Inhabiting an island

Abstract

The Ice Age ended and humanity claimed the planet. The changes to the planet that have occurred since then, in the past 10000 years, are massive. In geological perspective, they are on a scale that is comparable to the greatest changes in the living community since the Cambrian. These changes will have permanent effect, though they have happened in a geological instant. They have been caused by the growth and actions of the human population. Human beings are not animals. They do not follow geological rules in their behaviour, and it is wrong to analyse their actions by simplistic analogues with earlier changes known from the fossil record. Nevertheless, we are subject still to the general constraints of climate, resources, and our own abilities, and it is worth looking at the effects of our rapid population growth both by studying the behaviour of animal communities that have undergone rapid growth in numbers, and by studying the human record in limited systems, such as islands. Conquerors often become tyrants.