Globalization or (globalisation) is the process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together.
[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RXjdsuSU5s[/video]
The film is humorous but illustrates a good point . We have mixed up the worlds people and the environments they evolved in, that made them what they are, are no longer in play.
This subject fascinates me. It has happened in what Carl Sagan would call 'a fraction of a second in the history of human existence', and its effect....hummm I would say its the biggest 'screw with mother nature' we've ever done and the effect has yet to come.
1491 this was a very different continent and the effect of 1492 was devastating to it.

Smallpox is now said to be the cause of the massive Buffalo herds of the Americas. ...scratching your head on that one are you.
The Buffalo population was controlled by it human Amerindian predators, smallpox was so devastating to the population the loss of predator caused the buffalo population to explode.Visiting Europeans having not seen America before this event mistakenly thought America was like this before they arrived, not realizing they where seeing an effect of Globalization.

Good one, very interesting.

Then how was the buffalo population controlled before the arrival of the amerindians?

I've read they have been her 13,000 years so what ate the Buffalo before that would be a mystery.

Smallpox did not exists in the native american population until introduced by Europeans.

Prior to 13,000 years ago I believe much of north America would have been covered by glaciers, so there wouldn't have been any humans or buffaloes.

Does anyone know how far south the glaciers went in the last ice age?

The modern buffalo descended from Bison latifrons, an enormous, shaggy, European herbivore that crossed the land bridge that once connected Asia and North America. The crossing took place between 200,000 and 800,000 years ago and not long thereafter the land bridge submerged and North American Bison latifrons was isolated from the old world forever.

The ancestor of the buffalo that we know was left to evolve on the North American continent during a time of climate warming. About 120,000 years ago that species died out and was replaced by two new forms. Bison antiquus was closely associated with early man in North America and became extinct about 10,000 years ago. But the second descendant of the first buffalo, Bison occidentalis survives to this day. Though still a huge herbivore, it is smaller than its predecessors and its horns angle back rather than protrude outward like the ancient buffalo's. As the years passed, Bison occidentalis learned to utilize the main ecosystems of North America and, in doing so, evolved into two distinct races: the plains buffalo, Bison bison and the mountain or wood buffalo, Bison athabascae. These two races still exist and make up what is now known as the North American buffalo or bison.

To answer your question Peter:

Did the Ice Age cover all of the earth with ice?
In: Snow and Ice, The Ice Age


Answer
No. The earth has experienced many glacial periods. The last one, about 10,000 years ago, is often referred to as the Ice Age. About 30% of the earth was covered by ice, most of it in the Northern Hemisphere. Many parts of Africa and South America, in contrast, were warm.
In North America, glaciers covered the ground as far south as Illinois and Missouri.

PS: Peter, just so you do not credit me with unwarrented intelligence there is a source of information available other than people on the message board called "google it"

Which explains why archaeological evidence of the earliest humans known on this continent were first discovered in Clovis, New Mexico (hence they are now referred to as the Clovis people) and other parts of the country in the south and southeast, where they were driven over the course of centuries by the advancing glaciers . . which also removed all traces of earlier settlements. BTW, buffalo migrated south as well.

And it is appropriate to attribute when you do that.

That was the point I was trying to make, the Globalization down side.
The Amerindians immune systems where not ready for it and it and it almost wiped them out. The buffalo benefited with the lost of their major predator.

therefore..........
Lionfish will rule the reefs in 17.841 years?

I don’t think the chronology of the increase in numbers and subsequent decline of bison numbers is supported by the globalization theory. Early explores i.e.: Lewis & Clark et al. reported huge numbers of bisons. This is prior to the Native Americans being exposed to European diseases. The dramatic decline in bison numbers occurred when the white man began the wholesale slaughter for the hides.
Although, I guess the decline could be attributed to "globalization" but the increase in numbers does not support that theory if it is suggested to be caused by the decline in numbers of the Amerindians.

The Lewis Clark where over 300 years after the small pox epidemic in America, by the time Lewis and Clark showed up, the West was already transformed
the Desoto expedition was said to have carried small pox.
its even implied the he may have used it as a weapon as early as the 15th century.

