The Passenger Pigeon

 

Once upon a time, North America was home to an estimated five to eight billion passenger pigeons.  They may have been the most numerous bird species in the world.  My father was in diapers when the last one died in 1914.  I was born in Michigan, where immense flocks had once thrived, prior to the invasion of farmers and loggers in the early 1800s.  Today, our culture has largely forgotten the saga of the passenger pigeons.  We still remember the war on bison, which is somehow seen as more heroic and dignified.

Lately, some genetic engineers have been talking about resurrecting the extinct birds.  Huh?  Would that make any sense?  Their natural habitat is long gone, and their return would not be appreciated by farmers, airline pilots, and many others.  Curiosity forced me to read two pigeon books.  It was an illuminating and disturbing experience. 

A. W. Schorger (1884-1972) wrote The Passenger Pigeon, which especially impressed me, because he was totally obsessed with this subject.  He devoted 15 years to research, exploring over ten thousand sources — books, journal articles, newspaper clippings.  He actively sought informants, and corresponded with many old-timers who had been near the front lines in the war on birds.  Passenger pigeons inhabited the eastern U.S., and southeastern Canada.  Wikipedia provides a good overview, and a map of their habitat [HERE]. 

Their primary source of food was mast — nuts, seeds, berries, and fruit produced by trees and woody brush.  The two most important foods were acorns and beechnuts.  Acorns were swallowed whole, and up to 17 could be stored in the bird’s crop.  By morning, they would be digested.  When winter grew old and tired, flocks migrated northward, as the retreating snow exposed a buried treasure of yummy nuts.

Pigeons also raided farms.  In the early days, at planting time, seeds were broadcast by hand (tossed on the ground surface).  Then, hungry flocks would zoom in and eagerly devour them all.  They loved corn and wheat, but buckwheat was their favorite.  Farmers sometimes burned thousands of acres of trees to discourage flocks from roosting close to their fields.  Later, they switched to sowing devices that covered the seeds with soil.

Flocks did not visit the same areas annually, because oak and beech forests did not reliably produce nuts year after year.  Birds might not return to the same place for 11 years.  Nut trees were smart.  By being unpredictable, hungry flocks could not become permanent parasites.  This enabled enough nuts to germinate, sprout, and maintain the survival of the species.  For pigeon flocks, life was a never ending search for free lunches.  They followed their stomachs to delicious locations. 

Observers calculated that enormous flocks zoomed across the sky at about 60 miles per hour (96 km/h).  They constantly scanned the land they flew over, in search of nourishing treasures.  Flocks were most vulnerable when on the ground, where they were prey for predators like wolves, foxes, lynxes, cougars, raccoons, and humans. 

They were far safer when perched in trees, or flying.  Airborne predators included eagles, hawks, and vultures.  A solitary pigeon would have been an easy lunch.  It was much safer to fly within a fast moving mob of a million friends.  Large flocks were not one solid mass, they separated into multiple tiers of birds, layers maybe spaced a foot apart (30 cm).  At high speed, these densely packed clusters moved fluidly in unison — swerving, diving, soaring, and bending.  This made predation difficult.

Large flocks of birds required large amounts of food, so they had to keep moving.  Nights were spent safely roosting in trees.  In the morning, smaller groups scattered across the land to forage.  They might travel 100 miles (160 km) before returning to roost for the night.  If one group discovered a location that contained abundant food, the larger flock would somehow learn this, and join the feast.  When a banquet concluded, the flock took wing and searched for a new place to roost for a while.  Passenger pigeons were nomads, no permanent address.

In Kentucky, observers described a huge roosting site 40 miles (64 km) long, and 3 miles wide.  When large flocks roosted, birds covered every limb, sometimes several layers deep, standing on the backs of others.  Their weight snapped off large limbs.  Sometimes entire trees fell over.  Some forests looked like a tornado had passed through — thousands of acres of dead trees.

Descriptions of migrating flocks, in unbelievable numbers, strain the imagination.  But millions of people saw them.  Flocks often stretched as far as the eye could see, from horizon to horizon.  They might block out the sun for several days.  People could hear the approach of flock that was still 4 miles (6.4 km) away.  The sound of a million wings was deafening, “like the roar of distant thunder.”  John James Audubon, naturalist and artist, calculated that one flock had more than a billion birds.  Someone else watched a flock in Kentucky that sped across the sky for 14 hours.  It was a mile wide and more than 300 miles (483 km) long.  The flock continued on the following day. 

Roosting sites were inhabited until food in an area became scarce, then the flock moved on.  Nesting sites required a longer stay, so they were located where food resources were especially abundant.  They were close to water, sheltered from the wind, and often on islands.  A vital process was performed at nesting sites, reproduction.  Nests were built in trees, eggs laid, and squabs (chicks) hatched.  Flocks nested at least once a year, and most observers reported that just one egg was laid per nest. 

Nesting sites varied in size, but large colonies were typical.  There was safety in numbers.  Pigeon cities could have a hundred million birds or more.  They might inhabit an area ten miles long and three miles wide (16 by 4.8 km).  Tree limbs were crowded with nests.  If a winter storm blew in, or if hunters began shooting, the entire colony might suddenly abandon their nests and squabs.

Nesting was synchronized.  Colonies gathered and nests were built.  Almost all of the eggs were laid on about the same day.  Parents took turns keeping the squabs warm under wing, while the other parent brought back food.  Squabs grew rapidly, remaining in the nest for 13 to 15 days.  At this point, parents brought squabs their last meal, and then departed from the nesting area in a great mass.  It was up to the squabs to learn how to fly.  They were fairly helpless, and predators were happy to eat them.  Their bodies were loaded with fat. 

Native Americans were grateful for the pigeons.  They caught birds with nets.  Nesting sites were primary locations for getting birds.  They used poles to knock squabs from their nests.  Nesting trees were sometimes cut down to access the numerous squabs.  Tribes collected the fat from squabs, stored it, and used it like butter.  Pigeons played starring roles in tribal myths and legends.  There were taboos against prematurely disturbing nesting sites, and scaring away the adults before the young had hatched. 

Early explorers (1534) reported large passenger pigeon populations.  They were the most common birds on Manhattan Island in the 1620s.  In the 1800s, the tide changed.  Settlers were encouraged to conquer and demolish the wild frontier.  In 1849, free land was given to folks who drained wetlands (prime nesting habitat).  New telegraph systems enabled social networking, announcing the location of nesting sites.  New railroads enabled industrial scale pigeon hunting.  Millions of birds could be quickly shipped from rural areas to big cities.  Sometimes tons of squabs were dumped in the river due to spoilage.  Unsold birds were fed to pigs.

