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by NoSorryCannot
1778 days ago
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The message, I'm pretty sure, wasn't that it was that kind of garden. Just that the landscape was already heavily transformed by the time Europeans arrived, but the Europeans didn't know that and assumed what they saw was its wild state. It's not limited to California, either, as it's now suspected that North America's vast inland prairies were largely created by people setting fires and that we'd see something closer to forests if it were truly untouched. It's not an implausible degree of control to have. They weren't fighting fires, they were setting them. |
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> It's not an implausible degree of control to have. They weren't fighting fires, they were setting them.
It doesn't matter what kind it was, garden metaphor implies human control over a certain boundary.
And in this context (both from OP and the linked article) the control is specifically about preventing mega-fires through controlled fires. Prairies and uncontrolled fires are irrelevant.
There is little reason to question this technique was being applied locally with some success, but there is no evidence that this could be to an extent that made California their garden, in any meaning of the word you want to imagine.
If anything, I don't think the historical population vs landmass numbers can match up, hence my original objection. Disappointingly, only counter-arguments so far has been finessing over the definition of "garden" instead of working on the manpower and efficacy questions.