The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and PeopleGrove Press, 2002 - 423 Seiten Humans first settled the islands of Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and New Guinea some sixty millennia ago, and as they had elsewhere across the globe, immediately began altering the environment by hunting and trapping animals and gathering fruits and vegetables. In this illustrated iconoclastic ecological history, acclaimed scientist and historian Tim Flannery follows the environment of the islands through the age of dinosaurs to the age of mammals and the arrival of humanity on its shores, to the coming of European colonizers and the advent of the industrial society that would change nature's balance forever. Penetrating, gripping, and provocative, The Future Eaters is a dramatic narrative history that combines natural history, anthropology, and ecology on an epic scale. "Flannery tells his beautiful story in plain language, science-popularizing at its Antipodean best." -- Times Literary Supplement "Like the present-day incarnation of some early-nineteenth-century explorer-scholar, Tim Flannery refuses to be fenced in." -- Time |
Inhalt
Time Dwarfs | 208 |
Sons of Prometheus | 217 |
Who Killed Kirlilpi? | 237 |
When Thou Hast Enough Remember the Time of Hunger | 242 |
Alone on the Southern Isles Weirds Broke Them | 258 |
So Varied in DetailSo Similar in Outline | 269 |
A Few Fertile Valleys | 290 |
The Last Wave Arrival of the Europeans | 297 |
| 102 | |
| 108 | |
| 117 | |
Lost Marsupial Giants of New Guinea | 130 |
Arrival of the Future Eaters | 135 |
What a Piece of work is a Man | 136 |
Gloriously Deceitful and a Virgin | 144 |
Peopling the Lost islands of Tasmantis | 164 |
The Great Megafauna Extinction Debate | 180 |
Making the Savage Beast | 187 |
There Aint No More Moa In Old Aotearoa | 195 |
Lost in the Mists of Time | 199 |
The Backwater Country | 298 |
As If We Had Been Old Friends | 310 |
Diverse Experiences | 321 |
Like Plantations in a Gentlemans Park | 342 |
Unbounded Optimism | 355 |
Riding the Red SteerFire and Biodiversity Conservation in Australia | 374 |
Adapting Culture to Biological Reality | 387 |
Postscript | 405 |
Maps and list of photographs | 406 |
Selected Reference | 410 |
Index | 416 |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People Tim Fridtjof Flannery Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 2005 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
000 years ago Aborigines abundant adaptation agriculture ancestors ancient animals archaeological areas Arnhem Land arrived Asia Australia birds bones Caledonia carnivores cent century climate colonisation continent culture Despite developed dinosaurs diprotodons diverse eastern ecological niche ecosystems enormous ENSO Europe European evidence evolved extinct extraordinary fauna fire firestick farming fish forest fossil François Péron giant Gondwana groups Guinea habitat herbivores humans hunting ice age important inhabited Island kangaroos kilograms kilograms in weight kilometres landmasses Lapita largest lifestyle living Macassan mammals Maori marsupials megafauna Meganesia metres million years ago monotremes native northern nutrients Pacific perhaps plant population predators probably Queensland rainforest recently record region relatively remains reptiles researchers result sediments seems settlers soils South Wales southern species suggests survive Sydney Tasmania Tasmanian Te Rauparaha tiny tion tralian tree-kangaroos trees unique vast Victoria wombats Zealand
Beliebte Passagen
Seite 81 - Hiems' thin and icy crown An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds Is, as in mockery, set : the spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which: And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissension ; We are their parents and original.
Seite 81 - ... the seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose; and on old Hiems' thin and icy crown an odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds is, as in mockery, set...
Seite 188 - The day was glowing hot, and the scrambling over the rough surface and through the intricate thickets, was very fatiguing; but I was well repaid by the strange Cyclopean scene.
Seite 181 - Yet it is surely a marvellous fact, and one that has hardly been sufficiently dwelt upon, this sudden dying out of so many large mammalia, not in one place only but over half the land surface of the globe.
Seite 223 - ... which we find the large forest-kangaroo; the native applies that fire to the grass at certain seasons, in order that a young green crop may subsequently spring up, and so attract and enable him to kill or take the kangaroo with nets. In summer, the burning of long grass also discloses vermin, birds' nests, etc., on which the females and children, who chiefly burn the grass, feed. But for this simple process, the Australian woods had probably contained as thick a jungle as those of New Zealand...
Seite 19 - Revolutions still more remote appeared in the distance of this extraordinary perspective. The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time...
Seite 190 - I saw a boy sitting by a well with a switch in his hand, with which he killed the doves and finches as they came to drink.
Seite 223 - Fire, grass, kangaroos, and human inhabitants, seem all dependent on each other for existence in Australia; for any one of these being wanting, the others could no longer continue.
Seite 189 - I often tried, and very nearly succeeded, in catching these birds by their legs. Formerly the birds appear to have been even tamer than at present.
Seite 177 - ISLAND 16th. so small & tender that you may cut them down with a pocket knife. When I was in the Woods amongst the Birds I cd. not help picturing to myself the Golden Age as described by Ovid to see the Fowls or Coots some White, some blue & white, others all blue wt.