Hunters used ducking guns with six foot barrels, double barrel shotguns, and large blunderbusses.  A single shot might kill 132.  A Wisconsin hunter shot 1,458 birds in one day.  Lads skilled with nets could capture up to 6,000 birds per day.  Many birds were killed for their feathers alone, which were used for bedding.

By the 1870s, bird numbers were obviously declining.  Some folks suggested conservation efforts, but few really gave a <bleep>.  Money makes civilized people crazy, and an ambitious lad could make big money selling squabs for 30¢ a dozen.  The last wild flocks were gone by 1889.  They had been massacred far faster than they could reproduce.  Schorger sighed, “Persecution was unremitting until the last wild bird disappeared.” 

Over and over again, natural history teaches us that genetic evolution works slowly and beautifully.  When the species in an ecosystem coevolve over the course of thousands of years, the journey is far more likely to develop a sense of balance and harmony.  Over and over again, reality teaches us that a society obsessed with wealth and status is a fast path to a dead end.  Why don’t schools teach this?  How can we see where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been?

Schorger, Arlie William, The Passenger Pigeon, 1955, Reprint, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1973.

Greenberg, Joel, A Feathered River Across the Sky, Bloomsbury, New York, 2014.  

Wild Free and Happy Sample 19

[Note: This is the nineteenth sample from my rough draft of a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy.  I don’t plan on reviewing more books for a while.  My blog is home to reviews of 201 books, and you are very welcome to explore them.  The Search field on the right side will find words in the full contents of all rants and reviews, if you are interested in specific authors, titles, or subjects.] 

Climate Shifts?

So, what caused megafauna extinctions?  The two primary suspects in this mystery are hominin hunters and climate change.  After numerous rowdy fistfights at scholarly conferences, the overhunting theory has become the most widely accepted.  Quite a few still believe climate change was a secondary factor, because the swings between hot eras and frosty ones could cause substantial shifts in a habitat’s vegetation.  When tundra became forest, mammoths no longer lived in paradise.  Their numbers likely declined, and their groups could have become more isolated.

When the climate warmed, hippos and monkeys migrated into Europe, joining the woodland rhinos, elephants, boars, and deer.  Tundra became boreal forest, and the cold adapted critters no longer enjoyed optimal conditions.  This could have weakened them, and made them more vulnerable to hungry hominin hunters. 

Then, when temperatures dropped, ice sheets advanced again, and the good old days ended for the warmth loving critters.  Woodlands were displaced by tundra and taiga — good habitat for lemmings, arctic foxes, reindeer, woolly mammoths, and woolly rhinos. 

Peter Ungar discussed research in Greenland, where scientists bored deep into the thick 150,000 year old ice sheet.  In the ice core samples, the annual layers of ice buildup contained details about climate trends.  Patterns could remain stable for thousands of years, and then suddenly change.  The emergence of agriculture and civilization only became possible with the arrival of the current, unusually long warming trend, which began about 11,600 years ago.  It followed a 1,200 year stretch of intense cold.  The transition from intense cold to the modern warm trend occurred during one lifetime.  A lass who was born in an arid tundra would see the land transform into a young forest by the time her hair was gray.

Now, gaze at the globe on your desk.  As Earth makes its annual joyride around the sun, its axis tips.  When the northern hemisphere tips closer to the sun, it’s summer time.  Six months later, summer begins in the southern hemisphere, and winter arrives up north.  The regions close to the equator consistently receive the most solar energy throughout the year, so they are Earth’s warmest — the tropics.  Both the North Pole and the South Pole get the least solar energy, so they are icy year-round. 

On your globe, note that most dry land regions on the planet are north of the equator.  Also, at the top of the world, the northern edges of North America, Europe, and Asia extend into the Arctic Circle.  Consequently, the northern hemisphere has experienced a number of intense glaciation cycles.

The southern hemisphere has far less dry land, and far more ocean area.  The surrounding oceans retain heat, and encourage a more moderate climate.  In the southern hemisphere, the bottom edges of South America, Africa, and Australasia do not come close to the Antarctic Circle.  For these reasons, glaciation events have been less extensive.

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was the frigid peak of the most recent glacial cycle.  Ice sheets began growing about 33,000 years ago.  Glaciation peaked between 26,500 and 19,000 years ago.  Large regions of northern Europe, Asia, and North America were buried under ice sheets up to one mile (1.6 km) thick.  During the LGM, climate conditions were similar across these northern regions.  Glaciers retained so much frozen water that sea levels were 410 feet (125 m) lower than today.  A lass could walk from Ireland to Scandinavia or France without getting her feet wet. 

Bernardo Araujo’s team studied up-to-date climate models for the last 122,500 years.  For 19 regions, they compared the dates when humans arrived, with the dates when megafauna species went extinct.  They found that humans were entering Europe and Central Russia about 45,000 years ago.  In the colonized regions of Eurasia, extinction dates began about 40,000 years ago, and continued until about 10,000 years ago — the longest of the megafauna extinction cycles outside of Africa.

Araujo emphasized that our colonization of Eurasia was a significant turning point in the human colonization of the planet.  It was the first time that our fully tropical species was moving into regions that were colder than the conditions for which evolution had fine-tuned us.  It was far more challenging for humans to survive in snow country.

Fernando Fernandez also found no connection between climate patterns and extinctions.  He wrote that there were essentially two pulses of extinctions in Eurasia.  The first pulse was from 45,000 to 20,000 years ago, across the southern latitudes.  The second pulse was from 14,000 to 9,000 years ago, in the northern latitudes.

In North America, Fernandez reported a much quicker extinction spasm.  It mostly occurred between 13,500 and 11,000 years ago.  Experts still disagree when humans arrived on the continent, suggesting dates ranging from 20,000 to 13,000 years ago.  By the time humans entered North America, they had developed effective tools and strategies for succeeding in snow country, making a faster dispersal possible.  South American extinctions were mostly between 13,000 and 7,800 years ago.

Fernandez presented a list of arguments why climate change was not the primary cause of megafauna extinctions.  Climate swings affected the whole planet, but the extinction spasms occurred at widely different times, in different places — not everywhere at the same time.  The timing of extinctions does not closely correspond to the timing of glacial cycles.  Preceding the megafauna extinction spasms were 31 earlier glacial cycles which wiped out few if any species. 

Extinctions occurred first on continental mainlands, while species on isolated islands in the same region, with the same climate, survived much longer.  When extinctions took place in a region, there is no evidence that plant species were zapped by temperature swings at the same time.  It was the large animals that blinked out (the preferred game of hunters).  Small animals did not vanish in the same era (like they might have during a climate shift).  He did say that glacial cycles could have stressed ecosystems, making some species less resilient.

