An underwater mystery on Canada's coast | Hacker News Reader

An underwater mystery on Canada's coast

bbc.com

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Local reporting with much better pictures, diagrams and even a locally-produced podcast.

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-ingenious-ancient...

Thanks. Wow, what a beautifully done online-magazine. (A ~ 20 person operation)

RSS Feeds: [https://www.hakaimagazine.com/rss-feeds/]

Lots of YT videos too. [https://www.youtube.com/c/HakaiMagazine/videos]

This should be the link at the top. The BBC article doesn't even have a picture of the remnants of the stakes!

And for a really deep dive the 2015 paper: https://www.academia.edu/23327812/The_Comox_Harbour_Fish_Tra...

Great article. It strikes me that this system of fishing is far more efficient and environmentally sustainable than the ocean-going ships we use these days. After all, here the fish just come to you!

Fish traps have been in use all around the world for millennia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_trap

Fish traps are common. Sea gardens, less so.

Reading this and the talk about how “surprising” it is reminds me of how I’ve been researching British Columbia’s relationship with First Nations people, and this research extended to other people in the Pacific Northwest under the US system.

My takeaway is that everything about this is heavily misunderstood.

As CPG Grey also concluded, the entire concept is overinclusive, to its detriment. As we squabble between terms like indigenous, First Nations, native American, Indian, we are missing that these are all distinct cultures and there is no overarching grouping really possible. Each distinct group has its own name, own customs, own case law and enjoyed its own sovereignty at one point, and should be addressed by the name of their people, at the same standard we distinguish people by country or religion.

British Columbia is uniquely addressing this, with rights conveyances group by group. But it is a very long way from being closer to accurate. I think accelerating this relies on non First Nations people understanding that there is no overarching term possible (I dare say, including “First Nations”) and that the map of North America should be dotted with microstates just like Europe is

>> that the map of North America should be dotted with microstates

So who gets which microstate? Which point in history should be selected as the point whereby the name of the resident people is attached to a particular patch of land? These peoples moved around, they migrated and conquered one another for millennia. Does the arrival of Europeans suddenly lock them into whatever territory they had at the moment of first contact? Making the groups smaller risks dividing communities and cutting off people from the most lucrative claims processes. I'm sure the people of northern BC don't want to be cut off from the claims in the south, the claims involving the most valuable lands.

BC, and Canada more widely, is struggling to determine who should even be at the table to negotiate. Traditional territories overlap. Blood claims are often based on shaky evidence. Something as slim as a single forged letter can expand or contract a community by thousands. If treaties or settlements are going to be signed, by who? Are the people in charge of various groups today in any better position to sign permanent deals than their ancestors were a few hundred years ago? We are generations away from any real conclusion to these issues.

I agree on all points.

Another time overinclusivity rears its head is when people get vicariously offended for all indigenous people when they see someone wearing a headdress. One tribe says its ceremonial, can another tribe license it out … commercially … and all is fine? The same question as you, who gets to sign the contract, who has a say? How do you know the person wearing the headdress at a festival is breaking a relevant rule, or if they arent of a tribe, or if they didnt get permission - you cant tell by skin color or any phenotype so who gets to say - , and so on and so forth.

The consensus making process is completely broken because even the most progressive and sensitive people are doing an extremely insensitive overgrouping.

> As we squabble between terms like indigenous, First Nations, native American, Indian, we are missing that these are all distinct cultures and there is no overarching grouping really possible.

I agree; and moreover about the terms "white" and "black". Using these terms as if they actually refer to something in common beyond melanin level elides the true and magnificent variety of human cultural expression and historical diversity.

White for example refers to peoples as different as Appalachian descendants of Scottish Reavers as well as Berber royalty, among thousands of other cultures and heritages. Black, likewise, refers to peoples as different as African-Americans as well as to elite descendents of millenia-old Malian and west-African dynasties; among thousands of other heritages and cultures.

Europe is far from being dotted with microstates. There are a handful of relics, but most of Europe has been unified under some larger nation state. For a historical perspective, a political map of pre-1800 Germany with 'up to 350 states': https://twitter.com/weird_hist/status/1260451732221542400

I think that neither enhances or dilutes my point.

Modern microstates are the nearest analog. But they are on more kinds of maps, lists of countries, and the people currently on reservations should have something more similar to that.

