Wild Free and Happy Sample 50

 

[Note: This is the fiftieth 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.

PATHWAY TO DOMINATION

As discussed earlier, humans originated on the tropical savannahs of east Africa.  For most of the human saga, we were strong, healthy, nearly naked tropical critters with beautiful brown skin and curly hair.  In the tropics, winters were not cold, and food was available year round, so there was no need to preserve and store food.  There was no need to invent technology for staying warm, like protective clothing and shelter.

Because they were nomads, hoarding personal belongings would have made no sense.  Hauling stuff across roadless wilderness was hard work.  Because they lived simply, they didn’t need much stuff.  Instead, their survival largely depended on the knowledge stored in the glop between their ears.  For them, the keys to survival included cooperation and sharing, working well together.  Hunter-gatherers were egalitarian, everyone was equal.  Nobody gave orders, or took them.  No one went hungry unless everyone did.

The berry patch was freely open to all.  If a wandering forager picked some berries, they were hers to share and eat.  If I killed a kudu, the event was a perfectly normal and natural, like the sun rising at dawn.  Nobody owned the animal, no one got upset.  It would be carried back to camp, shared with the band, making everyone happy.  All was good.  If a lion ate my brother, nobody exploded with rage.  Lions ate many brothers and sisters, because they were good to eat.  We all feed each other.

In the tropics, some sort of food was generally available year round.  From week to week, folks knew the prime time for various munchies, and where to find them.  They regularly visited the wild buffet, and took what they needed from the daily specials.  Long term food storage was unnecessary and absurd. 

Big Mama Nature devoted a couple million years to fine tuning the evolution of tropical primates for survival in tropical climates, our home sweet home, where we belonged.  Compared to today, our ancient ancestors would seem to have been simple, stable, sane, and sustainable.  They were not two-legged category 5 hurricanes, like modern consumers.  Things were relatively cool for a very long time (sort of).  It wasn’t until much later that some sorcerers discovered the Fountain of Progress, guzzled its hallucinogenic fluids, and started smashing things.

Snow Country Colonization

As discussed earlier, maybe 100,000 years ago, some intrepid pioneers began migrating from Africa into Asia.  They wandered eastward through tropical lands, eventually reaching Australia.  The pioneers had a great time, and found many wonderful things to eat.  Quite a bit later, some of them wandered northward, into regions having a temperate climate, snow country. 

In portions of northern Eurasia, they discovered vast steppe and prairie grasslands that spanned from central Europe, east to the Pacific coast.  Temperate grasslands were ideal habitat for nurturing large herds of large herbivores, the food most cherished by hunter-gatherers.  It was as if they had stumbled into an unimaginable Serengeti-like heaven of limitless meat.  Joy!

Oddly, this was a bit like polar bears migrating into steaming hot Congo rainforests.  The notion of tropical primates colonizing snow country was equally silly.  The colonists were not born with fur coats.  They were not capable of hibernation.  They were too big to easily travel across deep snow, or thin ice.  Food was scarce during the winter months.  They knew little if anything about food preservation and long-term food storage.  But they were spellbound by the availability of so much meat!  Might there be some way that they could possibly make a home in this land?

The colonists proceeded to improve their skills at hunting, trapping, and surviving the long and frigid winters.  Over time, they got a bit too skilled.  As generations passed, the abundance of game gradually diminished.  Some species blinked out forever.  By and by, folks began fooling around with horticulture and herding, setting the stage for the dawn of plant and animal domestication.

I’ve already pointed out the obvious fact that the domestication of plants and animals was a sharp change of direction in the human saga.  It forced us into the express lane to a turbulent future.  I must emphasize that it’s also important to understand that the mere fact that hunter-gatherers successfully colonized snow country — thousands of years before domestication — was itself a crucial turning point, a necessary prerequisite.  Domestication originated in regions having a temperate climate, as did the first civilizations.  Colonization unlocked the gate to dangerous realms.

Energy Storage and Risks

In snow country, hunters faced more challenges than their ancestors had in Africa.  Back in the tropics there was no frigid season, so no need for the long-term storage of food energy.  If hyenas snatched the kudu you just killed, you may have lost one day’s effort, or less.  In snow country, the two options were store energy or starve.  Many weeks of hard work were invested in creating their winter food stash, lots of eggs in few baskets.  On any day, it could be raided by rodents, wolves, dogs, bears, or other hungry visitors.  A sudden hot spell could melt frozen meat and spoil it.

Of course, compared to snow country hunters, the farmers and herders faced more and bigger challenges.  From planting to harvest, a farmer’s crops were vulnerable to many potential risks (weather, fire, insects, disease, deer, bunnies, etc.).  Once the harvest was brought in, the granary was loaded with valuable energy for future use, something like a tank of oil.  It was a treasure chest that stored the concentrated results of countless hours of hard work — like a crisp new $100 bill, not a mere handful of pennies.  Carefully stored energy could be an irresistible temptation to folks who weren’t your best buddies. 

Likewise, herders invested loads of time and effort in creating impressive treasure chests of living flesh.  Herding was not risk free.  Late at night, your livestock could be quickly driven away by thieves.  Wild predators could pick them off.  During a long drought, or when anthrax or rinderpest came to visit, the herds in a region could be obliterated.  At any time, you could lose the stored treasure of a year’s hard work, or more.  Nothing was insured.

Livestock herds were overseen by masters who firmly controlled their movements, protected them from predators and raiders, and blocked their escape attempts.  Lifelong enslavement made it easy for masters to acquire their meat, milk, blood, hides, and wool whenever needed.  Imagine spending your entire life subservient to a dominator who eventually intended to cut your throat, strip off your hide, and eat you (and your kids). 

In snow country, when hunters, farmers, or herders enjoyed a lucky streak, it could lead to population growth, which could lead to increased tension and conflict.  More folks expected a piece of the pie, and some got wee slices.  Treasure chests, of course, have a long tradition of inspiring the belligerent behavior of aggressive parasites.  One successful day of raiding could snatch the rewards of months or years of toil, an outstanding profit.  Very clever!

More is Better

The colonization of snow country, and the necessity of food storage, inspired a new meme: more is better.  Having adequate energy storage was mandatory, but having even more was better still.  When good luck disappeared, it could be a blessed life saver. 

Folks painfully understood when they were dangerously hungry.  They also understood when life was kind to them.  Oddly, many humans seem to have a hard time perceiving the border line between enough and way too much.  In their brains, the idiot light that indicated [ENOUGH] never came on.  More was always better.  Too much was impossible.  Why do wobbly wrinkly 85 year old gits, with a billion dollars stashed away, still put on a suit and tie every morning and strive to hoard even more?

Herds of livestock were self-propelled warehouses of living meat that didn’t spoil.  Provided with grass and water, their bodies added more meat every month.  So, more is better was an intoxicating idea, until the land was stripped of vegetation, and herders experienced the painful revenge of merciless limits.  Farmers could farm like crazy, year after year, until their topsoil was drained of nutrients or ran away.  Limits spoil rowdy parties.

