| Kasz216 said: I mean... I hate to rain on everybodies parade... but that's mostly just false sentimentality of a culture that was essentially ethnically cleansed... and a general underestimation of Native American technology at the time. |
Agree.
Here in South America, like in Australia, man-made fires during the course of millenia are the reason you have a sparse tropical shrub vegetation and a poor, metal-rich soil where seasonal forest should be. We even have a major city named after a native american clearing.
There are reports on how the portuguese were amused how the natives were eager to bring trees down once they got the tools for do it because for them, just as for the portuguese, the "green hell" was sometimes downright unbearable to live.
Yeah. Because that's what humans do. Perhaps you'll have better luck admiring the Na'vi.
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Either way, for those too sentimental or lamenting american colonization, it remains to be known whether even if the 19m population of the continent by 1500 was downright exterminated, if those losses would be greater than european losses due to overpopulation and war if they couldn't vent somewhere.
