Stupidest Man Alive Contest

Correspondents ask, "Is everybody who writes for National Review as stupid as Donald Luskin?"

The answer appears to be: It sure looks like it, and in Jonah Goldberg's case--definitely:

First Draft - Oy.....: Jonah Goldberg spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison last night.... "Some say that Native Americans were great environmentalists don't know history. Some think that Indians were like a Disney movie, with Indians talking to bunnies. The great plains used to be a giant forest. The Indians burnt it to the ground to hunt buffalo."

Comments

[MobiusKlein]

Hmm, so he thinks that buffalo, which eat grass, lived in the forest, which has trees?

Or is there a deeper level of stupid I'm not getting?

[Laertes]

I imagine the seed of this idea came from "Guns, Germs, and Steel" wherefrom the reader learns that humans, upon arriving in the new world from across the land bridge from Asia to Alaska, wiped out a number of large mammal species.

So far, so good. I can't imagine, though, where this idea of native Americans burning forests to expose the hiding Buffalo came from.

Is he possibly suggesting that the Americans cleared vast forests to provide grazing land for the Buffalo?

[Knut Wicksell]

Jonah learned how to read as a child, but not well. He can't retain. Probably ADS or some other symptom resulting from his mother's likely substance abuse.

[Jim S]

That's just amazing. Buffaloes are plains animals. In addition to the best of my knowledge the type of soil composition that would support the kind of forest growth that he claims used to exist.

[trotsky]

Buffalo survive pretty nicely in Yellowstone National Park, which is nobody's idea of the Plains.

There's been quite a bit of paleo-ecology (if you will) studies into how the Indians manipulated the climate. They used fire a lot. It's been suggested that the open-understoried old-growth forests that the 49ers discovered in California were the product not so much of age (though that too) as of frequent burning.

The barred owl, now colonizing the West Coast and displacing our famous spotted owls, is a long-separated subspecies that has recrossed the newly treed (relatively speaking) Great Plains since the white settlement.

And of course, there's the huntable megafauna that went so suddenly extinct after the Berring Land Bridge was crossed.

All that said, favoring trees over grasslands is a contemporary human conceit that is really ecologically meaningless.

[Dave MB]

[where did Goldberg get this idea?]

It sounds a bit like a garbled version of Charles Mann's 1491, which is quite a good book. It's a survey of recent work on the Pre-Columbian Americas, and does argue that the Indians were more numerous, and manipulated the environment more, than was previously thought by condescending white people. They do seem to have deliberately started fires in the Eastern Woodlands which increased the supply of the stuff they lived on. But if Goldberg heard about this he seems to have conflated it with the Paul Bunyan legend.

[evap]

I nominate Alberto Gonzalez, who today claimed that "President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson and President Roosevelt" authorized "electronic surveillance" on a "far broader scale" than the current wire-tapping.

[bakho]

What a mess. The plains Indians used to burn the grasslands in the fall, partly to protect their villages from being overun by fire. However, they were grasslands.

Maybe what he is trying to say is that Native Americans manipulated and managed their environment to maximize their food resources?

The part about forests and trees is loony.

Go here:

http://www.wildlandfire.com/docs/biblio_indianfire.htm

[Dale]

Even in Yellowstone the Bison herds are to be found in the high meadows and largely treeless rolling hills. The Hayden Valley, the Lamar Valley. I have seen individuals or cow and calf pairs in the woods. But not herds. Maybe its different when the snows get deep.

[ogmb]

"I nominate Alberto Gonzalez, who today claimed that "President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson and President Roosevelt" authorized "electronic surveillance" on a "far broader scale" than the current wire-tapping."

Do you have a link?

[Bernard Yomtov]

Goldberg really is an amazing moron. NR is sort of reverse meritocracy for some reason, perhaps related to Buckley's dislike of the normal kind.

[cafl]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020600931.html

Go to the end. Highlight some word and search backward in page for washington. 2nd occurrence.

Something slightly more sensible was in his written statement.

[christofay]

The Abu Gonzales comment that Washington loves microelectronics is the top post at the http://www.crooksandliars.com/ site under the heading Alberto: George Washington loves electronics too. Yes the Republicans really are making it up as we go along down the hill to Argentinaville while the Presdenst searches for his outlaw shaker of salt.

[P.M.Lawrence]

There is a parallel here with Australian aboriginal "firestick farming". They really did reduce the tree cover to help hunt kangaroo - and, more to the point, to increase the number of kangaroo to hunt. I can imagine this happening at the edges of the Great Plains, but not so much as to alter the landscape. And, after all, buffalo are harder to hunt with primitive equipment; it's not as though it was important to increase their number.

[OGeorge]

The Great Plains have been primarily a grassland since at least the middle Miocene. Goldberg only missed by about 20 million years.