The smallpox devistation of the American Plains Indian did not occur that early. Desoto did not go that far west and the infection he brought had not spread much west of the Mississippi.

"Smallpox and the Plains Indians:
A smallpox outbreak in 1780-82 followed the distribution and trade route of the Indian horse (Haines). The outbreak in 1800-02 spreads from the Plains Indians to the Indians along the Pacific coast. Despite heavy losses during these periods, the most devastating outbreak of smallpox was yet to come.

In 1832, the first steamboat, a small side-wheeler named, Yellow Stone, reached Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. The use of steamboats on the Missouri allowed large quantities of trade goods to move up and down the river. The buffalo hide trade now become more important than the trade in furs. Remote Indian villages brought their buffalo hides to the American Fur Company posts. This set the stage for ensuing disaster.

In June of 1837, the St. Peter arrived at Fort Clark, sixty miles north of present day Bismarck, North Dakota. Knowing there were men aboard the boat with smallpox, F. A. Chardon and others of the American Fur Company tried to keep the Mandans away from the boat, but to no avail. The two Mandan villages that had provided aid to Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1804-05 were devastated. Thirty-one Mandans out of a population of sixteen hundred survived the epidemic...these figures vary, but needless to say it was devastating to the Mandans.

The 1837 smallpox outbreaks were initially confined to the Indian tribes that lived by, or had come to trade at, the upper Missouri River trading posts. The Mandan, Blackfeet, and the Assiniboine nations suffered the highest number of deaths. The 1837-40 smallpox outbreaks were said to have a ninety-eight percent death rate among those infected (Bray)."

The large number of bison existed prior to the decline of the native plains indians from smallpox. Actually, the decline of both were almost simultaneos.

So I guess you could say the decline of both was caused by globaliztion, but I do not see how the increase in population of the bison could be attributed to that.

Just a side note: if any of you are wondering why I spent so much time on this subject, I worked in a small way with the Crow Creek Indian Reseration in South Dakota, it's Tribal Chairman - Duane Big Eagle, and the South Dakota Game Fish & Parks game biologists on the management of the tribes bison herd. It has special interest to me and I like the facts to be accurate.

I agree. And my point, after pointing out that humans had only been around a while to "control" the buffalo population (they didn't, too many buffs, too few humans), is that if the smallpox/buff herds connection was fact, then the argument can be made that "globalization" has been going on throughout human history.

Most of my info on the subject comes from a
history book by Charles C. Mann i read about New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and some from books i've read by Richard Dawkins.
both are disputing the history of America on lots of points, from the land bridge theory to underestimates of the small pox epidemic.
Mann even contends De Soto intentionally brought the virus with him kept alive in pig stock for the purpose of weaponry and it swept coast to coast killing tens of thousands at such a speed they could not bury the dead for dying themselves and that its dramatic effect was due to different genetic susceptibility of the Amerindian.
Manns contention and premise for the book is we have it all wrong.
and even as i Google the subject their are lots of major discrepancies like the 13,000 year date of the presence and the 20,000 year carbon dates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=3239326
Mann concludes that Indians were a "keystone species," one that "affects the survival and abundance of many other species." By the time the Europeans arrived and settled in the Americas, the "boss" (Indians) had been almost completely eliminated. Disease ran rampant and killed off the Indians, disrupting their control of the environment. When Indians died, animal populations, such as that of the buffalo grew immensely. "Because they (Europeans) did not burn the land with the same skill and frequency as its previous occupants, the forests grew thicker." The world discovered by Christopher Columbus was “largely an inadvertent European creation.”

"Mann even contends De Soto intentionally brought the virus with him"

Uh HUH. Yes virology, not to mention pathogenic organism transmission theory, was at it's heyday back then.

I knew there was a reason his theories sounded off base. He's insane. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I have a copy of his book if your on the island i could pass it to you.
This is just a little tidbit from the book. Its full of radical new concepts about early America.
Have you ever read Richard Dawkins? Hes another Darwinian kinda thinker.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html