Medieval Warm Period seen in western USA tree ring fire scars

This is exactly, what the global warming theory predicts…?

I wonder if it is possible to calibrate other long living trees like the bristle-cone pine with the sequoia.
Does anybody know if the sequoia tree diverges like bristle-cone pine trees do with respect to recent ground-based temperature readings, say for the past 30-year period?

“…carefully reintroducing low-intensity fires at frequencies similar to those of the Medieval Warm Period may be crucial for the survival of those magnificent forests, such as those in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.”
Yet the alarmists would blame more frequent fires in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks on global warming. I am all too aware that some plant species do better after they have been subjected to fire and some species are dependent on fire occuring at some time in their life cycles.
“America’s most-cherished legacy tree, the giant Sequoia, is known as a “fire-dependent” species because it requires the heat effects of fire in order to prepare the soil and release the seeds of the next generation of sequoias.”
http://www.fireecology.org/research/USFS_fire_dependent.html
More here:
http://www.nifc.gov/preved/comm_guide/wildfire/fire_6.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1016/is_2_108/ai_89023208/

Happy st. Patrick’s day all!
I must say that I believe the temperature record has been perverted for twisted anti-human reasons and considering the damage the aforementioned has done we should all be delighted that, our expense, the likes of the UN’s carbon-trading mastermind; the haggard Dr. Graciela “my head looked vaguely human until I had it horrifically cut up in bits at your expense” Cichilnisky had loads of our cash with which to deform their faces.
http://images.google.ie/images?um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=graciela+chichilnisky&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&start=0
Why grow old gracefully when you can spend other’s money making you look like something out of a horror movie?

But how did they know which trees were the “fire detector trees”? We know from the most famous tree ring studies that some trees are “temperature trees” and others are not. Researchers had to cull through thousands of tree ring records to find those 10 or 12 temperature trees that produced the hockey stick. Apparently, toward the end of the 20th century there were no longer ANY temperature trees. How can finding “fire detector trees” be so simple?
(I’ll save Andrew the trouble here and mark my comments as “sarcasm”)

Fascinating. Those trees are just magnificent.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

The normal weather regime for California is wet winters and dry summers. Fires, by themselves are not an indication of drought. They could indicate an unusual amount of lightning. Even during wet years, summer lightning will cause significant fires. I am always a bit suspicious of the Hot-Dry / Cold-Wet view of weather and reports that try to support it. The usual pattern as indicated by the palaeoclimatological record, is Hot-Wet / Cold-Dry. But California, being a western coast, has a unique climate pattern. I would be interested in finding out what the evidence is for unusual drought conditions. Can anyone help educate me?

How would one region of the earth remain perpetually MUCH warmer than the rest for Centuries? Bulls..t!

is anyone else to the point where seeing the hockey stick makes you nauseated?

4 billion (18:27:31) :
The MWP was not warm the entire time.
Looking at the smoothed graph it would appear that it was. Do you know what smoothing is?
The raw data shows temps were up and down during those years.
But the data also shows the warm years were much warmer than warm years now in this two past decades—supposedly the warmest decades on the last 1000 years.
“Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium …””

Ian McLeod (17:55:06)
“I wonder if it is possible to calibrate other long living trees like the bristle-cone pine with the sequoia.”
Someone who knows more than me about this may correct me but…….As I understand it, bristle-cones are strip bark trees and cannot be used as temperature proxies because of the way they grow. They do not grow in concentric circles. One area will die and cause growth favorably in another area. That is why the trunk cross sections are so oddly shaped. There are simply to many covariants to tease a temperature signal out.

There is a tree in Yosemite called the fallen giant. About 20 years ago, I bought one of those wide view disposable cameras to use on trip to Yosemite. I took a picture of my wife standing next to the trunk of the Fallen Giant. The photo is roughly 3×8 wide. I sometimes take the album out and say to people, “my wife is in this photo. Can you find her?” Without exception, people are unable to locate her because they don’t comprehend the scale of the human vs the tree.

Mike D. (18:55:01) :
Do forest fires ever start naturally?
I have heard of native Indians starting prairie fires. But not too much about forest fires.
Could you provide a link or a book title that shows that American Indians started forest fires?

Here’s a photo that approximates the one that I took of my wife, although mine was better (of course!)
http://htmlhelp.com/~liam/California/Yosemite/MariposaGrove/FallenMonarch1.jpg
The post by Mari Jensen is right on. There is much to be learned from these trees, as opposed to, say, Yamal as interpreted by Briffa.

savethesharks (18:10:40) :
I have 1/2 dozen of them growing in my yard. They love to be planted in soil that has been cooked by a hot fire. No fertilizer. Just Sun, C02, water and raw mineral soil. The tops of them follow the sun, bending up to 15 degrees.

Mike,
The authors are correct. Forestry service conservation practices altered the natural, low intensity burn offs that occurred in regularly over the centuries in the Sierra and elsewhere. The Forestry Service thought forest fires were to be fought and extinguished immediately. That practice allowed the unprecedented build up of tinder-dry fuel over decades. Forest fires became conflagrations and we lost more timber than we saved. It wasn’t until relatively recently that the Forest Service came to understand that nature’s way was the best way to conserve our forests.
I don’t know of any reason why the prehistoric hunter-gatherers who inhabited the western US would have started fires in the Sierra or other western forests, unlike their agriculturally-based slash and burn relatives in southern Mexico, Central and South America.

Pascvaks (19:43:16) :
Clarification –
“Fires for clearing, yes.” But NOT in the Grove of The Giants! There’s not a whole lot of great sunlight for your pumpkins and squash.

“Droughts are typically both warm and dry, he added”
Is this what they call dry humour?

Picture Gallery of Trees and Tree Rings (Univ. of Tenn., Knoxville)
http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/gallery.htm

Wren (19:34:00) :
Are you feeling ok Wren? Do you have a fever or anything?

Max Hugoson (19:39:17) :
Max,
I had learned something similar, that the population of native Indians west of the Mississippi was ~250,000. Some of the tribes, apparently, had only about 400 people. And some small tribes were wiped completely out in warfare with other tribes. The population couldn’t have been in the millions.
I think Mike D. is just rambling some sarcasm.

davidmhoffer (19:54:41) :
Wow. Columbus landed in 1492 and did a population survey across a few million square miles of continent? How’d he do it? Stand in the crows nest at the top of the mast of one of his ships with a spyglass and count them?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
No, he didn’t actually get the real data. It was estimated, and homogenized, using a NASA grid model. That’s why the number is artificially high. He used a more heavily populated area to start with instead of those sparser forest and mountain areas. He just figured that it would all come out in the wash the same as if he used the real data.

Given that there were diverse cultures among Native Americans, I have no doubt that there were Millions here before the arrival of Columbus. But not necessarily
no Europeans either. There were seafaring cultures long before. I think we have
idea of what was here before, and I do know that fire setting to improve elk and
deer habitat was/is still a common practice….

Sorry. I keep forgetting that you folks are not historical landscape geographers, ethno-ecologists, paleobotanists, or forest historians. I mean, very few people are familiar with that stuff, and I should not expect it to be common knowledge. I apologize.
If you are interested in the lastest findings in those fields, please visit my History of Western Landscapes site:
http://westinstenv.org/histwl/
Here is a good reference on historical population estimates:
Denevan, Wm. 1976. The Native Population of the Americas in 1492. Univ. of Wisconsin Press. A compilation of historical demographic analyses by scholars including Denevan, Woodrow Borah, and William T. Sanders. Despite being over 30 years old, Native Populations of the Americas in 1492 is still considered to contain the best estimates to date of pre-Columbian populations.
Denevan’s own analysis and synthesis of the work of Borah, Henry Dobyns, Wilbur R. Jacobs and others leads him to estimate that the population of the New World in 1492 was at least 57,000,000 people. That count exceeds the estimated population of much of contemporaneous Europe.
See also:
Blackburn, Thomas C. and Kat Anderson, eds. 1993. Before The Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians. Malki Press – Ballena Press.
Thomas M. Bonnicksen, M. Kat Anderson, Henry T. Lewis, Charles E. Kay, and Ruthann Knudson. 1999. Native American influences on the development of forest ecosystems. In: Szaro, R. C.; Johnson, N. C.; Sexton, W. T.; Malk, A. J., eds. Ecological stewardship: A common reference for ecosystem management. Vol. 2. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science Ltd: 439-470.
Stewart, Omer C. Forgotten Fires — Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness. 2002. Edited and with Introductions by Henry T. Lewis and M. Kat Anderson. University of Oklahoma Press.
Bonnicksen, Thomas M., 2000. America’s Ancient Forests–From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery. John Wiley and Sons.
Anderson, M. Kat. 2005. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources. Univ. Calif. Press.
Kay, Charles E., and Randy T. Simmons, eds. 2002. Wilderness and Political Ecology: Aboriginal Influences and the Original State of Nature. University of Utah Press.