Baz Edmeades noted that most of Africa lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, the equatorial belt.  When there were extinction spasms in the equatorial belt, there was no rise of extinctions in regions where hominins had not yet arrived.  The extinctions were limited to Africa and southern Asia — tropical regions where hominins resided.

OK!  So, based on what I know today, I am convinced that climate change was not the primary cause of megafauna extinctions.  I am also thoroughly convinced that the pattern of extinction spasms was closely related to the early emergence of advanced hominins in Africa, and to the later pattern of world colonization by humans.

I remain befuddled by one mystery.  During the North America extinction spasm, most of the megafauna species that survived were not indigenous. They were immigrants from the Old World, like moose, bison, caribou, elk, deer, grizzly bears, black bears.  Indigenous megafauna got hammered.  Super-speedy pronghorn antelope were among the few to escape extinction.  The implication here is that the Old World megafauna immigrants had arrived at about the same time as the Siberian hunters, and these foreigners were fully aware that humans were dangerous murderers — run!  I was not able to find information confirming that “about the same time” is true.

William Stolzenberg presented a different twist.  He shared a fascinating story about Joel Berger.  Early in the twenty-first century, when Berger was working near the Teton Range of Wyoming, wolves from Yellowstone began wandering back into the region.  They had been absent for 50 years, victims of a predator eradication project.  For 50 years, moose and elk had not been bothered by serious predators.  Berger freaked out.  He tried scaring the moose with wolf calls and scents.  No response.  They had completely forgotten their natural fear of wolves.  So, the wolves casually walked past the clueless moose mothers, and hauled away their calves.  Eventually moose learned that wolves were dangerous.

Global Serengeti

Baz Edmeades grew up in South Africa, where he enjoyed observing the remnants of African megafauna at Kruger National Park.  His deep interest in archaeology and evolution led him to read Björn Kurtén’s book on Pleistocene Europe.  He was shocked to discover that 15,000 years ago, hyenas, leopards, and lions roamed Europe, and they closely resembled the animals he watched in Africa.  Woolly rhinos and mammoths had cousins at Kruger.  Not that long ago, large animals were incredibly abundant.  Grassland regions of Europe were once a wildlife wonderland, like Africa’s Serengeti.

North and South America also had Serengeti-like grassland regions.  Dan Flores wrote that the Great Plains used to be home to many species of large mammals, none of which had evolved adaptations for living near packs of aggressive bloodthirsty tropical primates with spears, dogs, and fire.  Many blinked out.  Five hundred years ago, when European colonists began arriving in great numbers, with highly advanced technology, life on the American Serengeti got blindsided with astonishing speed and efficiency.

Today, many documentaries and nature programs present images of the African megafauna that still survive in protected areas, like the Serengeti.  These images of lions, zebras, giraffes, and baboons inspire astonishment among the wretched mobs trapped in sprawling, grungy, concrete landfills like New York City or London.  But, compared to the Serengeti of 2 million years ago, the twenty-first century Serengeti is much diminished.

Two million years ago, all the other continents were also astonishing Serengetis.  Earth was one big wonderful celebration of abundant life.  The critters of every ecosystem had coevolved with each other, resulting in functional relationships between the eaters and the eaten.  Loose cannon critters were not yet molesting the sacred dance.  Today, of course, a hurricane of swarming tropical primates has reduced Planet Serengeti to Planet Train Wreck.

It’s heartbreaking to comprehend that this staggering tragedy was driven by the innocent unintended consequences of thousands of years of gradually accumulating more and more clever innovations.  Today, the rate of extinctions is in the stratosphere.  Innovation and technology have given us the ability to thoroughly obliterate healthy ecosystems faster than ever before.  We call this “progress,” one of our god words.  Another one is “growth.”

In North America, when humans arrived, there were at least nine species of big cats, and seven species of elephants.  The biodiversity was incredible — beavers as big as bears, two-ton buffaloes, armadillos the size of VW Beetles

Mammoths emerged in South Africa about five million years ago.  By 2.6 million years ago, they had spread across Eurasia and North America.  Around 190,000 years ago, all mammoths in Europe had evolved the woolly look.  Until 14,000 years ago, mammoth country ranged from Western Europe to Siberia to New England to Mexico.  The last mammoths survived until about 3,700 years ago, on Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia.

Aurochs once ranged from England to Korea, and south to India and North Africa.  Rhinos once ranged from Africa to Europe to Sumatra.  Leopard country spanned from southern Africa to England, to Java.  Short-faced hyenas were as big as lions, and their addresses included India, China, Transvaal, and Europe.  And on and on….

Tim Flannery mentioned Neanderthals, who had significantly larger brains than humans.  They were long-time residents of Eurasia that had coevolved with the other large animals.  For hundreds of thousands of years, they coexisted with mammoths, straight-tusked woodland elephants, and two species of woodland rhinoceros.  Scholars tend to regard Neanderthals as dullards.  Ecological stability is not a sign of pathological intelligence.

Mother Africa

Around 5 million years ago, the climate in Africa was getting cooler and dryer, forest area was being displaced by expanding savannah.  The ancestors of hominins learned ways to survive in the changing conditions.  Our hominin ancestors were bipedal at least 3.6 million years ago.  Somewhere around 2.5 million years ago, the climate in Africa once again entered a cooler and dryer pattern. 

By this time, our hominin ancestors were getting better adapted to savannah living.  They were bigger and smarter, using stone tools.  They may have been cooking with domesticated fire, but we’ll never know when the first fire was kindled.  As previously mentioned, hominin evolution was influenced by having the ability to regularly dine on cooked food, which significantly tweaked the design of our teeth and digestive tracts.  This implies that domesticated fire appeared early in the game.

The series of megafauna extinctions that occurred during the hominin era began in Mother Africa.  Lars Werdelin, an expert on ancient carnivores, wrote that beginning around 2 million years ago, large carnivore species began to gradually decline.  Hominins were becoming regular hunters, and they were eating more meat.  Carnivore extinctions accelerated around 1.5 million years ago.  Coincidentally, Homo erectus emerged around 1.5 million years ago.   Erectus was the first advanced hominin, having a brain larger than average for its body size.  This era corresponds to the oldest known evidence of domesticated fire.  Today, only two percent of the original African large carnivore species still survive.

