Reply #7: Amen to that [View All]

[Lexingtonian]

A lot of the large animal species that went extinct after the Ice Age seem to have remarkably small numbers even at their height; the dozens and hundreds of good skeletons we've found of them, mostly because they were preserved in caves and tar pits and ice and/or too large for other animals to eat, distort the real populations rather extremely. Humans had some part in what took place, but a lot of these species were hovering on the edge for entirely different reasons.

All civilizations do have to adapt to their land or fail. I prefer to focus on the positive aspect of it, of how cultures change and adapt, and a lot of what is going on in the U.S. is something of the kind. In social matters I'm always surprised at how the best solutions seem to resemble American Indian ones, and how American culture in the large picture seems to be in a slow transition from European conventions toward motifs also in Native American culture.