[wildlifer]

A few comments from a Plain's state ecologist. Most soils west of the Cross-timbers - timber transition from eastern deciduous forests (approximately the I-35 corridor in Oklahoma) - are grassland soils.
The difference being forested soils are shallow, and grassland soils are deep.
Fire, as was mentioned was used to protect villages, but also to drive the bison during the hunt.
However, there is a (sub)species of bison which lives in the boreal forests of Canada - the Wood Bison (go figure eh?).
Fire plays a major role in the ecology of grasslands by killing young trees - like the Eastern Red Cedar which is now the most populace tree in Oklahoma because of fire prevention.
There are different schools of thought as to how that evolved - either it was introduced by early American Indians, or they learned by watching nature in the form of lightning strikes etc.
I tend to lean towards the latter.
One must not forget herds of Elk too, used the prairie.

[UberIcarus]

One also has to wonder just how bright this guy is. Weren't most native societies primarily agricultural before the arrival of whites? And most importantly their horses?

[UberIcarus]

Also another problem with it...hunting societies do faaaar less environmental modifying than herding societies. There's alot less need for it.

Now herding societies did turn most of the middle east into a desert using bronze age axes and sheep. But there are no real wide occurances of nomadic or semi-nomadic native herdsmen in the Americas prior to the arrival of europeans.

[derek]

It sounds as though he took something he read or heard, vaguely processed it, and out came this mashed-up version: the new century's equivalent of Reagan's "most pollution is caused by trees".

I suspect the Great Plains are more likely to have been caused by the grazing herds millions of years before the hunters got there. If he checks his sources again, he'll probably find that he read and misunderstood something about Indians clearing forests in the *Northeast* and *farming* on the cleared land.

[Brandon Claycomb]

Fabius,

Your entry was really interesting, and I hope to follow up on it.

If you go back and read the alleged quote from Mr. Goldberg, though, I think you'll see that what he is saying is not necessarily supported by the points you make.

[peachkfc]

Fabius Maximus:

What does any of this very interesting information from the forest service have to do with poor Jonah's misguided idea that the buffalo were hiding in the woods that the Native Americans cleared out? While the Native Americans may have created additional grasslands by their actions, there is no doubt that there were huge areas of grasslands in existence before any manipulation of the environment by the Native Americans may have taken place. In any event, our Jonah is hardly an expert on any of this and thus one wonders what business he had making any comment about it at all. Sorry, Fabius Maximus, the bottom line is, Jonah deserves to be mocked and scorned for this stupid remark and the rest of the seemingly never-ending stream of incredibly inane, ignorant, and frequently simply repugnant pronouncements that emit from his tongue and typewriter.

[Karlsfini]

OGeorge: "The Great Plains have been primarily a grassland since at least the middle Miocene. Goldberg only missed by about 20 million years."

And (you should add this for folks like Goldberg) for the first nineteen million, nine-hundred and eighty-five thousand of those years no people ever set foot on those plains.

Think how much more we'd know about what happened if anthropology could offer the same career opportunities as law or real estate.

I can't make any decision about giving Goldberg a first in stupidity until I hear his take on human-animal high-breeding and how he thinks that's done. There are so many qualified candidates.

[WatchfulBabbler]

He only missed by millions years or, if you prefer, half the continent -- the Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest used controlled burning to wipe out undergrowth and create grasslands to provide for the deer that would come out from the mountains in springtime. Elsewhere, controlled burning was used for agriculture in order to encourage the growth of nitrogen-fixing plants, a fact noted by early European explorers.

So American Indians were in fact burning forestland to create meadows, but they were not on the Great Plains, nor hunting buffalo -- and, although Native American burning practices may have equalled or exceeded lightning-strike fires in some areas, they certainly didn't denude the entire Midwest, else the forests would have long returned.

[Scott Martens]

Yeah, I've heard enough too about the notion that Native Americans used various practices to modify their environment that, if I were charitable towards Jonah, I might confess that he is merely incredibly stupid rather than supremely stupid. But, AFAIK, the plains have been plains for an awful long time, like millions of years. Even the most chariatable interpretation has his facts almost entirely wrong.

I'm not terribly well informed in the relevant sciences, but the case being made in the literature is, I think, that before colonisation America was considerably less forested than it was at the time of American independence, possibly as deforested as it was in the 1920s when forest cover bottomed out, and that this was directly or indirectly engineered by Native Americans for semi-agricultural purposes. This doesn't mean the plains were forest though - it means Massachusetts wasn't heavily forested. This may mean that modern conservation practices may be introducing wilds to areas that weren't wild five centuries ago. But what real significance that has for present-day environmental policy is a mystery to me.

[Ira Schwartz]

Jonah?

Nah, not even close.

John P. Normanson remains the Undefeated, Undisputed, Unimaginably Biggest Fool at National Review Online. Were it not for Daddy Norm and Mommy Midge, John P. Normanson would be bagging groceries at a Jewish deli on the Upper West Side.

John P. Normanson, Fool of Fools at NRO.

[Ira Schwartz]

Donald Luskin. He's no less intelligent than the 15 out of 18 Wall Street analysts who had BUY recommendations on Enron the day the Lay-Skilling Empire declared bankruptcy.

Luskin's just bumming for house money. He'll write, say, or do anything to get his commission.

Luskin's the kind of life form that would sell long-term health insurance to a trapped coal miner in West Virginia.

