1 00:00:01,800 --> 00:00:05,120 Speaker 1: Native America existed for ten thousand years in a west 2 00:00:05,240 --> 00:00:09,360 Speaker 1: marked by many prior extinctions, but somehow found it possible 3 00:00:09,360 --> 00:00:12,920 Speaker 1: to preserve almost all the biological richness of the continent 4 00:00:13,280 --> 00:00:17,520 Speaker 1: until the arrival of Europeans. I'm Dan Flores, and this 5 00:00:17,560 --> 00:00:21,560 Speaker 1: is the American West, brought to you by velvet Buck. 6 00:00:22,200 --> 00:00:25,520 Speaker 1: Still in barrel. Velvet Buck arrives this summer, just in 7 00:00:25,640 --> 00:00:28,800 Speaker 1: time for the season that calls us home. A portion 8 00:00:28,960 --> 00:00:32,879 Speaker 1: of every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers to protect 9 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:52,280 Speaker 1: public lands, waters and wildlife, enjoy responsibly ravens and coyotes. 10 00:00:52,360 --> 00:00:52,800 Speaker 2: America. 11 00:01:00,080 --> 00:01:03,680 Speaker 1: Walking the edge of a sharp rimmed cliff in out 12 00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:08,240 Speaker 1: back Montana before sunrise, moving through a twilight of grays 13 00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:14,399 Speaker 1: and blacks and outlines, large graceful birds. Sandhill cranes are 14 00:01:14,480 --> 00:01:19,480 Speaker 1: fluting their strange, plisty scene cries in the pastel sky overhead. 15 00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:24,840 Speaker 1: But I'm focused on the lines of the topography in 16 00:01:24,880 --> 00:01:28,280 Speaker 1: front of me, especially the way the mesa I'm walking 17 00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:38,640 Speaker 1: narrows up ahead, seeing that my walking pace quickens. This 18 00:01:38,720 --> 00:01:42,480 Speaker 1: is a historic piece of ground, starting some two thousand 19 00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:45,520 Speaker 1: years in the past and continuing down to two hundred 20 00:01:45,600 --> 00:01:50,240 Speaker 1: years ago. It was the scene of frenzied, albeit sporadic 21 00:01:50,320 --> 00:01:55,320 Speaker 1: human activity. Like most historic places, there is something maddeningly 22 00:01:55,520 --> 00:01:56,720 Speaker 1: mute about the spot. 23 00:01:56,800 --> 00:01:57,080 Speaker 2: Now. 24 00:01:57,720 --> 00:02:01,560 Speaker 1: It's why we often stand and gawk numbly in such places, 25 00:02:01,920 --> 00:02:05,040 Speaker 1: unable to connect to the events we're supposed to marvel over. 26 00:02:05,800 --> 00:02:08,480 Speaker 1: But this morning, I'm not going to be stymied by 27 00:02:08,560 --> 00:02:12,240 Speaker 1: lack of imagination. I'm here with a purpose, my intent 28 00:02:12,360 --> 00:02:15,680 Speaker 1: to experience at least some part of what a Buffalo 29 00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:20,000 Speaker 1: jump drive was all about. It was fully dark when 30 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:23,360 Speaker 1: I arrived here an hour earlier, parked my car at 31 00:02:23,360 --> 00:02:27,200 Speaker 1: an interpretive sign, finished a cup of coffee, then slowly 32 00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:29,840 Speaker 1: worked through the boulders to the top of this mesa. 33 00:02:30,760 --> 00:02:34,200 Speaker 1: While I walked eastward to the luxuriant grassland of a 34 00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:38,799 Speaker 1: high meadow, the sky had gradually lightened. Now turning back 35 00:02:38,840 --> 00:02:41,440 Speaker 1: towards the car and the cliff I'd climbed in the dark, 36 00:02:41,720 --> 00:02:44,720 Speaker 1: I'm becoming caught up in what I tell myself are 37 00:02:44,840 --> 00:02:49,520 Speaker 1: echoes of the place. Pointing myself down the narrowing mesa 38 00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:56,359 Speaker 1: towards the far Rimrock, I start to jog. I'm running 39 00:02:56,360 --> 00:02:59,640 Speaker 1: a track that men and other animals have run many 40 00:02:59,680 --> 00:03:03,160 Speaker 1: times in the past, But in contrast to my lope 41 00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:06,600 Speaker 1: beneath the fluting cranes, then there would have been the 42 00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:10,800 Speaker 1: pounding thunder of sharp black hoofs cutting through the grass, 43 00:03:11,080 --> 00:03:15,280 Speaker 1: and the alarmed grunning of animals, their huge forms wrapped 44 00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:18,280 Speaker 1: in billowing clouds of dust. That must have made for 45 00:03:18,360 --> 00:03:24,080 Speaker 1: a ghostly stampede. Now I hear only my footfalls and 46 00:03:24,160 --> 00:03:27,280 Speaker 1: my breathing, But in the real thing, the air would 47 00:03:27,320 --> 00:03:31,040 Speaker 1: have been rent by the exultant shouts of the drivers, 48 00:03:31,200 --> 00:03:34,760 Speaker 1: urging on runners wearing the skins of wolves and red 49 00:03:34,800 --> 00:03:39,400 Speaker 1: coated bison calves leading the herd to its destiny. They're 50 00:03:39,520 --> 00:03:43,960 Speaker 1: costuming a ruse to fool buffalo cows into thinking that 51 00:03:44,080 --> 00:03:49,280 Speaker 1: wolves were selecting out defenseless young ones. Listening to the 52 00:03:49,360 --> 00:03:52,400 Speaker 1: rhythm of my feet, I wonder if the herd's noise 53 00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:56,800 Speaker 1: wouldn't have been so overwhelming, it would have morphed into silence, 54 00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:02,240 Speaker 1: adding a surreal quality to the ghostliness. The whole affair 55 00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:06,040 Speaker 1: would have commenced days earlier with a religious ceremony and 56 00:04:06,240 --> 00:04:09,200 Speaker 1: careful maneuvering of a bison herd in that high meadow 57 00:04:09,520 --> 00:04:13,440 Speaker 1: into position for a stampede. Then if all went well, 58 00:04:13,720 --> 00:04:15,800 Speaker 1: and it went well enough times in the past to 59 00:04:15,880 --> 00:04:19,280 Speaker 1: accumulate a bone layer five feet deep at the base 60 00:04:19,320 --> 00:04:22,039 Speaker 1: of the cliff. I'd climbed. The runners who led the 61 00:04:22,040 --> 00:04:24,839 Speaker 1: herd to the cliff edge would escape if they could, 62 00:04:25,200 --> 00:04:29,080 Speaker 1: by darting aside at the last moment, dodging the relentless 63 00:04:29,080 --> 00:04:32,640 Speaker 1: brown river of animals hurtling into space in a dream 64 00:04:32,800 --> 00:04:39,000 Speaker 1: of wild frozen action. Where I've begun my run is 65 00:04:39,040 --> 00:04:42,039 Speaker 1: a half mile back from the cliff, and soon enough 66 00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:45,640 Speaker 1: I crossed to descending benches and realize I am on 67 00:04:45,760 --> 00:04:49,440 Speaker 1: the point of no return in this bison jump. Get 68 00:04:49,480 --> 00:04:52,960 Speaker 1: the animals here and have them running, And the downhill 69 00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:56,520 Speaker 1: pitch steepened so quickly there would be no way for 70 00:04:56,560 --> 00:05:01,240 Speaker 1: the herd leaders either to stop or turn aside. I'm 71 00:05:01,320 --> 00:05:05,080 Speaker 1: running harder now, pulled faster by the angling slope, and 72 00:05:05,160 --> 00:05:08,960 Speaker 1: I registered that out in the valley, dawn color has arrived. 73 00:05:09,680 --> 00:05:13,920 Speaker 1: Chrome yellow light cast by the rising sun is lighting 74 00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:16,360 Speaker 1: the white cliffs on the far side of the river, 75 00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:21,920 Speaker 1: a scene of great beauty, one last soothing side of earth, perhaps, 76 00:05:22,200 --> 00:05:24,800 Speaker 1: as the lip of the plunge is scarcely one hundred 77 00:05:24,800 --> 00:05:29,239 Speaker 1: and twenty feet away. Now beyond that is windmilling motion 78 00:05:29,760 --> 00:05:33,560 Speaker 1: and the silence of forty feet of free space. Then 79 00:05:33,680 --> 00:05:38,080 Speaker 1: the jarring stop amongst the boulders. I slide to a 80 00:05:38,120 --> 00:05:40,520 Speaker 1: stop a few feet from the cliff edge and stand 81 00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:44,400 Speaker 1: panting for a few minutes, looking down on the slope below. 82 00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:47,320 Speaker 1: By modern standards, the scene would not have been pretty. 83 00:05:48,120 --> 00:05:52,560 Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety seven, the British trader Peter Fiddler described 84 00:05:52,720 --> 00:05:56,719 Speaker 1: such a concluding set piece. The young men killed the 85 00:05:56,760 --> 00:06:00,440 Speaker 1: crippled animals with arrows, bayonets tied upon them, the end 86 00:06:00,440 --> 00:06:03,920 Speaker 1: of a pole in etc. The hatchet is frequently used, 87 00:06:04,200 --> 00:06:07,120 Speaker 1: and it is shocking to see the poor animals thus 88 00:06:07,240 --> 00:06:11,840 Speaker 1: pin up without any way of escaping. However, pod like 89 00:06:11,960 --> 00:06:17,040 Speaker 1: their behavior as classic herd animals. All these bison were individuals, 90 00:06:17,080 --> 00:06:21,960 Speaker 1: of course, and that is the way they died. Slanting sunlight, 91 00:06:22,200 --> 00:06:26,320 Speaker 1: throwing morning shadows hundreds of feet long across the Madison 92 00:06:26,400 --> 00:06:30,200 Speaker 1: Valley of Montana, lights my face over the mountains. I 93 00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:34,240 Speaker 1: see a jet glending silver, a mobile diamond slicing through 94 00:06:34,279 --> 00:06:37,640 Speaker 1: the blue, Its motion fetching me back to my climb 95 00:06:37,680 --> 00:06:41,560 Speaker 1: down to the car, back to my commitments. But before 96 00:06:41,560 --> 00:06:44,400 Speaker 1: I start, I stand for a moment, thinking of the 97 00:06:44,440 --> 00:06:49,279 Speaker 1: bison that died among the boulders below. Humans drove buffalo 98 00:06:49,360 --> 00:06:53,320 Speaker 1: off cliffs in America for twelve thousand years, and despite 99 00:06:53,360 --> 00:06:56,280 Speaker 1: knowing something about it, I find it a shock to 100 00:06:56,320 --> 00:06:59,280 Speaker 1: be in this space where it happened, this close to 101 00:06:59,360 --> 00:07:03,120 Speaker 1: how it worked. I visited head smashed in jump in 102 00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:08,679 Speaker 1: Alberta and absorbed archaeologist friends accounts of Bonfire Shelter Jump 103 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:13,120 Speaker 1: in the gray limestone canyons of the Pacos River in Texas. 104 00:07:13,520 --> 00:07:17,200 Speaker 1: Hearing at the visitor center in Canada that Indians carefully 105 00:07:17,280 --> 00:07:20,480 Speaker 1: utilized every part of the animals. Yet knowing that in 106 00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:25,600 Speaker 1: Texas the cliff at Bonfire Shelter is scorched hundreds of 107 00:07:25,640 --> 00:07:31,160 Speaker 1: feet high from the spontaneous combustion of an enormous, mangled 108 00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:36,679 Speaker 1: heap of unutilized bison Native hunters drove off the rim above. 