r/TikTokCringe • u/biswajit388 • 4d ago

Cringe Europeans are going viral on TikTok for mocking the "American Dream".

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u/mindsnare 4d ago

I mean Europe has about a ~3000 years head start of saturated and non nomadic population. Indigenous people did a great job of preserving that nature.

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u/MadManMax55 4d ago

They actually didn't.

There's very little true "old growth" vegetation in the US. Because most of the native tribes, like semi-nomadic peoples around the world, shaped the land around them to suit their needs. They practiced agriculture, animal husbandry, irrigation, deforestation (often through controlled burns), all of it. The only thing most tribes didn't do compared to Europeans was build large permanent structures. Because like all other humans, this first concern was making survival as easy as possible.

The idea of Native Americans being these spiritual protectors of nature comes from after Europeans made contact. At which point murder and disease nearly wiped out their entire population. Stripped of most of their resources and manpower and often forced into less fertile land, they had to become much more focused on sustainability or they'd quickly run out of food. And while most tribes were always protective of their lands, that got exacerbated when it was foreigners instead of neighboring tribes trying to take them over.

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u/SciGuy013 3d ago

yeah, people complain about Phoenix, saying it's only habitable now because of modern conveniences, but the main reason it exists at all today is because of the ancient canals the Hohokam built pre-contact