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Hunter-gatherers introduced fish to a mountain lake 7000 years ago

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2580119-hunter-gatherers-introduced-fish-to-a-mountain-lake-7000-years-ago/
24•stevenwoo•2d ago

Comments

m463•2d ago
> That is the only possible explanation for how fish could have populated isolated mountain lakes

isn't that a common question?

"How do fish appear in landlocked lakes/ponds/etc"?

After digging a pond and letting it fill with rainwater/groundwater, fish appear. I don't think its because people carried them there.

(don't really know the common answer though)

stevenwoo•1d ago
In this case they have carbon dated wooden equipment for fish farming and know due to geological factors when the lake could support fish, though of course the fish might have gotten there first somehow. I thought this was interesting because it predates agriculture in the same area.
iefbr14•47m ago
Fish eggs often travel long distances by sticking to the feathers or legs of waterfowl I have been told at school long ago.
sejje•31m ago
I've had a pond for 11 years that has not acquired fish. It existed before that, too, but I'm not sure for how long (I think several decades).

It has lots of amphibians and snakes. Rarely any birds.

profsummergig•24m ago
Maybe the snakes have been eating the fish eggs / baby fish?
sejje•23m ago
The bullfrogs are the big carnivores, and sure, maybe.

Snakes are active but I doubt they eat nearly as much as the bullfrogs.

wil421•13m ago
Mountain lakes are completely different.

There’s fish eggs being washed everywhere during rain storms. The eggs come from upstream and wash into random places.

fractallyte•2d ago
An alternative vector: "cloud seeding" (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/sep/09/science.rese...)

Charles Fort collected numerous data for his famous "The Book of the Damned" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Damned

ck2•43m ago
I thought bird poop was the commonly accepted explanation

7000 years ago is the edge of recorded human civilization

(well 8000 years, I remember this because it's also the edge of a gamma ray burst in light years that could destroy all life on earth after traveling all that time)

sejje•33m ago
It doesn't matter if it's recorded. This is inferred, not written down.

Hunter-gatherers aren't known for their civilizations.

masklinn•23m ago
> 7000 years ago is the edge of recorded human civilization (well 8000 years

The earliest pre-pottery Neolithic complexes are nearly 4000 years older than that.

ikidd•14m ago
Did they have writing and kept records that we've found? That's the "recorded" part.
spwa4•27m ago
Yes. One thing that becomes very obvious if you go along "native" human villages in Africa is the reason civilization develops. When you look at villages that don't grow, but do the normal human thing. Grow, war (2 kinds: young vs old and village/tribe vs village/tribe), grow.

It's not because of agriculture. They have agriculture (they grow maniok, and you don't need much. They have fire, weapons, ... Also the entire countryside is full of grain). It's not that they don't understand how things work. They just don't care.

It's not because they're dumb. In fact on pretty much all measures the humans living in those villages are better, in a genetic sense, than we are. They're smarter. They're more beautiful. Every last one is in shape, even the oldest (the oldest, btw, are maybe 45, not that they even know themselves. In both villages I saw the oldest was a couple). They're even better, genetically, than the black people living in cities around them. They have no sick (maybe 1), because the sick are dead. Even sick children regularly die. They bury their dead, with respect, after a burial but to say they have a religion is overstating matters. They have noone that can't run a marathon, or is fat, or ... because if you can't hunt you don't eat. Wounds are deadly. Not because the wound is so serious, but because you're nearly guaranteed to develop fever and die. Most people die from complications with infections. They have only beautiful men and women, because if you can't participate in "evening activities" you'll go hungry or get murdered (and it's not just men: women have lovers kill other men due to "insults", or they poison someone. And regularly it doesn't take much incentive at all for a murder to happen). Sometimes they (try to) treat cities the way the treat neighboring tribes: they attack them to kill everyone (at the very least all men). That usually fails due to guns, but it's not like it never works.

There are very few people in those villages that want to leave. And they're not about to starve. There's no need for civilization, and, frankly, they don't want to. But also, I don't care what religion or non-religion you have: you will find that way of live thoroughly immoral.

orsorna•9m ago
Great point until the end. None of your descriptions imply a lack of morality for living isolated from a greater civilization. If anything, such small societies inhabit a neutral position, in that they don't care, which is something you already stated.

I think the only people arguing that the North Sentinelese are immoral are religious, for instance (hence why most attempts to visit are done by missions). The general consensus is otherwise awe for being separated from the rest of us, relatively unmolested.

EvanAnderson•22m ago
"Someone brought the black bass to this lake from far away, changing the biological distribution of the lake."

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5w35n0Hm_m0

moebrowne•4m ago
https://archive.is/ZuKV6
graemep•1m ago
I do not think anyone is arguing the Sentinelese are immoral?

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Hunter-gatherers introduced fish to a mountain lake 7000 years ago

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2580119-hunter-gatherers-introduced-fish-to-a-mountain-lake-...
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