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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: locogringo who wrote (830684)	1/18/2015 1:54:39 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575431

"Is it different?" Yup; we put lines on maps now, and don't let hunters cross them to follow migrating mastodons herds. We also can throw nuclear bombs at them if they try, instead of rocks. "Does somebody just run over to Walmart or Home Depot and buy some new seeds?" The survivors ate or buried the dead, and carried on the best they could. How Human Beings Almost Vanished From Earth In 70,000 B.C. npr.org = Between the years 200 and 600 the population of Europe declined by about 40% (10 million people) through a sequence of plagues: Galen's Plague and the Plague of Cyprian (both possibly smallpox), and the Plague of Justinian (bubonic plague). As a result, farms and villages were abandoned and reclaimed by forests as Europe experienced its "Dark Ages." Plague struck Europe again between 1347 and 1352 - the "Black Death." Around 30% of the European population died (25 million people). Entire villages were wiped out and crops were left unharvested. In populous areas abandoned farms were soon taken over by others, but in more remote parts of Northern Europe many farms reverted to the wild. Invasions and civil strife in China between the years 200 and 600 caused the loss of some 15 million people (around 7.5% of global population). Later the Mongol invasion caused a population decline between the years 1200 and 1400. Around 30 million people perished, mostly as a result of starvation resulting from the Mongol destruction of rice paddy infrastructure. Later, in the 1600s, war and smallpox claimed 20 million lives. But those losses pale when compared to the event which Bill Ruddiman has called: "arguably the greatest tragedy in all of human history." European contact in the Americas introduced smallpox, swine 'flu, measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough, anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, and malaria, both by personal contact and via the introduction of livestock. Known as "The Virgin Soil Pandemic," it caused the loss of some 50 million people or 85-90% of the combined American population over a century starting around the year 1525. Entire cultures collapsed and the old settlements, farms, buildings, monuments, roads and earthen mounds were abandoned to nature. These episodes of abandonment and reforestation are reflected by reductions in CO2 levels recorded in ice cores. skepticalscience.com