The Applied Epistemology Library :: View topic

Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London

Are passenger pigeons, like mourning doves, also related to the carrier variety?Just wondered if they might have been used to carry messages, maybe the "cultivators" were nineteenth-century pigeon fanciers.
And the reason the pigeons were no longer useful? Early twentieth-century technology, the telephone, wireless, telegrams, etc.

That was certainly my assumption originally. Until a coupla days ago I didn't know any of this stuff about chicks falling out of nests and the adults being the quickest things on two legs and so forth. I only knew (and this was twenty years ago) that passenger pigeons were ridiculously numerous and disappeared ridiculously quickly. So basically, as I generally do, I put the anomaly behind me ear for later, confident that it would iron itself out when the time came to put the Whole Theory together (which, you will appreciate by now, is happening for the first time before your wondering eyes).

The pattern I originally recognised was that the pigeon family in general were one of those "are they-aren't they" species which appear to have a close relationship with Man but are not fully domesticated. Since I best knew pigeons as the homing variety, it followed (I assumed) that their purpose was in carrying messages -- though I don't have a clue then or now how this was actually done. (Suggestions welcome.)

However, Ishmael has reminded me that in fact pigeons had a much more important role as a food source. Now this introduces a problem. Not only would it be unusual for one animal to have two completely different purposes, in this case the two purposes seem contradictory since the better the (sleek) bird was as a messenger, the worse it would be as a (plump) food source. On the other hand, remembering the reindeer, it would seem that Cro-Magnon had a marked tendency to utilise every facet of their 'adopted' animals so why not the passenger pigeon having a dual role.

But once this line of reasoning is followed, why not introduce a third function? Why, for instance, were they in such vast numbers (surely too vast for either messages or food)? Well...what else do flocks of pigeons do? They devastate crops! Yes, folks, that's it...the passenger pigeon was Cro-Magnon's way of controlling the North American flora.

DPCrisp

In: Bedfordshire

However, Ishmael has reminded me that in fact pigeons had a much more important role as a food source.

The entire flock would [disappear], and the chicks would [appear on] the ground.

Their flocks, a mile wide and up to 300 miles long, were so dense that they darkened the sky for hours and days as the flock passed overhead.

Wow, that must have looked like a whale in the sky.

Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire

Wow, that must have looked like a whale in the sky.

Dan!! You're a genius, as is well-known ...and when the flock landed it must have seemed like manna from heaven. Or, conversely, a heaven-sent punishment if the birds ruined a precious crop...converted it into a desert.

(In case anyone is perplexed, there was a discussion about a possible confusion between quails and whales with regard to the Israelites' wanderings in the desert and the connection, or not, with North American Indian whale myths).

Chad

In: Ramsbottom

Mick wrote:

Well...what else do flocks of pigeons do? They devastate crops! Yes, folks, that's it...the passenger pigeon was Cro-Magnon's way of controlling the North American flora.

The advantage of using pigeons to control unwanted flora is that you get a fantastic byproduct ......and I cringe as I'm writing this, but ...... SHIT LOADS OF GUANO to fertilize the desirable flora.

One point that hasn't been raised is the fact that the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) - as its Latin name indicates - was migratory. ...... It's one thing following reindeer during their seasonal migrations ...... but a 70 mph pigeon?

This means the whole domestication thing must have been a joint venture between the folk up north and the folk down south. ... Let's face it if you live down south and have millions of tons Kentucky Fried Pigeon arriving on your doorstep at a predictable time every year; you're going make the most of it and not worry that it might actually belong to Jack Duckworth (or his Cro-Magnon counterpart) up north.

If it wasn't a joint venture it would be foolish to choose a migratory species to domesticate in the first place, or at the very least you would want to eradicate this instinct from its psyche by selective breeding pretty early on.

And why was it called the PASSENGER pigeon? ... Who exactly were these passengers?

Ishmael

In: Toronto

Mick Harper wrote:

Yes, folks, that's it...the passenger pigeon was Cro-Magnon's way of controlling the North American flora.

You're gonna have to show some serious case for this.

