side characters my beloved

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
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Guess who’s back with another drawing of the same damn guy AGAIN

[ID: a digital drawing of Jet from Avatar: The Last Airbender. The drawing only shows his eyes and his wavy hair framing them, with gold and red dappled light over his face. His brow is slightly furrowed and his eyes face the viewer. End ID]

jet atla avatar: the last airbender atla jet atla fanart my art digital art figured out how to use sketchpad on a computer with a mouse which works WAY better than a tablet and figured for this one I'd mess around with lighting and shadow I'm really proud of how it turned out actually ^-^ It's supposed to have a kinda sunlight-through-fall-leaves effect or it could also be sparks from fire idk depends if you want angst or something more chill
erisenyo
headspace-hotel

Pleistocene extinction is an uncomfortable topic for me because the causes are not fully understood, but the likelihood that humans played a role in the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna brings out a nasty side of people where they're like "as you can see, humans kill everything they touch and destroy ecosystems wherever they go"

In particular they are often specifically talking about megafauna of the Americas, Australia, Madagascar or other islands. (this idea is usually paired with talking about people crossing the Beringia land bridge). It's all the exact places where indigenous peoples have been trying to assert their rights to their own land

Furthermore, the "holocene extinction" idea treats the current biodiversity crisis created by colonialism and capitalism as equal to the extinction when the Ice Age ended.

If we accept the proposition that the end-Pleistocene extinctions were caused by humans and that this quality means all of the "Holocene extinction" shares a common cause, that treats environmental destruction and exploitation as a fundamental effect of human presence, instead of a result of policies and systems of power that are not inevitable.

headspace-hotel

Also

The main guy who argues this is a guy named Paul S. Martin who basically came up with the "overkill hypothesis" positing that humans hunted megafauna worldwide to extinction.

I downloaded his book a while back and did some poking around in it, and he argues—I cannot stress this part enough—that we need to create a wildlife park in North America where we introduce lions, camels, elephants, and other African wildlife to America to experiment with the effects of doing something he calls "Pleistocene rewilding."

Presumably Native American nations would either agree that this is...somehow a good idea, or just wouldn't be consulted...

headspace-hotel

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Covered in a parallel reblog, but I wanted to save these tags. There's so much evidence that's piled up of human presence in the Americas between 15k and 30k years ago (All over the Americas, too! Both continents!).

The strongest evidence for "overkill" is that human arrival supposedly coincides with extinctions, and the old dates on human arrival seem completely overturned at this point.

I'm pretty sure I read that people mainly came by boat rather than land bridge, but don't quote me on it.

specialagentartemis

Minor archaeology correction: The current scientific hypothesis shift is to multiple entries.

There were definitely people in the Americas before the Beringia land bridge opened up. I have been to and seen the human footprints alongside mammoths and giant ground sloths in the 21-thousand-year-old clay in New Mexico! There are well-established campsites in Chile that date to the same time or before the Alaskan/Canadian ice-free corridor was opening up! The ancestors of those people very likely came to the Americas by boat, following the Pacific shoreline.

However, it’s also true that a massive amount of a specific type of tool, called Clovis point, that starts showing up right when the Beringia land bridge ice-free corridor opens up ~12,000 years ago. Most archaeologists agree that there was a migration south from Beringia/Alaska at that point, a new group entering the Americas seen in increased populations and a new stone point style. The point isn’t that that didn’t happen, just that they weren’t the first time people ever set foot in America—there were already people when the Beringia-peoples came and integrated. (The Pawnee historian and writer Roger Echo-Hawk has an interesting perspective on that here.)