Strictly a profit pariah.

[Ira Schwartz]

Johnny (aka EasyLiving),

Relax. Breathe. Nice defense of your boy, Jonah.

Of course, Jonah still refuses to respond to your persistent emails. Jonah still declines to sign an 8-1/2"-X-11" glossy and send it to you. Jonah still has no interest in speaking at your community organization unless, of course, you can produce the $10,000 in front money, eight security guards, and private plane that he demands. (Jonah graduated magna cum laude from the Joe Montana-Terry Bradshaw School of Pay Up or Else!)

I know. I know. You thought Jonah would respond favorably to your expression of unabashed support for him. But Johnny, you again failed to remember that Jonah walked all over people like yourself to descend to NRO. Expect nothing from Jonah.

Don't be too hard on Jonah. After all, Lucianne, the Heidi Fleiss of 1960s-70s D.C., reared Jonah. Well, the cadre of nannies handled the parenting. One can and should expect little from Jonah. After all, any boy of Lucianne's is a pariah of our 21st century society.

[creepy dude]

Proper breeding should prevent one from making fun of Goldberg. It's like pitting wild animals against one another; civilized men should refrain from such savage entertainment. Confronting Goldberg debases one's soul.

[Paul]

Charles Mann in his wonderful book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus writes at length about the profound transformation of the American environment wrought by native Americans. Here is a sample passage:

Indian fire had its greatest impact in the middle of the continent, which Native Americans transformed into a prodigious game farm. Native Americans burned the Great Plains and Midwest prairies so much and so often they increased their extent; in all probability, a substantial portion of the giant grassland celebrated by cowboys was established and maintained by the people who arrived there first. "When Lewis and Clark headed west from [St. Louis]," wrote ethologist Dale Lott, "they were exploring not a wilderness but a vast pasture managed by and for Native Americans."

[David]

not only that, the Great Plains were a giant RAINforest, so imagine how hard for the native Americans to light the match!

[Sam]

Steve wrote:

"This may mean that modern conservation practices may be introducing wilds to areas that weren't wild five centuries ago. But what real significance that has for present-day environmental policy is a mystery to me."

I think it is incredibly significant. A lot of environmentalists are currently basing their suggested programs on "restoration." The Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania is an excellent example. Green groups have been hollering for a decade about bringing back the "native" white pine and hemlock overstory. Because that is the forest in its "natural" state. A 300-year-old climax forest.

But if that forest was the product of human manipulation, the environmentalists, I think, are going to have to explain why they prefer that manipulated state to the current manipulated state. Or if they are still committed restoring it to a "virgin" state, they are going to have to do a bit more research to discover what that forest looked like.

[Kate Gilbert]

Jonah's point is what Jonah's point always is--we live in the best of all possible worlds--the only possible world--and so no alteration or consideration of human action or political morality is necessary. The point of his observation wasn't merely that Indians are people too, or that man is always a toolmaker, or that humans have always altered their environment it is that modern/non native american/white people like Jonah should not be expected to consider the impact of their lifestyles and economic choices on the environment. When I first read Jonah's comment I thought to myself "geez, Jonah, if all your friends were driving Buffallo off a cliff to kill them would you do it too?" Its that dumb of an argument. Even *if* there is some huge swatch of the populace that takes an idealized view of pre-industrial civilization and its effects or non effects on the environmnent how should that affect a modern discussion of humans and their effect on their environment *today*? Even if the left is full of starry eyed, objectively pro-pocahontas and talking bunny idiots that says nothing about the environmental issues facing us today.

If Jonah proves to me that the Aztecs were no better than the Spaniards on a people killed for religio-political reasons per capita basis does that mean I must automatically opt for the re-introduction of the auto da fe? Perhaps I might consider that torturing and sacrificing fellow citizens to an invisible angry god is, you know, outdated no matter who was doing what to whom a few hundred years ago.

The problem with Jonah is that he offers regurgitated bits of history or ecological fact purely as an excuse for a modern do nothing ideology of "I've got mine, jack." He neither knows nor cares what the content of his argument is--its truth or falsity (as witness his derivative attack on Upton Sinclair, of all people). His talks, like his column, are simply place holders. Bought and paid for by wealthier and more powerful people to stand in for real arguments about real issues.

Kate Gilbert

[Citizen Grim]

"If Jonah proves to me that the Aztecs were no better than the Spaniards..."

But the Aztecs were no better than the Spaniards. Is this in doubt?

[anne]

Kate Gilbert

"The problem with Jonah is that he offers regurgitated bits of history or ecological fact purely as an excuse for a modern do nothing ideology of "I've got mine, Jack." He neither knows nor cares what the content of his argument is--its truth or falsity (as witness his derivative attack on Upton Sinclair, of all people). His talks, like his column, are simply place holders. Bought and paid for by wealthier and more powerful people to stand in for real arguments about real issues."

Nice :)

[anne]

Even if barbarously right, Jonah Goldberg is purposely wrong....

Paul Krugman:

"I don't know why this contradiction is so hard to understand, except to echo Upton Sinclair: it's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary (or, in the current situation, his membership in the political club) depends on his not understanding it."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010305F.shtml

[anne]

Goofy speculation is the best kind, after all :) Woof.

