Falkland Islanders to hold referendum over sovereignty

[MrFun]

Dang, MTG. Drake might get red marks on his ass from you slapping him so hard and too many times.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Well, I guess that settles it. The views of a small subset that I cherry-picked of pseudoexperts in this field are the only thing that is relevant because I can't research any further than a wikipedia article.

Fixed.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

and enslaved by the Irish, in an entertainingly ironic reversal of the general historical norm.

Not in the slightest. From Roman times up until the 10th century, it was usually the Irish coming across on slaving raids, or colonial invasions. That's where the Scots came from.

It wasn't until Edward the Elder's time and onwards that England got too powerful for that.

[MrFun]

Now, back to shirtless men .....

[Tupac Shakur]

The one to two million figure relies on actual physical evidence. There is no archaelogical evidence to support the 7 million, etc. ranges added later, and the authors of those studies provide no explanation for how known hunting techniques (plains Indians were on foot pre-contact and the Lakhota and Sutai'o and Tsitsista peoles were all westenr Great Lakes and woodland peoples), plus known agricultural practices, would support those population levels.

Well, I guess that settles it. The views of actual experts in this field are irrelevant now that some internet know-it-all has weighed in.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Fun fact: Saint Patrick was actually a Briton who was captured and enslaved by the Irish, in an entertainingly ironic reversal of the general historical norm.

He was actually of Roman descent. So an interloping invader in the first place. Romans are closer to being Spaniards than Brits.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The point wasn't to take Dobyns' mortality figures at face value; they probably are too high. The point was to show that your "one to two million" population range is ridiculous, given the actual range is more like two to twelve million (or eighteen if you want to include Dobyns' highest estimates). Native population in North America pre-Columbus would have to be at the extreme low end of that range for your contention that native population is the same today as it was before the colonialists arrived to be true.

The one to two million figure relies on actual physical evidence. There is no archaelogical evidence to support the 7 million, etc. ranges added later, and the authors of those studies provide no explanation for how known hunting techniques (plains Indians were on foot pre-contact and the Lakhota and Sutai'o and Tsitsista peoles were all westenr Great Lakes and woodland peoples), plus known agricultural practices, would support those population levels.

In Mesoamerica, you have carbon deposits at certain strata levels indicating slash and burn agriculture, you have extensive evidence of minor settlements (not counting major settlements for elites and priest castes), you have food wastes indicating some hybridization and development of crops, you have trade items from other regions, etc.

You don't have that sort of physical evidence in North America, nor do you have evidence of burial sites, etc. that support the higher claimed population densities.

Agriculture was very limited in North America, so you'd need game and fishery density, supplies of wood for travois and lodge poles, evidence of winter camp sites (fairly easy to ascertain, as the practice was to **** and dump bones and trash on the perimeters throughout the winter, so when spring came, you had piles of organic material with bones in a distinct, more or less circular pattern, and that material differentially fertilizes the soil and the bones are detectible from either bone finds and/or calcium deposits in the soil independent of Calcium Carbonate.

There's a whole set of processes between archaeology, physical anthropology, paleozoology and paleobotany for deterimining prior ecosystems, and sustainability footprints. It's nice to come up with a number of 10 million Indians, but it's a different story when you have to break that down into their different pre-contact locations, then map vegatation types and density, game types and density, and document how such a population would sustain itself without causing local population collapse of game, water pollution from **** runoff, increasing intensity of warfare as a result of resource competition, etc. The physical evidence just isn't there to support the higher range estimates of population.

[DaShi]

Reported!

[Dauphin]

You Wiki'd that.

[Tupac Shakur]

Fun fact: Saint Patrick was actually a Briton who was captured and enslaved by the Irish, in an entertainingly ironic reversal of the general historical norm.

[Dauphin]

Oh yeah! The original oppressed drunk gamblers.

[Tupac Shakur]

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

[Dauphin]

I feel as stupid and violated as a native tricked by the British into signing away their land.

Follow the natives lead, get over it by getting drunk and gambling away anything you might still have.

[Tupac Shakur]

The point wasn't to take Dobyns' mortality figures at face value; they probably are too high. The point was to show that your "one to two million" population range is ridiculous, given the actual range is more like two to twelve million (or eighteen if you want to include Dobyns' highest estimates). Native population in North America pre-Columbus would have to be at the extreme low end of that range for your contention that native population is the same today as it was before the colonialists arrived to be true.

[MichaeltheGreat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#Impact_on_native_populations

Molly Bloom is much better than you are at the make-believe internet expert schtick. At least he has the sense to Google **** before he pretends that he already knew it.

And you're much worse than DD at the "wikipedia is the source of all knowledge on anything" troll schtick.

You can go outside wikipedia and find a number of academic papers challenging assumptions about "known mortality rates" because in fact, early contact mortality rates are a matter of circular assumption. Epidemiology did not exist as a field at the time, Indians didn't bother to do census counts every ten years, nor did they issue death certificates. There is no hard evidence to support Dobyns' mortality rates - it's all a bunch of "we think there were 20X Indians pre-contact (though without supporting evidence), and we find some groups 250 years later with actual census counts, of X so mortality rate must have been 95%. And since we have X Indians based on a bunch of reservation counts and we now know mortality rate was 95% because that's the number we just made up, that proves that there were 20X Indians pre-contact.