The Future Eaters

English language

Published Dec. 22, 2002

ISBN:
978-0-8021-3943-6
Copied ISBN!

View on Inventaire

4 stars (1 review)

1 edition

Review of 'The Future Eaters' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The title refers to human colonists—not just the Europeans arriving in Australia but all of them, every group of humans arriving in new lands since we first left Africa. Finding seemingly-unlimited resources; discovering that, oops, they're not unlimited; collapsing; sometimes surviving in degraded state—sometimes not.

Book was slightly too long but covered new (to me) material in geology, evolutionary biology especially the rise of birds to fill niches that mammals fill in other environments, and pre-European cultures of Australasia. Most distinguishing feature was its complete Australiocentricity, the references that took a moment to understand or even flew entirely over my head, the almost complete non-treatment of the Americas as if they were irrelevant. That was refreshing.

Money quote, from near the end:

The European history of the colonisation of Australia has followed the same pattern as has the history of all of the colonists of the 'new' lands. All have …