> That is the only possible explanation for how fish could have populated isolated mountain lakes
isn't that a common question?
"How do fish appear in landlocked lakes/ponds/etc"?
After digging a pond and letting it fill with rainwater/groundwater, fish appear. I don't think its because people carried them there.
(don't really know the common answer though)
giancarlostoro 1 hours ago [-]
Birds can drop fish after they've captured them. Not longer than a year now, we were visiting my wife's family, and me and my father in law got to Walmart there was a dead fish in the front, but when we mentioned it to my wife who got there before us (separate cars) she said it was struggling for life when they saw it, I don't think there was a lake nearby enough, but I wouldn't be surprised if birds have accidentally introduced life into new bodies of water.
iefbr14 3 hours ago [-]
Fish eggs often travel long distances by sticking to the feathers or legs of waterfowl I have been told at school long ago.
giancarlostoro 1 hours ago [-]
Close, I looked it up out of curiosity, it seems Waterfowl eat the eggs, but they travel through their digestive system fully alive. Really interesting even so!
BurningFrog 59 minutes ago [-]
I can see how the evolutionary advantage of such hardened eggs would be huge!
soperj 19 minutes ago [-]
I would think that would lead to a lot of inbred fish
lazystar 10 minutes ago [-]
a high rate of mutations would be an advantage in a new environment, though.
barbazoo 54 minutes ago [-]
Right, as long as you can still get out.
hnlmorg 44 minutes ago [-]
I’ve wondered if natural phenomena like tornadoes could carry fish eggs those kinds of distances. Or even just carry the eggs into the clouds, to be rained down large distances away.
stevenwoo 2 days ago [-]
In this case they have carbon dated wooden equipment for fish farming and know due to geological factors when the lake could support fish, though of course the fish might have gotten there first somehow. I thought this was interesting because it predates agriculture in the same area.
soperj 18 minutes ago [-]
How did wooden equipment not whither away in 7000 years?
Kye 36 minutes ago [-]
Humans were shaping their environments to produce food long before they plowed fields. Hunter-gatherers didn't just hunt and gather willy-nilly, picking up whatever they found, oblivious to how it got there.
wil421 2 hours ago [-]
Mountain lakes are completely different.
There’s fish eggs being washed everywhere during rain storms. The eggs come from upstream and wash into random places.
jjallen 2 hours ago [-]
This doesn't provide an answer for lakes.
But I always thought the explanation was eggs randomly getting stuck to bird feet. Or maybe a bird carries a fish with eggs up there and eats it or something. Inevitably it happens though...
wil421 1 hours ago [-]
Lakes have connected rivers and streams that provide paths for fish and eggs to move around. There are human and animal activities that affect this. Your bird example and beavers causing floods could allow movement.
jmalicki 1 hours ago [-]
Isolated alpine lakes do not have connected rivers and streams, yet a ton are stocked with fish by humans.
Is it unbelievable that ancient hunter-gatherers would do the same thing?
jerf 35 minutes ago [-]
A lot of people are unaware of how much husbandry hunter-gatherers still did. They may not have been farmers, with field plantings, weeding, and harvest seasons designed to maximize every acre under production, but they weren't stupid and still spent time to bend the world around them to the task of providing them more resources than it would have on its own. On a bang-for-the-buck basis they often did better than the farmers, it's just that without farming you can't get that density and net return.
We are on the same side. I’ve been trying to show the difference between natural water processes and some else like birds or humans spreading fish.
jjallen 41 minutes ago [-]
So many lakes do not have rivers flowing in and out. A low spot in an area will become a lake.
Many do have rivers; many don't. Ponds even more so don't have attached rivers.
darknavi 1 hours ago [-]
"Life finds a way"
- Dr. Ian Malcolm
2 hours ago [-]
williamdclt 2 hours ago [-]
How did they appear upstream?
wil421 2 hours ago [-]
There’s a stream in my back yard that doesn’t hold fish over the winter because it’s too shallow/cold. A large property near me has a pond that overflows into my stream. The fish survive in the deeper waters of the pond and spring rain usually washes fish eggs or even fish into my stream. They gather in the rocks in my backyard near the storm drain.
Alpine lakes are fed by snow met. There’s not going to be fish eggs on the snowpack that melts into the lake.
kakacik 58 minutes ago [-]
You yourself wrote in this thread:
> There’s fish eggs being washed everywhere during rain storms. The eggs come from upstream and wash into random places.
Do you realize that in the summer mountains below 4000m are mostly snow-free and thawing point ie in Europe has been pushed above 5000m repeatedly during summers. Its easy to have 25C in 2500m in today's alps (ie today 22C in 2000m in Chamonix, France).
The term 'alpine lake' doesn't mean anything specific, and most are fed from rain during entire summer without any/much of snow or ice contribution.
ShinyLeftPad 1 hours ago [-]
A tornado?
jmalicki 1 hours ago [-]
In California, it's because people (the state department of fish and wildlife) put the fish there.
You can even see their scheduled fish plantings online:
I've had a pond for 11 years that has not acquired fish. It existed before that, too, but I'm not sure for how long (I think several decades).