Werdelin assumed that hominins were not deliberately hunting large carnivores, which would have been insanely dangerous.  The extinctions were likely due to a decline in herbivores — the prey that carnivores depended on.  Was climate change reducing the forage that herbivores required for survival?  Small carnivores were not in decline, which would have been the case if ecosystems were being walloped by a climate shift.  Werdelin believes that hominins had become successful competitors for the traditional carnivores, both of whom were eager to dine on the same prey. 

Baz Edmeades noted that the African continent was loaded with megafauna 1.8 million years ago, but many were gone by 1.4 million years ago.  In the good old days, Africa had nine species of big cats (three today), up to nine species of elephants (one today), and at least four types of hippos (one today).  There were giant antelopes, giant hyenas, giant pigs, giant monkeys, giant baboons, and many others — all gone.  Over the course of many thousands of years, the consequences of hunting just a bit too hard accumulated. 

Some species that disappeared in Africa continued to survive on other continents.  Edmeades emphasized that during the African wave of extinctions, there were no corresponding extinction blips in Siberia, Europe, Australia, or the Americas.  In these other regions, most megafauna species thrived for another million years.  A jury would not convict climate change for the extinctions in Africa.

Wild Free and Happy Sample 15

[Note: This is the fifteenth sample from my rough draft of a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy.  I don’t plan on reviewing more books for a while.  My blog is home to reviews of 201 books, and you are very welcome to explore them.  The Search field on the right side will find words in the full contents of all rants and reviews, if you are interested in specific authors, titles, or subjects.]

Smashing Limits

Fearless prey was a lucky but temporary windfall jackpot for migrating hominins.  Another major asset was our ability to digest a highly diverse diet of plant and animal substances.  Because we aren’t fussy eaters, we can survive changing conditions better than many other species.  This advantage was greatly expanded by our unique ability to cook foods.  We can nourish ourselves in chilly Greenland, steamy Amazon rainforests, and the scorching Sahara.  In recent times, humans have also become the top carnivore in marine ecosystems, despite the fact that we don’t even live in the water. 

Over the span of millions of years, animal species of all types and sizes evolved time-proven anti-predator strategies for self-defense — flying, fleeing, swimming, climbing trees, diving into burrows, injecting venom, counterattack, camouflage, and so on.  These ancient strategies worked fairly well, but not every time.  Predators needed sustenance too.  Ideally, predators and prey lived in relative balance.  This encouraged wild ecosystems to maintain a state of long term sustainability.  Perfect!  It discouraged population explosions that can become ecological hurricanes.  Hooray!

When musk oxen were attacked by wolves, the group backed up together into a circle, butt to butt, with their horns facing outward, and patiently waited for the hungry predators to give up and have a good cry.  When raccoons, squirrels, or bear cubs were attacked by predators, they zipped up the nearest tree and giggled at the frustrated killers.  These excellent time-proven strategies failed when heavily armed hominins arrived with their deadly projectiles.

For many grassland herbivores, speed was an essential predator defense strategy.  Pronghorn antelopes can run for more than 20 miles (32 km).  They can flee at speeds up to 70 miles per hour (112 km/h), for up to two miles (3.2 km).  Pronghorns originally evolved high speed flight to outrun hungry cats — species that went extinct maybe 12,000 years ago.  Today, wolves and coyotes are way too slow.  Sadly, ranchers have installed some fencing on the prairie, and pronghorns can’t leap fences.  The fence prevents escape, the animals pile up, and enable mass kills.

When bison are attacked by natural predators, grazing stops, and running begins — the whole herd following the leader.  Slower animals, like calves, the elderly, and the sick or injured become the main course at lunch time.  This strategy worked well for millions of years until Neanderthals and humans organized communal hunts, and chose locations where fleeing herds could be guided into traps or off cliffs.  In this situation, follow the leader escapes could be disastrous.

For eons, sea birds, sea turtles, and marine mammals found security by living on islands.  This advantage was diminished by the invention of canoes, kayaks, harpoons, and so on.  Many of these island animals lived in a way that made them highly vulnerable when hungry aliens washed up on shore.  Many had a hard time fleeing or hiding.

Critters that found security in camouflage or concealment became far more vulnerable when hominin hunters set fire to the grass.  Excellent camouflage lost its advantage when enslaved dogs joined the hunt.  Their powerful sense of smell enabled them to quickly find prey that were difficult to see.  Critters that evolved the ability to make high speed escapes became more vulnerable when hunters began riding enslaved horses.  When hunters used both horses and dogs, game was far less likely to survive.

Evolving to jumbo size was another very effective anti-predator strategy.  Big, strong, healthy, mature elephants, rhinos, and hippos had little reason to fear wild carnivores.  Size mattered.  Predators preferred to kill their youngsters, because they were less dangerous, and easier to kill.  Jumbo size species have far lower rates of reproduction.  Wee critters, like mice, bunnies, and insects, are popular items on the menus of many animals.  Consequently, they reproduce like champions. 

Unfortunately, when hominins adapted spear technology, jumbo size became a serious handicap.  Elephants were big, slow, easy to find, and had lots of meat.  Hunting large game was energy efficient.  Killing a mammoth required far fewer hours and calories than killing a thousand bunnies.  Around the world, 50,000 years ago, the land rumbled under the feet of countless megafauna, every continent a Serengeti.

Stephen Wroe summed it all up.  Over millions of years, many animals developed anti-predator strategies that were good enough to keep their species in existence.  Tragically, the arrival of tropical primates armed with specialized high-tech hunting technology radically altered the rules of predation.  Advanced kill power, combined with fearless prey, sparked a revolutionary shift.  In the new paradigm, animals had to move beyond traditional anti-predator strategies, and strive to develop new and different anti-predator strategies that were hominin-specific.  Species unable to make this transition were more likely to blink out.

Technological crutches enabled our ancestors to become direct competitors with wolves, big cats, and other carnivores.  Wherever hominins expanded, they had the ability to destabilize long running ecosystem relationships.  Crutches also made us less vulnerable to man-eating predators.  Spears enabled our ancestors to better repel the predators that could help keep hominin populations stable and healthy.  This rubbished the laws of nature.  Imagine rabbits inventing tools that allowed them to kill foxes — soon there might be seven billion bunnies staring at cell phones (gasp!).

Colonizing Snow Country

Obviously, tropical primates evolved to survive in tropical ecosystems, which were warm all year round.  By and by, some hominins migrated out of tropical regions, and into temperate ecosystems, which had four seasons, including snow.

When tropical primates began wandering into regions with frigid winters they were confronted with new and serious challenges to survival.  They were presented with a painful warning similar to modern highway signs: Wrong Way!  Do Not Enter!  But, instead of cautiously turning around, and going back to more comfortable lands, some proceeded deeper into the domain of the frost giants, and discovered many super-cool new ways to die prematurely.  The game rules radically changed.  Warm clothing, protective shelter, new tools, and food storage boosted the odds for survival.

