplicity of
chimps and bonobos.
In earlier chapters, I’ve mentioned many low impact
cultures. It would be great if the vast human
herd could sharply downsize and return to far lighter lifestyles — deliberately,
wisely, and this afternoon (or sooner).
That would blindside life as we know it.
The herd is still growing explosively, and we’re zooming toward energy
limits, water limits, and soil limits, while the rapidly warming climate is preparing
to serve us exactly what our blindfolded cleverness has ordered.
Wild humans had no wings, and could not fly. So, most islands remained healthy and
safe. Unfortunately, clever innovation
eventually inspired the development of technology for travelling by water. Dodos were doomed! Fearless flightless birds also vanished on
Tonga, New Caledonia, Fiji, Hawaii, Easter Island, the Marquesas, and on and
on. Island by island, the good old days
disappeared in the rearview mirror.
Like dodos, mainstream humankind is also fearless. Some of us are a bit aware of a few
uncomfortable changes in the world. In
the preceding chapters, I mentioned the existence of swarms of growing
abnormalities. Nobody comprehends them
all, including me. The future is sure to
be full of exciting surprises.
The notion that our ancestors unintentionally encouraged extinction
surges is uncomfortable. But the
planet’s sixth mass extinction catastrophe is not slowing down. I suspect that blaming climate change might
be an effort to defend our reputation, and conceal embarrassing secrets. We can act like children who don’t understand
how the cookie jar mysteriously became empty.
Hey, we didn’t eat the pygmy hippos.
Honest!
Luckily, doubt fairies can be chased away with magical
thinking. We’re OK! Miraculous technology will protect us. We just need to make a bunch of clean green
energy, buy a bunch of electric cars, and continue enjoying unlimited
prosperity. If we just maintain a
positive attitude, and hope really hard, the clouds will pass. Really?
Bon
Voyage!
Congratulations, you’ve finally made it to the rear end of my
long and tedious rant storm! You now know
a bit about what I’ve been contemplating for the last 25+ years. What I’ve learned has little in common with
the worldview I absorbed during 16 years in classrooms, the standard love story
that celebrates our amazing genius, and perpetual progress.
This book’s core question was: “How did things get to be this
way?” Obviously, a mob of eight billion critters
fearlessly rubbishing a delightful planet is not exactly a heartwarming portrait
of sparkling intelligence. Limited
knowledge, clever technology, and self-centered thinking helped to conjure the
monster into existence.
In this book, my goal was to explore the human saga from a
perspective that presents humans as simply one of the gang in the family of
life, rather than the glorious crown of creation. From this viewpoint, we are the family’s crazy
uncle. The dodo family enjoyed this
planet for 23 million years, but the human family just stepped off the bus
recently. Humankind’s initial colonization
of the planet’s ecosystems established a pattern that has never stopped. Empire builders continue ruthlessly
bulldozing their way over all obstacles in their never-ending quest for maximum
domination — the Romans, Mongols, Spaniards, English, Americans, Nazis, Russians,
and thousands more.
On the day you squirted out of the womb, you were a wild
animal, ready to enjoy a wild life in a healthy paradise. You were not a fatally flawed animal
genetically, but the culture that taught you everything you know is a train
wreck. The good news, in theory, is that
dodgy cultures can be revised and improved, or hurled off a cliff. They are nothing but vivid ideas, fantasies,
and nightmares that live between your ears, and can be highly contagious.
As promised, I have presented no sure-fire snake oil cures
for all that ails us. I’ll let you know
if I ever find any. In this book, my objective
was exploring history, not foretelling the future. All of us accept the notion that we’ll die
someday. So will our way of life. The sun rises every morning, the stars come
out at night, and all civilizations have expiration dates. They grow like crazy, deplete their resource
base, and become ancient ruins.
Several weeks ago, it occurred to me that Wild, Free, and
Happy was a ridiculously inappropriate title for this book. It had little to do with the flow of ideas
between the covers, but it sounded nifty a few years back. I’m going to keep it. Discovering the islands of flightless birds
radically altered my perception of reality.
These ecosystems evolved in isolation for millions of years. They were 100% cleverness free, virgins
unmolested by cultural evolution, and they actually existed on this
planet. Imagine that!
We’ve learned that it’s possible for bird species to live for
millions of years without wings. Can humans
live without cleverness? Can we forget
everything we know, return to Mother Africa, throw out our clothes, and humbly
start over? Can humans survive the
powerful pandemonium we have conjured into existence? Time will tell. Whatever happens, genetic evolution will
continue, and guide the survivors down the long and winding path to healing.
Bon voyage!
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