On the other hand, a fast bird would be consistent with my case. A fast bird is one that never gets caught once it finally takes flight. Therefore, every flier is a survivor and every survivor is a reproducer. That means that the symbiotic homonids can eat more of them in infancy.

If the adult bird fell prey to predation, fewer of them could be consumed as chicks....and of course, they weren't all consumed as chicks anyway. No. They literally fell out of the trees like ripe fruit and the hominids went about picking them up then stuffed them into cages to fatten up and eat all year.

So now we know why some parts of North America were grasslands and some parts were forests. The forested areas were populated by pigeon-eaters while the grasslands were populated by elk and bison eaters. both groups "cultivated" their meat source. The pigeon eaters, no doubt, by feeding their pets grains unfit for humans and the elk eaters by feeding their pets....well...grains unfit for humans.

Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire

The advantage of using pigeons to control unwanted flora is that you get a fantastic byproduct .....and I cringe as I'm writing this, but ...... SHIT LOADS OF GUANO to fertilize the desirable flora.

The pigeon droppings we get in England are deemed a nuisance, if not a health hazard, though perhaps this view is determined by habitat, city as opposed to countryside; guano is harvested from seabirds, fish-eating rather than grain-eating species, high in nitrates. However pigeon droppings were greatly valued as fertiliser and apparently the towers constructed for them in ancient Mesapotamia were specifically designed so the droppings could be collected easily.

One point that hasn't been raised is the fact that the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) - as its Latin name indicates - was migratory. ...... It's one thing following reindeer during their seasonal migrations ...... but a 70 mph pigeon?

Are you sure it's a migratory bird (pigeons here stay throughout the year, they seem relatively impervious to heat and cold, though perhaps not extremes of either)? Is it an indelible instinct or would adequate food supplies and a reasonably temperate climate obviate the necessity to travel long distances each year?

Chad

In: Ramsbottom

Hatty wrote:

Are you sure it's a migratory bird (pigeons here stay throughout the year, they seem relatively impervious to heat and cold, though perhaps not extremes of either)?

As sure as I can be. - This detailed account sounds pretty authentic:

The main nesting area was in the region of the Great Lakes and east to New York. The main wintering sites stretched from Arkansas to North Carolina south to the uplands of the Gulf Coast states.

The habitat of the passenger pigeon was mixed hardwood forests. The birds depended on the huge forests for their spring nesting sites, for winter "roosts," and for food. The mainstays of the passenger pigeon's diet were beechnuts, acorns, chestnuts, seeds, and berries found in the forests. Worms and insects supplemented the diet in spring and summer.

In the winter the birds established "roosting" sites in the forests of the southern states. Each "roost" often had such tremendous numbers of birds so crowded and massed together that they frequently broke the limbs of the trees by their weight. In the morning the birds flew out in large flocks scouring the countryside for food. At night they returned to the roosting area. Their scolding and chattering as they settled down for the night could be heard for miles. When the food supply became depleted or the weather conditions adverse, the birds would establish a new roosting area in a more favorable location.

The migratory flights of the passenger pigeon were spectacular. The birds flew at an estimated speed of about sixty miles an hour. Observers reported the sky was darkened by huge flocks that passed overhead. These flights often continued from morning until night and lasted for several days.

The time of the spring migration depended on weather conditions. Small flocks sometimes arrived in the northern nesting areas as early as February, but the main migration occurred in March and April. The nesting sites were established in forest areas that had a sufficient supply of food and water available within daily flying range.

This migratory habit must have been regarded as pretty unusual for the bird to be given the specific name "migratorius". - So we come back to the point - if they were domesticated, who did it? Northerners or southerners, or as I suggested earlier was it a joint venture?

Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire

And why was it called the PASSENGER pigeon?

The name is said to come from French, "pigeon de passage" ('pigeon of passage'), on account of the overwhelming numbers of migratory flocks passing overhead (though why "passenger" rather than passage isn't clear). Strangely, the French called the passenger pigeon tourtre (hence turtle dove presumably).