Of course, for our wild ancestors who remained in the tropics, the more is better concept was absolute nonsense.  It was impossible for nomadic folks to make use of more than enough (too much = waste).  They couldn’t haul surplus with them, and in the hot climate, it would spoil, or attract pests and scavengers.  It wasn’t until much later, when domesticated crops and livestock were imported into Africa, that tropical folks began suffering from serious more is better deliriums.  Prior to this, enough was enough, and they all lived happily ever after.

Control Freaks

Big Mama Nature is fully aware that unusual population outbursts in any species can destabilize healthy ecosystems.  She generally does what’s needed to restore balance.  The current human outburst has become a spectacularly destructive living asteroid.  It’s now traveling at maximum velocity toward an invincible fortress of merciless limits that will take great delight in splattering the juggernaut.  There will once again be peace on Earth (and a staggering mess).

Domestication triggered a shock wave in the human saga.  It radically altered the traditional core relationship between humans and the rest of the ecosystem.  For maybe two million years, hominins were participants in a family of life that joyfully danced to the ecstatic music of freedom.  Then, domestication gave birth to a monster child, a new and obscene verb named control.  Devilish anti-freedom.  The toxic juju of control has infected the relationship, rendering it dysfunctional and violently abusive.

During the hunter-gatherer era, folks foraged for wild plant foods, and took what they needed.  This wasn’t a labor intensive control-oriented process of clearing, tilling, planting, weeding, etc.  The shift to agriculture transformed healthy sustainable wild landscapes into unsustainable radically simplified manmade food production systems.  Wild and free are the opposite of controlled.

Hunting was the pursuit of wild game, which required a combination of skill and random chance.  Wild game is intelligent, alert, and driven by a powerful desire to avoid predators.  Being alive is precious.  Wild game is out of control.  They are not passive dimwitted sheep in the pasture, constantly overseen by shepherds and dogs.  Herding is the process of controlling enslaved animals, for every minute of their lives.  When the herder needs meat, he selects which animal dies.  Escape is impossible.

Agriculture was a sedentary enterprise, the farmer was firmly bound to a specific piece of land.  When danger approached, the granary treasure chest could not be easily moved to a safe place, because it was not self-propelled, like livestock.  Depending on the threat, a farmer could defend it (and maybe die), or abandon it (and maybe starve).  High vulnerability, and a desire to survive, inspired farmers to reside in villages, and benefit from mutual defense.  Over time, as threats increased, villages became walled and fortified cities.  Over time, a warrior class emerged, to molest incoming attackers, and to attack and rob vulnerable outsiders.

Many farmers didn’t have the time, space, or desire to keep much livestock, but herders did.  Herders who had access to extensive open grasslands could pursue a very different way of life, and they did.  Indeed, the mindset of pastoralism eventually achieved great power.  It provided the foundation for the mindset of the world as we know it (stay tuned, more later).

Mother Africa Infected

Lyall Watson wrote a fascinating biography of Adrian Boshier (1939-1978), a young British man who went to South Africa and walked a path of power.  During his first six years in Africa, the lad spent most of his time in the bush, learning the ways of the land, rewilding.  He would head off into wild country with nothing but a pocketknife and a bag of salt (for trading), and live off the land for as long as he wanted. 

Boshier became highly skilled at catching and befriending dangerous snakes.  Walking into a village wrapped up in a 14-foot python (4.2 m), he terrified the natives, giving birth to his reputation as a powerful magician.  He would catch an eight-foot cobra, milk its venom, and drink it before a gasping wide-eyed crowd. 

Prehistoric cave painting in Europe gets a lot of attention.  African cave art gets less.  Boshier visited many caves, because the rock art in them had immense spirit power.  One day, he sat in a cave in Makgabeng, and had a chilling experience when his eyes focused on a horrific heartbreaking image.  The artists were likely San people, the original residents.

Mother Africa is where the human saga began, an evolutionary adventure spanning back maybe two million years, when early hominins came down from the trees.  There’s a good chance that the San people are the ancestors of most or all humans alive today.  Around 100,000 years ago, some Africans began migrating into the Eurasian landmass, where they eventually learned how to survive in a temperate climate, and then much later conjured plant and animal domestication into existence.

The images that had filled Boshier with horror were portraits of fat-tailed sheep, critters domesticated in the Middle East.  Sheep were not indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa.  They were brought to Africa by folks who were returning to Mother Africa, their ancestral homeland, with some new and creepy habits.  Some say the Bantus brought the sheep, others suspect the Khoi (Hottentots).  Whoever brought them, they were symbols of a dark transition.  The family of life in Africa was, for the first time ever, no longer entirely wild and free.  Hideous manmade freak show critters had arrived, along with a freak show culture of control and domination.  Trouble ahead.

Watson lamented, “The introduction of a pastoral economy, starting perhaps three or four thousand years ago, seems to have marked the beginning of a relentless destruction, now almost complete, of the earliest way of human life.  It was the end of a society that had discovered how to live in harmony with — rather than at the expense of — nature.”

 [Continued in sample #51]

Wild Free and Happy Sample 30

[Note: This is the thirtieth 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 202 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.] 

Horse

The first species of the horse genus (Equus) emerged in North America about 4.5 million years ago.  Over time, some migrated to South America, and others crossed the land bridge to Eurasia, and spread as far as Western Europe.  Maybe 15,000 years ago, hunters from Siberia discovered America, home to many horses.  Over the following centuries, a surge of megafauna extinctions occurred.  The last horse in the Americas died in Patagonia about 7000 B.C.  In 1493, Spaniards brought domesticated horses to the Americas, and by 1550, there were 10,000 of them rediscovering their ancestral homeland.

Graham Harvey noted that horses are fine tuned for grassland living.  They can run at a sustained gallop of 43 mph (70 km/h).  Sheep and cattle have complicated digestive tracts, so they need to rest after grazing.  Horses can eat and run.  They can go up to four days without water, so they can utilize grasslands farther from water sources.

Dixie West added that horses are able to efficiently digest a high fiber diet, so they can live on a daily intake of just 22 pounds (10 kg) of vegetation.  They are better able to survive on low quality forage, and they require less pampering than other livestock.  Prior to winter, herders had to gather and store hay for feeding cattle and sheep.  Horses were able to feed themselves throughout the cold months.  They also grew warm coats. 

Food Critters

Horses and hominins have had a long relationship.  As mentioned earlier, Neanderthals were trapping and killing horses at the Roche de Solutré site in France about 55,000 years ago.  Later, around 37,000 years ago, humans killed many horses at the same location.  West noted that, when panicked, horses flee in a single file, rather than rapidly scattering in every direction.  This made it easier to drive herds into traps. 

Over time, hunters got too good at trapping and killing horses.  Pita Kelekna wrote an excellent book on the history of the horse-human relationship.  She noted that by the Neolithic era (8000–4500 B.C.), the once plentiful wild horses had disappeared across most of Europe.  Some were able to survive in small pockets of Spain and central Europe. 

