On Fri, 11 Jan 2013, Brent Wallis <brent.wallis@gmail.com> wrote:
The thing about hunter-gatherer societies is that there is a more direct link between population and sustainability. If your tribe has a certain area that can feed a certain number of people then you have clear choices to keep the population down or declare war on surrounding tribes - which would be more likely to reduce the population of your own tribe than increase the available land.
Moi, as a long term resident of , and very frequent traveller to far flung villages in PNG can categorically state that you are so wrong it's not funny.
Some analysis of the food supply in Victoria suggest that our state is not producing enough food to feed it's inhabitants. Some suggest that we are doing OK now but will not be able to produce enough food in some years in the future. It's difficult to determine the numbers with all the trade and some inefficiencies in production. It's also not easy to determine how things could be changed if there was a food shortage, EG changing dairy farms to wheat farms improves useful food but isn't always easy or possible. No-one really cares about this because it's believed that we can rely on money from manufacturing and managing mining companies to import food. Victoria has an area of 237,629 km^2 more than half that of PNG which is 462,840 km^2. In a hunter-gatherer society the area of the country doesn't matter much (countries as we know them don't even exist for H-G), a H-G is unlikely to buy food from the next village let alone the products from other states and countries that occupy so much space on out supermarket shelves. Now there have been cases of H-G societies destroying themselves by using all of an important resource (EG Easter Island), but it should be easier to spot such things as they are happening when it's on a scale where everyone knows everyone else in the village and knows what they are doing. It's easier for first-world people to believe that growth can be sustained forever. We just use the infinite supply of oil and the infinite developments of new agricultural technology to increase food supply etc. Also there's little direct result. A tribe of 150 people in an area will have to make some significant changes if they expand to 300 people, which is a real problem when there's no unoccupied land. A family in Australia that doubles in size just buys more houses. Knowing someone from another country is such a wrong way of supporting an argument that's it's not funny. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/