Recently I have read an interesting book, 1491, New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, which considers in a fair amount of depth and breadth, the impact and effects that some very populous cultures had on the environments in which they lived. These cultures existed throughout the American continent, extending from the ancient Siberian land bridge through North America, Mexico, and Central America to South America. The book presents the work of scholars and researchers in a way that is very readable, very interesting, and extremely challenging. The stylistic presentation reminds me somewhat of Robert Ardrey’s, African Genesis, which I read sometime in the mid-seventies. Ardrey’s book primarily considered the emergence of the human specie based on the scholarship and research of many anthropologists, archeologists, and geologists. Of course, if you do not happen to accept the idea of an evolutionary emergence of humankind from prior species, you will likely not appreciate this book. Likewise if you hold to the notion that pre-Columbus inhabitants of the American continent existed by hardly making an ecological footprint on their environments, you will likely have a very difficult time with this book. But if you have a mind that is open to possibility and probability, you will likely end up admiring the work and re-considering some of the views you may hold regarding these ideas. I know I have, and I recommend the book to you.
I bring up both of the above mentioned books as an aid to whomever works with, cares about, or lives within a relatively natural environment – a wilderness environment, if you will. 1491 provides substantial evidence that the ancient American cultures radically altered their environments to sustain their populations. They constructed massive earthworks that served as irrigation and transportation canals, created areas for agriculture and habitation, roads, cities, and temples. They traded goods with neighboring groups. They had economies based on barter rather than monetary exchange. They modified the land to provide sustenance for themselves but they did so in a manner that was sustainable, unlike many real or proposed incursions on our present day environments (think ANWAR), which are not necessarily based on sustainability but rather on maintaining and expanding cultures that harm the environments, largely for monetary gain, at the expense of both the environments and the people who live therein.
Bear with me on this segue.
Within the last month Dan and I have twice been called to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The first time was to help our friend Ed Iron Cloud bring the Oglala College’s buffalo herd back into their home pastures. The second time Dan, Jill, Erney, and I went to meet with the rangers of the tribe’s Park and Recreation Department to recover our own buffalo which had found a way through our fence (about which we had allowed ourselves to become smugly proud) and into the Reservation’s huge pastures. Mind you this terrain is very rugged badlands/grasslands country and both of these ventures required a day’s work for everyone involved. We recovered the buffalo in both cases. Dan and I then returned to the breach and repaired it. The entire weeklong series of events struck me, regarding the two books previously mentioned, that we, too, were altering our environments in an attempt to assist their sustainability. Then I began looking at the non-natural additions to the landscape: cattle, fences, stock dams/dugouts, the remnants of windmills, introduced grasses, including cheat grass, western and crested wheat grass, et. al. What struck me next is that these things that people have added to their environment, rightly or wrongly, are an attempt to contribute to the environment’s ability to sustain itself and its inhabitants.
At this juncture there is no turning back the clock or the calendar. Cattle, fences, and cheat grass are here to stay, and today there may be no such entity as a pristine, hands-off wilderness. Wilderness may have only existed prior to the emergence of humankind on earth. The remnants of man’s hand on the land are here to stay. The best we can do now, the best we can ever have done is not to destroy what we have, not exploit it in any manner that takes away its ability to sustain itself and us.