To the east, large numbers of wild horses thrived on the vast wide open steppes, where there was no brush or trees to conceal hungry hunters.  The placement of a horse’s eyes gives them a 300° range of vision — they can see in almost every direction.  The flat landscape lacked ravines or valleys into which herds could be conveniently driven, trapped, and killed.

Humans have been eating horses for tens of thousands of years.  Today, folks in many nations continue enjoying lunch dates with horses.  In the top eight horse loving nations, 4.7 million are eaten every year. 

Domestication

Long before horses were enslaved, sheep, goats, and cattle were domesticated in the Middle East.  Horses remained wild and free until maybe 4000 B.C.  They had thrived on the steppes, which were northern shortgrass prairies that spanned a 5,000 mile (8,046 km) range from Hungary to Manchuria.  Several scholars have speculated that domestication probably saved horses from extinction, because it transformed them from wild and free into private property — my horsy!

Wild horses were strong, fast, intelligent, and aggressive.  They were not easy to domesticate.  When cornered, they aggressively stomp, kick, and bite.  Swift kicks could be fatal.  Zebras, their Equus cousins, have never been tamed, despite countless attempts — the older they get, the meaner.

The domestication of horses was a revolutionary event in the human saga — like fire, agriculture, metallurgy, fossil energy, nuclear technology, and so on.  Countless highly destructive new trends did not become possible until after their domestication.  Sometimes it’s interesting to play “what if.”  What if evolution had selected for untamable zebras, rather than horses? 

Kelekna described, at great length, the huge impacts that domesticated horses had on the course of both human and environmental history.  At first, domesticated horses were kept for meat, milk, and hides.  Eventually folks learned how to effectively utilize horse power, greatly reducing society’s heavy dependence on human muscles.  Horses could pull stuff like plows, wagons, logs, and battle chariots.  They could carry heavy loads.  They could be ridden.  A herder with a dog could oversee 150 to 200 sheep, but a mounted herder could manage 500. 

Horses enabled humans to quickly travel long distances, a huge boost to human mobility.  They made it far easier to hunt large animals, or to raid enemies.  Trade networks could extend much farther, and transport larger cargoes of goods back and forth.  Long distance travel could also transfer technologies, religions, ideas, infectious diseases, and invasive exotics over long distances.  Horse domestication promoted the expansion of farming and herding, spurring population growth and conflict.

Nomadic Pastoralists

Bridle, saddle, and stirrup innovations eventually enabled humans to ride horses, at high speed, while effectively using deadly weapons to kill game or enemies.  Military campaigns could travel farther, and strike fast and hard.  Horses enabled the emergence of large nomad empires, and the spilling of oceans of blood.  Kelekna said that horsepower greatly benefitted the pursuit of “bloodshed, massacres, deportations, enslavement, amputation, beheadings, torture, incineration, rape, castration, famine, pestilence, and destruction.”

Nomadic herders did not need to trade with agricultural societies in order to acquire food.  They enjoyed an independent lifestyle.  Seed-bearing grasses were common on the steppe, and nomads simply gathered the wild grain.  Herds provided milk, blood, and meat.  Nomads were likely better nourished than most of the hungry dirty peasants and slaves in farm country.

Paul Shepard wrote that around 1800 B.C., mounted warriors with iron weapons opened the door to a new and super bloody chapter in the human saga.  Sudden surprise attacks from hordes of nomad warriors shattered or destroyed many civilizations, which were plump sitting ducks that were irresistibly tempting to plunder.  These attacks inspired the construction of a variety of defensive fortifications — wooden palisades, massive stone walls, moats, drawbridges, and so on.  Traditional population management services formerly provided by man-eating predators were now shifting to warriors, starvation, and epidemics.

It was no longer safe to live in many regions.  An old Bedouin proverb declares, “Raids are our agriculture.”  Describing tribes of horse-worshipping German herders in A.D. 98, Tacitus wrote that fighting was better than farming.  “They even think it base and spiritless to earn by sweat what they might purchase with blood.”  Shepard noted that these mounted nomadic raiders developed a culture of “hierarchy, theft, rebellious sons, and competitive use of the earth.” 

Our wild hunter-gatherer ancestors were egalitarian, no leaders, all were equal.  The secret to their tens of thousands of years of success was sharing, cooperation, and an intimate relationship with the land.  Nomads had an entirely different worldview, one that favored patriarchy, raiding, conquering, accumulating personal wealth, and competing for status.  Primary components of their worldview continue to be the foundation in modern cultures.

Horses and Wheels

David Anthony wrote that wheeled vehicles first appeared in the Old World around 3300 B.C., and were of great benefit to herders.  Carts made it much easier to move families, food, tents, and water to greener pastures, for extended stays, to better keep their herds well fed.  He said that horses and carts enabled nomads to intensify their exploitation of the steppes, which had previously been little used by humans.

To better appreciate the impact of horses and wheels in the Old World, it’s interesting to look at the Americas.  In the New World, the llamas and alpacas of Peru were the only large animals domesticated, and neither was capable of carrying an adult rider.  In the Old World, the diabolical invention of the wheel greatly accelerated agriculture, deforestation, population growth, empire building, and on and on.  Industrial civilization could not exist in a world without wheels.  In the New World, the only wheels were those found on tiny clay toys.  Without horses, the pampas and prairies of the Americas had wee populations, and little or no agriculture.

Having no carts or wagons, the Inca civilization in Peru did not need to build smooth roads.  They did build bridges, dig tunnels, and cut steps up steep hillsides.  Pack trains of llamas could travel up to 12 miles per day (19 km), with each animal carrying up to 101 pounds (46 kg).  Speedy long-distance communication was provided by messages relayed from one Inca runner to the next.  This was much slower than Genghis Khan’s pony express system, which could move messages 248 miles (400 km) per day.

In Mesoamerica, the pack animals were two legged primates.  On a good day, a healthy lad might carry 50 pounds (23 kg) for 13 to 17 miles (21 to 28 km).  Without carts or pack animals, Mesoamericans could not create vast sprawling empires like Rome.  While the Mayans built some roads, hiking in Mexico was via dirt paths, where they existed.  Military adventures were restricted in the New World.  Each soldier had to carry his own provisions, which limited the load size and distance travelled.  Thus, if supplies could not be snatched from villagers along the way, campaigns would have been limited to round trips of eight days or so. 

In Eurasia, huge Mongol cavalries could zoom across the steppe at 68 miles (110 km) per day.  The Eurasian steppes experienced century after century of the rise and fall of numerous hordes of horse-mounted nomads like the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols, and Turks.  Mongol empires grew with explosive speed.  They peaked between 1279 and 1350, when they inhabited Iraq, Iran, central Asia, most of Russia, and all of China.  This was the largest contiguous empire in human history.  Later, the British Empire controlled more territory, but in many scattered regions.