It has lots of amphibians and snakes. Rarely any birds.
profsummergig 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe the snakes have been eating the fish eggs / baby fish?
sejje 2 hours ago [-]
The bullfrogs are the big carnivores, and sure, maybe.
Snakes are active but I doubt they eat nearly as much as the bullfrogs.
giancarlostoro 59 minutes ago [-]
Apparently if you introduce a large fish species to your pond, the bullfrogs will not eat them, not sure how you would secure the eggs though. Maybe some sort of area that could shelter from them, but once they come out of shelter when they hatch, its kind of the same problem.
Could also introduce fish that will eat the frogs to keep them under control. Or just leave it all as-is.
ekjhgkejhgk 57 minutes ago [-]
It's not the only possible explanation. Fish can get sucked up by tornatos and get dropped later.
hmmm, I have seen big fish in much bigger birds claws, and have seen even bigger birds dive bombing other birds to force them to drop there fish
plus a bird can get a fish over ANY lake in
minuits, vs an all day random fish carrying hike?
so to recap, I have seen many birds with fish, but zero human fish hikers
fred_is_fred 2 hours ago [-]
Someone below mentions bird poop, but could a fish egg survive the human (or a dogs) digestive system as well?
honeycrispy 2 hours ago [-]
> That is the only possible explanation for how fish could have populated isolated mountain lakes
I hate how much of historical science is performed this way. Speculation is not very scientific.
ck2 3 hours ago [-]
I thought bird poop was the commonly accepted explanation
7000 years ago is the edge of recorded human civilization
(well 8000 years, I remember this because it's also the edge of a gamma ray burst in light years that could destroy all life on earth after traveling all that time)
masklinn 2 hours ago [-]
> 7000 years ago is the edge of recorded human civilization
(well 8000 years
The earliest pre-pottery Neolithic complexes are nearly 4000 years older than that.
ikidd 2 hours ago [-]
Did they have writing and kept records that we've found? That's the "recorded" part.
masklinn 53 minutes ago [-]
If writing is your yardstick then 7000 years is way too far back. There was likely proto-writing back then (some of the figures at gobekli tepe are found in a very similar form in later scripts of the area[1], there are clearer forms of proto-writings from CA 6000~7000 BCE in various cultures) however writing proper is only currently known from 3000 BCE onwards.
In Norway, the oldest written records are barely 1000 years old.
sejje 3 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter if it's recorded. This is inferred, not written down.
Hunter-gatherers aren't known for their civilizations.
t-3 14 minutes ago [-]
Civilization refers to cities, not literature. Urban societies need writing and complex social rules to survive, but it's not as if those things can't or haven't arisen in other types of human societies.
spwa4 2 hours ago [-]
Yes. One thing that becomes very obvious if you go along "native" human villages in Africa is the reason civilization develops. When you look at villages that don't grow, but do the normal human thing. Grow, war (2 kinds: young vs old and village/tribe vs village/tribe), grow.
It's not because of agriculture. They have agriculture (they grow maniok, and you don't need much. They have fire, weapons, ... Also the entire countryside is full of grain). It's not that they don't understand how things work. They just don't care.
It's not because they're dumb. In fact on pretty much all measures the humans living in those villages are better, in a genetic sense, than we are. They're smarter. They're more beautiful. Every last one is in shape, even the oldest (the oldest, btw, are maybe 45, not that they even know themselves. In both villages I saw the oldest was a couple). They're even better, genetically, than the black people living in cities around them. They have no sick (maybe 1), because the sick are dead. Even sick children regularly die. They bury their dead, with respect, after a burial but to say they have a religion is overstating matters. They have noone that can't run a marathon, or is fat, or ... because if you can't hunt you don't eat. Wounds are deadly. Not because the wound is so serious, but because you're nearly guaranteed to develop fever and die. Most people die from complications with infections. They have only beautiful men and women, because if you can't participate in "evening activities" you'll go hungry or get murdered (and it's not just men: women have lovers kill other men due to "insults", or they poison someone. And regularly it doesn't take much incentive at all for a murder to happen). Sometimes they (try to) treat cities the way the treat neighboring tribes: they attack them to kill everyone (at the very least all men). That usually fails due to guns, but it's not like it never works.
There are very few people in those villages that want to leave. And they're not about to starve. There's no need for civilization, and, frankly, they don't want to. But also, I don't care what religion or non-religion you have: you will find that way of live thoroughly immoral.
orsorna 2 hours ago [-]
Great point until the end. None of your descriptions imply a lack of morality for living isolated from a greater civilization. If anything, such small societies inhabit a neutral position, in that they don't care, which is something you already stated.
I think the only people arguing that the North Sentinelese are immoral are religious, for instance (hence why most attempts to visit are done by missions). The general consensus is otherwise awe for being separated from the rest of us, relatively unmolested.
notathrowaway51 2 hours ago [-]
Well, they sure are xenophobic.
graemep 2 hours ago [-]
I do not think anyone is arguing the Sentinelese are immoral?
orsorna 1 hours ago [-]
Why would you bring a mission to a hostile island otherwise?
mothballed 1 hours ago [-]
Because you think god is immoral, and you want them to meet his mercy?
