Out west, we have a phrase, “before white man.” It’s shorthand for “everything from the Hadronic Era up until about 1867.” It comes in handier than you’d think. For example, if you find a small teepee circle with stones half-sunk into the soil, you can fairly confidently say that it’s from before white man. If you find stone scrapers and lance points, those are probably from before white man, if not necessarily by much. (If you find a point flaked out of an old glass telegraph insulator, that’s not from before white man, although plenty cool all the same.)
I’ve been whimsying: What will North America look like after white man, that is, after settled communities have vanished or so greatly contracted that the continent is essentially wilderness again?
How many introduced animal species will persist? Will they prosper? We already have feral pigs, often hybridized with European wild boars (and populations of the latter, come to that), multiplying and diversifying the way you’d expect of such resourceful animals; I think they’re living after white man now. I can imagine several strains of completely wild dogs and cats, probably becoming almost indistinguishable from wolves (or jackals?) and Syrian wild cats, respectively.
How many zoo animals, assuming they’d eventually escape into the wild, would persist? African antelopes of many kinds could almost surely adapt to, say, the American Southwest. How about hippos and rhinos in Florida and the Gulf States? Maybe Indian elephants along the Rio Grande? Nilgai in Taxas?
Big cats would certainly be able to subsist on the swarms of deer already present in North America; add in fallow deer and red deer (the latter hybridize with wapiti anyway) and lions and tigers might well spread from southern Mexico right up to the Arctic Circle. Cheetahs originated in the New World; they could go right back to hunting pronghorns. (Why can the cheetah run 70 mph? Because the pronghorn can run 60 mph.)
Oh, BTW, you non-whites reading this? No need for you to get smug about “after white man.” White men come in all colors. Ask any Plains Indian.
I’ve been whimsying: What will North America look like after white man, that is, after settled communities have vanished or so greatly contracted that the continent is essentially wilderness again?
How many introduced animal species will persist? Will they prosper? We already have feral pigs, often hybridized with European wild boars (and populations of the latter, come to that), multiplying and diversifying the way you’d expect of such resourceful animals; I think they’re living after white man now. I can imagine several strains of completely wild dogs and cats, probably becoming almost indistinguishable from wolves (or jackals?) and Syrian wild cats, respectively.
How many zoo animals, assuming they’d eventually escape into the wild, would persist? African antelopes of many kinds could almost surely adapt to, say, the American Southwest. How about hippos and rhinos in Florida and the Gulf States? Maybe Indian elephants along the Rio Grande? Nilgai in Taxas?
Big cats would certainly be able to subsist on the swarms of deer already present in North America; add in fallow deer and red deer (the latter hybridize with wapiti anyway) and lions and tigers might well spread from southern Mexico right up to the Arctic Circle. Cheetahs originated in the New World; they could go right back to hunting pronghorns. (Why can the cheetah run 70 mph? Because the pronghorn can run 60 mph.)
Oh, BTW, you non-whites reading this? No need for you to get smug about “after white man.” White men come in all colors. Ask any Plains Indian.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1ulgpek
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