I still fail to understand how tree rings can be considered “thermometers” of climate history. There are so many variables involved in the growth and survival of trees, how can we be sure their rings describe what scientists say they do? Furthermore, rudimentary research design and methodology would point out that Briffa’s 12 magic Yamal trees are not a statistically valid sample size to base the whole theory of AGW upon. This is common sense… and yet the unelected UN bureaucrats are already trying to introduce carbon taxes around the world? Will we need to rebel and overthrow governments to rid ourselves of this carbon trading fraud? Close down the UN before we end up under a totalitarian new world order.
REPLY: In this case they aren’t being considered “thermometers” only as yearly seasonal recorders with char marks at certain years. – Anthony

Not A Carbon Cow (20:29:15):
Human-set fires were so frequent that they altered the fuels. Infrequent lightning fires burned in culturally modified landscapes and so behaved much like anthropogenic fires, following the same fire patterns in the established anthropogenic mosaic. Human-set fires outnumbered lightning fires by many orders of magnitude. See:
Kay, Charles E. Are Lightning Fires Unnatural? A Comparison of Aboriginal and Lightning Ignition Rates in the United States. 2007. IN R.E. Masters and K.E.M. Galley (eds.) Proceedings of the 23rd Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference: Fire in Grassland and Shrubland Ecosystems, pp 16-28. Tall Timbers Research Station, Tallahassee, FL.

Mike D. (20:38:08) :
Sorry. I keep forgetting that you folks are not historical landscape geographers, ethno-ecologists, paleobotanists, or forest historians. I mean, very few people are familiar with that stuff, and I should not expect it to be common knowledge. I apologize.
>>
You are right, I’m not familiar. I am familiar with estimates in the early 1900’s being a million or two. then by the middle of the century they were 30 or 40. Now they are up to 100. What I notice is that with each increase the decline to known numbers when decent records start is blamed on disease, mistreatment and displacement by white man. I’m not saying the conflict with Europeans influx wasn’t hard on them, or that there were no epidemics due to disease, just that the higher the number goes the more words like “genocide” and “fault” get thrown into the equation.
Further native societies were very primitive. They were hunter/gatherer. No metal working, no wheels, no ploughs, no agriculture, no livestock. Until Cortez they didn’t even have horses. The range even a small tribe would have to hunt over to sustain themselves is large, and I just don’t buy 57 million being sustained with bows and arrows.

davidmhoffer (21:13:10): You are right, I’m not familiar. … Further native societies were very primitive.
Beware of the cultural bigotry so ingrained in our modern society. Read the refs I provided. Visit the site I linked to. Study it up. I think if you examined the literature, you would come to a very different conclusion. We are an ancient species, and we’ve always been clever and capable.

For what it’s worth department. My wife and I hiked in Big Basin Redwood Park in Santa Cruz, CA after reading about Climategate. My recollection is that the 7′ cut of the redwood tree that was time dated by the Rangers had a much longer period during the “Medieval Warm Period” than during recent time periods. There was no obvious evidence of fires but the size and timing of the tree rings clearly showed that the rings were larger (for what that means) during the middle ages. Someone with knowledge and expertise in this area could give feedback and analysis. If I could post a picture, I would.

Mike D 18 55 01
Indeed humans have lived inthe Sierras for 10000+yrs. But don’t you find it curious that they would have concentrated their efforts particularly in the middle ages? Might it be that its harder to get a decent forest fire going during cold rainy periods than when it is particularly warm and dry? We only get large numbers of forest fires in Canada during hot dry spells. Also,nearly all fire are caused by lightning storms which develop and build up during hot summer days.

The Ents are moving indeed; running in fact, no one has ever seen them run faster. Nice dead tree ring entrails. Dead tree ring entrails to fight the soothsaying with other dead tree ring entrails. Sweet ironic twisted trunk of science that is! I guess it’s not just Mann hiding the decline but also ignoring the fires! That’s what Mann, et. al., get for cherry picking. Fighting Mann, et. al.’s fire with natural fire! Gotta love it when the natural counter evidence is so clear and damning. Yes, these logs would make excellent material for Beavers dams. Damn, that’s a damned pun. [:)]

Mike D. (21:06:08) :
Not A Carbon Cow (20:29:15):
“Human-set fires were so frequent that they altered the fuels. Infrequent lightning fires burned in culturally modified landscapes and so behaved much like anthropogenic fires, following the same fire patterns in the established anthropogenic mosaic. Human-set fires outnumbered lightning fires by many orders of magnitude. See:
Kay, Charles E. Are Lightning Fires Unnatural? A Comparison of Aboriginal and Lightning Ignition Rates in the United States. 2007. IN R.E. Masters and K.E.M. Galley (eds.) Proceedings of the 23rd Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference: Fire in Grassland and Shrubland Ecosystems, pp 16-28. Tall Timbers Research Station, Tallahassee, FL.”
===============================================
Mike,
No-one doubts people set fires. Your assertion was that ALL of the historical fires documented in redwood tree rings were anthropogenic in origin, and that given the rest of us weren’t studied forest rangers, you would have to remind us of this fact, although you were surprised to have to do so, because you forgot we weren’t all studied forest rangers.
Personally, I find it very hard to believe that the descendants of a population of individuals intelligent enough to spread throughout the Americas, producing the Clovis culture, producing burial mounds in Ohio, rock structured settlements on the East coast, being the contemporaries of the Anasazi, Incas, Aztecs, those who produced the Nazca lines etc., were stupid enough to attempt to farm in the forest when easily accessible low lying rich and abundant farmland lay just to the west and south.
You hooked me again, but I’m crashing for the night. I’ve checked the batteries in my smoke alarms in case one of my neighbors decides to burn my yard tonight. (Cow, et. all BS Research vol 2 issue 34, pages 45-47 “All charcoal is man made says Mike”)

Robert Kral (21:18:01) said:

Mike D., I checked out the link you provided and noted with interest the following entry in your list of publications:
An Urgent Signal for the Coming Ice Age by Peter John Faraday Harris in Paleobotany and Paleoclimatology
Aside from that, it strikes me as preposterous to suggest that all, or even most, of the fires in the sequoia groves were man-made. These are fire-dependent trees, and their evolutionary history necessarily predates human existence, especially any human presence in North America. So how did they become fire-dependent if there were no humans around to start the fires?

You are obviously unaware of the power of teleconnection!

davidmhoffer, the indigenous peoples of North America definitely practiced agriculture and their “livestock” were the free herds of buffalo, deer, elk and others. The US constitution is greatly influenced by the Iroquois Constitution of the Five Nations/Iroquois Book of the Great Law. The land within the borders of the US were once populated by tens of millions of native peoples.
The invasion of Europeans upon the North and South American Continents resulted in genocide within any definition of the term.
You invoke Cortez as some sort of savior bringing horses yet he was the first among many destroyers of a vast and rich culture. Cortez the killer…the story of a homicidal maniac.