[anne]

Notice the wording, the tone of the attack. What are "we?" We are neurotic. Why are we neurotic? We are women. Well, we are women who are not ready to tear off our clothes and rush to the arms of a twerpish belittling fool who is thinking, wishing, about being John Wayne, though if John Wayne were at issue if might be different :)

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3857&offset_finder=1&u=75

Tufted Titmouse
New York City--Central Park, The Ramble.

Oh my, oh my :)

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3884&u=12272|11|...

Tufted Titmouse with Acorn in Beak
New York City--Central Park, The Pool.

[Todd and In Charge]

Jonah's main problem is he skims or references source material (from either Google or Lexis-Nexis) that conforms to his world-view, and passes it off as if he actually has read that material with an open mind. That's why he effortlessly moves from 16th Century English politics to Star Trek to Indian eco-disasters with nary a reflective thought (although his Star Trek knowledge appears genuine). He's not alone -- too many of us do this.

But the idea that the Indians "doubled" the size of the Western prairies is ridiculous, as anyone who has read Guns, Germs, and Steel (or even Lewis & Clark's journals) can attest. Sure, humans manipulated their environment wherever humans lived, that's a given, but not to the extent Jonah claimed. And yes, it's possible to manipulate your environment and still have a much closer and more intertwined relationship with your environment than we do today.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Another good book discussing Indians' use of fire to improve hunting is Changes_in_the_Land, by William Cronon. (His book about Chicago, Nature's_Metropolis, is an absolute masterpiece.) But it's about New England, not the Great Plans.

[Kate Gilbert]

I'm not sure what a "neurotic" post looks like. Does it wash its hands a lot? Does it look hunted and scared of things? Does it cry a lot? My keyboard, alas, is dry and my withers are unwrung.
In my opinion great ad hominem invective is, of course, its own raison d'etre--that's a feature, not a bug, so I take the compliment.

But to get back to our case at hand, allow me to wring out my neurotic handkerchief and add this. Any defense of Jonah's remark which does not take into account his specific history, his education, and his employment simply misses the mark. In other words, I'd argue that even taking Jonah seriously enough to rebut his "facts" is a waste of time. If Jonah's point were to explore the historical issues surrounding Native American use of the environment I would definitely urge everyone to read up on this subject. For example, I second everyone else's fact based criticism and urge everyone to read Cronon's two books (because they are both excellent) and also a wonderful book called Reflections on Bullough's Pond (or else its Bullock) which explores the ecological and technological history of New England. It wouldn't be relevant to the specifics of Jonah's so called argument but I'd argue that that hardly matters. Not to me, that is, but to Jonah. As an anthropologist and a social scientist I have a special love of facts and information about societies, and hold no brief for any romanticized notion of "indigenous" societies (Nor do I live in a Jonaesque/RNC world in which determining that one people are "bad" means that some other people somewhere must be "good.") But I do have a lot of respect for subject expertiese. Jonah's own essays and comments don't fall under that heading. They are not really "about" a subject, like Indians or whatever. The proof of that is that he will be on to something else tomorrow, and he'll be pursuing it just as shallowly. Jonah's essays and comments have, instead, an *object*--which is purely political.

Jonah's arguments are simply bought and paid for (gee, I must have been channelling Krugman, or maybe we are both simply right) to advance a particular politico/economic goal. That goal is de-legitimizing, parodying, and truncating other histories and other arguments about society and politics. If you read Jonah, or other fellow travellers like Jeff Jacoby, Mallard Fillmore, or the RNC alerts circulated to the faithful you see the promulgation not only of the same messages (over and over) but the same tenous and tendentious links to "real" science and "real" history and "real" pop culture. Jonah uses words like "history" and "indians" and even "prarie" or "fire" but to paraphrase others in the blogosphere in reference to the Princess Bride [those] words don't mean what you are supposed to think he means by them. You'd actually have to know, or care, about history, indians, praries, fires and etc...to use them as true scholars would use them. My god, just look at Juan Cole's magisterial slap down of Jonah last year, and at Jonah's pathetic response, to begin to see how little Jonah cares about the topics on which he bloviates.

How do I know Jonah is a tool and not a true scholar? Because he will write about the next pop cultural or coffee table book image/factoid with the same authority tomorrow even if it outright contradicts his point today. That is because the object of his writing is simply to score points again and again against his enemies.

But you knew that.

[anne]

Kate

"I'm not sure what a "neurotic" post looks like. Does it wash its hands a lot? Does it look hunted and scared of things? Does it cry a lot?"

You are a scream :) a clever judicious scream

[Timothy Burke]

Goldberg is making a bad and lazy gloss of an argument that's been made in a number of works published in the last decade, most incisively Shepherd Krech's book The Ecological Indian.

Krech and others have observed that Native Americans as a whole were not more notably inclined towards premodern versions of environmentalism than any other human society in history, and that the tendency to view them as such is something of a fiction created slowly and complicatedly in American culture over the last 150 years, especially in the last 50.

