I say this as an SUV driving republican voting nature lover:<p>A lot of people's first reaction to hearing this is something along the lines of "haha, <i>see</i>, hippies, see how stupid you are!??!".<p>Just because humans at one point blindly destroyed everything they came in contact with does not mean that they should continue to, or should dismiss doing so as acceptable.
We humans like to think we're special, but we're not, even in the realm of environmental damage.<p>It's part of why I love traveling through and around the state of Oregon: so much is named after beavers.
Is this really news? I mean someone very very confused might actually believe that ancient man was magical. But doesn't everyone know about the Mammoths and all the other giant fauna that went extinct when man arrived? Only Africa still has giant mammals probably because they co-evolved with hominids.
Related NPR story (& 5-minute audio):<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112124572" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1121245...</a>
It might be interesting, and you guys might like it, but this isn't news.<p>Seriously. anybody really interested in environmental issues should have known years ago that all creatures that live on this planet change it -- sometimes to drastic effect. Some of the practices the article didn't go into are even more devastating, such as the use of fire-hunting, or early attempts at mining and smelting (which polluted vast areas of wetlands)<p>The real question is: what would we like our environment to be like today? I think people get this romantic, mushy-headed feeling that somehow it's only modern humans that have had a noticeable impact on things, and that "if it were only like it were five thousand years ago" or some such that it would idyllic. By having a slanted preconception like this, it actually hurts conversations about where we want to go by adding a lot of finger-pointing and posturing where none need exist.<p>(Sorry -- must have a bit of grumpiness to get out of my system today)
Well, of course. What else does anyone think happened to all of the ice-age mega-fauna? Human beings moved in and ate everything that was big and slow.