I mean, the main sustainable feature of indigenous food systems is their small population size relative to the environment’s carrying capacity. Trying to feed a large city on hunted game would be far less sustainable than modern agriculture…
Sure, in some instances that was the case, but it’s wrong to assume that indigenous north Americans didn’t have cities or large scale agriculture.
Agricultural practices in Cahokia for instance, wasn’t a European style monocrop. Rather, “Farming at Cahokia was biologically diverse and, as such, less prone to risk than was maize-dominated agriculture” ^(see link above)^
And Cahokia was, for a time, the political and economic center of much of indigenous north American, with the city itself being of comparable size to many European cities in the same period.
I mean, the main sustainable feature of indigenous food systems is their small population size relative to the environment’s carrying capacity. Trying to feed a large city on hunted game would be far less sustainable than modern agriculture…
Sure, in some instances that was the case, but it’s wrong to assume that indigenous north Americans didn’t have cities or large scale agriculture.
Agricultural practices in Cahokia for instance, wasn’t a European style monocrop. Rather, “Farming at Cahokia was biologically diverse and, as such, less prone to risk than was maize-dominated agriculture” ^(see link above)^
And Cahokia was, for a time, the political and economic center of much of indigenous north American, with the city itself being of comparable size to many European cities in the same period.