Beasts of Burden

Paul Shepard was the opposite of a horse lover, because of the many new imbalances that domesticated horses enabled.  Compared to hand labor, the introduction of horses to agriculture allowed farm production to double.  This, of course, led to population growth, which often increased faster than the endlessly busy Grim Reaper could keep up with.  Agriculture’s faithful shadow is soil destruction.  We’re essentially eating soil.  The skin is being torn off of Mother Earth.  This has no long term future.

Clive Ponting wrote that before 1800, animals provided just 25 percent of the work energy, and humans did most of the rest (many serfs couldn’t afford work animals).  We used very little energy from windmills or waterwheels.  Feeding a horse required at least 6 acres (2.5 ha) of grassland, oxen a bit less.  In those days, most land suitable for crops was needed to grow food for humans, because agriculture was far less productive than today.

Consequently, prior to 1800, since people couldn’t afford a horse, they walked.  In that era, about 95 percent of humans in farming societies were peasants.  We have soft lives today, but Ponting reminds us that “Until about the last two centuries in every part of the world nearly everyone lived on the edge of starvation.”  My grandmother never tossed out apple cores, because the entire apple was food, seeds and all.

William McNeill noted that another troublesome cargo that domesticated beasts delivered into human society was deadly pathogens.  When human communities were brought into constant close contact with animals, it was far easier for diseases and parasites to leap from one species to another.  Over time, different diseases emerged in different regions.  Eventually, long distance travel for trade or warfare carried diseases from their place of origin to virgin populations that had zero immunity to them.  From A.D. 1200 to 1500, isolated regional disease pools eventually combined to form a large pool of civilized diseases.

The Black Death likely arose in China around 1331.  From there, by and by, it spread in every direction.  It hitched rides on merchant ships, armies, and trade caravans, and eventually appeared in Crimea by 1346.  From there, it proceeded to sail to Italy, rapidly visit much of Europe, and promptly delete about a third of the population.

Horses Return Home

Horses originally evolved in the Americas, and then blinked out in 7000 B.C.  In 1493, after an absence of 8,500 years, Spaniards brought domesticated horses back to the Americas.  Reintroduction eventually had dramatic effects on the western U.S. plains.  In 1598, Spanish colonists brought domesticated horses and other livestock to New Mexico.  One way or another, plains Indians acquired some of these animals. 

Richard White discussed how the acquisition of horses impacted the entire plains ecosystem.  Horses quickly became popular with many tribes.  Horses were trade commodities, the target of raids, and the inspiration for many bloody conflicts.  With horses, it became easy for hunters to kill far more buffalo.  With access to more food, population grew, tribal rivalries intensified, and warfare increased.  Horse stealing became a normal activity among the people of the plains.  Living in a remote location was no longer safe and secure, and corn growing villages were especially vulnerable to sudden raids.

Samuel Gwynne noted that prior to horses, the southern plains were lightly populated.  The region wasn’t well suited for agriculture, and hunting buffalo, antelope, and elk on foot was far from easy.  The prey was much speedier than the hunters.  A buffalo can sprint at 35 miles per hour (56 km/h).  The acquisition of horses revolutionized buffalo hunting.  A number of tribes abandoned farming, and became hunters.  With easier access to food, more people could be fed.

As American colonists began moving away from the Atlantic coast, into a wilderness of forests, prairies, and wetlands, travelling on horseback was difficult or impossible.  There were paths, but not roads suitable for wagons or carts.  At that time, Indians in the eastern U.S. travelled by footpath and canoe, via predictable routes, where colonists could ambush them.  Tribes that raised corn were far more vulnerable than nomadic hunters.  When settlers found villages, they burned them.  Stored food went up in smoke.

When colonists moved west of the Mississippi, they eventually moved beyond forest country and onto the open plains, where they met Indians on horses for the first time, and got blindsided.  It took many serious beatings until they figured out how to fight them.  Comanche warriors could readily attack any target within 400 miles.  Settlers and soldiers were sitting ducks for fast moving bands of warriors.  A warrior could shoot 20 arrows whilst a soldier or settler reloaded his musket once. 

James Sherow wrote about the challenges plains Indians had with keeping horses in the Arkansas River Valley.  Horses gave them amazing new powers, and painful new headaches.  Horses were personal property, and the more you owned, the higher your social status.  In 1855, the Cheyennes owned an average of 5.5 horses per person, and the Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, and Arapahos owned 6.2.

Climate had a major impact on the grassland.  One acre (0.4 ha) could produce 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of short grass when annual rainfall rose to 20 inches (51 cm).  When it dropped to 10 inches, only 450 pounds.  During hot spells, rain evaporated in midair.  Creeks and springs dried up.  During winter, the protein content of grass was half of summer levels.  In harsh winters, large herds shrank.  Horses in close confinement provided comfortable homes for a variety of parasites.

George Catlin studied western Indian tribes from 1832-1839, when buffalo herds were still enormous, and natives used bows and arrows to hunt during high speed pursuits on horseback.  He did many drawings and paintings, and wrote extensive notes.  While he was fascinated by the many things he learned, he was also sad, because the plains Indians and the buffalo were on a dead end path.  The arrival of civilized people brought lots of dark juju to the west.  Buffalo were hunted in winter when their fur was thick, and their hides were most valuable for the buffalo robe market.  After skinning the animal, the rest of the carcass was left for the wolves.  Indians living far from traders wasted no part of the animals they killed.

In May of 1832, a mounted hunting party of 500 or 600 Sioux chased a large herd for several hours, and killed many.  At the end of the day, they came to the fort with 1,400 buffalo tongues, for which they received a few gallons of whiskey, which did not last long among the thirsty lads.  The hides and meat of the dead animals were left on the grass.

The whites were making a nice profit today, and it never occurred to them to give consideration to the future of the buffalo.  Among the tribes, there was an ancient and widespread belief that the buffalo were a gift from the Great Spirit, infinite in number, and whatever they took would be replaced.  Whites also overhunted the buffalo.  Catlin could see that the buffalo could be gone in as soon as 8 to 10 years, and was deeply disturbed about the insanity of it all.

Peak Horse

The use of horses for transportation and traction peaked early in the twentieth century.  Clive Ponting noted that the U.S. was home to 20 to 30 million horses in 1900.  About a quarter of the nation’s cropland was needed to produce their food.  Model T Fords did not require six acres of good grassland to fuel them.

My grandparents witnessed the advent of Peak Horse, and my parents saw work horses largely disappear from farms and cities.  Venerable physicist Albert Bartlett calculated that, with regard to the all-time total volume of oil extracted by humankind, more than half of it will be consumed within the lifespan of the generation born since 1966.  We are living during a temporary explosion of staggering waste, and this idiotic binge has an expiration date.  So, we’ll just have to go back to horse power, right?  Well, umm, there are some challenges.

Eric Morris wrote a fascinating essay to help us remember life in the Peak Horse era.  By 1898, big city streets were jammed with horses, carriages, and wagons, squishing through a deep layer of manure and urine, past rotting horse carcasses, amidst dense clouds of flies and overpowering stench.  Cities were rapidly growing, as hordes immigrants moved in to enjoy miserable industrial jobs, while living in crowded, filthy, disease ridden slums. 