Modern Europe is not a good comparison. Something like Papua-New Guinea is probably closer. Not even sure how far into Europe's past one needs to go to find an ethno-political system similar to B.C. circa 1800. Medieval Europe? The era of Greek city states?

https://www.muturzikin.com/cartesoceanie/oceanie2.htm

Sure, I’ll bite: how would you describe Papau-New Guinea’s system in a way that could quickly convey an enhancement to what the reservation and other treaties around North America, since “Microstate like Europe” doesn’t convey that - to some

To the best of my understanding, B.C. circa 1800 can be described as 'patchwork of sovereign micro-ethnic groups in rugged terrain'

Europe microstates: Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican, Liechtenstein, Faeroe, maybe Iceland and Luxembourg. Relics of times long past, historical curiosities.

Papua NewGuinea: 832 living languages, presumably each with an independent history tracing hundreds if not thousands of years. Most of them with <3k speakers each. The largest ones with <250k speakers.

https://www.languagesgulper.com/eng/Papuan.html

And how would that mix with losing to a more powerful group which has diplomatic consensus with the rest of the world while maintaining sovereignty and trade with the more powerful winner?

I am not seeing how recognizing Papua-New Guinea’s language history addresses that? I’m not familiar with how its governed or if it has to balance cultures, resources and property with an imperial force that merely tolerates everyone else.

Can't help with that. I'm interested in ethno-geography. Here's a nice map of early XIX century Coast Salish micro ethnic groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coast_Salish#/media/File:Coast...

>> B.C. circa 1800 can be described as 'patchwork of sovereign micro-ethnic groups in rugged terrain

So was Appalachia at that time. So too were the expanses of Russia. So too was even Ireland. Pretty much every 17/1800s settled territory without a nearby railroad was composed of tightly-knit micro-ethic groupings. That doesn't meant they were not also part of a larger nation.

That's definitely not true of Ireland in the 19th or even 18th century. Nothing could be farther from the truth - Ireland at that time was a centrally (and externally) managed state much closer to a modern state than anything described in this thread.

Roads and canals do fine for knitting together a nation in the cultural and political sense of the word, and for enforcing/dispensing all the fruits of central government. Europe in the early 1800s was less homogeneous than today, perhaps, but it's strange to claim that areas without nearby rail service were a 'patchwork of sovereign micro-ethnic groups'.

And in places like BC, the water network linked everyone.

It didn't link everyone into centrally run sovereign nation states, though, which I thought was what we were talking about.

This is kind of debatable through, sure there are national laws, and even EU wide laws. However, Germany has its states, Berlin has different laws than Hamburg for certain things, same as Italy and Spain have their regions with various levels of autonomy. Every municipality all over Europe has control of some of its local laws, too. We don’t just have one European wide law, or even German wide law for every aspect of law.

Just like every county in the US can have different laws. An example might be sales tax rates in Florida.

Maybe the top poster should say that the map of North America should be dotted with micro-states like the USA (maybe even like Canada, I don't know)

That way it wouldn't sound like an American trying to paint Europe as some kind of parochial backwater of medieval fiefdoms.

Yeah, he definitely did not word it well. I’m from Canada, and how you describe it as North America having micro states is also kind of true. There are states, territories and provinces, across North America with a lot of local control, but there are also local native reservations that have a lot of sovereignty. For example, there are plenty of tribal lands close to where I grow up that have completely separate laws from the provenance that they are in, they deal directly with the federal government and even do their own policing. Although you almost never see those boarders on maps, there’s a strong argument that they’re a type of micro state, and Canada probably has multiple dozens of them if not hundreds with different languages and laws.

> trying to paint Europe as some kind of parochial backwater of medieval fiefdoms

no idea how you got "parochial backwater" from "microstate", it bothers you way more than it should

some of the most impressive, highly developed, secular, constitutional republics are microstates. whatever you associate the word with is not what I associate the word with.

> Every municipality all over Europe has control of some of its local laws, too.

Unless I'm mistaken, that's not true in France. Its a unitary state, where each region and commune is simply an administrative subunit of the state. That's why the French government was able to reorganize its regions at the start of January 2016.

By comparison, that would be illegal in the USA for the federal government do combine North and South Carolina, or to reunite West Virginia to Virginia. They're not administrative units of one government, but are actually separate governments.