I think the native societies were more advanced than the likes of you davidmhoffer.
peace,
Tim

DesertYote (18:14:36) :
I would be interested in finding out what the evidence is for unusual drought conditions. Can anyone help educate me?
If you meant more generally what the evidence for medieval drought in the Sierras is, there is lots. Many lakes in the Sierras have sunken forests dating from Medieval times, so lake levels were a lot lower then across the Sierras. In the 90s, a tree was pulled from Fallen Leaf Lake, just off the south end of Lake Tahoe. The tree, dated to have grown from 1000-1200CE was rooted 120 feet below the present water level. So we know the lake was at least this low for at least this long.
Nearby, in the bed of the Truckee River, which now drains Lake Tahoe into the Nevada desert, there are the remains of a forest from the same period. So we know that Lake Tahoe was not high enough to drain during this period.
Also, tree lines, both total and species-specific, were 300-500 meters higher than at present during this period, which implies summer temperatures 3-4C higher than during the 20th century (and measured temperatures did not increase at all during the 20th century).

The dryness of this period of the MWP in Cali suggests a strong and persistent “La Nina” phase and/or a prolonged negative PDO.
Cooler Pacific waters near the Cali shore mean less upward motion which means subsidence and very dry air.
But, as Rob has pointed out in another thread, the Giant Sequoias have evolved an ability to adapt to frequent fires [not to be confused with frequent fliers], and not only have they adapted to the fires….they learn how to thrive with it.
Lesson to self, and to species: We need to learn how to ADAPT to the changes in climate that come our way…no matter what they may be.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

savethesharks (23:06:16) :
Adaptation is the key to survival. AGW will remove that and the experiments they have planned for climate control means that the climate will be pegged one way or the other. They want to gamble with our very existence.

I would just like to say – if you ever get the chance to visit a Sequoia grove, take it with both hands. These magnificent trees are in a truly beautiful setting, and inspire slack jawed amazement in even the most jaded ‘seen it all’ person. It is simply a majestic place and a wonderful feeling to stand in a quiet forest absolutely dwarfed by these giants.
Oh, and now that they have finished with the slabs, can I have one? Would make a killer table all polished up.

I wonder if there’s a co relationship with the Pacific Decadel Oscillation with the fires.
Wrt human or natural occurrence with the fires.. it doesn’t matter because regardless, a fire that can mark a tree with charcoal can only occur when the conditions are right, ie, dry and warm with some wind to carry it.
JC

heresy101 (21:26:22) :
For what it’s worth department. My wife and I hiked in Big Basin Redwood Park in Santa Cruz, CA after reading about Climategate. My recollection is that the 7′ cut of the redwood tree that was time dated by the Rangers had a much longer period during the “Medieval Warm Period” than during recent time periods. [….]

Don’t read too much into that. The coastal redwood species are highly dependent upon the moisture from the coastal fog for their growth patterns. The high altitude redwoods like fog as well, but their environment in the high mountains resulted in a different type of growth response than the coastal redwoods.

And if American Indians did start forest fires why did they start more of them during the Medieval Warm Period, 800 to 1300, than at any other time?
Diabolical Mimicry

Thanks Leif and Anthony for a thought provoking post.
The Medieval Climate Optimum (much more descriptive of the benefits of a few degrees extra warmth than MWP), is a very inconvenient truth for the IPCC CAGW cabal. The lengths they have gone to in order to hide this piece of historic climate data is astonishing, but as always, the truth will out.

I’ve got a giant Sequoia in my back garden, which was planted about 150 years ago. To get the small and iron-hard cones to open requires them to be charred in a bonfire for quite a time, and only then will the teeny-tiny seeds come out. They look like tiny flakes of rolled oats, and obviously have little or no value to squirrels who leave them well alone.
The soil is typical lowland heath; very very poor and acid, and guaranteed useless for any kind of agriculture. Out local common is a renowned example, having remained unexploited by agriculture since the last ice-age. But the Sequoia Giganteum ( aka Wellingtonia) really likes these conditions, and we have some great examples within a mile or so (one in a grove nearby was until fairly frequently in the Guiness book of records as the tallest tree in Britain)
The trunk bark of these trees oddly enough is very spongy and soft and is about five to ten times thicker that the Scots Pine bark. I guess it is very very hard to set fire to the trunk as this bark would act as as an intumescent protective layer. So I reckon the only way the trunk would get damaged is via a lightning strike or quite a big fire requiring a lot of dry undergrowth.
The tree produces a lot of biomass compared to an equivalent oak, and the whole of last year’s ‘needles’ which are quite heavy drop down evey year in one go over a coupe of weeks. If left, they form a mat which is inimical to other growth; and In a dry climate I could see that this store would provide the fuel for the occasional necessary reproductive fire.
The tree branches are curved and pendulous and tend to drop quite frequently when they are relatively very thin compared to the trunk thickness, and is commercially useless . The wood is very dry and shatters easily, and burns very badly and dangerously as it spits red hot embers like rifle-fire and is also useless as a fuel.
And from the privilege of living with and observing the habits of a Sequoiadendron Giganteum, I reckon that this species has zero practical value to man and beast; as these great defences probaly explain their longevity in their natural habitat.
And so I would give credence to the record of regular dry lightning fires found in the treering record.

solrey (22:30:53) :
The invasion of Europeans upon the North and South American Continents resulted in genocide within any definition of the term.
[….]
peace,
Tim

Now that is an untrue statement. The word, “genocide”, comes from “gens”, meaning the family or clan, and “cide”, meaning to kill. The dictionaries define the word to mean a deliberate attempt to kill an entire family of people on the basis of race, ethnicity, or comparable human affiliation. To “invade” means to enter with the purpose of plundering and conquering.
The European colonizations were in part invasions for the purpose of plundering and conquering, but they were also in part non-invading colonizations by invitation of the native inhabitants. These invitations to colonize were offered to bolster defenses against hostile native conquerors intent upon committing true genocide. Ultimately, the Euro-American colonists succeeded in stopping the genocides being committed by the Amerindian cultures against each other and also prevented a genocide of Amerindians by Euro-Americans. The result has been the deliberate preservation and restoration of the Amerindian populations to pre-Columbian levels, and not the deliberate extinction of those Amerindian populations indicative of a genocide.

This sounds like it was a dangerous, expensive, and difficult operation:
—————————–
It turned out to be a gargantuan undertaking that required many people and many field seasons.
“We were sampling with the largest chain saws we could find – a chain-saw bar of seven feet,”
“We were hauling these slabs of wood two meters on a side as far as two kilometers to the road. ”
“the emergency rescue equipment for people”
—————————–
Conpared to:
“To study tree rings, researchers generally take a pencil-sized core from a tree.”
Kind of makes Mann’s response to Steve McIntyre look a little feeble:
“Most reconstructions only extend through about 1980 because the vast majority of tree-ring, coral, and ice core records currently available in the public domain do not extend into the most recent decades. While paleoclimatologists are attempting to update many important proxy records to the present, this is a costly, and labor-intensive activity, often requiring expensive field campaigns that involve traveling with heavy equipment to difficult-to-reach locations (such as high-elevation or remote polar sites). For historical reasons, many of the important records were obtained in the 1970s and 1980s and have yet to be updated.”
http://climateaudit.org/2005/02/20/bring-the-proxies-up-to-date/

“Why does the ‘battle of the graphs’ show that old and outdated H.H. Lamb temperature graph for Europe, whereas the topic is on the incidence of bush fires in the west of the US ”
Because the team-AGW claim that the MWP, if it happened at all, was limited to Europe, whilst this new research suggests that it occured in the US as well. It claims this on the basis that these “bush fires” are more frequent when you have warm dry weather (whatever the cause of the fire in the first place). Cold wet forests don’t catch fire very often, but warm dry forests do.

So the two graphs shown have nothing much to do with this data – they are about global and European temperatures respectively – and the word “anomaly” is mis-spelled and the graphs carry no formal provenance. That doesn’t help your case.
If the fires were man-made then the climate is almost irrelevant – other than the ground was probably not soaking wet at the time of the fires. Not sure how this gives evidence for a warm period in NA, much though I would like to believe in one.
If the fires were man-made then it would be interesting to know why people were clearing the brush under the trees – it is plain that the trees themselves were not the target, as they survived – although they suffered collateral damage.

G.L. Alston (23:54:32) :
[….]
Meanwhile there are plenty of papers referenced at archaeological sites from scholars looking at e.g. neanderthal populations in Europe to 30,000 BCE and concluding anywhere from 10k to 100k max individuals could be sustained reliably. That was a forested continent.