Each horse emitted 15 to 30 pounds (7 to 14 kg) of manure daily — 3 to 4 million pounds in New York City every day.  In 1800, farmers would pay haulers to bring manure to their fields.  By 1900, there was way too much poop, and it piled up on empty lots.  Some heaps were 60 feet high (18 m).  Clouds of flies picked up pathogenic microbes and brought them to your kitchen, spreading typhoid and other fecal-oral diseases.  In 1880, 41 horses died each day on the streets of New York.  The average horse weighed 1,300 pounds (590 kg).  Carcasses were often left to rot, making it easier to dismember them, so they could be hauled away.

Horses were jammed into filthy, poorly ventilated stables — excellent disease incubators.  In 1872, the Great Epizootic Epidemic struck, as huge numbers of horses were infected by the equine influenza virus.  Coughing spread it from one animal to the next.  Typically, they recovered in two to three weeks, but severe cases could immobilize an animal for six months.

During the epidemic, available horse power was drastically reduced.  Folks had to use wheelbarrows and handcarts to transport goods.  The postal service was hobbled.  Freight piled up.  Coal deliveries stopped.  Food distribution wheezed.  On farms, plows and other equipment fell idle.  Boats quit moving on the Erie Canal.  Horse-drawn fire engines and street cars did not move.  When a big fire roared in downtown Boston, firemen had to pull their heavy equipment from the station by hand.

Almost certainly, there are people alive today who will see the peak of motor vehicle production, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some (or many) will experience the extinction of motor vehicles, and the lights going out on civilization as we know it.  Bye-bye railroads, air travel, sea transport, refrigerators, elevators, mining, supermarkets, and so on.  Sewage treatment plants, municipal water systems, and digital technology will blink out.  Vast areas of cropland will cease being plowed, planted, irrigated, and harvested.  Humans may actually have to walk (eek!!). 

Future generations will gather around campfires and laugh at hilarious stories about how people used to live.  It’s sad that we the living can’t see this.

Wild Free and Happy Sample 24

[Note: This is the twenty-fourth 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 202 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.] 

Manmade Grasslands

It didn’t take long for our hominin ancestors, creatures of the grass, to learn that large game was most often found in grassland habitats.  Forests were more challenging to hunt in, and they were mostly home to small game.  This fact of life motivated hunters to eagerly follow their stomachs to wonderlands of grass-fed, organic, all-you-can-eat flesh.  Therefore, the human diaspora out of Africa tended to pursue routes that majored in grasslands. 

As they migrated out, their journey took them to grasslands in the Middle East, and then Europe.  Barry Cunliffe noted that a vast steppe grassland began in Hungary and ended in Manchuria, providing an easy to travel grass highway that was 5,600 miles (9,000 km) long.  As an added bonus, the steppe was largely carpeted with excellent vegetation that was drought-resistant and frost-tolerant. 

Later, around A.D. 1300, Marco Polo described the Silk Roads that spanned across the steppe, connecting the civilizations of Europe and the Far East.  This link enabled much cultural knowledge to move back and forth (a mixed blessing).  The steppe also enabled the emergence of tribes of pastoralists, with their large roaming herds of livestock.  These tribes were sometimes absorbed into powerful empires, like those of the Mongols and Huns.

Once established in Asia, the front line pioneers of the human diaspora were eventually able to wander from Siberia, over the Beringia land bridge, and then explore the incredible grassland Serengetis of the Americas.

Anyway, our early hominin ancestors could not help but notice that when occasional wildfires burned off the dry grassland vegetation, tender shoots would soon emerge from the ashes.  Fresh greenery looked heavenly to the hungry grazing critters, and hunters deeply loved grazing critters.  Fire was a good tonic for the health of grass.  It burned up accumulated dead foliage, allowing more solar energy to feed the grass people.  Also, when the snows melted away, the ground warmed up faster when the litter was gone, enabling the growing season to begin earlier.

Several million years ago, a clever hominin learned how to kindle a manmade flame by generating friction.  One day, by accident or intention, flames from a campfire somehow ignited nearby grass, and winds pushed the roaring blaze across hill and dale, incinerating brush, trees, dry grass, and unlucky wildlife. 

This exciting experience gave birth to a devious idea.  They could deliberately start grass fires wherever and whenever they wanted.  Burning fried the shoots of woody vegetation, eliminated dead plant debris, and encouraged grass to produce at optimal rates.  They could encourage bigger herds of game by expanding and maintaining high quality grassland.  They could entice game to graze in locations optimal for hunting them, like places close to a water source, and not far from camp.  By cleverly controlling nature, they could eat better, feed more bambinos, and enjoy a higher standard of living.  So they did. 

We folks in the era of glowing screens have a hard time imagining that the practice of deliberately burning grass was a remarkable history bending innovation.  But back in the good old days, it was a very hot idea.  The routine eventually spread around the world, and substantially reconfigured many ecosystems.  It was a highly influential transition in the human saga, far more significant than smart phones or automobiles, which are ridiculous unsustainable amusements that have no long term future.

Initially, fires were used to expand or improve open grassland.  Once woody vegetation was eliminated, additional fires were routinely set every few years to prevent its recovery.  Eventually, there were no more seeds of woody plants hiding in the sod, so the burn cycles could then be less frequent.

The practice of attracting large game by maintaining top quality grassland is often called firestick farming.  It was an easy low tech way to increase food resources.  Alfred Crosby noted that firestick farming had transformed much of six continents a long time before the first field was planted.  Let’s look at a few examples.

Australia

In Australia, the firestick farming practiced by Aborigines was a time-proven fine art that evolved after many centuries of trial and error, learning and tweaking.  Humans arrived between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, and they must have brought with them the magical art of fire starting.  Within several thousand years of their arrival, 85 percent of the megafauna species were extinct, including 1,000 pound (453 kg) kangaroos, 400 pound (181 kg) birds, lizards 25 feet (7.6 m) long, and tortoises the size of Volkswagens.  Over time, many dry forests that were not fire-tolerant went up in smoke, and were displaced by fire-promoting eucalypt forests.

Bill Gammage described the Australia that British colonists observed in 1788, when they first washed up on shore.  The landscape looked radically different from today.  Much of what is now dense forest or scrub used to be manmade grasslands.  Early white eyewitnesses frequently commented that large regions looked like parks.  In those days, all English parks were the private estates of the super-rich.  Oddly, the Aborigines who inhabited the beautiful park-like Australian countryside were penniless bare-naked Stone Age anarchist heathens.  Their wealth was their time-proven knowledge, and their respect for the land.