109 00:07:37,960 --> 00:07:41,800 Speaker 1: Those two sides beg a big question, putting aside whatever 110 00:07:41,880 --> 00:07:45,480 Speaker 1: fantasies of the past we have, what kind of relationship 111 00:07:45,560 --> 00:07:49,120 Speaker 1: did humans in animals fashion over the one hundred centuries 112 00:07:49,120 --> 00:07:53,200 Speaker 1: of Native America that followed the Pleistocene, And if it 113 00:07:53,520 --> 00:07:58,480 Speaker 1: was different, more ecologically benign, or balanced than what came before, 114 00:07:58,760 --> 00:08:11,680 Speaker 1: and what came after then, why Clovisia the Beautiful ended 115 00:08:11,720 --> 00:08:14,760 Speaker 1: with the demise of elephants and the majority of America's 116 00:08:14,760 --> 00:08:18,560 Speaker 1: big animals. People were here, but most of the original 117 00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:22,760 Speaker 1: animals were not. The haunting stories of losses must have 118 00:08:22,960 --> 00:08:28,160 Speaker 1: lasted because having so many charismatic creatures disappear seems to 119 00:08:28,240 --> 00:08:32,760 Speaker 1: have shifted human behavior. The ten thousand years that followed 120 00:08:32,960 --> 00:08:38,280 Speaker 1: wasn't entirely extinction free, but thousands of years later, arriving 121 00:08:38,440 --> 00:08:42,160 Speaker 1: Old Worlders described the wild new world that greeted them 122 00:08:42,440 --> 00:08:46,439 Speaker 1: as a paradise of animals. The image of America as 123 00:08:46,480 --> 00:08:49,560 Speaker 1: an animal eaten out of prehistory has shaped the country's 124 00:08:49,600 --> 00:08:53,360 Speaker 1: sense of itself ever since. But was that actually the 125 00:08:53,400 --> 00:08:59,200 Speaker 1: reality of Native America? When nineteenth century ethnographers began to 126 00:08:59,240 --> 00:09:03,280 Speaker 1: assemble a lie linguistic map of Native America, the conclusion 127 00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:07,120 Speaker 1: anyone would draw is that over ten thousand years there 128 00:09:07,120 --> 00:09:10,960 Speaker 1: had been a tremendous movement of peoples around the continent. 129 00:09:11,840 --> 00:09:16,560 Speaker 1: Athabaskan speakers lived in interior Alaska, and also way down 130 00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:20,560 Speaker 1: in the Southwest. There were pools of Algonquin speakers in 131 00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:24,000 Speaker 1: New England, in the Ohio Valley, and in the foothills 132 00:09:24,040 --> 00:09:28,400 Speaker 1: of the Rocky Mountains. All this was in contrast to Australia, 133 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:32,360 Speaker 1: for example, where aboriginal populations have stayed in place for 134 00:09:32,400 --> 00:09:38,600 Speaker 1: fifty thousand years. The American story implies significant experimentation with 135 00:09:38,720 --> 00:09:42,640 Speaker 1: different locales and ways of life. Some of those human 136 00:09:42,679 --> 00:09:46,200 Speaker 1: migrations may have been related to the resheffling of American 137 00:09:46,320 --> 00:09:50,520 Speaker 1: nature that took place in the echoes of the Pleisscene extinctions. 138 00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:55,000 Speaker 1: The biology of the conton was reinventing itself. The vegetation 139 00:09:55,200 --> 00:09:59,360 Speaker 1: was changing. Without ground slows to disperse their seeds, the 140 00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:03,440 Speaker 1: range of Joshua trees now began to contract, and without 141 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:08,280 Speaker 1: mammoths succurbed them, honey mesquite began to spread. There were 142 00:10:08,360 --> 00:10:12,240 Speaker 1: so many missing animals that a remarkable number of ecological 143 00:10:12,400 --> 00:10:18,760 Speaker 1: niches either were vacant or newly filling. The ecological rebirth 144 00:10:19,040 --> 00:10:22,840 Speaker 1: was most dramatic in the western half of America. The 145 00:10:22,960 --> 00:10:29,040 Speaker 1: loss of mammoths, giant bison, horses, camels, ground sloths, direwolves, 146 00:10:29,240 --> 00:10:33,400 Speaker 1: short faced bears, scavenging birds, and a range of cat 147 00:10:33,440 --> 00:10:38,880 Speaker 1: predators opened niches at every level. In cases like wolves 148 00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:43,280 Speaker 1: and bears, there were ready replacement species, with direwolves now 149 00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:47,640 Speaker 1: extinct gray wolves and ancient American wolves emerged as the 150 00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:53,320 Speaker 1: primary caned predators, But with seventy percent of America's grazers gone, 151 00:10:53,760 --> 00:10:58,520 Speaker 1: niches for replacements were wide open with almost no competition. 152 00:10:58,960 --> 00:11:03,920 Speaker 1: A new small ball or bison, supplanted horses, mammoths, and 153 00:11:04,040 --> 00:11:08,480 Speaker 1: its huge bison ancestors. Within a few centuries, this new 154 00:11:08,840 --> 00:11:13,200 Speaker 1: dwarf bison grew into a biomass of animals that had 155 00:11:13,280 --> 00:11:17,880 Speaker 1: almost no analog anywhere else on Earth. Biologists now believe 156 00:11:18,040 --> 00:11:23,160 Speaker 1: modern bison are a classic example of anthropogenic selection, their 157 00:11:23,320 --> 00:11:30,040 Speaker 1: size and rapid reproduction shaped by human predation. Seals, sea otters, 158 00:11:30,080 --> 00:11:33,880 Speaker 1: and sea lions excepted, along with the one prong horn 159 00:11:33,960 --> 00:11:38,040 Speaker 1: species that survived to browse the forbes that camels once ate. 160 00:11:38,679 --> 00:11:42,160 Speaker 1: Most of the large animals west of the Mississippi were 161 00:11:42,360 --> 00:11:46,920 Speaker 1: Asian immigrants. In some parts of the planet, the warmer 162 00:11:46,960 --> 00:11:49,960 Speaker 1: climate that marked the end of the Ice Ages allowed 163 00:11:50,120 --> 00:11:53,640 Speaker 1: hard pressed humans to try out some new things. But 164 00:11:53,800 --> 00:11:58,839 Speaker 1: since humans had extensively settled America only thirteen thousand years 165 00:11:58,840 --> 00:12:03,400 Speaker 1: ago rather than forty five thousand, North America didn't yet 166 00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:07,400 Speaker 1: call for an agricultural revolution the way the Old World did. 167 00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:12,320 Speaker 1: America's human cultures segued to a stage where animals were 168 00:12:12,360 --> 00:12:16,080 Speaker 1: still of primary importance, but plants were taking on a 169 00:12:16,120 --> 00:12:22,319 Speaker 1: more significant role. Archaic is the term anthropologist and archaeologists 170 00:12:22,559 --> 00:12:26,280 Speaker 1: have long used for humans living this way, by which 171 00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:31,600 Speaker 1: they mean people existing as hunter gatherers. So, while the 172 00:12:31,720 --> 00:12:37,000 Speaker 1: Old World experimented with agriculture and domestication, in North America, 173 00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:41,640 Speaker 1: the hunting gathering lifestyle continued over vast spans of time 174 00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:47,360 Speaker 1: and diverse geographies all the way into modern history. Clearly, 175 00:12:47,440 --> 00:12:52,120 Speaker 1: we ancient hunters of animals surrendered our oldest LifeWay with reluctance. 176 00:12:57,480 --> 00:13:01,199 Speaker 1: America wasn't just in the throes of bio logical recreation. 177 00:13:02,200 --> 00:13:05,960 Speaker 1: Around eighty five hundred years ago, there was another potent change. 178 00:13:06,360 --> 00:13:09,959 Speaker 1: The warming cycle that ended the Last Ice Age didn't relent, 179 00:13:10,360 --> 00:13:14,000 Speaker 1: and America's climate swung into a hot, dry phase that 180 00:13:14,160 --> 00:13:18,120 Speaker 1: stayed in place for a mind blowing thirty seven hundred years. 181 00:13:19,120 --> 00:13:22,600 Speaker 1: This was the depths of the last entered Glacial, the 182 00:13:22,679 --> 00:13:26,920 Speaker 1: long slide out of the frozen Wisconsin Ice Age. Now, 183 00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:31,400 Speaker 1: the Earth's rotational wobble had the northern hemisphere slightly closer 184 00:13:31,440 --> 00:13:35,200 Speaker 1: to the Sun, and for almost forty centuries some parts 185 00:13:35,240 --> 00:13:39,800 Speaker 1: of America cooked, the Alta thermal, as it's called, came 186 00:13:39,880 --> 00:13:42,480 Speaker 1: close to turning large parts of the continent into a 187 00:13:42,520 --> 00:13:46,160 Speaker 1: true desert and a vacant one. Many species of animals 188 00:13:46,240 --> 00:13:49,880 Speaker 1: left for wetter settings. So did many human groups, like 189 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:54,160 Speaker 1: other animals, shifting eastward and westward out of the interior. West, 190 00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:59,040 Speaker 1: the country where Clovis and folsome people thrived nearly emptied 191 00:13:59,040 --> 00:14:02,720 Speaker 1: of humans during the Alta thermal, But once the Alta 192 00:14:02,800 --> 00:14:07,480 Speaker 1: thermal subsided, generations of hunter gatherer people's returned to occupy 193 00:14:07,520 --> 00:14:12,040 Speaker 1: the same landscapes for centuries. That kind of close familiarity 194 00:14:12,360 --> 00:14:16,720 Speaker 1: gave them bodies of handed down ecological insights about how 195 00:14:16,760 --> 00:14:21,440 Speaker 1: to live in particular places. The feedbacks they read from 196 00:14:21,520 --> 00:14:25,160 Speaker 1: place based living enable humans to come up with a 197 00:14:25,280 --> 00:14:30,800 Speaker 1: striking epiphany, one allowing them to live well without using. 198 00:14:30,680 --> 00:14:31,440 Speaker 2: Up their world. 199 00:14:33,040 --> 00:14:37,240 Speaker 1: The breakthrough, a key to success in Native America, sprang 200 00:14:37,320 --> 00:14:40,720 Speaker 1: from the realization that there was no longer a wild 201 00:14:40,800 --> 00:14:45,240 Speaker 1: new world empty of other people out there. Clovis like 202 00:14:45,320 --> 00:14:50,280 Speaker 1: expansion across a virtually uninhabited continent was over. Humans now 203 00:14:50,360 --> 00:14:54,840 Speaker 1: had to learn to deliberately carefully manage their own numbers 204 00:14:55,040 --> 00:15:00,560 Speaker 1: to avoid overshooting local resources when times turned bad. In 205 00:15:00,640 --> 00:15:04,800 Speaker 1: a variable world, good times inevitably give way to bad times. 