Yes, am now persuaded they were migratory! It could even be that the birds' trajectories were manipulated if the right kind of grain was cultivated in chosen locations.

Why, for instance, were they in such vast numbers (surely too vast for either messages or food)?

The flocks had to be huge to ensure their protection against predators; they were extremely vulnerable and couldn't survive in smaller numbers if there was an imbalance between predator and prey (as became apparent once those numbers started to decrease).

According to wiki:

There was safety in large flocks which often numbered hundreds of thousands of birds. When a flock of this huge a size established itself in an area, the number of local animal predators (such as wolves, foxes, weasels, and hawks) was so small compared to the total number of birds that little damage would be inflicted on the flock as a whole.

Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London

Strange though.........if these birds are similar enough to be mistaken for one another, how come our ornithological friends don't even place them in the same genus?

A trained Applied Epistemologist would use this single observation to destroy the orthodox version of...oh...just at a preliminary guess: Linnaean Taxonomy, Darwinian Evolution, North America (pre-)History, Cro-Magnon Domestication Programmes, the Origin of Writing et al ad nauseam -- it's called the expanding torrent and is fairly straightforward because The Academy insists everything has to hang together nicely and must be communicable to young persons.

But just noticing is unusual enough. You will read dozens of books on the subject without it ever being remarked on by anyone, much less 'dealt with'.

PS Try and find a zoologist or similar to ask and record their answers. It's most entertaining as well as enlightening. (About zoologists, I mean, not speciation in the pigeon family.)

PPS But if you get the word 'genus' wrong (or as may be, family) then you will lose his or her attention immediately and for ever. They're funny that way.

Ishmael

In: Toronto

Hatty wrote:

(In case anyone is perplexed, there was a discussion about a possible confusion between quails and whales with regard to the Israelites' wanderings in the desert and the connection, or not, with North American Indian whale myths).

Yes. A "possible confusion" that this notion has not solved. I will raise that issue here later - perhaps.

Chad

In: Ramsbottom

Mick wrote:

Well...what else do flocks of pigeons do? They devastate crops! Yes, folks, that's it...the passenger pigeon was Cro-Magnon's way of controlling the North American flora

I wrote:

The advantage of using pigeons to control unwanted flora is that you get a fantastic byproduct .........and I cringe as I'm writing this, but ......... SHIT LOADS OF GUANO to fertilize the desirable flora.

Looks like this wasn't far off the mark if the following is anything to go by..............

We considered the possible effects Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) flocks may have had on the disturbance regime and species composition of presettlement forests in eastern North America. We suggest that the activities of roosting and nesting Passenger Pigeons caused widespread, frequent disturbances in presettlement eastern forests through tree limb and stem breakage and nutrient deposition from pigeon excrement. We suspect that the deposition of fine fuels resulting from such disturbances may have influenced fire intensity and frequency in presettlement forests. Further, we propose that consumption of vast quantities of acorns by pigeons during the spring breeding season may partially explain the dominance of white oak (Quercus alba) throughout much of the presettlement north-central hardwoods region. Consequently, the pigeon's extinction may have facilitated the increase and expansion of northern red oak (Quercus rubra) during the twentieth century. Although it is difficult to accurately quantify how physical and chemical disturbances and mast consumption by Passenger Pigeon flocks affected forest ecology, we suspect they shaped landscape structure and species composition in eastern forests prior to the twentieth century. We believe their impact should be accounted for in estimates of the range of natural variability of conditions in eastern hardwood forests.

.......not sure though how much of this was by design.

Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London



Well found, Chad. You'll find a discussion about the role of oaks in ye olden days in the Where are all the Neanderthals? thread. Marry 'em up, could you?

Chad

In: Ramsbottom

As Mick suggested I hopped over to the 'Where are all the Neanderthals?' thread, to read up on the oak discussion. This post from Komorikid more or less puts it in a nutshell.