In 1788, large areas of Australia had been actively maintained by firestick farming, which greatly expanded habitat for the delicious critters that the natives loved to dine on.  The Aborigines used both hot fires and cool fires to manage vegetation that was fire intolerant, fire tolerant, fire dependent, or fire promoting.  Different fires were used to promote specific herbs, tubers, bulbs, or grasses.  When starting a fire, the time and location was carefully calculated to encourage the desired result.  According to Gammage, most of Australia was burnt about every one to five years.  On any day of the year, a fire was likely burning somewhere.

The natives generally enjoyed an affluent lifestyle.  They had learned how to live through hundred-year droughts and giant floods.  No region was too harsh for people to inhabit.  Their culture had taboos that set limits on reproduction and hunting.  During the breeding seasons of important animals, hunting was prohibited near their gathering places.  Lots of food resources were left untouched most of the time, a vital safety net.  The Dreaming had two rules: obey the Law, and leave the world as you found it.

The colonists were clueless space aliens.  Their glorious vision was to transfer a British way of life to a continent that was highly unsuited for it.  Australia’s soils were ancient and minimally fertile, and the climate was bipolar — extreme multi-year droughts could be washed away by sudden deluges.  But, they brought their livestock and plows and gave it a whirl.  They believed that hard work was a virtue.  The Aborigines were astonished to observe how much time and effort the silly newcomers invested in producing the weird stuff they ate.

The new settlers wanted to live like proper rural Brits — permanent homes, built on fenced private property.  They freaked out when the natives set fires to maintain the grassland.  Before long, districts began banning these burns.  This led to the return of saplings and brush.  So, in just 40 years, the site of a tidy dairy farm could be replaced by dense rainforest.

Without burning, insect numbers exploded.  Without burning, fuels built up, leading to new catastrophes, called bushfires.  The Black Thursday fire hit on February 6, 1851.  It burned 12 million acres (5 million ha), killed a million sheep, thousands of cattle, and countless everything else.

Mark Brazil shared a story that was full of crap.  In Britain, cow manure was promptly and properly composted by patriotic dung beetles, which returned essential nutrients to the soil.  In Australia, none of the native dung beetles could get the least bit interested in cow shit.  It was too wet, and too out in the open.  Cow pies could patiently sit on the grass unmolested for four years, because nobody loved them.  This deeply hurt their feelings.

Australian flies, on the other hand, discovered that cow pies made fabulous nurseries for their children.  Each pat could feed 3,000 maggots, which turned into flies — dense clouds of billions and billions of flies — which the hard working Christians did not in any way fancy.  Being outdoors was hellish.  In the 1960s, folks imported British dung beetles, which loved the taste and aroma of cow pies.  Oddly, this is one example where an introduced exotic species apparently didn’t create unintended consequences.  When they ran out of pies to eat, the beetles simply died.

Anyway, a continent inhabited by Stone Age people was substantially altered by firestick farming and hunting.  The Australia of 1788 was radically different from when the first human arrived.  We’ll never know if continued firestick farming would have eventually led to severely degraded ecosystems.  Some serious injuries can take a long time to fully develop.  Many attempts to deliberately control ecosystems have spawned huge unintended consequences over time.  For example, agriculture.

United States

In the central U.S., the prairie ecosystem emerged in the last 8,000 to 10,000 years, displacing the tundra that had emerged as the ice sheets melted and withdrew.  Prairies support complex biodiversity, with different mixes of species adapting to different mixes of soil types, moisture, and climate.  Two hundred years ago, the prairies were home to 30 to 60 million bison, and numerous other herbivores.

Stephen Pyne wrote that when white colonists landed in America, the western portion of the Great Plains was shortgrass prairie, too dry to support forest.  But the eastern portion was tallgrass prairie.  Most of it had rainfall and soils suitable for forest, but Native Americans had gradually pushed back the forest cover.  They maintained this highly productive prairie by burning it every three years or so.  It provided excellent habitat for buffalo and other delicacies.

Burning was a common practice almost everywhere in North America.  By A.D. 1000, the expansion of manmade grasslands enabled buffalo to cross the Mississippi River for the first time.  By the 1600s, they had reached Massachusetts on the Atlantic coast.  In some regions, forests were periodically burned to prevent the accumulation of brush.  This was often done in late autumn, after the leaves had fallen.  Pioneers commented that these fire-maintained forests resembled European parks.  The open floor made it easier to travel, which sped the process of colonization.

Shepard Krech wrote that California Indians burned chaparral (dense brush) to entice deer.  Along the east coast, there were oak openings (meadows with scattered trees) as large as 1,000 acres (404 ha).  Manmade grasslands in the Shenandoah Valley covered a thousand square miles (2,590 km²).  Indians in Oregon’s Willamette Valley engaged in extensive routine burning.  When colonists ended this traditional burning, there was a tremendous recovery of forest in many regions.  Krech noted that Indian fires sometimes exploded into raging infernos that burned for days, sometimes killing entire buffalo herds, up to a thousand animals. 

Between about A.D. 800 and 1300, Indian agriculture greatly expanded, majoring in corn (maize), beans, and squash.  Much of their cropland was former forest, and it was kept cleared by regular burning.  Their fields were often 100 acres (40 ha), and sometimes 1,000.  Because they had no livestock to produce manure for fertilizer, soils were often depleted in a few years.  So, they cleared more forest, and the depleted fields once again grew trees.  This cycle could be repeated until the soil was junk.

In the Midwest, where large areas of forest had been replaced by manmade tallgrass prairie, the topsoil was deep and highly fertile.  Settlers, arriving with plows and draft animals, were able to turn the thick sod, plant grasses like corn and wheat, and reap impressive harvests.  Today, maybe one percent of tallgrass prairie still survives.  A number of states that were once primarily forest or tallgrass prairie are now sprawling farmland.

Michael Williams noted that as the diseases of civilization spread westward, Indians died in great numbers.  They had zero immunity to highly contagious Old World pathogens.  Diseases spread westward far faster than the expansion of settlers.  The half-lucky Indians who survived the epidemics were herded into reservations.  Consequently, the cycle of periodic burning stopped, and the forests quickly returned.  The high mortality of disease resulted in extensive reforestation.  Forests in 1750 may have been bigger and denser than they had been in the previous thousand years.  When whites eventually arrived to create permanent agricultural communities, the regrown forests had to be cleared.

Britain

When the glaciers of the last ice age began melting, sea levels were very low, and England was connected by dry land to Ireland, Scandinavia, and continental Europe.  Barry Cunliffe wrote that as the ice retreated, and the climate warmed, the newly exposed lands went through a sequence of transitions — from tundra, to steppe, and then forest.  Essentially most of Western Europe became a vast forest.  Large game thrived on the tundra and steppe, but the expansion of forests reduced grazing land area, and the abundance of large game.

By 9000 B.C., hunter-gatherers apparently made some small clearings in the forest to attract game.  By 6000 B.C., England became disconnected from the continent by rising sea levels.  By 4500 B.C., when farmers and herders began to trickle in, England was largely a forest, except for the highlands.  Hunters dined on red deer, wild boar, and aurochs.  By 3000 B.C., there were substantial clearances for cropland and pasture.  By A.D. 1100, just 15 percent of Britain was forest.  By 1919, it was five percent, Britannia was essentially stripped naked.