206 00:15:05,240 --> 00:15:09,080 Speaker 1: That was an ancient lesson. Basing your numbers on the 207 00:15:09,120 --> 00:15:12,800 Speaker 1: good times could set you up for disaster. How did 208 00:15:12,800 --> 00:15:16,360 Speaker 1: these ancient Americans manage to pull off controlling their populations 209 00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:21,000 Speaker 1: so they could live well on local resources. Birth spacing 210 00:15:21,240 --> 00:15:26,360 Speaker 1: was one common strategy. Breastfeeding suppresses ovulation during a mother's 211 00:15:26,400 --> 00:15:31,840 Speaker 1: fertile years, preventing a rapid succession of pregnancies. Child mortality 212 00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:36,280 Speaker 1: was high among ancient humans anyway, but most hunter gatherers 213 00:15:36,360 --> 00:15:40,240 Speaker 1: practice forms of abortion to control their populations, and the 214 00:15:40,320 --> 00:15:44,680 Speaker 1: evidence is that as an ecological strategy it worked well. 215 00:15:44,760 --> 00:15:47,320 Speaker 1: But for the women who carried babies to term or 216 00:15:47,320 --> 00:15:53,520 Speaker 1: close to it, infanticide in particular, was a psychological burden. Ultimately, 217 00:15:53,680 --> 00:15:58,080 Speaker 1: many hunter gatherers sought to escape it, but the larger 218 00:15:58,160 --> 00:16:02,480 Speaker 1: equation was relentless. The hunting gathering economy was still the 219 00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:07,640 Speaker 1: predator's economy, and predators of whatever kind were always few 220 00:16:07,760 --> 00:16:12,440 Speaker 1: compared to prey. Hunting and gathering required space to roam 221 00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:16,560 Speaker 1: habitats for birds and mammals. Living the good life meant 222 00:16:16,760 --> 00:16:22,040 Speaker 1: you could not overburden the world with people. There was 223 00:16:22,120 --> 00:16:25,760 Speaker 1: one possibility to increase human numbers, but it meant giving 224 00:16:25,840 --> 00:16:29,520 Speaker 1: up much of humanity's ancient life and investing in an 225 00:16:29,680 --> 00:16:35,560 Speaker 1: entirely new economy. Around five thousand years ago, an agricultural 226 00:16:35,560 --> 00:16:38,520 Speaker 1: revolution similar to the one that swept the Old World 227 00:16:38,680 --> 00:16:42,600 Speaker 1: began to spread into North America from the south, the 228 00:16:42,640 --> 00:16:47,160 Speaker 1: selection and domestication of wild plants emerged where human populations 229 00:16:47,200 --> 00:16:53,280 Speaker 1: were densest and animal population's lowest, namely crowded Meso America. 230 00:16:54,080 --> 00:16:58,520 Speaker 1: Unknown traders and travelers first carried ideas about domestication northward 231 00:16:58,640 --> 00:17:02,600 Speaker 1: about four thousand years ago, and later the actual seed 232 00:17:02,680 --> 00:17:08,399 Speaker 1: stocks of Mexican agriculture. So over the ensuing millennia, crop 233 00:17:08,440 --> 00:17:12,960 Speaker 1: fields and farming towns began to dot Native America from 234 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:16,240 Speaker 1: the south to southern New England, then along the river 235 00:17:16,320 --> 00:17:19,960 Speaker 1: valleys of the Midwest, and even in scattered locations in 236 00:17:20,040 --> 00:17:25,760 Speaker 1: the desert southwest. Once the agricultural transformation took root, populations 237 00:17:25,800 --> 00:17:31,960 Speaker 1: began to grow, and sometimes centralized governing bodies, usually religious ones, 238 00:17:32,480 --> 00:17:39,959 Speaker 1: organized towns into regional empires we know as Kahokia, Spiro Mounds, Hooho, 239 00:17:40,119 --> 00:17:43,720 Speaker 1: Kom and the Chaco and Empire, which I talked about 240 00:17:43,760 --> 00:17:47,640 Speaker 1: in our first podcast. All of these were very late 241 00:17:47,720 --> 00:17:51,960 Speaker 1: experiments in the last thousand years of Native America, but 242 00:17:52,080 --> 00:17:56,880 Speaker 1: in vast regions of America, agriculture never replaced hunting a gathering. 243 00:17:57,400 --> 00:17:59,920 Speaker 1: So wetted were Native people to the hunt that eat 244 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:04,680 Speaker 1: even his agricultural towns emerged. Many of the farmers continued 245 00:18:04,680 --> 00:18:08,879 Speaker 1: to hunt, at least seasonally. Some returned exclusively to hunting 246 00:18:09,080 --> 00:18:13,960 Speaker 1: when circumstances allowed. What sort of human existence could be better? 247 00:18:27,440 --> 00:18:31,320 Speaker 1: All the evidence indicates that America's Native people lived immersed 248 00:18:31,400 --> 00:18:36,320 Speaker 1: in art, stories, and observations designed around the grand theme 249 00:18:36,680 --> 00:18:42,760 Speaker 1: of understanding themselves in a sometimes impenetrable world. A fundamental 250 00:18:42,760 --> 00:18:46,600 Speaker 1: way to probe those kinds of understandings is through stories 251 00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:52,440 Speaker 1: of gods. The oldest named characters in North American history, 252 00:18:52,440 --> 00:18:55,520 Speaker 1: in fact, are the deities who created the continent and 253 00:18:55,560 --> 00:18:58,480 Speaker 1: its life, and set in motion human life with all 254 00:18:58,520 --> 00:19:02,400 Speaker 1: of its victories and tragedy. Stories of these deities make 255 00:19:02,520 --> 00:19:07,880 Speaker 1: up the continent's oldest literature, with few exceptions. Ancient America, 256 00:19:07,920 --> 00:19:12,040 Speaker 1: and gods were animals, although the stories described some as 257 00:19:12,200 --> 00:19:17,320 Speaker 1: anthropomorphic animals. In Western America, for example, the deity who 258 00:19:17,320 --> 00:19:22,320 Speaker 1: acquired the universal epithet coyote stood upright on its legs 259 00:19:22,600 --> 00:19:26,720 Speaker 1: and brandished human hands, but had the fur, sharp nose, 260 00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:30,640 Speaker 1: erect ears, and the tale of a coyote. The deities 261 00:19:30,680 --> 00:19:35,480 Speaker 1: who made it into modern English as Coyote, Raven, spider Man, 262 00:19:35,920 --> 00:19:41,199 Speaker 1: Skeleton Man, Master Rabbit all shared a basic human nature 263 00:19:41,480 --> 00:19:46,200 Speaker 1: with their followers. Our vices, our lusts and our jealousies, 264 00:19:46,480 --> 00:19:51,360 Speaker 1: our selfishness and our narcissism resided in America's ancient gods. 265 00:19:51,680 --> 00:19:55,439 Speaker 1: There to writtness and there for good reason. More about 266 00:19:55,440 --> 00:19:58,640 Speaker 1: this in a later episode. But the deities not only 267 00:19:58,720 --> 00:20:01,520 Speaker 1: explained to listeners why North America was the kind of 268 00:20:01,560 --> 00:20:06,679 Speaker 1: world it was, they taught lessons, often uncomfortable or funny ones, 269 00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:13,879 Speaker 1: about human behavior and motives. They were gods, creators, also thieves, liars, 270 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:20,680 Speaker 1: and lettres, classic professors of human nature. Coyote, who emerges 271 00:20:20,760 --> 00:20:23,480 Speaker 1: from the stories as a kind of world win biol, 272 00:20:23,600 --> 00:20:27,959 Speaker 1: physical force with an enormous appetite for pleasure and sensuality, 273 00:20:28,480 --> 00:20:30,800 Speaker 1: was one of the most widely known gods out of 274 00:20:30,840 --> 00:20:34,840 Speaker 1: ancient America and avatar for humans in the world, and 275 00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:38,000 Speaker 1: we'll devote much of an episode to him and his stories. 276 00:20:39,040 --> 00:20:42,560 Speaker 1: Like Raven, He is the un theseeen conductor of a 277 00:20:42,640 --> 00:20:47,120 Speaker 1: master plan set in motion by an aloof first cause. 278 00:20:47,800 --> 00:20:52,320 Speaker 1: This more knowable, approachable god was common in Native America, 279 00:20:53,400 --> 00:20:56,040 Speaker 1: and if there are mysteries in the world you've wondered about, 280 00:20:56,480 --> 00:21:01,160 Speaker 1: let Raven's adventures explain them. Raven one was yet another 281 00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:06,240 Speaker 1: merged animal human deity who told the clinkets I was 282 00:21:06,359 --> 00:21:11,840 Speaker 1: born before this world was known, uttering his monosyllabic go. 283 00:21:12,880 --> 00:21:16,359 Speaker 1: Raven proceeds to shape each animal in a slightly different 284 00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:24,760 Speaker 1: way and to name them all whale, seal, eagle, bear, caribou, beaver, salmon, sea, otter, land, 285 00:21:24,840 --> 00:21:29,240 Speaker 1: otter wolf. The birds he paints in bright colors because 286 00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:33,119 Speaker 1: he wants them to be pretty. There is one worrisome 287 00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:38,000 Speaker 1: thread that runs through Raven and Coyote stories, though in 288 00:21:38,119 --> 00:21:43,200 Speaker 1: early times the Inuit explained, Raven becomes concerned that humans 289 00:21:43,320 --> 00:21:47,600 Speaker 1: are becoming too numerous. Human villages are growing too large, 290 00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:51,840 Speaker 1: and subsequently their residents are killing too many animals. The 291 00:21:52,040 --> 00:21:56,240 Speaker 1: Inuit first man agrees and tells Raven, if the people 292 00:21:56,320 --> 00:21:59,560 Speaker 1: do not stop killing so many animals, they will kill 293 00:21:59,600 --> 00:22:04,639 Speaker 1: everything you've made. In Coyote's case, as both the yanas 294 00:22:04,720 --> 00:22:08,480 Speaker 1: of California and the Navajoes of the Southwest told the 295 00:22:08,560 --> 00:22:12,679 Speaker 1: story humans have to die because if they do not, 296 00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:17,399 Speaker 1: human overpopulation will result in the destruction of all the 297 00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:28,480 Speaker 1: animals and even of earth itself. In the early nineteen thirties, 298 00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:33,440 Speaker 1: a historian of religion named Joseph Epps Brown became fascinated 299 00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:39,159 Speaker 1: by Native religions. He interviewed traditional Lakota elders, including the 300 00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:43,119 Speaker 1: legendary black elk, and ultimately set down the ideas that 301 00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:46,600 Speaker 1: made up part of hunter gatherer knowledge about America's animals. 