I say this as an SUV driving republican voting nature lover:
A lot of people's first reaction to hearing this is something along the lines of "haha, see, hippies, see how stupid you are!??!".
Just because humans at one point blindly destroyed everything they came in contact with does not mean that they should continue to, or should dismiss doing so as acceptable.
Ah, reading your post again - We're special in that we can decide what effects we want to have - indeed we may be only special in being able to decide we don't want certain effects. We might not be special in being able to decide we won't actually create them. Human beings, as devastating as fire ants but with more regrets!
... except when we fail to act on our supposed ideals, which seems to be most of the time!
I suppose that if we assumed that humans were like some species of giant ant, then our spread accross the globe, destroying species, altering coast lines and spewing out poison, would be a marvel of nature!
If each complex species that enters and alters an area is "degrading" it, what is the most desirable ecosystem? A giant mound of plankton?
Isn't it a marvel of nature? We're consciously shaping the world to suit ourselves. We're being very destructive and savage in the process, but destruction and loss is natural.
I most enjoy the comments one sees online made by people who talk about how our biology is going to doom us to destruction. The point they miss is that being aware of our biology allows us to circumvent it, to some degree, and that's a part of evolution to. Mental/technological evolution still counts as evolving.
Is this really news? I mean someone very very confused might actually believe that ancient man was magical. But doesn't everyone know about the Mammoths and all the other giant fauna that went extinct when man arrived? Only Africa still has giant mammals probably because they co-evolved with hominids.
It might be interesting, and you guys might like it, but this isn't news.
Seriously. anybody really interested in environmental issues should have known years ago that all creatures that live on this planet change it -- sometimes to drastic effect. Some of the practices the article didn't go into are even more devastating, such as the use of fire-hunting, or early attempts at mining and smelting (which polluted vast areas of wetlands)
The real question is: what would we like our environment to be like today? I think people get this romantic, mushy-headed feeling that somehow it's only modern humans that have had a noticeable impact on things, and that "if it were only like it were five thousand years ago" or some such that it would idyllic. By having a slanted preconception like this, it actually hurts conversations about where we want to go by adding a lot of finger-pointing and posturing where none need exist.
(Sorry -- must have a bit of grumpiness to get out of my system today)
Yes, this is news. It presents specific, new evidence of the practice. The general idea that ancient humans had negative impact on the land was recognized as not being novel in the lead: "The idea that primitive hunter-gatherers lived in harmony with the landscape has long been challenged by researchers, who say Stone Age humans in fact wiped out many animal species in places as varied as the mountains of New Zealand and the plains of North America."
I see this tendency with scientific articles a lot. An article presents a new finding within an existing framework, and someone feels compelled to point out that the existing framework is old hat. This ignores that the news in the article is the new finding, not the existing framework.
It represents specific new evidence. Got me there.
My point, somewhat rhetorically put, was that the framework itself is what is new for most readers here, not the specific piece of information. And that's sad.
Actually, this might just be an important point in the discussion of what exactly "does or doesn't belong" on HN. It seems like all the highly-voted, well-liked, and highly-commented articles tend to discuss some sort of revelation of pattern, not revelation of fact. In other words, hackers like to read about new, effective abstractions (for seeing the world in general, not just for code.)
Well, of course. What else does anyone think happened to all of the ice-age mega-fauna? Human beings moved in and ate everything that was big and slow.
A lot of people's first reaction to hearing this is something along the lines of "haha, see, hippies, see how stupid you are!??!".
Just because humans at one point blindly destroyed everything they came in contact with does not mean that they should continue to, or should dismiss doing so as acceptable.