Krech synthesizes work on a variety of pre-Columbian Native American cultures that suggests, among other things, that some Southwest cultures outstripped their available resources, in part through intensive and misguided infrastructure (this is the same research that Diamond cites in his two recent books); that some Native Americans in the Rockies and Sierras used fire fairly extensively to produce the mix fo meadow and old-growth forest that was later regarded as pristine and natural wilderness; and that some Plains Native American societies may have used wasteful hunting methods such as driving large herds of buffalo off cliffs. And so on.

So very distantly, Goldberg is correctly summarizing several important arguments--that Native Americans were not uniformly or automatically deeply committed to spiritual or practical analogues of contemporary environmentalism, and that what some 19th Century Americans moving into the West took to be pristine, untouched wilderness environments were actually environments that were significantly altered by human presence.

That's all. The material on the buffalo and the plains and all that is simply his fantasy: it's not in any of the work that he might plausibly mean to refer to.

This is a basic problem with a lot of public discourse on the right, and sometimes the left: people who spout off to score a quick point who are profoundly careless.

[MobiusKlein]

(some) Pacific Coast forests have clear understories for a variety of reasons.

Mature Redwood forests shade the ground level very strongly, hampering low level brush.

Grazed Oak forest lands have reduced understory from grazing, according to some sources. (Uh, I probably should check my sources on that.)

Eucalyptous forests have cleared understories because their bark falls down, and contains chemicals that hinder other plant's growth.

The problem with Jonahs assertions is that he no credentials in biology, ecology, botany, anthropology, etc. In this finite world, perhaps we can give more weight to the folks actually trained in the subject?

[Kate Gilbert]

Ben is absolutely right. An inability to type a word correctly is proof positive that the entire content of my post is false and wrongheaded. And not only that, but the blog host himself, Brad Delong, is an utterly worthless poseur whose blog posts are not worthy of comment. I will instantly renounce my readership! This will free up oodles (sp?) of time and I will finally be able to give up worrying and learn to love the bomb.

Kate

[bartleby]

Kate:

"Jonah's arguments are simply bought and paid for (gee, I must have been channelling Krugman, or maybe we are both simply right) to advance a particular politico/economic goal."

Ok, Kate, if this is so obvious, give two examples that prove your statement. I am looking for proof that Jonah does not believe what he writes or says, AND does do only for money or "to advance a particular politico/economic goal."

[Kate Gilbert]

Ben,

Commenting on the supposed clothing choices of a blog poster as a form of criticism? I think there might be therapy for that.

Kate

[Barkley Rosser]

Mike, Paul, Fabius, and others,

The basic ecological fact is that forests only grow in areas where precipitation exceeds transpiration. There is a natural boundary running north south not too far from the Mississippi where east of that this holds and west of this does not. Certainly this boundary has shifted over time, but at the time of the European invasion, forests simply did not grow in the Great Plains. It was too dry. Goldberg is at least ignorant, if not the stupidest man alive.

OTOH, it is true that the Indians reduced forests through their controlled burns in the east to some extent.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5992&u=4|1|...

Great Horned Owl Preening
New York City--Central Park, The Ramble.

Speaking of knowing how to dress, I am forever envious :) Who needs Ferragamo?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/opinion/01diamond.html?ex=1262322000&en=0bca4693e985942b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

January 1, 2005

The Ends of the World as We Know Them
By JARED DIAMOND

Los Angeles — NEW Year's weekend traditionally is a time for us to reflect, and to make resolutions based on our reflections. In this fresh year, with the United States seemingly at the height of its power and at the start of a new presidential term, Americans are increasingly concerned and divided about where we are going. How long can America remain ascendant? Where will we stand 10 years from now, or even next year?

Such questions seem especially appropriate this year. History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise: peak power usually means peak population, peak needs, and hence peak vulnerability. What can be learned from history that could help us avoid joining the ranks of those who declined swiftly? We must expect the answers to be complex, because historical reality is complex: while some societies did indeed collapse spectacularly, others have managed to thrive for thousands of years without major reversal.

When it comes to historical collapses, five groups of interacting factors have been especially important: the damage that people have inflicted on their environment; climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading partners; and the society's political, economic and social responses to these shifts. That's not to say that all five causes play a role in every case. Instead, think of this as a useful checklist of factors that should be examined, but whose relative importance varies from case to case....

Maya Native Americans of the Yucatan Peninsula and adjacent parts of Central America developed the New World's most advanced civilization before Columbus. They were innovators in writing, astronomy, architecture and art. From local origins around 2,500 years ago, Maya societies rose especially after the year A.D. 250, reaching peaks of population and sophistication in the late 8th century.

Thereafter, societies in the most densely populated areas of the southern Yucatan underwent a steep political and cultural collapse: between 760 and 910, kings were overthrown, large areas were abandoned, and at least 90 percent of the population disappeared, leaving cities to become overgrown by jungle. The last known date recorded on a Maya monument by their so-called Long Count calendar corresponds to the year 909. What happened?

