3/8. Ten Thousand Years of Kinship: Native American Hunter-Gatherers and Ecological Balance — Dan Flores — Following the Pliocene extinction event, North America entered a 10,000-year period characterized by hunter-gatherer societies achieving sophisticated ecological equilibrium. Flores documents that Native American peoples consciously maintained deliberately restricted human populations (fewer than five million inhabitants) to preserve biodiversity and prevent further species loss, resulting in only one documented extinction during this extended period. Flores emphasizes that these indigenous societies conceptualized wild animals as kin, celebrating them through oral traditions, stories, and sacred ceremonies, with coyote and raven functioning as ancient deities and archetypal trickster figures within cosmological frameworks.
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