Outsmarting Evolution

A bedrock theme in this book is that the ecosystems which move through the millennia guided by genetic evolution tend to make transitions in a fairly graceful manner.  Ungraceful ecosystem transitions are far more common when the hominin residents naively develop a never-ending abusive relationship with the super-sticky tar baby of cultural evolution and technological innovation.

Japanese snow monkeys slowly and smoothly adapted to a temperate climate via genetic evolution.  Humans emerged maybe 300,000 years ago, when the hominin drama was already heavily dependent on cultural evolution (fire, weapons, stone tools, etc.).  Our homeland in Mother Africa had a tropical climate, and genetic evolution had provided our species with better heat tolerance.  Human genes have not made extensive changes in 300,000 years.  We remain able to live happily in tropical lands, but still can’t survive in snow country without a load of prosthetic technology. 

Between the Arctic, and the Mediterranean, there were several climate zones — ice, tundra, steppe, and woodland.  When the climate plunged into frigid periods, glaciers and ice sheets expanded downward from the north, which compressed the zones to the south.  There were times when the ice sheet extended from Scandinavia to northern Germany, and covered most of the British Isles.  At times, large areas of France were tundra.  The Mediterranean Sea, a large body of warm water, moderated the climate of southern Europe, so the temperature swings were less intense in Gibraltar, and wild foods remained abundant for the remaining Neanderthals.

One indicator of climate shifts is the types of bones found at various time periods in the layers of cave crud.  The layers associated with Neanderthals usually indicated warm, moist, woodland or forest.  Woodland conditions were identified by the bones of aurochs, red deer, boar, cave bear, leopard, giant deer, and temperate rhinoceros.  The ideal weapon for woodland ambush hunting was the thrusting spear, and it remained the perfect tool for 400,000+ years.

It’s important to understand that the more recent sites, which are associated with humans, often indicate steppe-tundra conditions, when the land was cold, dry, open, and treeless.  Steppe-tundra conditions were identified by the bones of woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse, musk ox, ibex, moose, Artic fox, and reindeer.  In steppe-tundra habitat, the wide open landscape had no trees or brush for hunters to hide in.  So, their preferred weapon was the javelin, which could kill from a distance.

When humans wandered into the steppe grasslands of Eastern Europe 36,000 years ago (the “European Serengeti”), their tropical bodies were not fine-tuned for freezing weather, nor had they evolved the clever trick of hibernation.  Moving into a winter wonderland was something like colonizing Mars.  At this point, their choices were: (1) give up and freeze to death, (2) turn around and return to home sweet home, or (3) innovate like crazy and struggle to survive in a hostile climate where large game was abundant.

Health Advantages

Aside from stuff like frostbite, winter hunger, and respiratory issues from smoke filled shelters, there may have been significant health benefits to colonizing temperate ecosystems.  Our African homeland was tropical, with a climate that ranged from warm to hot year round.  Tropical ecosystems have the highest biodiversity of plant and animal species, including the entire spectrum from elephants to microbes.  The colder the ecosystem, the lower the biodiversity, because many species have not evolved the ability to survive months of intense cold.

Pathogenic tropical parasites include malaria, schistosomiasis, and sleeping sickness.  Some regions in Africa are uninhabitable due to the high risk of sleeping sickness.  Tropical viral diseases include yellow fever, and three hemorrhagic fevers: Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa.  A warm climate is also home to more species of disease transmitting insects, many of which have poor cold tolerance.

The tropics are home to numerous other species of monkeys and apes, with whom humans are more likely to swap diseases.  For example, AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, which is probably a mutation of the SIV virus that is carried harmlessly by chimps.  Today, chimps, gorillas, and humans are dying from Ebola.  It is likely that tropical diseases had far less impact 50,000 years ago, long before deforestation, bushmeat hunting, agriculture, herding, irrigation, high mobility, and explosive population growth.  A later chapter will devote more attention to disease.

Wild Free and Happy Sample 14

[Note: This is the fourteenth sample from my rough draft of a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy.  I don’t plan on reviewing more books for a while.  My blog is home to reviews of 200 books, and you are very welcome to explore them.  The Search field on the right side will find words in the full contents of all rants and reviews, if you are interested in specific authors, titles, or subjects.] 

Expansion and Limits

William Rees noted that every species has two traits.  (1) They will expand to all locations that are accessible to them, if conditions allow their survival.  On the other hand, negative feedback can discourage new expansion, or encourage retreats.  The climate might be hostile.  Food or water resources might be scarce.  Powerful predators or hostile people might live there.  So might disease agents, like tsetse flies, malarial mosquitoes, or parasitic worms.

For walking critters, the area accessible for expansion has limits.  People with domesticated horses or camels have greater potential for long distance expansion.  The same is true for folks having watercraft that can travel on rivers, or move across seas and oceans.  Also, folks with flying machines, or driving machines.  Critters that know how to make fire and sew warm clothing can expand into snow country, far beyond the normal and appropriate habitats for tropical primates.

(2) When critters expand into new habitat, they will utilize all available resources — until they smack into limits, and have to back off.  This is no big deal for animals that live as they naturally evolved to live — without complex tools.  When a resource becomes scarce, they can switch to a substitute, if any, or they can move elsewhere, or they can turn into cat food.

Technology can expand what resources are available.  A mammoth is not a resource that an empty handed hominin can utilize, but a hominin with a thrusting spear, stone blade, and fire drill can.  Fishing with a hand net is one thing, a motorized trawler is another.  Hunter-gatherers did not mine and smelt ores, fabricate machines, drill oil wells, or replace wilderness with mega farms growing millions of tons of corn — but industrial civilizations do.

As you can see here, there are limits to expansion.  Innovation and technology can push back narrow limits, sometimes to a huge degree.  For example, 10,000 years ago, the human population was maybe 10 million.  Today, it’s seven-point-something billion, thanks our ability to cleverly bypass countless limits, our feeble ability to foresee the unintended consequences, and our reluctance to question reality when we’re enjoying regular meals. 

This artificially swollen carrying capacity can only be temporary, because it is fantastically unsustainable.  Modern folks, the most educated generation ever, have a fervent blind faith in the ridiculous idea that we have no limits.  They’ve been angrily pissing on Thomas Malthus for almost 200 years for suggesting the logical and rational ‘heresy’ that unlimited growth is impossible.