302 00:22:47,480 --> 00:22:51,760 Speaker 1: Brown's informants perceive the essential nature of animal species as 303 00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:56,960 Speaker 1: much through dreams and visions as through native science. Bears 304 00:22:57,040 --> 00:23:00,399 Speaker 1: ruled the underground, as bison did the surface, and eagles 305 00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:05,520 Speaker 1: the air. Certain animals illustrated particular traits useful to the 306 00:23:05,600 --> 00:23:09,439 Speaker 1: human Animal members of a wolf clan sought to invoke 307 00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:13,199 Speaker 1: the wolf's cooperative skills in hunting and killing. If a 308 00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:15,680 Speaker 1: young man on a vision quest heard a bull elk 309 00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:18,639 Speaker 1: bugle for cows in the crisp air of autumn, he 310 00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:22,000 Speaker 1: might then regard the elk as a totem whose potent 311 00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:27,600 Speaker 1: sexuality he could internalize. These elders also recalled a connection 312 00:23:28,119 --> 00:23:34,159 Speaker 1: involving energy flow between creatures. These were connections neither eighteenth 313 00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:38,840 Speaker 1: century Lenaean science or twenty first century genetic science would 314 00:23:38,920 --> 00:23:43,399 Speaker 1: ever think to link together. What the Lakotas called Umi 315 00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:49,359 Speaker 1: or yum was world wind power, the unrestrained residue of 316 00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:53,800 Speaker 1: the energy of the four winds. They remembered WorldWind power 317 00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:57,040 Speaker 1: as much sought, in part because possessing it made one 318 00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:00,760 Speaker 1: difficult to attack in battle, But only a small number 319 00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:06,359 Speaker 1: of special animals spiders, also, moths, dragonflies, and bears, elk 320 00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:11,760 Speaker 1: and bison possessed the world winds secret. As for bison, 321 00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:15,400 Speaker 1: seasonal winds coming from the north or south seemed part 322 00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:19,000 Speaker 1: of their mystery, bringing them or taking them away. A 323 00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:22,480 Speaker 1: south wind might produce herds that blanketed the landscape from 324 00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:27,440 Speaker 1: horizon to horizon, but they could entirely disappear, which led 325 00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:31,160 Speaker 1: to a widespread belief in Native America that bison had 326 00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:36,840 Speaker 1: their origins underground, and sometimes they returned there, as had 327 00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:40,200 Speaker 1: been true of our first hunting ancestors in Africa, true 328 00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:44,840 Speaker 1: of the Neanderthals, true of the Clovis people. Native ceremonial 329 00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:49,399 Speaker 1: lives centered on an ancient human desire to control nature, 330 00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:54,160 Speaker 1: but they did so primarily as part of a religious philosophy, 331 00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:59,680 Speaker 1: not a scientific one. Managing animals based on population modeling, 332 00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:05,240 Speaker 1: carrying capacity of landscapes are selective. Sustainable harvests, as modern 333 00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:10,640 Speaker 1: ecologists and biologists do, would have been incomprehensible because Native 334 00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:15,679 Speaker 1: cause effect explanations for why things happened relied on completely 335 00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:23,760 Speaker 1: different premises. The religions through which Native people understood animals were, however, 336 00:25:24,040 --> 00:25:29,960 Speaker 1: superb at apprehending the kinship between animals and humans. Crucial 337 00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:33,760 Speaker 1: in Native America was knowledge about how to influence animals 338 00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:38,280 Speaker 1: in a rim usually defined as supernatural, an essential part 339 00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:42,760 Speaker 1: of religion. A friend from my years in Montana, professor 340 00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:46,800 Speaker 1: Roslin Lapierre, has done the best insider account so far 341 00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:51,560 Speaker 1: of the invisible reality that was central to this ten 342 00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:56,720 Speaker 1: thousand year old world. Roslin's own Black people possessed what 343 00:25:56,800 --> 00:26:01,000 Speaker 1: she calls a powerful worldview that suggests, yes, the Blackfeet 344 00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:05,520 Speaker 1: desire to manipulate animals and nature is a deep seated 345 00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:11,480 Speaker 1: human impulse, available through the assistance of supernatural allies. The 346 00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:14,560 Speaker 1: degree of power, when possessed to call on those allies 347 00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,800 Speaker 1: determine how much you could make happen. Human beings could 348 00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:22,600 Speaker 1: become vectors of power from these supernatural realms if a 349 00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:26,199 Speaker 1: sacred being sought them out, are through a vision quest 350 00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:29,960 Speaker 1: or other effort to find a sympathetic animal ally, or 351 00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,359 Speaker 1: even by purchasing power from someone who already had it. 352 00:26:34,760 --> 00:26:38,000 Speaker 1: Another intriguing look at Native religious traditions with respect to 353 00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:41,439 Speaker 1: animals comes from the work of an anthropologist who lived 354 00:26:41,480 --> 00:26:47,280 Speaker 1: with the Athabaskan speaking Coyukon peoples of Alaska. The Coyucons 355 00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:51,720 Speaker 1: preserve an ideology with powerful echoes of how life in 356 00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:55,040 Speaker 1: the ten millennia span of Native America must have worked. 357 00:26:55,920 --> 00:27:00,960 Speaker 1: Keen observational naturalists with a highly refined knowledge of animal behavior, 358 00:27:01,400 --> 00:27:04,920 Speaker 1: the Coyukons traced their link with animals back to what 359 00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:09,560 Speaker 1: they called distant time, when animals were human and spoke 360 00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:16,240 Speaker 1: human languages. The deity animal was ever watching raven. Raven 361 00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:20,040 Speaker 1: rarely missed anything and was always alert to violations of 362 00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:24,000 Speaker 1: taboos about how to treat animals and respect them. Many 363 00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:27,280 Speaker 1: raven stories were about the bad luck that befell people 364 00:27:27,359 --> 00:27:31,960 Speaker 1: who transgressed against the animal world. Animals were critical to 365 00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:36,320 Speaker 1: a major life force, luck that could make or break 366 00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:41,240 Speaker 1: a person's life. Luck was an award from ever watching 367 00:27:41,359 --> 00:27:46,040 Speaker 1: raven as a result of correct behavior towards animals, and 368 00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:50,240 Speaker 1: the most correct behavior of all was treating them as kin. 369 00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:58,200 Speaker 1: Ten thousand years ago, the entire human population of planet 370 00:27:58,320 --> 00:28:04,080 Speaker 1: Earth numbered only about four million across all the Americas, 371 00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:08,520 Speaker 1: Humans then likely made up only a quarter of that number. 372 00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:13,280 Speaker 1: North America probably had barely five hundred thousand people, then 373 00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:18,240 Speaker 1: fewer than a single large city in our time. Agriculture 374 00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:21,560 Speaker 1: changed that, but because big parts of the continent were 375 00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:25,200 Speaker 1: unsuited to farming, and because farming was a new development, 376 00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:30,040 Speaker 1: America wasn't entirely remade by agriculture the way Europe or 377 00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:34,359 Speaker 1: Asia were. By five hundred years ago, the best guess 378 00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:38,560 Speaker 1: is that America north of Mexico had grown its population 379 00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:43,520 Speaker 1: to just under four million people. Four million people spread 380 00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:47,040 Speaker 1: across the landscape that in the twenty first century supports 381 00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:51,479 Speaker 1: four hundred million seems explanation enough for why humans and 382 00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:55,400 Speaker 1: wild animals coexisted well for so long in Native America. 383 00:28:56,120 --> 00:28:59,000 Speaker 1: That might be an argument that for hunting and gathering 384 00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:04,240 Speaker 1: and subsistence farming economies, four million people was just about 385 00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:11,280 Speaker 1: the carrying capacity of the American landscape. The effects accumulated. 386 00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:15,240 Speaker 1: Though across the final fifteen hundred years of Native America 387 00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:19,320 Speaker 1: before Old Worlders arrived, a cumulative total of one hundred 388 00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:21,760 Speaker 1: and fifty to two hundred million people lived out their 389 00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:27,280 Speaker 1: lives north of Mexico. America was no howling wilderness. It 390 00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:32,960 Speaker 1: was a long inhabited, lived in world. Humans are biological, 391 00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,360 Speaker 1: after all, and no species gets a free ride in nature. 