A major factor was environmental degradation by people: deforestation, soil erosion and water management problems, all of which resulted in less food. Those problems were exacerbated by droughts, which may have been partly caused by humans themselves through deforestation. Chronic warfare made matters worse, as more and more people fought over less and less land and resources.

Why weren't these problems obvious to the Maya kings, who could surely see their forests vanishing and their hills becoming eroded? Part of the reason was that the kings were able to insulate themselves from problems afflicting the rest of society. By extracting wealth from commoners, they could remain well fed while everyone else was slowly starving.

What's more, the kings were preoccupied with their own power struggles. They had to concentrate on fighting one another and keeping up their images through ostentatious displays of wealth. By insulating themselves in the short run from the problems of society, the elite merely bought themselves the privilege of being among the last to starve....

[Roger]

Goldberg's thesis is absurd. Here's what happened: Intelligent flesh-eating dinosaurs burned the great forests so as to smoke out the bison, which they then cooked and ate. The Native Americans did not get to the Americas until several decades after the great forests had already been burned. They crossed the land bridge to nowhere in Alaska. The dinosaurs had been killed a few years earlier when the earth was struck by a small star.

[Dave]

The hilarity of this is obvious to anyone who's spent any time in the Midwest. It's also highly ironic given the criticism of "bicoastal" liberals, and talk about "flyover" country. Has Goldberg never driven across the country? Or flown over the country? Does he not realize how _big_ the Great Plains are? That must have been one helluva fire!

What a maroon.

[ahem]

"Jonah's main problem is he skims or references source material"

He doesn't even do that. He asks people to skim for him, then skims their skimmings.

The sad thing is that there are dumber people than him: that is, people who think he's an authority on anything other than laziness and bedwetting.

He truly shows, in his writing, the intellectual depth of a puddle.

[Pinch]

Don't give us boring facts.

Attack the man. Attack the man!

[anne]

Kate,

You're just so gorgeous!!! I feel all tingly!

[joel]

Kate:

So in other words, the Native Americans were burning off the land in order to make their garden grow?

[Jennifer]

Please ignore these trolls.

[MobiusKlein]

I'm amazed that J.G. can attack a strawman quite so well. Contrary to his notions, NOT A SINGLE COMMENTER HERE has suggested that the American Indians were perfect ecological saints.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/17/reviews/991017.17fleisht.html

October 17, 1999

Natural Man
By MARK S. FLEISHER

THE ECOLOGICAL INDIAN
Myth and History.
By Shepard Krech 3d.

Imagine a life with nothing manufactured, with yourself starting from scratch and being forced to build everything you need out of natural resources, exploiting rivers, lakes, oceans and forests for food without significantly altering the landscape.

We learned as kids that American Indians lived off the land in perfect harmony with nature, never taking too much or destroying rivers, grassland or forests more than they had to. Native American people are indeed the thoughtful consumers of native animals and plants, exploiting the landscape in careful, deliberate ways. Never would they overexploit buffalo herds or cut too many trees or use fire inappropriately. The American Indians truly understand what it means to live off the land. Right?

Wrong, says Shepard Krech 3d in ''The Ecological Indian: Myth and History.'' Our notion of the Native American as the Ecological Indian, keeper and preserver of the environment, is merely an image fashioned by mythmakers -- some nave, others manipulative. If we look closely, he says, the image is unsubstantiated. His book is a well-researched, carefully written exploration of how Indians used and abused the environment and how our beliefs about them, shaped by cultural perceptions, have created a largely stereotypic image of real people.

I spent the middle and late 1970's among Salish and Nootkan people on the Northwest Coast, conducting ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork as a graduate student and then as a fledgling assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University. I vividly recall transcribing the Salish language Clallam and the Nootkan languages Hesquiat and Makah, spoken by tribal elders born at the turn of the century. I recorded hundreds of vocabulary items for animals, fishing and hunting techniques and accompanying rituals, and enjoyed native myths about how the world of humans and animals meshed in practical and mythic harmony for thousands of years of habitation at the edge of densely wooded forests on Washington's Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island's western seacoast south of Nootka Sound. I had no time then to question how Europeans and European-Americans conceptualized native people and their relationship to the environment. Nor did I wonder if elderly informants' statements about their treatment of the environment in the ''olden days'' were an accurate depiction of a lost life style.

Krech, an anthropologist at Brown University, examines specific ecological issues and dissects each one into cultural and factual components. Did American Indians kill too many buffalo? If they did, why? Did they cut too many trees, and why? What was the effect? Did American Indians really inhabit a lush countryside, an Eden? Krech helps us understand these issues by separating facts from myths. There were so few American Indians on so much land that Europeans, accustomed to crowded spaces, perceived only paradise when they saw lightly peopled landscapes. Nor did the early Europeans see the abandoned, overexploited landscapes. Not only did Europeans interpret what they saw through a lens biased by a Western life style, they had little understanding of the cultural complexities of the Indians or of how Indians' views of animals, plants and forces of nature affected what we now see as overexploitation and abuse of the land....

[a different chris]

>"I'm not sure what a "neurotic" post looks like.

>Does it wash its hands a lot?

No, that would be obsessive compulsive.