Jed Kaplan’s team of researchers wrote a paper on the prehistoric deforestation of Europe.  It included stunning maps that illustrated the shrinkage of forests between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 1850.  [MAP]  Forests can be pushed back by killing them via burning, chopping, or girdling.  Tropical primates are the only critters that have the spooky ability to create such massive change, affecting entire continents.

In the 1970s, Hugh Brody was working on a British documentary about the Inuit people of Canada.  He had worked closely with an elder named Anaviapik, who had never travelled outside of his homeland.  When the film editing was done, both got on a plane, and flew to London to bless the finished version.  One day, Brody took Anaviapik for a drive in the countryside, and he was totally freaked out by what he saw.  “It’s all built!”  The natural face of the land had entirely been torn off, and replaced with manmade scars.

J. B. MacKinnon mentioned the story of a British scientist visiting the U.S.  From an overlook in the White Mountain National Forest, he could gaze down on 800,000 acres of woodland — an overwhelming experience.  The man burst into tears and had a long, hard cry.  At Yellowstone, he saw wolves in the wild for the first time, and he dropped to his knees.

Ireland

The story in Ireland was similar to Britain in many ways, but Ireland got much more rainfall, annually receiving 50 to 200 inches (127-508 cm) of precipitation.  The wet climate encouraged the growth of lush temperate rainforests.  Frederick Aalen noted that early hunter-gatherers arrived about 8,000 years ago, when the isle was covered with a dense unbroken forest.  Folks lived along coastlines, lakes, and streams.  In the forest they created some openings to attract game, but these were apparently small in scale.

Farmers and herders began arriving around 3500 B.C., and the long war on trees commenced.  By the end of the 1600s, the destruction of native forests was nearly complete.  When Aalen wrote in 1978, just three percent of the land was covered by natural forest or fake forest (tree farms).  Deforestation had many unintended consequences.  William MacLeish noted that in the good old days, the rainforest wicked up a lot of moisture from the land, and allowed the breezes to disperse it into the atmosphere.  When the trees were gone, this dispersal ended, but the Gulf Stream continued delivering warm rainy weather from the Caribbean.  Consequently, water tables rose, bogs spread, and ground turned acid.

If we disregard the serious damage caused by deforestation, Ireland seemed to be a perfect place for raising livestock.  Winters were mild, the grass was green all year, and there was no need to grow, cut, and store hay for winter feed.  Barns were not needed to protect livestock from the cold.  Milk and meat were available all year round.  Herding worked well, but the very rainy climate made it rather risky to grow grain, despite the rich soils.

In A.D. 1185, King Henry II sent Giraldus Cambrensis (Jerry of Wales) to Ireland and report on the conditions.  His report mentioned many beautiful lakes, where some of the fish were larger than any he had ever seen before.  Common freshwater fish included salmon, trout, eels, and oily shad.  Along the coast, saltwater fish were abundant.  The woods were home to “stags so fat that they lose their speed.”  There were vast herds of boars and wild pigs.  Small hares were numerous.  Wolves had not yet been fully exterminated.  He said it was common to see the remains of Irish elk, a species that vanished on the island before the arrival of humans.  Their remains were commonly found in bogs, often in groups.

The Irish people lived like beasts, he wrote.  They held agriculture in contempt, and had no interest in the glittering wealth of the outer world.  There were large tracts of land suitable for crops, but folks had no interest in a shift to backbreaking drudgery.  The herding life worked just fine.  Cambrensis felt great pity for the uncivilized natives.  “Their greatest delight was to be exempt from toil, and their richest possession was the enjoyment of liberty.” 

Ireland was a great place to be a hunter-gatherer, as long as the clans avoided classic booboos like overhunting, overbreeding, or allowing the introduction of domesticated livestock and bloodthirsty colonizers.  Unfortunately, booboos happen.  The wild stags, wolves, and boars were perfectly adapted to the ecosystem, and caused no permanent injuries.  Humans often have a difficult time smoothly blending into ecosystems.  Will shamans ever discover a safe and effective cure for cleverness fever?

Wild Free and Happy Sample 22

[Note: This is the twenty-second 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.] 

Mother Grassland

Hominins originated on the tropical savannahs of Mother Africa, about four million years ago.  Since then, we have evolved, gotten too clever, colonized six continents, driven many megafauna species extinct, maximized food production, and exploded in numbers.  The human saga has been a unique experiment in living that is entirely out of the pattern of all other animals.  In a fantastic joyride of blissful ignorance, we have unintentionally succeeded in rubbishing the planet.  The bedrock foundation of this grand adventure is our deep and enduring relationship with grassland ecosystems.

Grasslands are sprawling green arrays of solar energy collectors that transform sunbeams into carbohydrates.  These nutrients migrate from species to species, up and down the food chain, and enable the existence of the family of life, including large herbivores, the preferred food for prehistoric people.  For the effort invested, they provided the biggest jackpots of meat.  Our intense desire for these animals, and our ongoing dependence on them, guided our evolution from hominins to humans. 

It’s important to understand that herds of large herbivores do not usually reside in forests or jungles.  Large body size is an advantage on grasslands, but can be a disadvantage in dense woodlands.  In terms of vegetation, forests contain much more plant biomass than grasslands, but most of it is elevated out of the reach of hungry herbivores. 

For herd critters, grasslands are the best place to dine on high quality greenery, hang out with friends and relatives, and enjoy a wonderful life of fresh air, travel, and adventure.  Each year, grasslands produce much more new biomass per acre than forests, and it’s conveniently located close to the ground.  Consequently, grasslands are home to far more large animals.  I would expect that most mammalian megafauna species originated in grasslands.

Grasslands, grazers, and large carnivores coevolved for many millions of years.  Much more recently, hominins pushed into the game, and began competing with the carnivores.  By and by, the clever tropical primates, with their terrifying weaponry, expanded into every continent, migrating from grassland to grassland, hunting, feasting, singing, and dancing.

As expanding wild cultures perfected their hunting skills, large game became harder to find, and attention shifted toward smaller animals, birds, shellfish, and so on.  We kept bumping into limits, and some cultures began to lurch toward the domestication of animals and/or plants.

Over time, persistent control freaks eventually succeeded in domesticating some wild herbivore species.  Instead of spending their time chasing increasingly scarce wild critters all over the countryside, they could selectively breed passive dimwitted animals, confine them to limited pastures, and conveniently exploit them in every imaginable way.  Jared Diamond noted that the five most important domesticates were horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.  All five were domesticated on the grasslands of Eurasia by 4000 B.C.  No mammals were domesticated south of the equator in Africa, humankind’s ancestral homeland.

In some cultures, foragers gathered the energy-dense seeds of wild grasses.  Over time they encouraged these grasses to grow in more locations by sowing their seeds.  Foragers had a natural tendency to gather the seeds that were more convenient to reap, and leave behind seeds that readily fell to the ground.  For example, when wild wheat is ripe, the heads shatter, releasing all of their seeds.  This natural dispersal promotes the survival of the species. 

