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Ep. 10: Start of the Endgame for the Ancient West

Ep. 10: Start of the Endgame for the Ancient West

Gunfighters vor 1 Jahr

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1:03:42

When Lewis & Clark saw the West in the first years of the
1800s it still preserved the healthy biodiversity of
Native-managed ecologies in place for 10,000 years. Within thirty
years, everything had changed. Americans arrived in the West with
religious traditions that taught animals were created solely for
human use. And they introduced an economic system that made
western animals commodities in a global market, an economy that
snagged Native people in the trade and created the first American
millionaires. By 1840 ancient western ecologies evolved around
sea otters, fur seals, beavers and many other species were
collapsing in both the interior and on the coasts. For some the
period produced romantic figures like the mountain men.
Witnessing such destruction, however, even some of their peers
saw the casual loss of the ancient West very differently.

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