>Does it look hunted and scared of things?

Nope, paranoid (although it's not paranoid if somebody is really after it).

>Does it cry a lot?"

That would be a depressed post.

No, the only way I could think to categorize it was "wonderful".

HTH

[Hmmmm....]

Jennifer,

Ignore the trolls? How do you tell the diffference between them and some of the regulars?

Brad suggested a stupidest man alive competition. If this weren't already his blog, that'd be a textbook example of trolling.

Let's see how long my comments stay up.

3, 2, 1...

[Ummmm....(formerly Hmmmmm...)]

Mobius,

Jonah wasn't setting up a straw man. He was merely clarifying his original comments, which Brad attacked and suggested were stupid. So, if Jonah's point and clarifications are acceptable, in that you seem to accept that the American Indians weren't environmental saints, then your issue is with Brad, not Jonah.

I can't wait to see that discussion!

[Ahemmmmahem...(formerly Ummm...etc.)]

ahem,

Have you bothered to read Jonah, aside from occasionally glancing at The Corner.

Your comments suggest that it's you getting the skimming of the skimming.

Quite amusing, actually.

[UmmmHmmmetc...]

Looks like everyone went home.

[okonemore]

Ira Scwartz,

Way to go personal Ira. You have demonstrated a class and intellectual honesty that people who've read these comments will remember you for, for ages.

You poor deluded wretch.

Cheers!

[liberal]

Barkley Rosser wrote, "There is a natural boundary running north south not too far from the Mississippi where east of that this holds and west of this does not."

Yep. It's readily apparent to someone like me---I grew up in Iowa, and it's clear that there's more rainfall out here on the East Coast, and along with that, more trees.

[liberal]

Etc. Etc. ... wrote, "As it occured in a public talk, the worst I can see Goldberg accused of is imprecision in his use of humorous material, and that regarding the specificity of the Great Plains. Those, like Brad, who wish to take him to task for that are welcome to it, but it goes a great deal farther in displaying how humorlessly self-congratualting they are than it does to illustate or denigrate Goldberg's intelligence."

Except for the fact that Jonah has a very consistent record of idiocy.

[Jack]

I read with interest several of the comments earlier today, and for the most part, they were civil exchanges between those with different views. Now I come back and find that Brad has deleted pretty much every comment that does not agree with his viewpoint. Way to show some guts, Brad!

[I'm running a discussion, not a trollfest. Deal with it.

You are welcome to contribute, if you have something to say.]

[Jack]

Brad has now redefined "trolling" to mean "disagrees with me." Interesting.

[AmusedByThisThread]

http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html

What is the Sixth Extinction?

We can divide the Sixth Extinction into two discrete phases:

Phase One began when the first modern humans began to disperse to different parts of the world about 100,000 years ago.

The first phase began shortly after Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and the anatomically modern humans began migrating out of Africa and spreading throughout the world. Humans reached the middle east 90,000 years ago. They were in Europe starting around 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals, who had long lived in Europe, survived our arrival for less than 10,000 years, but then abruptly disappeared -- victims, according to many paleoanthropologists, of our arrival through outright warfare or the more subtle, though potentially no less devastating effects, of being on the losing side of ecological competition.

Everywhere, shortly after modern humans arrived, many (especially, though by no means exclusively, the larger) native species typically became extinct. Humans were like bulls in a China shop:

They disrupted ecosystems by overhunting game species, which never experienced contact with humans before.
And perhaps they spread microbial disease-causing organisms as well.

Wherever early humans migrated, other species became extinct.

The fossil record attests to human destruction of ecosystems:
Humans arrived in large numbers in North America roughly 12,500 years ago-and sites revealing the butchering of mammoths, mastodons and extinct buffalo are well documented throughout the continent. The demise of the bulk of the La Brea tar pit Pleistocene fauna coincided with our arrival.
The Caribbean lost several of its larger species when humans arrived some 8000 years ago.
Extinction struck elements of the Australian megafauna much earlier-when humans arrived some 40,000 years ago. Madagascar-something of an anomaly, as humans only arrived there two thousand years ago-also fits the pattern well: the larger species (elephant birds, a species of hippo, plus larger lemurs) rapidly disappeared soon after humans arrived.
Indeed only in places where earlier hominid species had lived (Africa, of course, but also most of Europe and Asia) did the fauna, already adapted to hominid presence, survive the first wave of the Sixth Extinction pretty much intact. The rest of the world's species, which had never before encountered hominids in their local ecosystems, were as naively unwary as all but the most recently arrived species (such as Vermilion Flycatchers) of the Galapagos Islands remain to this day.

Sorry if this shatters anyone's Disney-ish view of Native Americans and other pre-technological societies.

[MobiusKlein]

The straw man was the origial assertion: that ..."Some think that Indians were like a Disney movie, with Indians talking to bunnies." ...

An assertion _nobody_ here seems to belive.

The part about "The great plains used to be a giant forest" may be the factually incorrect part, which a geologist or botanist would know better than I or J.G. Was there a giant forest after the glaciers retreated?

http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/govdocs/text/greatplains/text.html

Seems to be a good place to learn more. I'll read it before I say another word on the subject.