However it’s true that the causes of the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions aren’t fully understood, but the changing climate -> large grasslands becoming forests -> massive grazing herbivores didn’t have the food sources they used to is a big part of it. (Evidence: the places where there still ARE large grasslands, like the North American plains and the South American pampas, retained large herbivore megafauna)

And as my Ecology professor from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes once told us, when discussing this, and I never forgot: If it’s true that the people who came to the Americas in the Ice Age hunted the mammoths to extinction, maybe it was an important lesson our ancestors learned back then. Maybe that’s why we place such an important value on reciprocity, care, good stewardship, and relationship with the Earth and the animals: that we saw what happens when we don’t. There are different ways to think about this story.

headspace-hotel

Yeah, I have no doubt that human migrations contributed to megafauna extinctions, but I don't think it's some kind of "humans are a special exterminator species that destroys everything by nature" thing, it was just another stressor on top of drastic changes in their habitat

I just don't buy a lot of the things Paul S. Martin says in his book. For example he suggests that American megafauna was docile and easy to hunt because of not having any experiences being hunted by humans, citing the docility of flightless birds on islands with no natural predators.

I think that's bullshit. American megafauna would have had loads of predators, even if not humans specifically, and there's no reason an animal wouldn't be able to generalize their avoidance of predators to include humans.

Honestly one of my main impressions of the book was "lol this guy doesn't know anything about hunting" because he seems to believe that early humans would have killed mass numbers of herbivores just because they were easy to kill, which is a naive view of hunting and herbivores. Herbivores can and will Kill You for looking at them funny and there's no way hunting a mammoth wasn't incredibly dangerous.

Like, a bison killed someone in Yellowstone just this past week. It seems pretty presumptive to decide that extinct megafauna was slow and stupid when extant megafauna is pretty much all murder machines.

headspace-hotel

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ok i looked up the thing about the bison killing someone and couldn't find anything and I was really worried i'd made it up until I saw this. whoops

prodogg
quousque: “gluklixhe: “ ironbite4: “ fluffmugger: “ crazythingsfromhistory: “ archaeologistforhire: “ thegirlthewolfate: “ theopensea: “ kiwianaroha: “ pearlsnapbutton: “ desiremyblack: “ smileforthehigh: “ unexplained-events: “ Researchers have used...
unexplained-events

Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

VIDEO

smileforthehigh

Finally. People need to realize aliens aren’t the answer for everything (when they use it to erase poc civilizations and how smart they were)

desiremyblack

(via TumbleOn)

pearlsnapbutton

What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”

kiwianaroha

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Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it

And the Iroquois told Europeans that squirels showed them how to tap maple syrup and no one believed them until they caught it on video

theopensea

Oral history from various First Nations tribes in the Pacific Northwest contained stories about a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting the coast, but no one listened to them until scientists discovered physical evidence of quakes from the Cascadia fault line.

thegirlthewolfate

Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.

Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/

Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄
archaeologistforhire

Adding to this, the Inuit communities in Nunavut KNEW where both the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were literally the entire time but Europeans/white people didn’t even bother consulting them about either ship until like…last year. 

“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.

In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.

“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/inuit-canada-britain-shipwreck-hms-terror-nunavut

“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”

Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.

“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”

 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/sammy-kogvik-hms-terror-franklin-1.3763653

crazythingsfromhistory

Indigenous Australians have had stories about giant kangaroos and wombats for thousands of years, and European settlers just kinda assumed they were myths. Cut to more recently when evidence of megafauna was discovered, giant versions of Australian animals that died out 41 000 years ago.

Similarly, scientists have been stumped about how native Palm trees got to a valley in the middle of Australia, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that someone did DNA testing and concluded that seeds had been carried there from the north around 30 000 years ago… aaand someone pointed out that Indigenous people have had stories about gods from the north carrying the seeds to a valley in the central desert.

fluffmugger

oh man let me tell you about Indigenous Australian myths - the framework they use (with multi-generational checking that’s unique on the planet, meaning there’s no drifting or mutation of the story, seriously they are hardcore about maintaining integrity) means that we literally have multiple first-hand accounts of life and the ecosystem before the end of the last ice age

it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.  

Now consider this: most people consider the start of recorded history to be with  the Sumerians and the Early Dynastic period of the Egyptians.  So around 3500 BCE, or five and a half thousand years ago

These highly accurate Aboriginal oral histories originate from twenty thousand years ago at least

ironbite4

Ain’t it amazing what white people consider history and what they don’t?

gluklixhe

I always said disservice is done to oral traditions and myth when you take them literally. Ancient people were not stupid.

quousque

Wouldn’t that make it the oldest accurate history in the world, of any kind?