392 00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:41,720 Speaker 1: In some American archaeological sites, animal remains show a significant 393 00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:46,440 Speaker 1: decline over time. The massive Emeryville Mound site on the 394 00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:49,960 Speaker 1: shore of San Francisco Bay portrays a steady decline in 395 00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:55,560 Speaker 1: the bones of sturgeon, salmon, deer, elk, and pronghorns, demonstrating 396 00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:59,400 Speaker 1: a drawdown of local wildlife as human populations grew. In 397 00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:04,360 Speaker 1: Native ca California, elk remains and many continental archaeological sites 398 00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:08,040 Speaker 1: are so scarce that some scientists suggest that elk numbers 399 00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:11,360 Speaker 1: must have been suppressed, and the almost certain cause was 400 00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:15,760 Speaker 1: human hunting. There was also at least one human caused 401 00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:20,920 Speaker 1: wildlife extinction in Native America. As humans spread around the world, 402 00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:26,920 Speaker 1: flightless birds were always particularly vulnerable, and the Pacific coasts 403 00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:31,120 Speaker 1: of California and Oregon, along with the Channel Islands held 404 00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:36,200 Speaker 1: one a flightless sea duck and the genus Chindites in 405 00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:39,640 Speaker 1: the past decade. Researchers dating the remains of these goose 406 00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:44,360 Speaker 1: sized ducks from six coastal sites concluded that humans began 407 00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:48,000 Speaker 1: killing them ten thousand years ago, just as the plies 408 00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:51,240 Speaker 1: to see and gave way to Native America. Wiping them 409 00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:54,440 Speaker 1: out was hardly the three century blicks creeds that took 410 00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:59,000 Speaker 1: out mammos or later passenger pigeons or bison, but by 411 00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:03,200 Speaker 1: twenty four hundred years ago, people had hunted Pacific flightless 412 00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:08,080 Speaker 1: sea ducks to extinction. Judging from the stories people preserved 413 00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:12,960 Speaker 1: of their cultural heroes. The most common environmental overreach, though, 414 00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:18,000 Speaker 1: was what the Inuit raven story feared over hunting brought 415 00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:25,680 Speaker 1: on by growing human numbers. Coyotes and ravens. America existed 416 00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:29,440 Speaker 1: for seventy five times longer than the United States has 417 00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:32,840 Speaker 1: so far, so it shouldn't be a surprise that a 418 00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:37,800 Speaker 1: history reaching beyond human memory would provoke a religious awe 419 00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:43,200 Speaker 1: from its human inhabitants. Native America's culture heroes taught that 420 00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:49,120 Speaker 1: the key to the animal human relationship was kinship. Animals 421 00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:55,520 Speaker 1: were people, They had families and societies, opinions and cultural memories. 422 00:31:56,120 --> 00:32:00,200 Speaker 1: Like people, they also possessed something essential to them, a 423 00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:04,720 Speaker 1: breath or a spirit that survived death. Respect came from 424 00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:08,720 Speaker 1: honoring that humans and animals were kin and acknowledging that 425 00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:13,080 Speaker 1: we and they could move between one another's cultures because 426 00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:17,040 Speaker 1: we sprang from the same source. This became the key 427 00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:21,480 Speaker 1: when because of some human hubrists that violated the arrangement, 428 00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:27,280 Speaker 1: the animals retaliated by withdrawing from human's presence, pleading with 429 00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:31,960 Speaker 1: bison elk dear to return and rebalance the world. Thus 430 00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:36,000 Speaker 1: became a focus of some of the grand ceremonies Native 431 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:40,680 Speaker 1: peoples developed in North America. When Old World has arrived 432 00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:44,240 Speaker 1: in America five hundred years ago, Central and South America 433 00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:48,520 Speaker 1: held more than fifty million people, but in what is 434 00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,959 Speaker 1: now the United States and Canada, hunting and gathering culture 435 00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:56,320 Speaker 1: still prevailed across vast stretches, and here the human population 436 00:32:56,760 --> 00:33:01,600 Speaker 1: had not yet reached five million. With human numbers seemingly 437 00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:07,480 Speaker 1: so slight, five hundred generations of humans had physically transformed 438 00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:12,000 Speaker 1: North America to the native peoples. The continent was occupied, 439 00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:16,560 Speaker 1: settled its birds and reptiles and mammals, all intimately known 440 00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:21,360 Speaker 1: and considered ken. Even with fewer than five million inhabitants, 441 00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:24,160 Speaker 1: parts of America held large enough numbers of people that 442 00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:29,120 Speaker 1: wild animals weren't always abundant. But save one, all the 443 00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:34,840 Speaker 1: species that had survived the Pleiscenstine extinctions still existed. Beavers 444 00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:39,360 Speaker 1: continued to engineer a watery landscape, shore birds and ducks 445 00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:43,520 Speaker 1: filled the skies, and bears, wolves and other predators still 446 00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:48,360 Speaker 1: played their crucial roles in American ecologies. Even with thousands 447 00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:52,600 Speaker 1: of years of human harvest. Bison and passenger pigeons were 448 00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:57,080 Speaker 1: still among the most numerous species on Earth. But the 449 00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,440 Speaker 1: change that was coming was on a scale no one 450 00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,600 Speaker 1: could possibly fathomed. Since the Ice Age ebbed and northern 451 00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:08,239 Speaker 1: seas flooded Boringia, America's animals and humans had lived in 452 00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:12,640 Speaker 1: near total isolation from the rest of Earth. No one 453 00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:15,520 Speaker 1: on either side of the Atlantic had any inkling the 454 00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:20,759 Speaker 1: other existed, or that such biological isolation sat ready to 455 00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:25,239 Speaker 1: deliver one of the most profound tragedies in history when 456 00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:29,960 Speaker 1: the planet's human population finally rejoined after parting thousands of 457 00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:34,840 Speaker 1: generations earlier. The America of Clovis and Folsom and Choco 458 00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:41,880 Speaker 1: of bison and passenger pigeons confronted a staggering transformation, raven 459 00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:45,040 Speaker 1: and coyote would never be able to turn things back 460 00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:46,360 Speaker 1: to the way they had been. 461 00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:15,440 Speaker 3: Dan last time we talked about, you know, in the 462 00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:21,640 Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, they're being this very popular conception of native 463 00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:29,279 Speaker 3: people as being inherently environmentalist, and I think in a 464 00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,480 Speaker 3: lot of ways we've sort of moved past that. And 465 00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:34,480 Speaker 3: I think from a historical perspective, we recognize that not 466 00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:39,960 Speaker 3: all human actions on the landscape prior to European contact 467 00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:42,120 Speaker 3: were environmentally sustainable. 468 00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:43,880 Speaker 2: But then in this. 469 00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:49,360 Speaker 3: Lecture you describe a long swath of time that does 470 00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:55,080 Speaker 3: appear to be relatively stable or sustainable, and I wonder, 471 00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:01,440 Speaker 3: not necessarily asking if it was sustainable, but more sort 472 00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:05,479 Speaker 3: of how you begin to untangle the contradictions there. 473 00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:11,920 Speaker 1: Well, I had to look for some explanations for what 474 00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:19,440 Speaker 1: appeared to be a fairly obvious premise, which is that 475 00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:24,759 Speaker 1: when people from the Old World arrive five hundred years ago, 476 00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:29,680 Speaker 1: they find a North American continent that seems to be 477 00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:36,040 Speaker 1: ecologically healthy, with you know, a pretty wide diversity of 478 00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:40,840 Speaker 1: animals and birds and fishes, And I mean we know 479 00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:45,640 Speaker 1: that to some extent, that description was based on a 480 00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,360 Speaker 1: kind of an ecological release of animals and birds and 481 00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:53,520 Speaker 1: other species that came about as a result of the 482 00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:57,400 Speaker 1: suppression of Indian population through this sort of, you know, 483 00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:01,000 Speaker 1: inadvertent introduction of Old World disease, and so the Indian 484 00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:05,000 Speaker 1: population drops from nearly five million, which is what it 485 00:37:05,080 --> 00:37:08,200 Speaker 1: was we think at about the time of contact, down 486 00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:10,960 Speaker 1: to about nine hundred thousand in what is now the 487 00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:14,920 Speaker 1: United States and Canada as a result of those disease epidemics. 