Technological innovation is the fruit of diabolically clever genius.  But… it seems that genius and wisdom rarely, if ever, meet.  Wisdom is almost invisible in our culture, a ghost, a will-o-wisp.  All the spotlights are on geeky genius, as it enthusiastically tap-dances across the stage, like a whirlwind of nerve gas.

Genius designs and builds 440 nuclear power plants — before giving any serious consideration to the enormous challenge of how to permanently store countless tons of radioactive wastes that can remain highly toxic for a million years.  Wisdom cries.  Wisdom recommends turning off the lights, turning on your thinker, converting your Mercedes into a chicken coop, and discovering the evolutionary purpose of those mysterious five-toed thingees at the ends of your legs. 

Genius, the hyper-ambitious idiot savant, gives us automobiles, cell phones, hydrogen bombs, plastic diapers, landfills, and a severely rubbished ecosystem.  The bottom line is that healthy, sustainable, ordinary animals like chimps have zero need for wisdom, or genius, or foresight, or technological innovation.  They live in the manner for which they evolved, period.  Imagine that.

Unlike wild chimps, we are not free.  Industrial civilization keeps us in cages.  Miles Olson pointed out that we are essentially enslaved by the powers that control the technology we are addicted to for survival — corporations that provide energy, transportation, food production, and so on.  Chimps would not notice if all of these corporations went bankrupt next week.

Hominin Wanderers

Anyway, hominins emerged in Mother Africa, and eventually expanded around the world.  This was not unique.  Long before hominins appeared, many “ordinary” animals travelled widely — mammoths, horses, wolves, salmon, bears, bison, migratory birds, and so on.  These species did so gradually, allowing evolution to fine tune them for new conditions — with zero dependence on technological crutches.

Much later in the hominin saga, Homo sapiens emerged, maybe 300,000 years ago.  In Africa, this era is sort of a black hole in the archaeological record.  Minimal evidence has been found.  Paul Jordan wrote that the geologic chemistry of African caves was lousy for preserving bones, while the limestone caves of Europe were excellent.

By and by, our human ancestors wandered out of Africa, and entered the Middle East somewhere around 130,000 and 100,000 years ago.  Clive Finlayson suggested that this was not an exodus to escape problems, and it was not purposeful — brave pioneers eager to explore the unknown.  Folks just gradually moved into new regions over the span of many generations, like roaming herds of bison, going where their stomachs led them.

The early pilgrims were probably small groups, and there were likely multiple expeditions over the centuries.  They wandered eastward, across tropical regions of Asia, and arrived in Australia maybe 50,000 years ago.  Humans began migrating into Eastern Europe about 36,000 years ago, and arrived in Portugal 2,000 years later.  Finally, we wandered into the Americas maybe 13,000 years ago.

Moving through the tropical regions of Asia was not a daunting challenge for critters that evolved in tropical Africa.  They didn’t need clothing or warm shelters.  Meat and plant-based foods were available year round.  They may have left some African pathogens behind, and they may have discovered some new pathogens in Asia.  Tropical ecosystems are home to high biodiversity, including pathogens.

In Asia, as well as Africa, they remained vulnerable to man-eating predators that were big, strong, fast, smart, and armed with sharp teeth and claws.  In both continents, our ancestors were at a distinct disadvantage — smaller, weaker, slower, and wimpy in the teeth and claws department.  Back then, the notion that we would someday become the dominant animal on Earth seemed hilarious.

Self-defense was a primary challenge.  Folks likely kept a fire burning all night, with someone staying awake on guard duty.  They used spears, clubs, rocks, and impolite suggestions to discourage unwelcome visits from their hungry carnivorous neighbors.  In those days, being a plump juicy walking meatball 24 hours a day inspired folks to constantly pay acute attention to the sights, sounds, smells, and patterns of the surrounding reality (unlike today’s cell phone zombies).  Like all other animals, it was not common for humans to die from old age.  The other primary challenge was regularly acquiring food.  Cold turkey withdrawal from a serious addiction to food is unpleasant, often fatal.

Fearless Prey

OK, now pretend that it is 75,000 years ago, and you are a huge, powerful, ass-whooping aurochs munching on the greenery along a river in tropical India.  One fine day, a few strange animals appear in the meadow — brown, hairy, stinky, fairly small, oddly walking on two legs, and carrying long sticks.  What the <bleep> are those?  You sense no danger and continue grazing.  Healthy mature aurochs fear no other animals.  Large carnivores prefer to attack game that is less likely to tear them to bloody shreds.  Suddenly, the gang of alien critters charge and ram their sticks into you.  Game over. 

Thanks to predator control programs run by the U.S. government, wolves ceased living in the Tetons for a while.  By and by, new generations of elk and moose lost their memory of wolves.  Later, some wolves from Yellowstone began drifting back in.  They were delightfully surprised to discover herds of delicious animals that had absolutely no instinctive fear of them.  William Stolzenburg wrote that wolves could simply stroll into a herd and snatch away their calves.  Eventually, animals realized that wolves were dangerous predators, and promptly rewrote their survival manuals.

Back in Mother Africa, no critters ever forgot that lions, leopards, hyenas, and humans were vicious serial killers.  Life on the savannah was an endless crime wave, the bloody sacred dance of life.  When human pioneers wandered away from their original African home, into the great unknown, they regularly encountered (and ate) a wide variety of animals that had no fear of them — at first.

In 1921, Knud Rasmussen’s arctic expedition made a winter camp on Danish Island.  Out on a walk, “we encountered a hare so amazingly tame that we were tempted actually to essay his capture with our bare hands.  Soon afterward, we spied a lonely caribou who at once was all curiosity and came running toward us to investigate these strange visitors.  Never before had I encountered from animals such a friendly greeting.”

Tim Flannery wrote about the elephant seals that lived on Tasmania’s King Island.  Some weighed up to four tons.  When hunters found them, the seals calmly watched as the animals around them were killed.  It was a surreal experience.  The hunters felt like gods.  In 1802, when European explorers arrived at Kangaroo Island, off the south coast of Australia, the fearless kangaroos could be calmly approached and shot in the eye, or smacked with a club.

In 1805, when the Lewis and Clark expedition was crossing into Montana, Lewis wrote, “The buffalo, elk, and antelope are so gentle that we pass near them while feeding, without appearing to excite any alarm among them, and when we attract their attention, they frequently approach us more nearly to discover what we are, and in some instances pursue us a considerable distance apparently with that view.”

On numerous islands, the first explorers found that the wildlife was incredibly tame.  Birds could be killed with a stick, and many islands were home to enormous bird communities.  Thriving colonies of fish knew nothing about hooks or nets.  When legions of sea turtles came to nest, they were sitting ducks.  For a while, newcomers to islands enjoyed an easy life of feasting —until limits began raining on the party.