Year after year, foragers brought home seeds from plants that were (1) less prone to shattering, (2) ripened at the same time, and (3) produced larger seeds.  Over centuries, the seeds they planted became significantly different from wild seeds.  Today, more than half of the calories consumed by humankind come from three grasses: rice, wheat, and corn (maize).  Other popular grasses include oats, barley, millet, sorghum, sugar cane, and bamboo. 

I’ll have more to say about plant and animal domestication in later chapters.  Here, I just want to point out that some hunter-gatherer cultures transitioned into farmers and herders.  Their diet continued to major in grassland plant foods and large herbivores, but it was shifting toward domesticated varieties.  What remained constant was the continued dependence of many cultures on grassland ecosystems.

Graham Harvey, a grass worshipping wordsmith, concluded that humans are essentially creatures of the grass, like hyenas and horses.  Deep inside, we still are.  Long ago we lost our ability to quickly scamper up trees, and leap from branch to branch.  We evolved into bipedal critters fine-turned for walking, running, and surviving in grasslands.

Nomadic Freedom

In the good old days, bands of nomadic hunter-gathers spent their lives wandering across vast grasslands.  It was a way of life that majored in freedom.  Our ancestors were as free as every other wild critter.  No rent, money, landlords, soldiers, slaves, taxes, kings, police, or smart phones.  Indeed, we evolved as nomads, and remained nomads for almost the entire four million year hominin saga.  For hunters to stop roaming, and put down roots, would have been very risky.  Their best option was to follow the herds, which never stopped wandering in search of grass.

Bruce Chatwin was fascinated by the freedom of nomadic life, and the deep human need to always keep moving.  He was born in England in 1940, and spent his entire life in an intensely overpopulated world, boiling with nonstop conflict and bad craziness.  Industrial civilization tends not to inspire a profound sense of joy, wonderment, and celebration among the billions of anxious stressed-out taxpayers born in captivity.

He mentioned a Hungarian epidemiologist who had studied the history of infectious diseases.  The man concluded that humans were not meant to settle down.  Whenever you confine dense populations of humans and other animals in a fixed location, poop happens — lots of poop — excrement all over the place.  Drinking water develops a crappy flavor and aroma.  Before long, pathogens rush through the crowds, weeding out the weak and unlucky — a gold rush for grave diggers.  Nomads live in small bands, and rarely crap in the same place twice.  Their water tastes like water, and their lifestyle is not a magnet for infectious diseases.  Freedom is good for your health.  We’ll take a closer look at disease in later pages.

Today, during the brief era of fossil fuel mania, developed societies can temporarily discourage epidemics by implementing complex, expensive, energy-guzzling systems for waste treatment and water purification.  In wealthy societies, antibiotics are currently controlling the spread of many pathogens, but the benefit of these wonder drugs can only be temporary, because pathogens will never stop mutating into drug-resistant forms.  We are approaching the post-antibiotic era.  Whistling while he works, the Grim Reaper is sharpening his scythe.  Breaking all the laws of nature has harsh consequences, and Big Mama Nature has a deep regard for justice.

Finally, nomadic cultures enjoyed great freedom as long as they remained hunter-gatherers.  These cultures were essentially egalitarian.  There was no hierarchy of power, everyone was equal.  Unequal status was toxic to group cohesion.  Folks who became big headed were a serious problem that had to be promptly resolved.  It was vital that folks in small bands cooperated, shared, and respected one another.

When nomadic cultures shifted from hunting wild animals to herding enslaved critters, they entered a path that led to ugly destinations.  Nothing more reliably turns humans into tyrants, conquerors, egomaniacs, and spectacular idiots than cultures that define personal status in terms of accumulated wealth — personal property.  The lad with 100 cattle looked down on the fellow with 10.  This mindset sparked an explosion of craziness — furious empires of Mongols and Huns spilling rivers of blood.  Status mania continues to this day, but on a dramatically larger scale.  We are not living at the zenith of freedom, or anywhere near it.

Grassland Basics

In the dry land regions of Earth, there are four primary biomes: grassland, forest, desert, and tundra.  Precipitation is a key factor.  Forests and jungles need to receive at least 30 inches (76 cm) per year.  Deserts receive less than 10 inches (25 cm).  Grasslands fit in the middle, 10 to 30 inches.  Grasslands have two seasons, productive and dormant.  In warm climates, they are dormant during the dry season, and recover when the rains return.  In temperate climates, they are dormant during the frosty months, and green when the soil thaws.

Grasslands have evolved to survive in arid climates.  Grasses can live where most other plant species cannot.  There are three basic categories of grasslands: savannah, steppe, and prairie.  [MAP]  Savannahs are grasslands speckled with some trees and brush.  Steppes are called shortgrass prairies, because most plants are less than one foot (30 cm) tall.  Prairies are wetter, and produce tall grass, which can grow up to 13 feet (4 m) high — a horse can disappear in it.

Graham Harvey noted that grasses first evolved about 70 million years ago.  There are now an estimated 12,000 grass species, and they grow in many temperate and tropical regions.  Grasslands are communities of different plants — primarily grasses, mixed with a wide variety of sedges and leafy forbs (wild flowers and herbs). 

These mixed communities maximize the capture of solar energy, make better use of soil resources, and create rich humus.  Humus boosts fertility, and helps retain moisture.  Some plants convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form that is essential for all plants and animals.  Others are good at retrieving essential mineral nutrients.

Following an intense disturbance, grasslands can recover in 5 to 10 years — far faster than a wrecked forest.  Evolution has done a remarkable job of fine-tuning grasslands for rugged durability.  They can go dormant during dry times, and revive when rains return.  They can survive extended droughts and six month winters.  They can recover more easily after wildfires because only a third of grassland biomass is above ground, and vulnerable to flames. 

Beneath the surface, the invisible portion of grasslands is astonishing.  Many plants send roots deep into the ground, to acquire moisture and nutrients.  Some grow as deep as 32 feet (10 m).  In some regions, densely interwoven roots created a thick sod that pioneer farmers cut into bricks that were used to build homes and schools.  Because of unreliable precipitation, trees and shrubs often die before they can grow roots deep enough to tap dependable water.

The seeds of many grassland species can remain dormant for an extended period, until appropriate conditions return, and inspire them to germinate.  Some seeds can survive a ride through an herbivore’s gut and remain fertile, enabling the colonization of new locations.

In 1872, Kansas senator John James Ingalls celebrated the power of grass.  He wrote: “Grass is the forgiveness of nature — her constant benediction.  …Streets abandoned by traffic become grass-grown like rural lanes, and are obliterated.  Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal.  …The primary form of food is grass.  Grass feeds the ox: the ox nourishes man: man dies and goes to grass again; and so the tide of life with everlasting repetition, in continuous circles, moves endlessly on and upward, and in more senses than one, all flesh is grass.”