Using Me!

No, it REALLY must be our fault!

Following on from my indignation with the Yosemite Large Tree Population assumptions, also in the news today we find out that Humans were having a severe impact on fish populations as early as 1000AD!

Men Kill Fish!

Again we are not presented with enough data to support the conclusion. Initially they state that fishbones are found in sites all over NorthWest Europe but read carefully and the detailed data and the analysis and conclusion are only drawn from the York site. At York the bones show that freshwater fish being eaten diminished in size as time went on and simultaneously the proportions of sea fish being eaten in the diet increased.

The conclusion is: Man overfished the rivers and lakes and had to turn to the sea for more food. How can you conclude this from one site? Perhaps the other sites back up this conclusion but without further proof I think that is a tenuous conclusion. Perhaps the water course changed? Perhaps changing sea-levels affected the settlement, the fish, the river, or simply the ease of open water fishing?

I found some interesting data while thinking about this:

The oldest source I can find (Josiah C Russel, Medieval Demographics, 1984) states that in 1066 the population of England was 1,100,000.

I had assumed that at the time most of the country was covered in dense forest but that turns out to be incorrect. By 1000 AD most of the forest had been lost.

Men Kill Trees!