Impact of Ice Age Hunters on the Forests of Europe

Researchers have concluded Europe would be more heavily-forested today if not for the lasting consequence of large-scale fires set by humans around the last Ice Age.  (Science Daily:  Ice Age hunters destroyed forests throughout Europe)

This research has generated new insights on the role of hunters in the formation of the landscape. It may be that during the coldest phase of the last Ice Age, some 20,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers deliberately lit forest fires in an attempt to create grasslands and park-like forests.  They probably did this to attract wild animals and to make it easier to gather vegetable food and raw materials; it also facilitated movement.  Another possibility is that the large-scale forests and steppe fires may have been the result of the hunters' negligent use of fire in these semi-open landscapes.

- Science Daily

The researchers aren't sure why they started such huge fires but they do see the consequences of them.

The remarkable thing about this to the Rockhouse is our Celtic ancestors did that.  However, American Indians did not and America has outstanding forests in the Northwest and the Great Smoky Mountains have one of the most beautiful forests anywhere but you saw the risks when Gatlinburg burned.

Note:  the majority of the wildfires in Tennessee have been arson.  (Legal Insurrection:  Arson Suspected in Several of the Tennessee Wildfires)

The people arrested for it have not been terrorists as they were low-life white people who deliberately threw cigarettes into piles of leaves to watch them burn and did nothing about them.

Corporate America is aggressively raping the forests to send the wood as pulp to China so they can make coffee tables and sell the wood back to us.  Our Celtic ancestors probably weren't aware of the consequences of their actions but corporate America doesn't care.  As we see in Europe, the consequences of that type of marauding are still being felt twenty thousand years later.

The biggest question coming out of the research for me is why didn't the American Indians do that too.  They did some heinous stuff like inducing a herd of bison to charge over a cliff but I've not read of American Indians destroying forests.  When they speak of respecting the Earth and leaving no trace, it appears to have a great deal of cultural depth.

The irony is the descendants of those European Celts who burned the forests over there are now destroying them over here.

Ed:  all ancient Europeans weren't necessarily Celts!

Yah but there were many of us.  We reproduced like a viral epidemic and the range was from Turkey west to Scotland and north to the Scandinavian countries.

Another remarkable thing about American Indians is they did not develop the advanced weapons of the Europeans.  Even China was playing with gunpowder and about ten thousand years ago but Indians apparently never did.  The implication is they were fundamentally less warlike than others and there was no need to evolve more and more sophisticated weaponry.

There wasn't the same tribal conflict in America as in Europe, however.  One example of conflict between tribes was the Mongol attempt to invade Europe for Asians fighting Celts.  Indians had many tribes but they were all sub-tribes of the greater Indian existence and that holds true until you start drifting beyond modern America's borders but even the South American Indians did not develop any high-technology weapons.

It's just arrogance to think they were not capable of it so we need an explanation for a substantial difference in the large-scale behaviors of these cultures.