Re: CHAT: Religion, Philosophy & Politics

> Date:         Thu, 4 May 2000 15:00:34 -0500
> From: "Carlos Eugenio Thompson (EDC)" <EDCCET@...>
> I would believe that for a family or a small village, hunter-gatherers will
> use less land than primitive farming.  But if you improve the farming
> technology, we could increase the amount of people supported for the same
> land; and if we have good trading practices, a larger used land could
> support an even much larger amount of people.  Probably we are still far
> from saturation but I thing the mass of people on earth is higher than the
> one a hunter-gathering economy could support, in terms of usable land.
I think you need to tell us what you think a hunter-gathering
lifestyle means. The definition everyone else is using is for a group
of people to hunt/fish/dig/pick their food and then wait for new
animals/fish/roots/fruits to appear on their own.

As soon as you do anything at all to increase the amount of food you
can get, like by rounding up animals and protecting them from other
predators or collecting the seeds of plants you like and sowing them
elsewhere, you're not a hunter-gatherer anymore. Even if it's machines
doing the work for you, you're a farmer with very fancy tools.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)