Komorikid wrote:

The specific introduction of trees (including obviously artificial trees such as the various oaks) is one obvious early method of terreforming. And something even the Celts may have picked up in their desultory fashion

.
The oak is an interesting tree. It was required for the main manufacturing industry of the Neolithic and Bronze Age: leather. Reindeer skins from northern Scandinavia were tanned using bast fibre from oak trees due to its high tannin content. This was done on the west coast of Ireland which was adjacent to huge oak forests. Ireland once had huge stands of oak forest in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age.

The leather was used to construct boats (hulls and sails). These boats were large vessels capable of withstanding the rigours of Atlantic sailing. Tim Severen sailed a replica to America. These boats were still being used at the time of Julius Caesar who wrote about them. In fact he clearly mentioned TWO distinct types of boat used by the coastal and island tribes. The west Britons used leather boats and the north Europeans used wooden boats. Both types are built using oak. The description of these boats closely resembles the Pucans of western Ireland and the Longships of the Vikings.

Longships are built entirely of oak but there is no oak in Scandinavia. The raw material for Scandinavian boats came from Ireland and Britain. According to the latest palaeobotanist surveys oak was introduced to Britain no earlier then 4000BC. There was no way it could have spread naturally across the channel.

The earliest boat building is also from around this time. It would seem that managed forests are not a new concept as we are led to believe. Mick's terraforming idea is on solid ground. Though I don't think the Celtic proposition holds up as they were the boat builders.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know what the wood pigeon population was like in Neolithic Britain?

Chad

In: Ramsbottom

Just found this little snippet

The woodpigeon in the UK is unique in that it is largely non-migratory, unlike the population on the continent - hence crop damage occurs all the year.

To my mind this has all the hallmarks of human intervention. - In America they utilized an existing migratory species which they could rely on to return each year in time for the acorns. No such bird existed in Britain, so they brought in a migratory pigeon from Scandinavia and bred this instinct out of it.

And whilst we're on the subject, is the homing instinct in racing pigeons just modified migration - with a one way ticket?

Wile E. Coyote

In: Arizona

Rather interestingly we learn from wiki that Dovecotes were unknown to these isles until Norman times although the Romans were fanatics....strange that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote

online etymology wrote:

Cote....Old English cote, fem. of cot (plural cotu) "small house, bedchamber, den" (see cottage). Applied to buildings for animals from early 15c.

coterie (n.)..... 1738, from French coterie "circle of acquaintances," originally in Middle French an organization of peasants holding land from a feudal lord (14c.), from cotier "tenant of a cote" (see cottage).

columbarium (n.) "subterranean sepulchre in ancient Roman places with niches for urns holding remains," neuter of Latin columbarius, "dove-cote" (so called from resemblance), literally "pertaining to doves;" from columba "dove." Literal sense of "dove-cote" is attested in English from 1881.

cottage (n.) late 13c., from Old French cote "hut, cottage" + Anglo-French suffix -age (probably denoting "the entire property attached to a cote"). Old French cot is probably from Old Norse kot "hut," cognate of Old English cot, cote "cottage, hut," from Proto-Germanic *kutan (cognates: Middle Dutch cot, Dutch kot).

Meaning "small country residence" (without suggestion of poverty or tenancy) is from 1765. Modern French cottage is a 19c. reborrowing from English. Cottage industry is attested from 1921. Cottage cheese is attested from 1831, American English, earliest in reference to Philadelphia:

There was a plate of rye-bread, and a plate of wheat, and a basket of crackers; another plate with half a dozen paltry cakes that looked as if they had been bought under the old Court House; some morsels of dried beef on two little tea-cup plates: and a small glass dish of that preparation of curds, which in vulgar language is called smear-case, but whose nom de guerre is cottage-cheese, at least that was the appellation given it by our hostess. ["Miss Leslie," "Country Lodgings," Godey's "Lady's Book," July 1831]

cot ..... "hut, cottage;" see cote.

dovecote....... early 15c., from dove (n.) + cote.

coot.... c.1300, cote, used for various water fowl (now limited to Fulica atra and, in North America, F. americana), of uncertain origin. Compare Dutch meercoet "lake coot." Meaning "silly person, fool" is attested from 1766.

They are coo words as is coast. These isles were littered with coo places.

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