No, tht was a mostly glaciated continent with marginal areas in forest. Today’s Europe has some 10,180,000 square kilometers of territory. At the time of the neanderthals this area was extremely reduced to less than half its presently available area. So , assuming 40% of today’s area and the same population density of 0.015 people per square kilometer as the 19th-20th Century Eskimos, the possible equivalent neanderthal population works out to 60,180 neanderthals. That number falls neatly between the 10,000 to 100,000 neanderthals the author suggested.

Lastly, I don’t care what sort of Mann-o-matic statistical gyrations these twits want to beat the bad bad Euro-folk with, but surely 57 million souls in 1492 alone ought to have left a bit more of a mark; one could simply ask what became of the the millions of graves and other massive evidence that would support such a preposterous assertion. i.e. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, after all.

First of all, you’ve got the date wrong. You are falling for the old fallacy that the Amerindian population peaked at the moment of Columbian contact with the New World in 1492. Such is not the case. The Mayan empire was among the most populous of the Amerindian civilizations and the entire rest of the world in its time period. Mayan population densities are reported to have reached 1,295 to 1,813 people per square kilometer in the countryside and 4,662 to 6,734 people per square mile in the cities. MesoAmerica is littered with their ruined cities, rainfall collection basins, and canals. However, this great civilization and its population suddenly crumbled and its population reduced some 90% to 95% by 950AD, not 1492AD.
A host of likely factors have been suggested as the causes of the Mayan collapse, and diseases endemic to the New World such as hemorrhagic fever are among them. Suffice it to observe that the Old World Amerindian populations were subject to catastrophic collapses due to disease, famine, natural disasters, political upheaval, warfare, and more in the same way as the Old World cultures. The homogenity of the genetic makeup of the New World populatons, however, made those populatons at greater risk of diseases coming from the Old World and the New World. Ultimately, it proved to be an inevitable catastrophe. It was only a question of when and how and not if it would occur, because contact between the disease pools of the Old World and New World would have to occur in one direction or the other sooner or not so much later.
Secondly, not all of the Amerindian cultues practiced burials. Many of the cultures exposed the dead or cremated the dead. In some circumstances, slaves and other captives were ritually slaughtered and cannibalized. In those cases, you’ll have no reason to discover burials. In the other cases, there is a rich history of burials. The great Mississipian culture of North America left behind a vast landscape of burials in North America, many others have been ignored as farmers plowed the grave sties under their farm fields, and more remain to be discovered. See the maps and illustrations of the Mississipian burial mounds:
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/memorial/68/mndmap1.gif

Thus I ask for, nay, I DEMAND to see the actual physical proof; surely 57 million hunter gatherers ought to have left behind more arrowpoints etc than could be counted, etc. etc. etc.

Hundreds of points are discovered in Illinois alone every year. You also need to note these people were not just hnter-gatherer cultures. They built cities as large as and larger than many European cities in the same age. They accomplished these projects without the major beasts of burden available in the Old World. Their ability to procreate was also hampered by comparison to the Old World, where mothers finished nursing their babies earlier by feeding them from substitute milk sources such as cows and cow milk. The Amerindian mothers lacking such resources did not bear children as often while breast-feeding their children for many more months. Despite such handicaps, they worked metals such as copper, manufactured pottery and jewelry, navigated the rivers in trading networks, and maanged their forests by regularly burning off the understory shrubbery. To see this in person, visit the Cahokia Mounds, the Mesoamerican cities, and the cities of the Incas. The physical evidence of these millions of people are as massive as the stoneworks of their cities and the massive artistry of their mounds and moats. Then remember the New World has more than 42 million square kilometers of territory, and even at the bragain basement population density rates, the Old World would still have had tens of millions of people whenever those populations were not already reduced some 90% and more by catastrophes such as the New World and Old World diseases.

Mike D.: “Come on folks. Leif, tell ‘em. You can’t take an anthropogenically caused phenomenon and detect micro climate change in it. That’s goofy. I’m not saying there was no MWP. All I’m saying is fire scars in a human-mediated cultural landscape are not climate proxies!!!!!!!!!”
And you don’t also discount trees in the rest of the world where humans have been chopping them down, pasture-ising them and generally changing the environment in which the trees grow during the same period?
I remember my history teacher telling me that the Romans in Britain cut down 80% of all the woodland. That’s long before modern methods, but clearly by the end of the Roman period a lot of previously wooded areas were being cultivated.
In Scotland, the forests have been removed and sheep have dramatically changed the environment, creating open spaces where none existed before. Reindeer herding in the Siberian tundra, will also tend to affect the forest, so that e.g. younger saplings are killed allowing mature trees to grow, whereas when grazers are not protected by humans, the balance in the ecology is different as the herds are graze only where they are safer from attack.

This actual fire evidence certainly confirms what a multitude of researchers have been reporting: that the MWP was global with “unprecedented” temperatures and climate effects. Here is a page I found that lists a bunch of MWP/Little Ice Age studies, and then another page that is just historical proxy temperature charts, —-
http://www.c3headlines.com/climate-history/
http://www.c3headlines.com/temperature-charts-historical-proxies.html

A thought provoking article, but I share other concerns about the suitability of the infographics at the start – a bit more context or better examples would be useful.
I know I’d fancy spending some time taking those samples.

Tree rings-not good for hockey stick graphs, but good for MWP grphs?

So, is Michael Mann of Penn State to climatology same as Jan Hendrik Schön to physics?

1. I never said Cortez was some kind of saviour. I said that’s when horses showed up in NA. Cortez’ invasion was brutal but large numbers of horses escaped into the wild and were absequently domesticated by the native population.
2. 1492 was right at the end of a nasty cold period that was almost 100 years long already (see graph above) and was followed by the truly severe LIA. This would have had major implications regarding food source for managed crops and game alike.
3. Examples of pockets of people having agricultural practices can’t be extrapolated across the whole of two continents. They were not wide spread.
4. The Mayans no doubt had a much higher population density but their civilization collapsed and vanished hundreds of years before Columbus. Further, consider the numbers. They supposedly reached RURAL population densities as high as 1700 per square mile. Really. Let’s think about that. Let’s say they had big families and lived 10 to a household. That’s 170 houses per square mile. That’s 3.8 acres per household. The house, foot paths, roads all have to take some space, let’s call it 3.5 acres per household to generate enough produce to feed themselves (all 10 of them), plus have enough left over to sell to feed the nearby city supposedly at 10 or 20 times the population density. There are certain areas of the new world that could have in theory supported such massive agricultural output, but they were tiny in comparison to the area as a whole.
5. Much of central N America is plains. The main food source there was buffalo which have HUGE grazing ranges and (think about this) the plains had didly squat for vegetables, leafy greens etc. The tribes that lived there not only had to have hunting ranges that were gigantic, they ALSO had to wander off to other areas for non meat food sources in their diet.
6. In much of North America there are natural camp grounds which were used either as stopping points on the long trek between summer and winter locations, or as giant meeting spots where the local tribes would convene councils days long to discuss trade, borders and so on. These areas frequently could accomodate only a few thousand people whose territory was gigantic by comparison.
7. If those who want to propose a native population of 50 million or more want to make their case, I am willing to listen. What happened to the natives of North America due to the influx of Europeans was a terrible thing. But when I read a history of what the population might have been, I stop reading when I see the words “genocide”, “holocaust” and so on. These are terms that denote deliberate and systematic attempts to wipe out another people. They are incendiary by nature, yet the articles supporting large native populations at time of Columbus are ladened with them which ascribes to them a political purpose.