BurningFrog 51 minutes ago [-]
Do we know anything about their morals, aside from that they kill immigrants at sight?
spwa4 2 hours ago [-]
They don't care and "respond strongly" to insults or territorial disputes (which involve both actual land, men, women, and children), to the point that sometimes dozens of people die in the resulting fight. They kill because of insults (which mostly involves sex). Oh and they do quite a bit for alcohol. They'll fuck visitors, just to see if their next kid is white (but, of course, if you go along with that you lose whatever protection that "outsider who maybe brings alcohol" gave you. And you're sure to lose almost any fight). Also: don't make the mistake of still visibly having any alcohol when leaving the village.
Certainly it would be accurate to say that both the cities in the neighborhood and the central government have issues with this sort of thing. To say nothing of when cities get attacked.
mothballed 1 hours ago [-]
Sounds like you need alcohol, and also a pistol, with a few full magazines. Just in case. Try not to let the women see it, if you have occasion to remove your clothes.
2 hours ago [-]
hnd9q09qk4 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 17:01:44 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
isn't that a common question?
"How do fish appear in landlocked lakes/ponds/etc"?
After digging a pond and letting it fill with rainwater/groundwater, fish appear. I don't think its because people carried them there.
(don't really know the common answer though)
There’s fish eggs being washed everywhere during rain storms. The eggs come from upstream and wash into random places.
But I always thought the explanation was eggs randomly getting stuck to bird feet. Or maybe a bird carries a fish with eggs up there and eats it or something. Inevitably it happens though...
Is it unbelievable that ancient hunter-gatherers would do the same thing?
This looks like a good overview paper for interested folk: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3048989/
Many do have rivers; many don't. Ponds even more so don't have attached rivers.
- Dr. Ian Malcolm
Alpine lakes are fed by snow met. There’s not going to be fish eggs on the snowpack that melts into the lake.
> There’s fish eggs being washed everywhere during rain storms. The eggs come from upstream and wash into random places.
Do you realize that in the summer mountains below 4000m are mostly snow-free and thawing point ie in Europe has been pushed above 5000m repeatedly during summers. Its easy to have 25C in 2500m in today's alps (ie today 22C in 2000m in Chamonix, France).
The term 'alpine lake' doesn't mean anything specific, and most are fed from rain during entire summer without any/much of snow or ice contribution.
You can even see their scheduled fish plantings online:
https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FishPlants/PublicPlantSearch
It has lots of amphibians and snakes. Rarely any birds.
Snakes are active but I doubt they eat nearly as much as the bullfrogs.
Could also introduce fish that will eat the frogs to keep them under control. Or just leave it all as-is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_of_animals
> Tornadoes and waterspouts may lift up animals into the air and deposit them miles away.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5w35n0Hm_m0
Charles Fort collected numerous data for his famous "The Book of the Damned" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Damned
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/special-delivery-d...
I hate how much of historical science is performed this way. Speculation is not very scientific.
7000 years ago is the edge of recorded human civilization
(well 8000 years, I remember this because it's also the edge of a gamma ray burst in light years that could destroy all life on earth after traveling all that time)
The earliest pre-pottery Neolithic complexes are nearly 4000 years older than that.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330759548_World's_F...
Hunter-gatherers aren't known for their civilizations.
It's not because of agriculture. They have agriculture (they grow maniok, and you don't need much. They have fire, weapons, ... Also the entire countryside is full of grain). It's not that they don't understand how things work. They just don't care.
It's not because they're dumb. In fact on pretty much all measures the humans living in those villages are better, in a genetic sense, than we are. They're smarter. They're more beautiful. Every last one is in shape, even the oldest (the oldest, btw, are maybe 45, not that they even know themselves. In both villages I saw the oldest was a couple). They're even better, genetically, than the black people living in cities around them. They have no sick (maybe 1), because the sick are dead. Even sick children regularly die. They bury their dead, with respect, after a burial but to say they have a religion is overstating matters. They have noone that can't run a marathon, or is fat, or ... because if you can't hunt you don't eat. Wounds are deadly. Not because the wound is so serious, but because you're nearly guaranteed to develop fever and die. Most people die from complications with infections. They have only beautiful men and women, because if you can't participate in "evening activities" you'll go hungry or get murdered (and it's not just men: women have lovers kill other men due to "insults", or they poison someone. And regularly it doesn't take much incentive at all for a murder to happen). Sometimes they (try to) treat cities the way the treat neighboring tribes: they attack them to kill everyone (at the very least all men). That usually fails due to guns, but it's not like it never works.
There are very few people in those villages that want to leave. And they're not about to starve. There's no need for civilization, and, frankly, they don't want to. But also, I don't care what religion or non-religion you have: you will find that way of live thoroughly immoral.
I think the only people arguing that the North Sentinelese are immoral are religious, for instance (hence why most attempts to visit are done by missions). The general consensus is otherwise awe for being separated from the rest of us, relatively unmolested.
Certainly it would be accurate to say that both the cities in the neighborhood and the central government have issues with this sort of thing. To say nothing of when cities get attacked.