[hey]

I really love that arguments that don't agree with the host get to stay up, but vicious, personal, and massively anti-semitic comments stay up. Interesting priorities that you have Braddy-boy. Luckily anti-semitism is perfectly acceptable at Berkeley.

Leaving these comments up, combined with your vigorous pruning of displeasing comments, provides a fairly good cause of action. We've got "actual malice", demonstrably false statements, and we're well off-shore of internet and editorial safe-harbours. The only way you stay out of court is by Mr. Goldberg's pleasure. I suggest that you thank your lucky stars and amend your ways if you want to stay out of court.

[Dale]

There is real anti Semitism in this world. And we are obligated to call it by its name when we see it. But it's a shame when someone misuses the term so egregiously.

[AmusedByThisThreadsCommentariatGestapo]

As I said earier, and was deleted, the Indians did in fact significantly expand the plains.

[Ira Schwartz]

First off, I received a personal email from one Jessica Gavora, author, former Ashcroft staffer, Alaskan, and Lucianne Goldberg trainee.

No, I will not list Ms. Gavora's email address. Let Ann Coulter, one of Ms. Gavora's unquestioned heroes and role models, resort to such foul, cheap, and tawdry tactics.

Ms. Gavora, to her credit, was civil. Ms. Gavora's message was brief and clearly one of displeasure. That is, of course, Ms. Gavora's right. As a private message from Ms. Gavora to myself, I will not publish it here. Why? Ms. Gavora did not give me permission to do so.

By her brief email, it's quite clear that Ms. Gavora has not yet been fully sullied by long-term exposure to Lucianne Goldberg. For that, I credit Ms. Gavora's parents. She hails no doubt from fine stock. To her parents, I tip my hat in compliment.

My opinion of Lucianne Goldberg, based upon knowledge gained over decades well lived, remains unchanged. (Note: I have little respect for Bill Clinton! Why? See Rich, Marc, pardon!)

I openly scorn Lucianne and her tawdry ways. In Jonah, I see the veritable chip off the old (albeit cracked) block. Were Lucianne an engine, she would have been released to a junkyard years ago. Jonah is but a slightly less dangerous version of Lucianne and, with Ms. Gavora, offers an interest literary title twist.

Saddam and Gavora, the 21st century Goldbergs.

On to other business:

okonemore, interesting comment you made. Can you spell? Scwartz ain't right, son. Also, love your email address: okonemore@okonemore.com

hey (hey, hey, baby, hey)

Yes, I'm Jewish. Yes, I adore the Blues. Start with John Lee Hooker. Also, I know anti-Semitism. Criticizing someone who is Jewish (including me) is not anti-Semitism, contrary to what young Jonah and John P. Normanson want you to believe.

hey, don't use terms that you cannot define. You just wind up looking as foolish as Jonah and John P. Normanson.

Also, hey, like okonemore, love your email address: you@hey.com

[save_the_rustbelt]

Haven't you ever noticed the Great Plains are covered with maple tree stumps. :-))

Anyone ever tried to take down a large hardwood tree with a hatchet (tomahawk)?

I read Johah for the comic relief. Not exactly Bill Buckley.

[Ira Schwartz]

Lucianne Goldberg's son.

William F. Buckley.

Comparable?

Now, that's hilarious!

[Blocked Out at Another IP]

Mobius,

One who takes comic hyperbole and holds it up as a straw man is one with whom it will be very difficult to take sersiously.

Ira,

Typos Ira. I hope I wasn't completely (or even partially) invalidated in your mind by a typo. He who lives by the typo in an argument will fall by the typo. Remember that.

I'm sure you're in Dutch with Lucianne and others... Summering together in the Hamptons, putting up with her war stories about Lewinsky. The point is that your own personal and unelucidated opinions of Ms. Goldberg, her son, and his wife, do not an argument make, however self-satisfying they may be to you personally.

At least Brad deigned to offer a quote, however ineffectual it was given the actual facts of the issue and the discovery by many here that Goldberg's humorous take was not the flippant idiocy Mr. DeLong so readily took it to be. Here we just have your droll (my use of the word is quite liberal in this instance) commentary regarding your own personal viewpoints about people. It's not nearly as fascinating as you might believe, or as some actual points of debate might be. It is fun though to see how quickly the personal daggers come out, in the face of things like factual information.

Brad, just FYI, this is a contribution. If you don't want people to post anonymously and make up fake e-mails to maintain that anonymity, then get a log in or at least post that information in a prominent location on the site (as it's common practice on the Internet). Blocking people by IP and removing otherwise civil and sensible posts is simply beneath anyone seeking to have an open and enlightening dialogue.

I am assuming that is your intent. Or is this all about propaganda? In that case block away. You might as well be transparent.

Cheers.

[One last thing]

Save the rustbelt,

I appreciate that you read Jonah for his sense of humor. Please read carefully though. The word he used was "burnt".

Or did the Native Americans possess some sort of flamethrowing, stump-leaving, tomahawk technology not mentioned in most history books?

Cheers