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The Modern Antiquarian Forum » The Pagan 'problem' |
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Littlestone 5386 posts |
Sep 17, 2010, 16:02
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StoneGloves wrote: 'If Dawkins didn't exist it would probably be necessary to invent him'. Perhaps, in a way, that is exactly what we have done.
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BuckyE 468 posts |
Sep 17, 2010, 19:06
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No, sorry, the seed bank necessary to recreate a pre-human forest is no longer there. That's what Stonegloves is on about when he says, "...No fungi, micro-invertertebrates, lichen...' Here in the American Piedmont, at least, one can certainly allow land to regrow. Loie and I have about six acres that's been doing just that for twenty years. At first, we tried rehabilitating patches, but soon gave up. After hundreds of years of ploughing and foresting, our little new woods are an entirely different ecosystem than what existed preEuropean invasion. Even back then, the land was not totally "natural," in that Native Americans had been setting fires to create meadows, farming in less intrusive ways, etc. But it was certainly much more "natural." The forests floors were feet deep in duff: leaf and branch litter being decomposed by fungi, and tunneled by ants and other insects. Dozens of species of forbs had their seeds distributed by the ants; dozens of others spread by rhizomes. There were dozens of species of understory shrubs and small trees. None of this will reestablish itself naturally. The few places where the forbs still grow in something like profusion are so far apart, and the browsing animals so densely packed, the plants can't possibly get from there to here. Even the few specimens we planted are long gone, eaten up. Asian stilt grass is taking over. So are Japanese honeysuckle, English house sparrows, Oriental Bittersweet. Native bees are pretty much dead of foreign mites and viruses. The list goes on and on. On the other hand, the woods are green. There's plenty of growth! Succession would take over our mown yard in a few years, the way it has on the few acres of field and few acres of stream bank. If I leave a patch unmowed for even one season, oak, poplar and walnut trees spring up in profusion. Good old eastern gray squirrels doing their job. Although I understand introduced ones are extirpating your native native Red Squirrels. Sigh.
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StoneGloves 1149 posts |
Sep 17, 2010, 20:52
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I have a pal who is exterminating the grey squirrels but the pet lovers are starting to fight back, through the animal cruelty legislation. I saw one in an open urban area scurrying north, about a week ago, an unusual sight. There's still some Red squirrel locally but are now irretrievably fragmented. Cubes of forest soil might work as transplants - patches are too liable to dry out, perhaps. Forest would rapidly reassert in the city, even, though it could only have a fraction of the biodiversity of the woodland that appeared after the glacial retreat - simply because of the time scale. The Red Rose Forest has been sometimes planted where trees have never grown - up in the peatlands.
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Resonox 604 posts |
Sep 18, 2010, 06:14
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The thread seems(IMO)to be veering towards confusing "paganism" with "atheism"..I have always assumed that praising nature was a form of worship and in it's own way a sort of deity worship, so can't really be atheism...even the scientists are just as pagan as the rest of us with their own form of worship. These "celebrity atheists" who seem to rail against everything and anything....are just telling us how clever they are by believing nothing at all..yet(desperately)want us to believe in them are the ones who get my goat. (I daresay goat worship is still rife in certain parts so no offence intended...) ;0P
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Kozmik_Ken 829 posts |
Sep 18, 2010, 19:21
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Pretty much agree with that Geoff. I'm interested in paganism's origins and practises - plus how remnants have carried through to the present day. But I see modern paganism as just as self-delusional as any other religion or belief in the supernatural.
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BuckyE 468 posts |
Sep 19, 2010, 04:13
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Ah, well, cubes might be viable, certainly, but not useful. As you say, the biodiversity would be at best fractional. And it's that biodiversity we imagine we would be re-establishing. Hah. Forget it. We don't even have, here in the Piedmont, any comprehensive surveys of preEuropean flora and fauna. There were some Naturalists working in the 18th century, and there are of course reports from 17th century explorers. But no one has any reliable idea of what the ecosystem here actually comprised, especially when you get down to the level of fungi and insects. That's bizarre and, ultimately, discouraging. There are a few hundred square miles of supposedly "virgin" forest still extant on the Right Coast of the USA, but even in those cases, all that means is those places have no historical evidence of being cut/logged/farmed. Europeans could well have been --indeed probably were-- running pigs in that forest at some point. English earthworms have infested most of those places. Those two factors alone would have changed the ecosystems beyond reconstruction. Nope. I gave up. I ruined my old pickup truck yanking out invasive plants here. Piled up three brush piles each of which was nearly the size of our house. Now, EPA regulations prevent me from burning such piles. Eff it. It's hopeless. Our little plot of ground is at least Green, in the sense that's it's providing a carbon sink. That's all we, as homeowners, can do.
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Sep 19, 2010, 05:29
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BuckyE wrote: Our little plot of ground is at least Green, in the sense that's it's providing a carbon sink. That's all we, as homeowners, can do. Quite. I'm with Moss, trees are better than none. And I don't think turning the ecological clock back is ever possible anywhere, despite the instincts of stoney people, who can see monuments restored rather more easily. It's one world, people immigrate, so do bees, the whole world system is not only inter-linked but in constant flux. Just in my lifetime the dawn chorus is quite different - and that's quite independent of global warming. You also have the problem that archaeos have - if there was a moment when the past wasn't evolving but was static (which there wasn't) which restoration datum would you be aiming to get back to? For the States, pre-European might be a significant one but there are others equally significant, back to the times of the dot people - and anyway, the impact of Europeans has been incremental over five hundred years, so..... Nah, it can't be done meaningfully. What might be amusing is to choose a future datum, 200 years hence, and see if you create a vision of that. ;)
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StoneGloves 1149 posts |
Sep 19, 2010, 18:22
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"Nah, it can't be done meaningfully. What might be amusing is to choose a future datum, 200 years hence, and see if you create a vision of that. ;)" Desert, no proper food, Waterworld But there is more that a person can do than sink carbon (which I achieve by diverting objects from the MWS and living like an Egyptian) and that's to champion or promote a locally endangerd or declining species - a bunch of common butterfies and moths, again, in my case.
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Sep 19, 2010, 20:23
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a bunch of common butterfies and moths, again, in my case. Good for you. You can buy hundreds of eggs for peanuts and raise them all without losing 99% to ichneumon wasps so one person can make a big difference locally, almost straight away. Everyone should do it!
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Chris Collyer 849 posts |
Sep 19, 2010, 23:06
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nigelswift wrote: You can buy hundreds of eggs for peanuts and raise them all without losing 99% to ichneumon wasps so one person can make a big difference locally, almost straight away. Everyone should do it! Sounds interesting, have you got any more information on that? -Chris
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