Why would natives set fires in a mature forest?
For food. If you’re ever lucky enough to be in a really sizable fully mature forest, of redwood or Douglas fir or whatever in the Pacific northwest, check the ground. It’s all dead needles. In season there are mushrooms. That’s about it. No shrubs, no flowers, no grasses, no nothing to attract game. Dense mature forests are surprisingly sterile. Not enough light gets through the forest top to support lower growth.
So you set a fire to burn off the top cover. The trees can handle it; they’ll be back at full greenery in only a few years.
But in the meantime, the cycle starts with berries and grasses, mostly delivered by air mail (birds). Then comes the game. Happy times for aboriginals.
Still, lightening is thought to have caused most forest fires. Friction is rare, but it happens: two dry branches rubbing together as their respective trees move in a stiff wind. I fought just such a fire at Franklin River on Vancouver Island. It may have been a Boy Scout Special, but it was just as tough as any other forest fire.

davidmhoffer (21:13:10) :
. . . native societies were very primitive. They were hunter/gatherer. No metal working, no wheels, no ploughs, no agriculture, no livestock. Until Cortez they didn’t even have horses. The range even a small tribe would have to hunt over to sustain themselves is large, and I just don’t buy 57 million being sustained with bows and arrows.

Caleb (03:19:17) and D. Patterson (03:47:28) have effectively countered Mr. Hoffer’s generalizations. I would just like to recommend a terrific book on the subject:
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Knopf, 2005 ISBN 1-4000-3205-9).
Mr. Mann (no relation to Michael, I assume!) presents some of the latest research into the nature of the American Indian societies (both North, South, and Central) immediately before the onslaught of the Europeans. He argues convincingly that their numbers were far higher than previously thought; that, contrary to the Rousseauian picture of the isolated ‘noble savage’ roaming the virgin forests with bow and arrow, the Indians practiced a great deal of intensive land and forest management, both in the temperate forests of North America, and in the tropical ones of Central America and Amazonia; and that, the genetic homogeneity of the Indians made them almost universally vulnerable to European diseases, particularly those that originated with the livestock that the Europeans brought with them (and to which the Europeans had relative immunity). Mann retells the story of Cortez’s visit to the vast native towns along the Mississippi, accompanied by hundreds of pigs, and a subsequent survey a few years later, which discovered the towns abandoned and the population all dead.
Not to mention, of course, that Cortez encountered not a few bands of hunter-gatherers, but huge urban complexes surrounded by cultivated fields.
Mike D: it might be helpful if you could explain a little more what the California Indians were trying to accomplish by firing the redwood forests. And what about the periods before and after the MWP?
/Mr Lynn

@Mike D
‘All I’m saying is fire scars in a human-mediated cultural landscape are not climate proxies!!!!!!!!!’
Oh-oh-wow. You’re actually mostly saying a lot, but proving naught.
Guess working isn’t proof.
If you know anything about native americans from the southern tip Argentina to the northern tip of Canada, (both which are farther in either direction then Chile and Alaska,) there’s two things that are striking very few city civilization like ancient Egypt or ancient India, and very few farmers up until the white men descended upon their poor ar—.
They most often didn’t go around clearing forests the way that are done today in some countries, that would’ve been suicide. Nor did they run around setting fire to trees for the fun of it, and certainly not just in one, now, national park.
I’m thinking, that if the north american natives had a use for ginormous trees on any scale of worth, that they brought down with the help of fire, it would probably have showed up on the archeological radar by now.
Although I wont concede to any 50 million, that would’ve constituted about 1 person per square kilometer. And a lot of the folks in present day USA were nomadic. But I’d say that around MWP that there were far more than one million from north to south, the numbers wouldn’t add up otherwise. 50 million people would actually leave a pretty little dent in nature, from settlements to the amount of game available.

OT:The Chilean earthquake was forecasted by:
J.C. Ruegga,∗, A. Rudloff b, C. Vignyb, R. Madariagab, J.B. de Chabaliera, J. Camposc,
E. Kauselc, S. Barrientosc, D. Dimitrovd
We would then conclude that the southern part of the Concepción–Constitución gap has accumulated a slip deficit that is large enough to produce a very large earthquake of about Mw= 8.0–8.5.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28560952/Ruegg-et-al-2009-1-1

Mr Lynn
Caleb (03:19:17) and D. Patterson (03:47:28) have effectively countered Mr. Hoffer’s generalizations.>>
Sure, my generalizations are well, general, and I have accepted the exceptions pointed out. That doesn’t mean the exceptions should be accepted as the general rule.
Consider Canada. Even with modern technology, the vast bulk of Canada’s population live in the southern few percent of the country, AN

Ryan Stephenson (03:10:19) :
I was not referring to climate. I was referring to drought. That is why I used the word drought. A change in climate that causes an increase in lightning does not mean a decrease in rain. In fact, quite the opposite. I may not be a climate scientist, but I am well versed in the scientific method and have mastered field well outside my normal domains. I grew up in Phoenix so I am pretty familiar with lightning. The most dangerous time for forest fires is at the start of the monsoon, before the rains really start to kick in. I would assume that an increase in temperature means more energy for dynamic weather, e.g. thunder storms with lightning. The other point I was trying to make is that California has a dry season that has nothing to do with drought. Dry conditions and drought are two different things.
Is the popular notion of “an increase in hot means an increase in dry” contaminating the interpretation of this study? Because as i understand it, an increase in hot is usually accompanied by an increase in wet, not dry.
Also that often stated figure of 90% of fires are anthropogenic is suspicious considering the agencies that promote it. In Arizona, most fires are started by lightning! (I have even seen a lightning strike start a fire along Bee Line Hwy in the late 80’s. It was pretty cool thing to witness!)
I wish you guys would read my entire posts before criticizing.

Curt (22:37:26) :
Thanks. This gives me a place to start looking when I get home.

D. Patterson — Then remember the New World has more than 42 million square kilometers of territory, and even at the bragain basement population density rates, the Old World would still have had tens of millions of people whenever those populations were not already reduced some 90% and more by catastrophes such as the New World and Old World diseases.
I have no issue with the concept that indian populations could reach into the millions range in optimal conditions; that number would be consistent with archeaological and written evidence. But **57 million** people hanging about and doing laundry and hunting turkeys etc the day columbus landed is too much. I’m all for scholarship and even reasonable conjecture. This isn’t it.
Re sequoia fires, this is a simpler issue that we’re making it out to be. There have been people mucking about in any size number in that region since when? There’s precious little evidence of substantial human settlement before say 14 or 15k years ago. Meanwhile as another poster pointed out these trees REQUIRE fire to propagate. OK, so quickie genetics study shows that this species existed before, or after humans? If before then it’s safe to say that for whatever reason fires were almost certainly natural, and while fire frequencies may be somewhat altered by humans doing things for their own reasons, the idea that the fires are *mostly* human seems rather silly.
Ockham’s razor.

Anecdotally, doesn’t this proposed drought period fit with the Anasazi indian society destruction?

Wren, R. Gates and anyone I missed
I don’t know who put together the graphs at the beginning of this article, but
the portion of the graph showing the MWP as it appears there can be found on page 202 of the 1990 IPCC Assessment
J T Houghton, G J Jenkins, J J Ephraums, Eds,, “Climate Change; The IPCC Scientific Assessment”. 1990 . Cambridge University Press
which does not appear to be online anywhere. I got the reference from the
late John L. Daly’s site,
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
and I located a copy in a research library using Worldcat to verify his
information. (so shoot me, I’m a librarian by training and couldn’t help
myself).

Tree Rings, CO2 levels, local temperature records from thermometers, sea shells, ocean floor deposits, and a thousand other things, give us “data” which we then attempt to decipher and make some sence out of. Sometimes, someone actually succeeds, and after 20-30 or more years, more and more people look at their work and say: “They were right!”
There doesn’t seem to be anything fast about a life’s worth of research or the ‘recognition’ for good work and new findings. More often than not, historicaly, the ‘finder’ of the something ‘new’ dies before he/she is ever properly acknowledged.
Anytime someone starts jumping up and down and screaming “The Sky Is Falling!” you can pretty much put that person in the category of a flake with a problem. If .01% of the population is a little off their rocker at any given time, that means that there are about 650,000 walking around talking to themselves and shouting strange things to everyone they pass on the sidewalk. (I am not speaking of those with real medical or psychiatric problems.)
There does however seem to be an increasing trend line for flakes (as with everything else these days). I personally believe it has something to do with sugar, plastics, detergents, and/or food additives –perhaps it’s genetic modification of foods.