Surplus Killing

Sometimes hungry predators kill more prey than they need, and abandon what they can’t use.  Often surplus carcasses are simply abandoned, tasty offerings for the local scavengers.  Surplus killing is common with many species including badgers, wolves, red foxes, leopards, lions, spotted hyenas, bears, coyotes, lynx, feral dogs, house cats, and humans.

A pack of 19 spotted hyenas once attacked a herd of Thompson’s gazelles, killing 82, and severely injuring 27.  Only 16 percent of them were eaten. 

During a severe Minnesota winter, when the snow was very deep, the deer had a hard time moving.  Wolves killed every one they found, leaving many uneaten. 

Sometimes surplus killing is deliberate and purposeful.  Weasels kill voles as winter approaches, and leave them in burrows for later dining.  In Alaska, a wolf pack killed 17 caribou in early February.  Over the next three months, they returned, dug up carcasses, and continued dining on them.

Barry Lopez spent time with native Alaskan hunters, and wrote a book about wolves.  When a wolf chases and confronts a caribou or moose, their eyes meet, and their spirits communicate, in what Lopez calls the conversation of death.  The prey can chose to resist, which sometimes works, or they can attempt to flee, which sometimes works.  A sick or elderly prey might indicate surrender — take me, let my healthy comrades live.  Or, the wolves might suddenly end the confrontation and walk away.  If there is to be a death, both predator and prey choose this outcome during their spirit-to-spirit ceremony, wrote Lopez.

Wolves and moose have coevolved for a very long time, and both comprehend the sacred power of the life and death encounter.  They are fully aware of what is happening.  Wolves know that a strong, healthy, mature moose can splatter their skulls with a swift kick.  When wolves are desperately hungry, the risk of injury is secondary to the risk of starvation.

Domesticated animals are a different story.  Many have had their wild intelligence bred out of them, rendering them passive and infantile.  So, when the hungry predator confronts them, and it’s time for the conversation of death, the wild spirit of the prey is absent — the lights are out, nobody is home, a truly pathetic situation. 

In South Africa, one leopard killed 51 sheep in a single attack.  There are a number of stories of wolves killing 20 or 30 sheep and just eating 2 or 3.  If a herd of prey makes no effort to flee, or are helplessly trapped, predators sometimes keep killing them.  In the family of life, predators evolved to be natural born killers.  Their sacred mission is to discourage population outbursts in prey species, and the consequent ecosystem impacts.  They help maintain balance.

It’s daunting to contemplate the ongoing expansion of highly skilled human hunters into new regions outside of Mother Africa, where they certainly encountered fearless prey.  Did the human hunters instinctively treat fearless critters the way hungry wolves treat clueless sheep?  As humans entered Australasia, Eurasia, and the Americas, large animal extinctions followed.  They were the most desired prey, and they had not coevolved with heavily armed tropical primates.

Wild Free and Happy Sample 08

[Note: This is the eighth sample from my rough draft of a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy.  I don’t plan on reviewing more books for a while.  My blog is home to reviews of 199 books, and you are very welcome to explore them.  The Search field on the right side will find words in the full contents of all rants and reviews, if you are interested in specific authors, titles, or subjects.] 

Domestication of Fire

Before hominins learned how create fire, they very carefully preserved the flames of a naturally caused fire by feeding it fuel.  Burning sticks could be taken to other locations and become the source of additional fires.  Folks were extremely careful to preserve the live embers because, if they ever went out, the unlucky brothers and sisters might begin to smell like cat food.

Once upon a time, in an African wilderness, we aren’t sure when, someone figured out how to conjure a dancing flame into being.  Whoa!  In the hominin saga, that first glowing ember was the equivalent of an asteroid strike — a big one.  It catapulted our ancestors outside of the family of life, and into a spooky new realm of supernatural power and danger.  It was the magic ring that gave our ancestors the ability to eventually become the dominant animal on Earth (for a while). 

Unfortunately, the powerful magic was not delivered with warning labels attached.  The gift box did not include powerful herbs and potions to inspire profound wisdom and godlike foresight.  No animal needs these abilities.  Hominins are animals.  The Great Spirit apparently had a mischievous sense of humor.

The four elements are earth, water, air, and fire.  Pyne perceived the first manmade fire to be an act of staggering ecological audacity.  Tropical primates had found the keys to the mastery of fire.  Good grief!  The event is reminiscent of the old Sorcerer’s Apprentice tale, in which a half-clever trainee recklessly conjured a hurricane of big magic that he was powerless to stop, which soon got totally out of control. 

Without domesticated fire, hominins could have remained perfectly sustainable tropical primates, like baboons.  With fire, we acquired an impossible responsibility to use it with flawless wisdom, generation after generation, wherever we went.  The ancestors of baboons effortlessly lived sustainably for several million years by simply living like baboons — brilliant!  When hominins domesticated fire, they lost the magnificent inherent stability that comes from simply being ordinary animals, like all the others.

Some scholars have speculated that if space aliens had visited Earth 100,000 years ago, our ancestors would have appeared to be nothing more than ordinary animals.  For a long time, I accepted that.  Now I don’t.  Those visiting space aliens would have noticed that one species — and only one — maintained fires in their encampments.  This practice was not the slightest bit ordinary.  Hominins were the only animals who could deliberately ignite or extinguish a fire.  By and by, when hominins go extinct, so will domesticated fire, and the monsters it conjured into existence.

Paleoanthropologists and archaeologists have endless screechy arguments about the dates when prehistoric changes happened, like the domestication of fire.  Pretty much, everyone agrees that it happened at least 400,000 years ago, and the most likely suspect was Homo erectus.  Others point to two million year old ashes in the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa.

The Swartkrans Cave near Johannesburg is a special site.  Many years of assorted stuff has built up on the floor, and the crud has been carefully excavated.  In the oldest layers, no charcoal is found.  It is an era before fire.  At this level, there are complete skeletons of big cats, and the scattered gnawed bones of the critters they ate, including more than 100 individual hominins.  In this era, cats were the top predator.  Higher up, charcoal is found in newer layers, about 1.6 million years ago, the age of fire.  Here are found complete hominin skeletons, and the scattered bones of the critters they gnawed, including big cats — hominins were now the top predator.

Today, a growing number of scientists think it’s time to announce the end of the Holocene Epoch (from 11,700 B.P. to now), and declare the arrival of the embarrassing Anthropocene Epoch.  Epochs are time periods in geologic history that leave behind a layer of residue that is unique and recognizable.  Carboniferous was the coal era.  Jurassic was the era of petroleum and natural gas.  The Anthropocene is the era when humans conquered the Earth, and unwisely initiated massive and irreversible change.