488 00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:17,520 Speaker 1: And so a lot of the descriptions we get of 489 00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:21,520 Speaker 1: kind of what a marvelous eden of nature North America 490 00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:27,080 Speaker 1: was kind of based on that, on this rapid ecological release. 491 00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:31,520 Speaker 1: But on the other hand, when you sort of try 492 00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:36,840 Speaker 1: to survey the range of species that were present we 493 00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:39,239 Speaker 1: think were present, say ten thousand years ago, and the 494 00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:41,880 Speaker 1: ones that were still present five hundred years ago, there's 495 00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:45,719 Speaker 1: not really a substantial difference in the range. Now there 496 00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:48,320 Speaker 1: would have been. There's no question there's evidence here and 497 00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:52,920 Speaker 1: there that there were reductions in numbers of particular species. 498 00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:57,759 Speaker 1: But as we talked last time, I mean, when I 499 00:37:57,840 --> 00:38:02,080 Speaker 1: was doing the research on this particular chapter, which is 500 00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,480 Speaker 1: out a wild New world. I can only find evidence 501 00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:10,200 Speaker 1: of one entire and complete extinction during that ten thousand 502 00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:12,879 Speaker 1: year period, which is course, is very different from the 503 00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:16,759 Speaker 1: pless scene that preceded it, and it's very different from 504 00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:19,920 Speaker 1: the five hundred years since then. So I was tasked 505 00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,040 Speaker 1: with trying to figure out, so why how did this happen? 506 00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:26,319 Speaker 1: How is it possible to do this? And I came 507 00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:32,200 Speaker 1: up with two or three explanations really that I relied 508 00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:37,279 Speaker 1: on and I think have some explanatory power. And one 509 00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:40,320 Speaker 1: of them has to do with the fact that North 510 00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:44,879 Speaker 1: America is colonized by people at a far later date 511 00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:47,960 Speaker 1: than much of the rest of the world, and in 512 00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:50,320 Speaker 1: a lot of the rest of the world, like in Eurasia, 513 00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:54,560 Speaker 1: for example, the human population reaches the point where it 514 00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:58,040 Speaker 1: becomes pretty difficult to live as hunters and gatherers because 515 00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:04,120 Speaker 1: the numbers of creatures are gradually being reduced, and so 516 00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:07,359 Speaker 1: at the end of the Pleististine that sort of stimulates 517 00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:09,800 Speaker 1: what we call the Neolithic revolution in the Old World, 518 00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:12,880 Speaker 1: the agricultural revolution, where you start relying a lot on 519 00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:17,320 Speaker 1: grown crops. People start living in towns rather than hunting 520 00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:21,279 Speaker 1: across the landscape, and they start domesticating a lot of 521 00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:24,080 Speaker 1: the animals that they had hunted, so hogs and sheep 522 00:39:24,160 --> 00:39:27,600 Speaker 1: and goats and cattle and horses and all get domesticated. 523 00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:31,880 Speaker 1: But because North America was settled a lot later, although 524 00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:35,680 Speaker 1: agriculture does get a start in North America about four 525 00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:39,640 Speaker 1: or five thousand years ago, it never reaches the kind 526 00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:42,920 Speaker 1: of epic level that it does in the Old World, 527 00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:47,160 Speaker 1: so that a lot of America is still inhabited by 528 00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:53,240 Speaker 1: populated by hunter gatherer groups. I mean, there's agriculture certainly 529 00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:56,120 Speaker 1: in the south and as far north as southern New England. 530 00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:59,560 Speaker 1: There's of course a big agricultural region in the Southwest 531 00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:05,560 Speaker 1: based on irrigated crops and Mexican cultivars, but a lot 532 00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:07,759 Speaker 1: of say the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains of the 533 00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:12,000 Speaker 1: Pacific northwest California, which has a very dense population of 534 00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:16,480 Speaker 1: Native people, they never become agricultural. And so what that 535 00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:21,239 Speaker 1: ultimately translates to is that the population of North America, 536 00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:24,880 Speaker 1: as far as we can tell, never grows beyond about 537 00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:32,440 Speaker 1: five million people, and that relatively low population obviously doesn't 538 00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:38,240 Speaker 1: put as much stress on wildlife populations as a larger 539 00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:42,520 Speaker 1: population would. Then I also came to the conclusion that 540 00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:47,759 Speaker 1: by not having domesticated animals and native people, I mean 541 00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:52,360 Speaker 1: they had obviously dogs and a lot of groups domesticated 542 00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:56,399 Speaker 1: wild turkeys, especially in the Southwest, because they were kind 543 00:40:56,400 --> 00:41:00,960 Speaker 1: of starving for protein, and turkeys as domesticated provided a 544 00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:09,200 Speaker 1: possibility for that. But it's kind of a strategy of 545 00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:14,120 Speaker 1: living that allows a lot of ecological functions to continue. 546 00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:17,840 Speaker 1: So there's no need to make war on predators. For example, 547 00:41:18,320 --> 00:41:21,040 Speaker 1: you don't have to go after wolves and coyotes and 548 00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:26,239 Speaker 1: lions and bears because you don't have domesticated herd animals 549 00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:30,600 Speaker 1: to protect the way old worlders did, So that provides 550 00:41:30,680 --> 00:41:36,840 Speaker 1: a kind of an ecological continuity I think that Europeans find. 551 00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:41,680 Speaker 1: Then the last thing that I dealt with was this distinction, 552 00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:45,719 Speaker 1: and it really becomes a distinction after Europeans ride in 553 00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:50,279 Speaker 1: how native people and native religions viewed their relationship with 554 00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:53,200 Speaker 1: other animals. They continued to think of themselves, and I 555 00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:55,560 Speaker 1: think this is a very old human idea. I think 556 00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:59,719 Speaker 1: it goes back beyond Neanderthals, maybe far back in our history. 557 00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:04,000 Speaker 1: We considered ourselves to be kin, coming to come from 558 00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:08,520 Speaker 1: the same sources, same origins as other creatures. And so 559 00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:12,759 Speaker 1: that kinship idea sort of with the idea that other 560 00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:18,400 Speaker 1: creatures were, they had families, they were they were just 561 00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:21,120 Speaker 1: like us. In fact, you could even some people could 562 00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:24,360 Speaker 1: even go back and forth from being bears to people. 563 00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:29,799 Speaker 1: And that sort of belief system about animals as being 564 00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:33,880 Speaker 1: keen is strikingly different from the one that Europeans bring 565 00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:36,600 Speaker 1: to bear, because they arrive with the idea that humans 566 00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:40,799 Speaker 1: are completely exceptional, We are above everything else, and all 567 00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:43,799 Speaker 1: the other creatures on Earth were placed here by a 568 00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:46,759 Speaker 1: deity for us to use, and so we stand in 569 00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:50,920 Speaker 1: one spot and everything else stands in a lower position. 570 00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:56,000 Speaker 1: And that distinction I think probably has some role to 571 00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:59,320 Speaker 1: play in trying to explain this. But as I said, 572 00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:03,360 Speaker 1: you have to operate from the premise that here's the evidence. 