AC osborn — Please read what you have written, you really think that the Native Americans covered the Whole of the North Americas, 42 million square kilometers of territory without Horses?
Of course. Homo Erectus walked from Africa and covered much of southeast Asia in a relatively short time.

Ian McLeod (09:27:06) : You are absolutely right. Nobody has been able to find ANY kind of weapons or war defenses at the City of CARAL, a five thousand years old culture, archelogists have found, instead, musical instruments, amphitheaters, places of cult, quipus (knot writings), etc.
http://www.caralperu.gob.pe/civilizacion/intro.html
Your are also right when you say that leftist invented and changed world history to make believe “social justice” was imposible to find under any other form of government but under theirs “social paradise”. Justice was found, as history (now a forbidden subject to be taught at schools as UNESCO recommends) shows under every form of government. So the “new age”, post-normal archeological and settled science presents old cultures’ people, as savages and ignorants. They and their settled science are the real ignorants. Thanks God knowledge it is still out there for those who seek the truth.

Unesco recommends only “continental” history to substitute national history (in every country):
In this perspective, the creation of the African Union (AU) offers new hope for addressing history teaching within the continent as a whole. The AU Member States have already expressed strong support for the renovation of history education on the basis of the General History of Africa
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001840/184049e.pdf
If this is not conspiracy, the same as climate scam and from the same source, what is it?

Ryan Stephenson (03:10:19) :
“Fires, by themselves are not an indication of drought. They could indicate an unusual amount of lightning”
” Since we can assume there has been no great increase in altitude in California over 3000 years, we can say that any increase in lightning frequency was due to lightning.”
————————————————————
Did you mean, any increase in fires was due to lightning?
“If you assume that the forest fires were linked to temperary climate change then there are two possibilities that become obvious. One is that the forest fires were a regular occurence but became more extensive due to the forest floor being tinder dry. The second is that the warmer climate caused the food supply to diminish resulting in more numerous failed attempts to deliberately clear the Sequoias to permit more farming.”
————————————————————
There are a few things wrong with the second assumption that would render it unlikely. First of all, the high altitude and very rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada would have made access to the Giant Sequoia forests very difficult, making produce transport problematic. There were no beasts of burden until much later on. Secondly, the rocky terrain features nutrient-poor soil of little depth, very little sunlight reaching the forest floor and a very short growing season; not exactly ideal farming conditions. Thirdly, the early inhabitants of the western US were not farmers; they were hunter-gatherers. Even the non-nomadic coastal tribes were hunter-gatherers. Had they been farmers like some of the eastern tribes, why on Earth would they leave the most fertile farmland in North America, California’s vast Central Valley?
As someone who minored in Pre-Colombian Anthropology, I am familiar with the early inhabitants of the western US. As a native Californian who has spent a considerable amount of time in the Sierra over many decades, I can tell you from first hand observation that lightning strikes are a very common occurrence and can pose a real hazard to backpackers No doubt there were fires started accidentally by ancient hunters from time to time. They also likely never lived to tell the tale, given the nasty habit of Sierra winds to reverse direction and swirl about. To suggest that most of the ancient fires in the areas studied were anthropogenic in nature defies logic to anyone truly familiar with the terrain and the food gathering practices of the tribes that inhabited those areas in ancient times. Frankly, I find the notion absurd.

BBk (04:29:42) :
D. Patterson:
“The New World area is about 42,549,000 square kilometers. Some anthropologists estimate the pre-civilization paleolithic cultures had a population density of at least around some 0.1 persons per square kilometer. Such a population density would result in a population of at least some 4 million people in the New World living in pre-civilization hunter-gatherer groups. ”
Faulty logic there… just because a culture has a given population density in an area that they exist (which, as you say, is esitmated anyway), doesn’t mean that they existed everywhere that it was possible to exist so that you can extrapolate to total population.

North America has a population density of slightly less than 23 people per square kilometer at the present time. That average density in no way indicates there are nearly 23 people in every square kilometer. It means there are 0 people in some square kilometers, 2,600 people in other square kilometers, 700 people in other square kilometers, and so forth. Likewise with a hypothetical population density of 1 person per square kilometer. It means there are 0 people in some square kilometers, 2,600 people in other square kilometers, 700 people in other square kilometers, and so forth. The proposition that 57 million could not and did not populate the New World in in 1492AD or before then requires the assumption that it was not possible for the “average” population density of the New World to exceed 1.34 people per square kilometer. To guage the likeliehood of such a proposition, we can look at what we already know from experience.
We know the Eskimo population density in one of the harshest climates on the Earth was about .015 people per square kilometer. We know that the heavily jungled areas of New Guinea supported and still support population densities of 1 person per square kilometer in the most difficult environments of the lowlands and 20 people per square mile in the less difficult highlands. Even the Bushmen of the Kalahari, arguably one of the most nomadic cultures in one of the Earth’s most harsh desert environments managed to achieve a population density of 1 person per square mile or more. The Mongol culture maintained an average population density of 1 person per square mile in the steppes and deserts of Asia. Many of the pre-Columbian cultures of the New World were far more populous and civilized food producers and farmers than the Eskimo, Bushmen of the Kalahari, and other neolithic hunter-gatherer cultures. Their cities, suburban towns, outposts, road networks, canals, and irrigation projects attest to their large and civilized (meaning agricultural) populations far in excess per square mile than your average hunter-gatherer cultures and their 1 person per square mile population densities spanning the most forbidding deserts, steppes, mountains, and jungles.
Given the facts of population densities for the most primitive of hunter-gatherer cultures living a nomadic existance across the harshest environments the Earth has to offer versus the much more populous early agricultural civilizations, by what mathematics can it be reasoned and supposed that the “average” population density for all of the New World, including its farming civilizations, would be less than 1.34 people per square kilometer or less than the 1 person per square kilometer found among the Earth’s most primitive and nomadic cultures resident across the world’s emptiest territories?

As I understand it, the bulk of the population was nomadic, which meant that they shifted sites. If every location in North America was claimed by a tribe, there’d be nowhere to go to find new game, etc. I doubt the .1 person/km estimate was based on land use over many years, but rather land in use at any given time.

You understand incorrectly. Nomadic cultures defend their territories. The Mississippian culture of North America spanned much of the watershed of the Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland, and Missouri Rivers. This culture was a civilization which built permanent mound cities with canals, irrigation projects, farms, towns, gardens, and other permenent public works. As the farms and cities developed, former nomadic camps were transformed into permanent palisaded fortresses. The ill defined territories of the nomadic clans were tranformed into formal territorial boundaries of a semi-nodic and non-nomidic civilization defended by these permanent fortresses. Far from being the most primitive stone age bands of hunter-gatherers depicted so often, the Mississipian culture was a civilization spanning a good portion of North America and comparable in many respects to the copper-age Celtic civilizations of the Old World. The territories not occupied by the Mississippian culture were not barren of all civilization and civilized population densities either. There were other civilized and semi-nomadic cultures adjacent to the Mississipian culture.
The demise of these civilizations and cultures are not a matter of speculation. Witnesses documented some of their abrupt collapse. Some of the catastrophic population collapses occurred centuries and decades before 1492AD. Others occurred after 1492AD and are undoubtedly the consequence of the exchanges of disease pools between the New World and Old World. The pandemics killed so many people, there was often no one or few left alive as survivors to bury the dead. The political landscape underwent monumental upheavals as the surviving Amerindian cultures competed to takeover the suddenly vacant territories. Maps showing the pre-Columbian locations of the tribes, confederations, and languages are contrasted with the post-Columbian locations. The results and the extent of the catastrophe are obvious.

davidmhoffer (08:23:06) :
[….]
If you want to accuse me of generalizing, then fine. Start by taking the vast chunks of continent that could not (and still can’t) support intense agriculture out of the equation. Then take the vast chunks that could, but show no sign of that having happen. Now you are left with the exceptions.

