The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and PeopleHumans first settled the islands of Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and New Guinea some sixty millennia ago, and as they had elsewhere across the globe, immediately began altering the environment by hunting and trapping animals and gathering fruits and vegetables. In this illustrated iconoclastic ecological history, acclaimed scientist and historian Tim Flannery follows the environment of the islands through the age of dinosaurs to the age of mammals and the arrival of humanity on its shores, to the coming of European colonizers and the advent of the industrial society that would change nature's balance forever. Penetrating, gripping, and provocative, The Future Eaters is a dramatic narrative history that combines natural history, anthropology, and ecology on an epic scale. "Flannery tells his beautiful story in plain language, science-popularizing at its Antipodean best." -- Times Literary Supplement "Like the present-day incarnation of some early-nineteenth-century explorer-scholar, Tim Flannery refuses to be fenced in." -- Time |
Contents
The New Lands | 20 |
Australia in Gondwana | 30 |
Land of Geckos Land of Flowers | 42 |
Land of Sound and Fury | 52 |
Meganesian Enterprises | 67 |
Splendid Isolation | 75 |
Sweet are the Uses of Adversity | 85 |
The Diversity Enigma | 92 |
Time Dwarfs | 208 |
Sons of Prometheus | 217 |
Who Killed Kirlilpi? | 237 |
When Thou Hast Enough Remember the Time of Hunger | 242 |
Alone on the Southern Isles Weirds Broke Them | 258 |
So Varied in DetailSo Similar in Outline | 269 |
A Few Fertile Valleys | 290 |
The Last Wave Arrival of the Europeans | 297 |
The Desert Sea | 102 |
The Mystery of the Meganesian Meateaters | 108 |
A Bestiary of Gentle Giants | 117 |
Lost Marsupial Giants of New Guinea | 130 |
Arrival of the Future Eaters | 135 |
What a Piece of work is a Man | 136 |
Gloriously Deceitful and a Virgin | 144 |
Peopling the Lost islands of Tasmantis | 164 |
The Great Megafauna Extinction Debate | 180 |
Making the Savage Beast | 187 |
There Aint No More Moa In Old Aotearoa | 195 |
Lost in the Mists of Time | 199 |
The Backwater Country | 298 |
As If We Had Been Old Friends | 310 |
Diverse Experiences | 321 |
Like Plantations in a Gentlemans Park | 342 |
Unbounded Optimism | 355 |
Riding the Red SteerFire and Biodiversity Conservation in Australia | 374 |
Adapting Culture to Biological Reality | 387 |
Postscript | 405 |
Maps and list of photographs | 406 |
Selected Reference | 410 |
Index | 416 |
Other editions - View all
The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People Tim Fridtjof Flannery No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
000 years ago Aborigines abundant adaptation agriculture ancestors ancient animals archaeological areas Arnhem Land arrived Asia Australia birds bones Caledonia carnivores cent century climate colonisation continent culture Despite developed dinosaurs diprotodons diverse eastern ecological niche ecosystems enormous ENSO Europe European evidence evolved extinct extraordinary fauna fire firestick farming fish forest fossil François Péron giant Gondwana groups Guinea habitat herbivores humans hunting ice age important inhabited Island kangaroos kilograms kilograms in weight kilometres landmasses Lapita largest lifestyle living Macassan mammals Maori marsupials megafauna Meganesia metres million years ago monotremes native northern nutrients Pacific perhaps plant population predators probably Queensland rainforest recently record region relatively remains reptiles researchers result sediments seems settlers soils South Wales southern species suggests survive Sydney Tasmania Tasmanian Te Rauparaha tiny tion tralian tree-kangaroos trees unique vast Victoria wombats Zealand
Popular passages
Page 19 - Revolutions still more remote appeared in the distance of this extraordinary perspective. The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time...