So “scientists” have discovered evidence of past civilizations flourishing in the Amazon:
SAN MARTIN DE SAMIRIA, PERU – To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial – from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.
Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands.
Thousands, mind you. The idea that tens of millions of people lived in the Amazon until white people showed up is just not realistic. Yes, communities and societies can enrich soil and develop agriculture to build a population even in the Amazon. Brazil has already become a net wheat exporter, but that’s with the advent of modern factory-farming methods. Yes, tree patterns may indicate that humans planted much of the Amazon — but there’s no way they planted all of it.Whereas the “scientists” in the Washington Post story postulate enormous populations lived in the Amazon Basin until disease wiped them out — leaving only wooden structures to be eaten up by a jungle that may or may not be at least partly manmade — my own guess is that when radiocarbon dating is complete, the story will more more like Lost. Or maybe Rapa Nui.
In other words, a story of Jared Diamond-trophic cascade over and over again as populations outstripped resources — as happened with the Cahokian empire that once flourished throughout the Mississippi River system.
Easter Island is the perfect example of a society that destroyed its world long before white people ever showed up. The fact it was once forested — and now covered only in scrub — makes you wonder what the last moai-maker was thinking when he cut down the last tree. Maybe the last fracker cracking the last clean water table, or the final oil roughneck to drill the last well, will have similar thoughts.
It is a scientific fact that most civilizations have not survived. Even when you don’t expose them to guns, germs, and steel, they can collapse of their own weight. The people in charge can see it coming, but be unable to overcome the inertia of their own culture; inevitably, their children wind up rejecting that failed culture.
Every culture forms to solve a specific set of problems. American culture began with people looking to solve the problems of social, religious, and economic freedom; that the most powerful and well-off members of American culture refuse to change is like the Mayan priests sacrificing captured slaves to gods while starvation takes hold. We are not so special.