That’s right, the exceptions were included in the overall average. If you want to concentrate on the more habitable woodlands of North America, then assume the Eastern Woodland Culture spanned somewhere around 2.6 million square kilometers. We know that the primitive cultures of New Guinea achieved population densities of up to 20 people per square kilometer. If we assume for the sake of comparisons that the Mississipian culture was incapable of equaling or exceeding the population densities of the less advanced and less well situated cultures of New Guinea, then 20 people per square kilometer times 2.6 million square kilometers for the Eastern Woodland Area gives you a possible Eastern Woodland Culture population of 52 million people. Note, this number does not include any of the other Amerindian populations anywhere else in the New World.
Even if we assume the Eastern Woodland culture was no more successful than the much less civilized (meaning much less agriculturized) hunter-gatherer cultures of today’s South American rain forests, their 2.5 people per square mile population density times the 2.6 million square kilometer Eastern Woodland area results in a possible Eastern Woodland area population of 6.5 million people.
Add the Plains Amerindian culture at 1 person per square kilometer and assuming 2.6 million square kilometers for the plains area, the result is another 2.6 million population of Plains culture Amerindians.
Assuming the remainder of North America except for Mesoamerica, habitable and unihabitable, of about 19 million square kilometers supports an average of only the prehistoric paleolithic population density of about 0.01 people per square kilometer, the result is a population of about 1.9 million people. So, even a very pessimistic estimate based on known populaton densities in the New World and Old World has us at 6.5 million for the Woodland area, 2.6 million for the Plains cultures, and 1.9 million for all other cultures north of Mesoamerica. This comes to a total of 11 million people, before we even begin adding the populations of the Mesoamerican civilizations, the South American civilizations, and all of the other cultures in Mesoamerican and South America.
Anything greater than the most pessimistic examples of real world population densities is only going to increase the hypothetical Amerindian populations of the New World somewhere above a 20 to 30 million population level.
When you then apply a 90% population collapse due to a pandemic of epic proportions as reported by so many historical witnesses, then it cannot be surprising to find the surviving population in the immediate aftermath may number no more than some 2 million to 6 million of their former populations of 50 to 60 million people spread over two continents of 42 million square kilometers, speaking hypothetically.

A C Osborn (09:30:57) :
Please read what you have written, you really think that the Native Americans covered the Whole of the North Americas, 42 million square kilometers of territory without Horses?
You mean they didn’t just group around where there was Water, Food, Shelter and more temperate jones?
Perhaps we should ask some Native Americans.

You grossly underestimate the capabilities and accomplishments of our ancestors.
The Inca maintained the Inca Road and a postal system, much like those of the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Chinese, and other civilizations. Much like the Romans, the Inca established inns and communities about every 20 to 22 kilometers along the roadway. The couriers, chasqui, ran and relayed messages and sometimes light packages about every 1.4 kilometers between the inns. Fresh fish from the Pacific coast were delivered to Cusco with a travel time of about 240 kilometers per day. The Inca maintained communicatins all the way from the Pacific Coast, across the Andes Mountains, and deep into the Amzon rain forests far to the east.
The Mayan road system extended across much of Mesoamerica.
The Aztec empire conducted slave capturing raids from Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) far up into the Great Plains where the Canadian Shield begins.
Roads and well worn trade routes existed all the way from the shores of Hudson Bay to the praries of Texas.
The Dorset culture maintained trade routes which extended all the way from the Pacific Coast of Alaska, across Arctic Canada, to Baffin Island, across Northern Greenland and Pearyland, down the eastern coast of Greenland on the Atlantic Ocean.
The Creek nation pursued the Choctaw nation all the way from Old Mexico, into Arkansas and Missouri, across the Mississippi River into Mississippi and Alabama in a bid to wipe them out in a genocide over a dispute and revenge.
Colonization of a continent by foot and by boat takes an amazingly short period of time so long as the population expands at any rate whatsoever.

Anthony
Seems like there’s a fair amount of interest in Pre-Columbian Native American population. When the weather breaks, might be nice to have a guest post by someone who really knows something about the subject.

Ian McLeod – Schulman began his hunt for a species with better drought sensitivity (Bristlecones) because Sequoias grew too uniformly; basically you couldn’t tell much from the Giant Sequoia because they require a tremendous amount of water to survive (500+ gallons/day) which is why they only grow near steady water sources. Thus a Bristlecone – Sequoia correlation is unlikely and not very useful given that groundwater conditions could not be more different.
Mike D & Pascvaks – This article seems to support MWP…which, in turn is another body blow against the IPCC and the Alarmists. I like this. However, this article does not provide substantial evidence to support MWP…if I am going to criticize Salzer & Mann for junk science, I have to be consistent.
So here are my criticisms:
1. Fire needs a cause or source. Drought doesn’t cause fire. In fact the lack of moisture in the Troposphere during a drought would create less opportunity for lightning strikes and perhaps arguably less frequent fires.
2. I have spoken to the Sequoia Lead Archeologist about anthropogenic fire. It is well known that Native Americans inhabited the entirety of Sequoia and Kings Canyon from the lowlands at 2,000 feet to the alpine region with temporary settlement evidence as high as 11,000 feet. They certainly inhabited the Sequoia belt in the Summers. The landscape the Europeans first saw in California in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s was a “Highly Modified” landscape. Which is to say, the Native Americans used Fire as a tool, often…both for access to steady food supplies and to clear out overgrowth.
3. There is evidence to suggest that the Individual Sequoias (ones with hollowed out interiors from either fire or because they arch over a stream) were used as shelter and for cooking. Sequoia exteriors were also used as fire backstop/shelters.
4. One Native American was ALWAYS made to stand guard and tend the fire at all times. This is specifically true of Native Americans in and around the Kaweah River who spent summers in Giant Forest. Fire was THAT important.
5. This issue has already been addressed by Dr Bartholemew at UC Berkeley
“Fire scars in the rings of giant sequoias describe fire history dating back to the birth of the tree—sometimes as far back as 2,500 years ago. Analysis of tree-ring scars indicates that before settlers came to California low-intensity surface fires, ignited by native people or lightening, burned every five years on average. These small fires cleared only the understory brush and small trees, leaving the larger trees only partially burned and on the whole unharmed. They maintained gaps in the canopy, provided space for developing sequoia saplings, replenished soil, and most likely made hunting and moving around in the forest easier for native people.”
So I suppose the point is that the relationship between humans, fire & Sequoias is not perfectly understood, and simply pointing to increased fire scars and Barking “MWP” isn’t going to prove anything. I believe in the MWP, I just don’t believe the evidence presented above moves the argument further down the road.
The National Park Service has studied the issue extensively yet inconclusively:
Current hard historic evidence on the source of fires in the southern Sierra Nevada is too limited to determine the specific importance of either lightning or Native American causes. Actual patterns of fire across the landscape were probably a result of both ignition sources with the importance of each varying between specific vegetation types and locations. However, within the parks it is argued that the number of lightning ignitions could account for the observed pre- settlement fire frequencies if they had not been suppressed and had been allowed to spread (Swetnam et al 1992; Stephenson 1996; Vale 1998). This contrasts with views which suggest that lightning ignitions were not frequent enough to account for the number of fires that occurred in the Sierra prior to Euroamerican settlement (Reynolds 1959;
Vankat 1970; Lewis 1973; Kilgore and Taylor 1979). The former view is supported by an analysis of past fire occurrence, reconstructed using fire scars, and contemporary lightning ignitions in the East Fork watershed (Caprio 2000 unpublished data). For the period from 1750 to 1849 fires
were recorded during 75% of the years (25% without fires) while during the contemporary period from 1933 to 1999 lightning ignitions (243 total) were recorded for 79% of the years (21% without ignitions), a very similar frequency.
Fire Scars with other evidence might prove the MWP in Giant Forest but there isn’t enough here. For example in nearby Mountain Home State Forest a cataclysmic fire hit virtually every tree in 1297 at the end of the MWP…similar to an 1849 fire that affected multiple groves and watersheds within Sequoia National Park….Both Fires were colossal…does that prove prolonged drought? What proves prolonged drought? I would expect a 500 year drought/warming as the author suggests to show a consistent and escalating sequoia die off along with a renewed forest wide sapling surge circa 1300 post drought.
Lastly, I do not know if the issue has been studied, I would expect increased human activity in the sequoia belt in a major 500 year drought. I would expect them to bring fire with them and hence an increased incidence of fire. In a drought….Sequoias = water. These trees gobble up 500+ gallons a day or they die. So wherever these trees are, even where streams or lakes are dry, even where shrubs and small trees are dying, springs are probably permanent for human use.

