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Originally Posted by highthief
While I agree that some of the people of the more "primitive" parts of the world have not destroyed their environment nor created many of the problems of the modern world, the fact is that many have utterly wrecked their own environments and many live in utterly murderous societies that can hardly be held up as paragons of virtue.
The Easter Islanders, for instance, destroyed their own society by using up all the trees on their island, and ended up reverting to a more primitive and poorer society. They manufactured and experienced their own man-made environmental disaster and were certainly not the only tribes to have done so.
The Yanomamo Indians of South America are incredibly violent, and death from the hands of another is expected. The Mojave Indians considered 30% casulaties to be normal and the Mae Enga tribe of New Guinea experienced 40% losses.
Many, if not most, hunter-gatherer societies were every bit as nasty and cruel and as stupid as modern societies.
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While all of that is true (and I am taking your word for it) did these things happen before or after interaction with Westerners? For example, many (many, but not all) wars between American Indian tribes were due to them being forced from their homes by European settlers and forced to encroach on the territories of neighboring tribes. War is human, regardless of color, nationality or level of "civilization" but I'd be willing to go out on a limb and guess that the Western world is responsible for many more wars than any primitive society. Again, this is all an educated guess. History's not really my thing. My knowledge in these subjects are limited at best.