573 00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:07,080 Speaker 1: When Europeans arrived, the place looks pretty damned healthy. It 574 00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:11,839 Speaker 1: looks like it's got the pretty full complement for the 575 00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:16,320 Speaker 1: previous ten thousand years of all the animals and birds 576 00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,560 Speaker 1: and fishes that were there ten thousand years before. 577 00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:23,160 Speaker 4: You just straight into a question I had. You kind 578 00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:27,960 Speaker 4: of invertently walked into a question I had, which was 579 00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:33,080 Speaker 4: I know that in North America there were dozens probably 580 00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:41,000 Speaker 4: hundreds of religions of some sort right belief systems around 581 00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:49,760 Speaker 4: a theme of animism. Right, if you go to Western Europe, 582 00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,080 Speaker 4: do you kind of said that you think of this, 583 00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:55,400 Speaker 4: But if you expand out, if you go to Western. 584 00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:57,000 Speaker 2: Europe back to some point, I don't know when. 585 00:43:58,360 --> 00:44:03,040 Speaker 4: Was it that religions mirrored that there as well, or 586 00:44:03,160 --> 00:44:05,960 Speaker 4: was it a totally different belief system that made this 587 00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:13,720 Speaker 4: sort of primed them for like the Abrahamic religions meaningly Islam, Judaism, Christianity. 588 00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:17,520 Speaker 4: I mean, did they go from animism and thinking that 589 00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:22,400 Speaker 4: they were related to bears and that mountains had a 590 00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:28,560 Speaker 4: spirit and a personality into monotheism or do you think 591 00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:32,640 Speaker 4: that the path was more gradual and they just developed 592 00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:37,160 Speaker 4: a sort of different worldview that made Christianity eventually appealing. 593 00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:39,960 Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think I think it's more gradual, and 594 00:44:40,160 --> 00:44:43,600 Speaker 1: it is there is a progression from that, and there's 595 00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:48,920 Speaker 1: no doubt that not long ago in Western Europe fifteen 596 00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:55,839 Speaker 1: hundred years maybe certainly by for areas like say Scotland, Ireland, 597 00:44:56,239 --> 00:45:02,680 Speaker 1: outback regions of Germany and France, people are still you know, 598 00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:07,359 Speaker 1: the Druids are still considered to be They're not only 599 00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:11,319 Speaker 1: non Christian, but they're considered to be nature worshipers, and 600 00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:15,279 Speaker 1: so I mean, and that's seen years ago. Yeah, that's 601 00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:18,920 Speaker 1: still evident, you know, at a time when Christianity is 602 00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:24,759 Speaker 1: attempting to convert all these outback pockets of Europe. But 603 00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:28,600 Speaker 1: even by that point fifteen hundred years ago, say the Vikings, 604 00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:31,880 Speaker 1: for example, some of those Viking groups share this idea 605 00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:36,759 Speaker 1: that they are related still to deities that are found 606 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:40,799 Speaker 1: in mountains and to various animals. But there's been a 607 00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:45,960 Speaker 1: progression already, and you can see it from this kind 608 00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:51,280 Speaker 1: of animistic religious tradition in the Greeks, because the Greeks 609 00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:58,560 Speaker 1: began about twenty five hundred years ago sort of steadily 610 00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:05,000 Speaker 1: moving from the idea of polytheistic animal or animal deities 611 00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:11,400 Speaker 1: and deities that are found in landscapes. Two human gods, 612 00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:15,440 Speaker 1: but they don't have a single one. They will have 613 00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:18,760 Speaker 1: they will have Demeter, for example, who becomes the goddess 614 00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:24,880 Speaker 1: of the crops, and they'll have Poseidon, and they'll have Artemis, 615 00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:29,040 Speaker 1: who is the goddess of the wild creatures and so. 616 00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:33,680 Speaker 1: But Artemis and Poseidon and Demeter are all in human form. 617 00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:37,200 Speaker 1: So there's been a progression from the idea that you 618 00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:41,240 Speaker 1: have a creature like say Coyote, who is a paleolithic 619 00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:45,120 Speaker 1: deity in North America who can stand on his hind 620 00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:50,319 Speaker 1: legs and may have opposable thumbs, but he also has 621 00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:55,560 Speaker 1: coyote snout, erect ears, he has coyote tail, So Coyote 622 00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:57,960 Speaker 1: is sort of in the process of doing the same 623 00:46:58,080 --> 00:47:01,480 Speaker 1: thing in North America, sort of becoming here. So the 624 00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:05,520 Speaker 1: Greeks do that so that their deities ultimately become human 625 00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:10,200 Speaker 1: like deities, and then ultimately, of course, in Judeo Christianity ideas, 626 00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:14,200 Speaker 1: there is a single narrow it down to a single 627 00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:16,640 Speaker 1: deity who lives in the sky rather than in a 628 00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:19,120 Speaker 1: mountain or in a population of animals. 629 00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:28,480 Speaker 3: I think when I was looking at this episode, it's 630 00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:33,479 Speaker 3: it's an episode about a long period of time from 631 00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:37,640 Speaker 3: the place of scene extinctions up until first contact essentially, 632 00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:41,960 Speaker 3: and it treats it almost as a whole, and I 633 00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:46,160 Speaker 3: think that has a lot of explanatory power. But also 634 00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:50,640 Speaker 3: there's moments in it where you can drill down and say, 635 00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:54,680 Speaker 3: like Kahokia, you know, there are these stories of these 636 00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:58,520 Speaker 3: rise and fall of civilization, which on its own is 637 00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:03,640 Speaker 3: sort of this epic historical tale, right, even if we 638 00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:08,040 Speaker 3: don't have all the details. But I kind of wonder 639 00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:13,000 Speaker 3: how you think about that the big picture compared to 640 00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:15,200 Speaker 3: the small pictures, of what you gain by looking at 641 00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:19,640 Speaker 3: the big picture and what you lose without zeroing in 642 00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:23,000 Speaker 3: on these like sort of epic human stories. 643 00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:26,440 Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean that's obviously a great question. And 644 00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:29,759 Speaker 1: what I will say is that the episode here that 645 00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:36,080 Speaker 1: we're talking about is a highly distilled version of a 646 00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:40,520 Speaker 1: chapter in one of my books, which is about four 647 00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:44,719 Speaker 1: or five times longer than what we presented here in 648 00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:51,799 Speaker 1: the podcast. And even that comes from a book that 649 00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:55,799 Speaker 1: was in its entirely four hundred pages long. And I 650 00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:59,200 Speaker 1: realized that I could have easily written a two thousand 651 00:48:59,239 --> 00:49:03,080 Speaker 1: page book while I was working on this, And so 652 00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:07,040 Speaker 1: it becomes, you know, sort of a matter of all, right, 653 00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:09,920 Speaker 1: in terms of the book and the chapter particularly, and 654 00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:14,960 Speaker 1: to a certain extent of the podcast as well. How 655 00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:17,840 Speaker 1: many people are interested in reading a two thousand page book, 656 00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:19,879 Speaker 1: you know, So I've got to make the book four 657 00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:23,080 Speaker 1: hundred pages, and how many people are interested in listening 658 00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:25,440 Speaker 1: to a three and a half hour podcast. I've got 659 00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:28,000 Speaker 1: to make the podcast. It's got to be only thirty 660 00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:30,560 Speaker 1: five or forty minutes or something or an hour or 661 00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:31,239 Speaker 1: whatever we're doing. 