Dendrochronology is pretty cool stuff. When fire is part of a conifer’s reproductive cycle, that’s not “man made”. Forest fires are a fundamental part of the natural lifecycle.
I’m just a passenger on this wonderful jewel of a planet in space. To think that I can change something like the weather is the definition of hubris.

For Amino:
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus [Deckle Edge] (Hardcover)
~ Charles C. Mann (Author)
A mostinteresting book to read, about the Americas and American Indians. A bit of political correctness in it, but not all that much. And yes, the eastern American Indians did purposely burn the forest floor every yeat. This made the trees in the forests to be more widely spaced apart, creating great habitat for the critters the eastern American Indians hunted for food. In Europe, where this forest management wasn’t practiced, there was and still is little habitat for critters.
Natural forests have darn little habitat for ground animals.

Greg (15:31:05) :
Dendrochronology is pretty cool stuff. When fire is part of a conifer’s reproductive cycle, that’s not “man made”. Forest fires are a fundamental part of the natural lifecycle.

Humans often find it useful to prompt the “natural lifecycle” to move along at times, places, and directions more convenient to humans. If a natural lightning strike does not clear the understory of the forest to the liking of the humans, the humans apply a little of their own lighning to get the job done sooner. If a sugar maple tree isn’t where you find it convenient to have onem, you help nature along by moving a sugar maple to the palce you can use one more conveniently.
Interstate Highway I-70 generally follows the same route froom Washington D.C. to St. Louis, Missouri as the earlier National Highway in use since the 18th Century. The National Highway was established generally along the same path used by the Amerindian cultures as their roadway through the Eastern Woodlands. The Amerinidans established their roadway through the Eastern Woodlands using the pre-existing game trails of Bison, elk, and other large game animals. Keeping the roadway free of weeds and undergrowth without the assistance of industrial age earthmoving equipment and large animals was problematic, until you used fire to keep the paths clear.

@Greg
‘Dendrochronology is pretty cool stuff.’
I hope you’re proud of being who you are, because not even a comp geek, or nerd, in general find that kind of stuff: Cool.
What would be cool is getting average joe understanding, or at least seeing, time. Figure this, can you actually imagine a hundred years back even fairly accurately? Hint, you get it more right the more you know.
But in simple terms, no dendrochronology is not cool, it’s a bunch of bull sht. Figure this, that tree rings and like ice cores are converges before the claim of accuracy. Nobody actually knows anything about the actual accuracy in time before hand, it’s like all extrapolation after the fact. :p

Wren (10:26:55) :
I find a serious fracture in your ‘science’ argument, namely, you keep talking about the Mann Hockey Stick graph as if it valid for determining temperature during the Medieval Warm Period.
You are ignoring the NAS report in that regard.The Mann Hockey Stick graph is not trustworthy for determining temperature during the Medieval Warm Period.
.
Here is a graph from page 14 of the NAS report on Mann et als work. It does not resemble the Hockey Stick graph. It is the smoothed graph of data that is far more trustworthy for determining temperature than Mann et als method:
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309102251/xhtml/images/p200108c0g14001.jpg
.
And this is from page 21 of the NAS report:
Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium
………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Science does not support that the Mann Hockey Stick graph is an accurate record of temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period.
I know you will go on promoting the Mann graph Wren. I am seeing that you are an advocate for global warming and not an unbiased person.
I did not write all of this for you but for readers who are looking for the truth. I hope they read the entire NAS report for themselves and see that the Mann et al graph is not to be trusted as accurate temperature data.
link to the NAS report:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=R1

It’s always Marcia, Marcia (16:21:40): You are trying to produce a list of reason why there would be an increase from 800–1300 AD but your list didn’t include the Medieval Warm Period. Is this because you want to say there was no Medieval Warm Period?
Marcia, Marcia. I said (18:55:01) that I accept the MWP, but on the basis of Greenland ice cores, not fire scars. Consider this: Swetnam said that over the last 3,000 years the highest fire frequency was from 800 to 1300 AD. Therefore the fire scar evidence fails to record the Roman Warm Period, which the ice cores indicate was even warmer than the MWP.
So if you believe the fire scars recorded global temperatures, that must mean you deny the Roman Warm Period. Is that what you’re saying?

Amino Acids in Meteorites (19:41:27) :
I know this is way off topic, but do either of you know if Indians in the area that is now the Contiguous 48 practiced human sacrifice similar to the Mayans?

Human sacrifice was practiced by the Amerindian cultures inhabiting the present day CONUS (Continental United States). The extent to which the human sacrifices were similar to and different from the Mayan, Aztec, and other Mesoamerican practices is subjective and arguable.

I bet 1200 AD was a great time to be alive.

After Seven (15:02:11) :
Thanks for the information.

@T McLaughlin
If you carefully read the legends on the graphs, they explicitly state what they represent.
Since Mann’s graph shows alleged anomalies ‘relative to 1960-90′
it should not be difficult to discern how the temperature record in graph 2
does not support (or is not supported by – take your pick) Mann’s graph.
“Incidentally, what does either (global/European) have to do with these new tree -ring data from the Sierra Nevada?”
What the new data provides is evidence that perhaps the MWP was truly global and not limited to Europe. For a proper examination of the significance of this point, I suggest you read: “The `Hockey Stick’: A New Low in Climate Science” by the late John L. Daly
(http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm)
As Daly argues: “To disprove the `Hockey Stick’, it is sufficient to merely demonstrate conclusively the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and/or the Little Ice Age in proxy and/or historical evidence from around the world. According to the `falsifiability’ principle of science, substantial physical evidence that contradicts a theory is sufficient to `falsify’ that theory. To that end, `exhibits’ of physical evidence are presented below to prove that not only is the `Hockey Stick’ false, but that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were not only very real – but also global in extent.”
That is the point.

Pascvaks (14:32:40) : “Anthony, Seems like there’s a fair amount of interest in Pre-Columbian Native American population. When the weather breaks, might be nice to have a guest post by someone who really knows something about the subject.”
Pascvaks, I think you have the best of the best — minds and arguments and research — right here on WUWT. No surpise because that is what Anthony, Moderators, Contributors, Commenters do all the time. Great thread for insights into recent research in a variety of scientific fields. Enneagram even snuck (?) in a little “earthquakes and solar minima” material (3/18-07:56:35). Happy Birthday, Charles the Mod.

Brian D Finch (06:49:55) :
“If you carefully read the legends on the graphs, they explicitly state what they represent”
I have done that and KNOW what they represent. My concern id with casual readers who look at the two graphs and believe them to be different representations of the same thing.
Willis Eschenbach makes amends here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/18/more-on-the-national-geographic-decline/#more-17466
He compares anomalies with anaomalies -which is as it should be.

Digsby, it is you who suggest that certain subjects should be taboo. I am merely pointing out that real denial, of humanity, is something other than global warming denial.
Let’s take this a step at a time. Climate realists, like me, take huge offense at being called “deniers” because of the connotation with Holocaust deniers. There really was a Holocaust. Hitler really did murder 6,000,000 innocent people.
The Holocaust is not a forbidden subject to me. I think it should be studied, reported, and NEVER forgotten. There are lessons there for all human kind to learn.
Similarly, human habitation of the Americas for the last 12,000+ years really happened. I think that subject should be studied, reported, and the findings not denied. Millions of people lived here. The pre-Columbian population suffered a 95% collapse when Old World diseases were introduced. Many refer to that as “the American Holocaust.” There are lessons there for everyone, including Jewish people, and including you.
Do you see, Digsby, that I am not forbidding the study of history — I am encouraging it. But you take umbrage at that. I think you are confused.
I am not a “post-normal scientist” anymore than you are a complete idiot mouthing cliches who cannot grasp what others have written. I suggest you calm down and go read all the comments above carefully, with maximum comprehension effort. Try to concentrate on what was actually written. I know you can do it.