Walking with Beasts

History is not about memorizing facts

• history is about change over time
• history is about cause and effect --not just chronology, not just correlation
• key rules for evaluating evidence;
  
• how much evidence is there--one example is how many people are there in a scientific study, in history that is more often how much detail is there showing the pattern
  
• correlation is not causation--just because two things follow the same pattern doesn't mean they are cause and effect
• look not just for what happened first and second but for how the first could have caused the second
  

What counts as an explanation in history?

• in the other social sciences you can often do experiments or otherwise test theories
• (one way of defining science is that a theory is only scientific if it is testable or can be proved false)
• science requires controlled experiments--where you have a control group without the factor you are looking at
• artificial experiments that allow you to look at one thing at a time
  
• in history you can't do scientific experiments and isolate one factor, one cause
• so in history there is usually more than one explanation or cause--don't try to oversimplify to make it neat
  
• events are often overdetermined: you can find more explanations than you need
  
• instead of finding the simplest causes for some event, historians want to understand the complexity
• so lots of different things count as an explanation (change history)
  
• actions of great men
• changing ideas (general public or what is written in serious magazines)
• ecology and disease, population pressure
  
• social movements (eg. civil rights movement)
• religion
• natural events and natural resources
  

Crosby wants to say--pay attention to these explanations that have usually been left out
ecology can be both a cause and the thing whose change needs to be explained
ecology is both the cause and the effect

• cause: when Europeans were able to bring their ecosystem they succeeded
  
• effect: European colonization succeeded in making other parts of the world into neo-Europes
• but why did that work--what is the cause of Europeans being able to bring their ecosystem
  

So why did European flora, fauna, and people displace those native in the neo-Europes?
Why wasn't it a more even exchange?
ecologists tell use we can't jut say that European plants and animals were better (because the only "better" is that they are better adapted to a particular environment)
instead it worked because the pieces of the European ecosystem fit together and because Europeans transformed the land

Why was that dramatic ecological revolution possible?

1. because the neo-Europes were isolated ecosystems
2. because the extinction of the megafauna had left ecosystems with empty niches
3. the Europeans created the conditions that favored their plants and animals

Isolation

• because of the isolation of the neo-Europes their flora and fauna may have been simpler

• because humans came late to the Americas and Australia, few diseases had developed there
• fewer domestic animals meant fewer diseases because many diseases pass from animals to humans

extinction

• in addition there is an oddity of ecological history
  
• the first set of settlers (whom we call indigenous) found large animals, which they learned to hunt successfully
• Australian megafauna       North American megafauna (plan to reintroduce)
• the native large animals had gone extinct (whether or not caused by humans)
• Crosby says the Europeans found impoverished ecosystems (ecosystems with missing animals)
  
• this left niches open for European livestock (particularly in Argentina)
  

did the first humans kill off those large animals?

• still controversial, but in at least some cases yes (eg. Moa)
  
• if not by hunting then by changing the ecosystem by burning
• but animals that evolved without large predators do not easily learn to defend themselves
• Galapagos
  

Europeans created the conditions that led to ecological change
Some extinction happened before the Europeans arrived, but some the Europeans did: once the European settlers arrived they killed off the competing animals in the great plains

• in North America there was more competition, but Europeans slaughtered the buffalo

• animals that live by certain patterns can be hunted into extinction: passenger pigeon
• Europeans valued and planted/protected their plants and not (with few exceptions) the native plants
  
• also the actions of the Europeans in planting crops and other plants and releasing animals into the wild
• Europeans and their animals disturbed the soil, favoring plants that liked disturbed soil
  
• in the European cases this is purposeful action by humans to change the ecosystem
  

other reasons for the success of European plants and animals--some of it happened without human beings changing the ecosystem on purpose

• European plants and animals left many of their enemies behind
• European plants and animals were adapted to work together: so the grasses stood up to grazing, European plants were fertilized by honeybees brought by Europeans
  

Two explanations so far: what happened before the Europeans arrive (partly human action) and the action of Europeans in hunting

Fundamentally there is the action of the Europeans here

• wouldn't have succeeded without cutting down of forests, plowing and grazing animals
• European plants and animals succeeded because the Europeans created the environment the plants and animals were accustomed to

effect--success of European colonization

• cause--Europeans had an ecological advantage, but how?
  
• empty niches
• plants and animals that worked together
• Europeans disturbed the soil and created a suitable environment
• others
  

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