662 00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:34,040 Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's very human that you keep your audience 663 00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:34,440 Speaker 2: in mind. 664 00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:38,200 Speaker 1: Well, I mean yeah, I mean I started out as 665 00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:41,000 Speaker 1: a writer for magazines and I had editors who drilled 666 00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:43,880 Speaker 1: that into me when I was in my early twenties, 667 00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:45,799 Speaker 1: that you had to think about in the audience. And 668 00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:48,520 Speaker 1: so I've always kind of as a result of that, 669 00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:50,600 Speaker 1: I think I've never kind of gotten over the notion 670 00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:53,239 Speaker 1: of I got to think about, you know, the readers, 671 00:49:53,680 --> 00:49:57,319 Speaker 1: and I can't lay you know, an enormous kind of 672 00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,600 Speaker 1: thing on top, especially today where people you know are 673 00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:04,360 Speaker 1: not committed to the idea necessarily of reading. 674 00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:06,319 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, I didn't. I didn't mean that to 675 00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:09,120 Speaker 3: be a question of like why didn't you do this 676 00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:11,719 Speaker 3: or why'd you leave this out? But it's more like 677 00:50:12,200 --> 00:50:18,399 Speaker 3: that story is comprehensible read at a certain level, right 678 00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:21,760 Speaker 3: and then and you gain a lot from the big, broad, 679 00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:27,840 Speaker 3: sweeping history. But yeah, there's also all of this drama 680 00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:30,080 Speaker 3: that sort of lies beneath the surface of that. 681 00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:34,160 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right, And there are so 682 00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:36,799 Speaker 1: the truth is, you know, with a story like that, 683 00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:39,120 Speaker 1: I mean that's an attempt to cover ten thousand years 684 00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:44,719 Speaker 1: in sort of one quick sweep, And I mean it 685 00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:52,719 Speaker 1: does give I think, some narrative power to it doing 686 00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:56,360 Speaker 1: it that way. But I would hope that for a 687 00:50:56,400 --> 00:51:00,600 Speaker 1: lot of people who are fascinated, for example, by whatever 688 00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:07,440 Speaker 1: one says about Kahokia or Choco, that they would dig deeper, 689 00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:11,359 Speaker 1: because yeah, the stories are phenomenal and they are far 690 00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:15,120 Speaker 1: richer than one can tell in an attempt to kind 691 00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:17,960 Speaker 1: of do a broad coverage. 692 00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:20,080 Speaker 2: I got one last one for you. 693 00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:26,719 Speaker 4: With your book while New World, where you do you 694 00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:33,120 Speaker 4: tell the story of wildlife in America and you start, 695 00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:35,759 Speaker 4: you know with the chicks Lube impact or like the 696 00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:38,840 Speaker 4: destruction of the dinosaurs, which happened just off the coast 697 00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:41,520 Speaker 4: of our you know, kind of the coast of our 698 00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:44,600 Speaker 4: current day country, and then you track all the way 699 00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:46,560 Speaker 4: through to the present, and then you kind of dabble 700 00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:50,799 Speaker 4: in the future for a minute. Like I'm not going 701 00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:53,880 Speaker 4: to go read one of those for every continent right now, 702 00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:57,400 Speaker 4: but I'm dying to read that for South America, Like 703 00:51:59,120 --> 00:52:03,160 Speaker 4: do there's the language barrier? But does that kind of 704 00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:04,640 Speaker 4: work exist? 705 00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:05,680 Speaker 2: Like does what you do? 706 00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:09,920 Speaker 4: Are you aware of your like a South American counterpart, 707 00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:14,600 Speaker 4: an Asian counterpart, an African counterpart? Who are who are 708 00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:18,279 Speaker 4: saying like? Who are doing that type of work in 709 00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:19,080 Speaker 4: those places? 710 00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:22,680 Speaker 3: Or is there something particular about the North American story 711 00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:26,280 Speaker 3: that makes it nor Americans? 712 00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:29,400 Speaker 2: Does that book exist about South America. 713 00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:34,760 Speaker 1: I am not aware of a book like that existing 714 00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:39,839 Speaker 1: for South America. I mean, I think probably Australia may 715 00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:46,319 Speaker 1: come the closest to having work like that, But I 716 00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:51,080 Speaker 1: do think North America lends itself and probably South America 717 00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:56,800 Speaker 1: would too. But the Americas lend themselves to a particularly 718 00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:01,239 Speaker 1: powerful kind of story in this form because they're the 719 00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:04,880 Speaker 1: last parts, except for some of the islands out in 720 00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:07,920 Speaker 1: the oceans. They're the last parts of the Earth that 721 00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:11,800 Speaker 1: humans find and come to. And so by the time 722 00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:16,080 Speaker 1: we find the America's, I mean, we're pretty much who 723 00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:21,320 Speaker 1: we are now, But we had also been living forty 724 00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:28,640 Speaker 1: five thousand generations as hunters, and so we're really really 725 00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:32,960 Speaker 1: good at that. And the other thing, of course, that 726 00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:36,319 Speaker 1: I think makes it a powerful story is that it's 727 00:53:36,440 --> 00:53:39,040 Speaker 1: fairly evident. At least I think it's evident. I argue 728 00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:41,640 Speaker 1: that in Wild New World that one of the things 729 00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:44,120 Speaker 1: that propels our migration around the world is that we're 730 00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:47,799 Speaker 1: doing something that you know, all of us today still do. 731 00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:50,919 Speaker 1: We all love getting out to a spot where man, okay, 732 00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:54,279 Speaker 1: there's not a single other car at the trailhead. I'm 733 00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:56,680 Speaker 1: looking over this valley, I do not see a single 734 00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:59,880 Speaker 1: other campfire. We're the only ones. My buddies and I 735 00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:02,479 Speaker 1: the only ones that are going to be backpacking into 736 00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:05,440 Speaker 1: this mountain valley this weekend. And what I think people 737 00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,840 Speaker 1: were doing as they moved out of Africa into the 738 00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:12,920 Speaker 1: Middle East, into Europe, into Asia is they were propelled 739 00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:18,799 Speaker 1: constantly by looking for places that other humans hadn't been 740 00:54:19,520 --> 00:54:23,680 Speaker 1: because that implied to them that the resources were going 741 00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:28,600 Speaker 1: to be just rich and available, the animals were going 742 00:54:28,640 --> 00:54:32,560 Speaker 1: to be innocent of humans as hunters, I mean, And 743 00:54:32,719 --> 00:54:37,799 Speaker 1: it propelled us around the world. And it's probably one 744 00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,720 Speaker 1: of the reasons, you know, without us really being conscious 745 00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:44,600 Speaker 1: of it, we still tend to be fascinated with exploration 746 00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:48,040 Speaker 1: and with going to the Moon, going to the Mars, 747 00:54:48,200 --> 00:54:53,040 Speaker 1: going to you know, Titan Saturn's moons, or Europa one 748 00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:57,120 Speaker 1: of Jupiter's moons. I mean, we're still fascinated by this 749 00:54:57,239 --> 00:55:01,120 Speaker 1: idea of going into new places and as I said, 750 00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:03,719 Speaker 1: you know, I certainly experienced this all the time, and 751 00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:07,160 Speaker 1: I know I'm pretty sure probably you guys do as well. 752 00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:10,120 Speaker 1: This is something we always feel good about as man, 753 00:55:10,160 --> 00:55:13,160 Speaker 1: I'm looking out over this country and I don't see 754 00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:14,839 Speaker 1: evidence of anybody else in it. 755 00:55:15,600 --> 00:55:17,680 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Dan, thanks man. Look for to jumping into 756 00:55:17,719 --> 00:55:18,440 Speaker 2: the next episode. 757 00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:21,000 Speaker 1: Thanks Steven Randall, appreciate it.