. Someone here
>recently mentioned the ecology of meat-eating versus cultivating grains. It
>got me to thinking again about a problem I’ve had since first reading
>“Neanderthin” last year with the idea that hunting/gathering is kind to the
>environment while agriculture isn’t. Part of Ray’s and others’ contention
>is that hunting/gathering is environmentally more sound and sustainable
than
>agriculture.

I am agreeig with the idea that hunting gathering is kind to the environment
while agriculture have not been, but there is an other solution that is
getting out the this dichotony .( black or white)
THe tradidional practice have been disastrous to the environment in the way
that it interfere with the natural process of fertilisation that make the
top soil grow every year with the increased of bio mass. This interference
happens thru the practice of tilling or burning (the kind of agriculture
practiced before the plow)
The practice of tilling create need for fertilisation, weeding, treatment of
diseases .
The logical outcome of centuries of traditional agriculture is chemical
farming .(because of soil depletion)
Masanobu fukuoka demonstrated a kind of farming that don't require tilling
fertilising , weeding or treatment of disease and which allow the buildup of
the topsoil without depleting the neighbour topsoil (like in organic
farming).
He wrote a book <the naturel way of farming> where he develops the
principals , philosophy and practice of the green revolution. An other book
that is more easely accesible  (the other is out of print) and may be more
responding to your question is <road back to nature> where he relate the
desertification process going on in the world with  the differents cultures
's practice of agriculture .
I will be more than willing to give you more on this way of farming that i
am practicing myself for 5 years (very short in comparaison with the 50
years of practice by masanobu

On top of not depleting the soils this kind of farming can bring the highest
yield possible. ( his basic motive was to put in practice the idea :< you
can't do better than nature>
HE was himself a plant pathologist that tried hard to do better by advising
treatments of diseases to farmers. by looking at the roots of diseases, he
end up realising that fixing problems that we are creating in the 1 st place
is just removing ourselves farther from the source. So he looked at the
source,  at the first disturbance,  interference with naturel processes
(natural fertilisation process)
>
>Here’s my question: how does this gibe with the standard Paleolithic
>observation that it was in large part mankind’s efficiency as a hunter that
>wiped out much of the megafauna (large game) at the end of the Paleolithic
>era? If I’m reading this correctly, we became too efficient for our niche,
>and that was part of what forced us to begin to look elsewhere for food
>sources, such as grains and “fruits of technology”. If we outgrew our
>ability to sustain ourselves on game 10,000 years ago, when the world’s
>population was a fraction of what it is now, it makes no sense to me that
it
>is ecologically sound now, with 5 billion people populating the planet.

In my opinion , it is the practice of cooking our food that gave rise to a
physiological state of undernourishment  and a psychological feeling of lack
.
It became A necessicity to secure more our food sources leading 1st to
hunting bigger mamals in greater number 2 to pastoralism and agriculture
once the wild ecosystem was getting more "unsupporting " of humanity  .
On top of that there is a clear  decreasing of  sexual activity once one
switch to raw food that suggest , that endogenous exitation due to  heat
denatured molecules   might have led us to overpopulation and further
reinforcement of insecurity and feeling of lack.
>
>I agree with those here who’ve said that agriculture is environmentally
>devastating. It just seems that the issue is much more complicated than
>assuming that we can sustain ourselves on animal products, since according
>to Audette, D’Adamo, and others who’ve written about the
>Paleolithic/Neolithic shift, we seem to have proven once that we can’t.
From
>a nutritional point of view, I like this diet. But from an ecological point
>of view, it strikes me as a much more complex topic than either vegetarian
>or paleolithic ideology makes it.

My point is that the hunting and gathering that we know today is at the
source of agriculture despite that the least invading ones have been able to
maintain their lifestyle for longuer period of time without feeling the
desire to improved on their  limited practice of agriculture( amazonian
cultures)
There is a responsible place where we can become the care taker of the land
, allowing rich varied ecosystem supporting plants animals and human in
symbiotic relationships.
And there is allready available a rich source of paleofoods in the forms of
insects and smalls animals ( birds,reptiles, and small mamals)  that can
complete  a reasonnable management of mamal population
Jean-claude