rebeccmeister: (Default)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
1. The NYT recently published an interview of Robert Putnam, known as author of the book Bowling Alone. He's rather pessimistic about what has happened in the US in the time since the book was published, but there are some interesting responses mixed into the interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/magazine/robert-putnam-interview.html

2. I appreciated this recent article about how discoveries made using ground-penetrating radar are shifting thinking about how people lived during prehistoric times: https://aeon.co/essays/an-archeological-revolution-transforms-our-image-of-human-freedoms

3. This article is a reminder to be aware of the effects of natural disasters on people who were already economically marginalized: https://www.texasobserver.org/hunger-hurricane-houston-beryl/

And now I shall close those tabs.

Date: 2024-07-19 02:18 am (UTC)
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
From: [personal profile] twoeleven
Tiny quibble: "how people lived during prehistoric times" seems to imply thousands of years ago. Many of the societies described are quite recent -- no more than a few centuries old -- but their histories are presently unknown.

ObBiology: The mention of the large populations in the Amazon and other areas which are now tropical forests reminded me of my conjecture when the evidence for them first emerged. Is the "rule" that species diversity falls with increasing latitude simply a consequence of rapid speciation in those areas when the human population and its associated agricultural lands were wiped out by Old World diseases?

There would have been incredible numbers of empty niches not only left behind, but also constantly created by plant succession (cropland to tropical forest), climatic changes, and animals filling one set of niches and making others to fill. For example, the emergence of herbivores with new traits creates niches for new kinds of predators (though that sounds a bit teleological).

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