> It struck me at the time that maybe h/g's aren't > necessarily quite the stewards of nature we tend to think. >*IF* Aborigines > of the last couple of hundred years or so are representative of their > ancestral habits or of habits of paleo h/g's in general, then it's an > over-romanticization to believe that they (or anyone else) never took more > out of nature than what they could use. it have never been a conscious choice of them to be in respect of nature's overall well being . they have been mostly in harmony with the natural regulating system that allow earth as a living organism to maintain homeostasis. They did it because of the limited technology they had . yet there is many signs that the trend of developping more powerfull way of doing things and the desastrous consequences the use of more and more powerfull technology have on this homestasis , started way before the neolithic revolution . yes paleo peoples allready compromised their well being in the long run , neolithic revolution might have become a necessity because of that . It took thousands of years to start to show some unbalances because with stone tools upu are getting limited in your impact ,in comparaison with modern tools > While many cultures/societies are > noted for fervent worship of nature, it doesn't necessarily follow that > they conserve it to the utmost. I'm not making an indictment here, for it's > not really very logical to apply modern sensibilities to peoples of the > past. they didn't have to develop a religion of gratefullness, because their vulnerable situation led them to that feeling. the scary thing for now is that we are still as inconscious of the impact in the long run of our actions but the tools we have are so much more impactfull than then . also about modern sensibilities arise from the lack of connection with the crude reality of the natural world , In some way we are becoming less aware than ever .Basically we learned to live in our heads and are not in touch with the necessity to feel all our feeling fully. there is deep joy and deep sorrow in nature , now we try to go by evenly okay .no wonder depression is so rampant . jean-claude