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**Itrtuawh** · 09-21-2012, 08:41 PM

Talking about Europeans being invasive made me remember a book I heard of recently. I believe it is called 1492 (or maybe 1493?) and it chronicles the changes to the Americas after the colonization by Europeans. Things you would never even think of had impact, like European earthworms ( apparently native worms were non existent after the glacier periods, and the new earthworms changed the structure of the forest ground litter affecting the undergrowth...). And so far as the human population, it is estimated we wiped out up to 90% of the indigenous peoples with our diseases mostly.
But you have a point that any species can be considered exploitive of new environments. And even the indigenous peoples here came from else where too, albeit thousands of years earlier, and no doubt had their own impact of the "New World".

09-21-2012, 08:41 PM	#21
Itrtuawh Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 503 Senior Member	Talking about Europeans being invasive made me remember a book I heard of recently. I believe it is called 1492 (or maybe 1493?) and it chronicles the changes to the Americas after the colonization by Europeans. Things you would never even think of had impact, like European earthworms ( apparently native worms were non existent after the glacier periods, and the new earthworms changed the structure of the forest ground litter affecting the undergrowth...). And so far as the human population, it is estimated we wiped out up to 90% of the indigenous peoples with our diseases mostly. But you have a point that any species can be considered exploitive of new environments. And even the indigenous peoples here came from else where too, albeit thousands of years earlier, and no doubt had their own impact of the "New World".
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