If you ever want to start a bloody fistfight at a bar full of scruffy drunken scientists, ask this: When did the Anthropocene begin?  Some say 1945, the dawn of the nuclear age.  Some say 1800, the kickoff of the Industrial Revolution.  Some say 8000 B.C., the Agricultural Revolution.  Paul Shepard thought that the game changer was the Hunting Revolution, when hominins learned how to make and use deadly stone tipped javelins and lances, hunt in packs like wolves, kill too many large animals, and feed their energy-guzzling oversized brains with highly nutritious grass fed organic meat.  Ronald Wright called this transition “the perfection of hunting,” the first progress trap (a difficult to undo “advance”).

James Scott thought that the good old days ended with the domestication of fire.  In his mind, the nightmare world we live in is the result of four domestications — fire, animals, plants, and humans.  Domesticated fire, like livestock, required breeding, feeding, and oversight to keep it from running away from its master.  Domesticated fire was as addictive as heroin, a habit impossible to willfully quit.  The habit eventually spread around the world.  Carleton Coon noted that only a few folks made it into the nineteenth century without becoming fire makers — the Tasmanians, Andaman Islanders, and the Pygmies of the Ituri forest.

Fire altered the traditional food chain.  Man-eating predators were intimidated by all-night fires and burning torches.  So, fewer hominins were violently killed and eaten.  This diminished a population check on our ancestors, which may have disturbed the stability of functional ecosystems.  Other checks include disease, starvation, conflict, accidents, and so on.  John Reader wrote that, under ideal conditions, if two humans, and their descendants, all had large families, the clan would explode to 4 billion in just 500 years.  Man-eating predators are good for us.  They weed out the sick, elderly, injured, inattentive, and unlucky.  We all feed each other. 

Fire kept our ancestors warmer.  Humans have three million sweat glands to cool us off in hot weather.  In cold weather, the body directs more warm blood to the skin.  One thing that struck Europeans about primitive people was that they seemed to be impervious to cold.  During his famous voyage, Darwin was surprised to observe natives who wore little or no clothing during bitterly cold weather in Tierra del Fuego.

On the Kalahari, night temperatures in June and July can dip below freezing.  Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was with a group of naked San people during a night when their water froze.  Their only protection was a kaross — an animal skin wrapped around their shoulders. 

Tropical people go naked, like chimps and baboons, because clothes are unnecessary, making them requires work, and pointless work is moronic.  Modern consumers waste lots of energy, because much of their sense of “cold” is merely a belief induced by cultural programming.  Also, they want to wear shorts and tee-shirts indoors, in the middle of winter.   I’ve taught myself to be far more tolerant of cooler temperatures than I was 30 years ago.  I wear more layers, and waste far less heat.

Fire enabled folks to survive in regions having extended cold weather.  So they eventually expanded into much of the northern hemisphere, previously home to wooly mammoths, sabertooth cats, and many other species of megafauna.  By making uninhabitable regions habitable, fire increased the global carrying capacity for the hominin hordes — more territory, more food, more hominins.

Fire was used on a large scale to manage landscapes for more productive hunting and foraging.  It was used to drive animals into bogs or streams, off precipices, or into locations where they could be confined and killed.  It burned off cover that concealed hidden nests or burrows.  Flame was used for optimizing grasslands to attract more game — it consumed dead vegetation and woody brush, encouraging the growth of fresh nutritious green forage.  It left behind a banquet of roasted grasshoppers.  It discouraged visits from bloodthirsty flies and mosquitoes.

Fire enabled slash-and-burn agriculture (swidden), which replaced forest with cropland.  Crops were grown for a year or so, until soil fertility was depleted, at which point another area of forest was slashed down.  The depleted fields were left to recover for ten or twenty years, when they were slashed again.  After multiple slash-and-burn cycles, the land was rubbished.  Daniel Hillel reported that in Indonesia there are more than 39.5 million acres (16 million hectares) of land that is incapable of supporting either agriculture or forest.

Fire has long been used as a weapon of mass destruction during violent conflicts.  Cities built of wood often fed the flames of horrific firestorms that claimed many lives.  Even in peacetime, structures heated with open flame fireplaces frequently went up in smoke, often igniting the rest of the village.  For many centuries, firefighting technology was an ineffective process of hauling buckets of water by hand.  Deadly fires were very common, and a great source of fear.  The Christian concept of Hell was intensified by the terror of frequent fires in early times.

Fire had a spiritual aspect in every traditional culture.  Jacob Grimm mentioned the needfire rituals that were once common in many regions of Western Europe.  Every year at the summer solstice, each home in the village let their hearth fire die out.  A new fire was kindled into existence by a spinning drill (never flint and steel), and everyone took home a bit of the needfire to light their hearth for the coming year.  Often people and livestock were passed through the glowing embers for purification and protection.  Fire was highly sacred business.  Many old pantheons had fire gods, goddesses, and myths. 

Domesticated fire is Earth-shaking super-big juju.  James Scott concluded that the accumulated ecological impacts of manmade fire on this planet overwhelm those caused by the domestication of plants and animals.

Cooking

The domestication of fire kicked open the door to a revolutionary change in the hominin saga — a technology called cooking.  Cooking softened and pre-digested food.  Ancestors were able to extract more nutrients from each mouthful.  Better nutrition facilitated the development of bigger brains.  Infants could be weaned sooner when softened food became an option, so births could be spaced closer together.  The toothless elderly benefitted from access to soft food.  Chewing was less work, so hominins evolved smaller teeth compared to other primates.  Also, digestion took less processing, so our guts got smaller, and tummies flatter.

Cooking transformed some foods that had been toxic or indigestible into edible nourishment.  By increasing the variety of plant foods we could eat, and the amount of nutrients we could extract from them, it became possible for an area of land to feed more ancestors.  Thus, cooking boosted an ecosystem’s carrying capacity for hominins.

Cooking gave us the keys to industrial civilization.  Imagine the astonishment when early hominins watched some heavy rocks in the fire turn red and melt into a liquid form.  The first smelter was born.  Metallurgy gave us the ability to fill rivers with spilled blood, to reduce cities to ashes, and to ravage ecosystems in countless, devastating, and irreparable ways.

The ancestors also learned about cooking clay.  They were baking figurines in primitive kilns 25,000 years ago.  This knowledge eventually evolved into baking pottery and bricks.  Sand could be cooked into glass, limestone into cement, wood into charcoal, water into steam, crude oil into distillates (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc.), and on and on and on.