Sure, but not every small town has a distinct language and distinct set of laws. The OP talks about "food security for an estimated 10,000-12,000 K'ómoks People", unclear that the K'ómoks ethnic group was much larger than 10k.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%27%C3%B3moks

On Vancouver island where the Komoks people lived, there certainly was a distinct language and culture and possibly laws for probably half a dozen or more groups. On the island alone, I (a white person), know of the Songhees, Lekwungen, Tsartslip, Tsawout, Wsanec, Cowichan, Pacheedaht, Ucluelet, and Homalco nations. All those are local to the island and have their own languages and traditions.

Point being that there can be a surprising number of micronations in a very small area.

Regarding your disclaimer, wouldn't it be more apt to say "someone with no Komoks blood" or "a white person that also has no First Nation lineage" the latter if you also want the affect of your disclaimer. I'm thinking its a pretty distinctly North American experience for people of any color to have some First Nation/indigenous/local heritage. At least for the black and white people that have been here for 200-600 years.

this is more so curiosity than a correction.

Do you think that documentary series will ever happen?

no. I think his initial research is what is necessary and, at best, he can do a video summary and focus on one or two specific recognized groups living on reservations. This topic goes deep. His whole thing is picking a mundane small feature of society and expounding on that to make it interesting, and the reality is that each indigenous culture should have many of those things to dive into, no different than how the UK or the Solar System has many different things to dive into (the inspiration for many of his other research videos). But trying to do a broader series on cultures in North America has far too much depth, unless he pivots to that. I'm sure its on his backburner, but I'm also sure he's too far ahead of the culture on this one.

Not sure which is the primary source (BBC is very much likely), but [1] gives more details on the look of the stake sites, the discovered locations, and most intriguingly (for myself) the supposed design of the fish traps.

[1]: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/fir...

Yes, but [1] also seems to be the kind of websites that promotes mystical/conspirational stuff about how the aliens/atlants actually built the pyramids with state-of-the-art alien tech and how they already had batteries, aircrafts... Although they will never say it out loud, you have to watch the documentaries until the end. The conspirational part is how the egyptologist/archeologist lobby try prevent us from the knowing the truth. The video editing and false truthes in them also look like any other conspiracy-theory video. It's innocuous but had to be noted.

> ... Yes, but [1] also seems to be the kind of websites that promotes mystical/conspirational stuff...

I can't vouch for the site [1] itself, I just wish the BBC Travel article was more illustrative about the subject, it kept me wondering what the described staked fish traps were supposed to look like.

BBCs headlines leave much to be desired. They dont want to summarise the article in the headline, they merely want to pique the readers interest.

They also edit them to something more detailed after a few hours sometimes, slightly devious.

If anything, headlines like these make me avoid clicking. My attention is a scarce resource. I'm not going to read through a longform (unless it's from damninteresting.com - but I purposefully go there for longform trivia) if I have no idea of the longforms' relevance to my current interests.

I usually try to avoid clicking them out of spite. I'm sure that they've found that it overall increases viewership, otherwise they wouldn't do it, but I hate that this is what news is now.

> Until recently, the sophisticated technology had been overlooked by Western science.

This feels like an overstatement. Fish traps are a very well-understood technology, and we've always known coastal people used them. This discovery is significant because of its scale, and how the site itself was overlooked, not because it represents evidence of previously-ignored technology.

Rtfa

I literally quoted the article.

There are a number of fish traps along the coast of Southern Africa http://fynbosstrand.yolasite.com/visvywers.php

They exist all over Australia too. Some of them are thought to be amongst the oldest examples of human construction on Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewarrina_Aboriginal_Fish_Tra...

Really interesting, the history of humans is constantly surprising.

Not included in article: photos relevant to the actual mysteries.

see top post

Someone I know recently posted a photo of similar structures in use in Kiribati. They're made with rocks instead of wooden poles though.

https://twitter.com/mytagimoucia/status/1445189713535528961

> Here, the Kwakwaka'wakw People built monumental rock walls, large enough to be seen from space

I can see a sidewalk from space by opening Google Earth. I propose we kill that expression.

The BBC also neglect to mention imminent climactic changes and the effect warming will have on local fish; rather important context looking forward.

I remember learning about fish traps similar to these. They used a similar design but with modern nets in the Chesapeake. Not sure what the timeframe was for their use or if they are still used today.

What’s the line of sticks down the middle with no fencing on it for?

Probably to direct more fish into the trap, which otherwise would've swam to the other side totally oblivious of the trap. Efficiency is increased by that middle fence.

Edited to add excerpt from the original paper.

>A leader set in a linear direction more or less perpendicular to the shore so that fish approaching the leader turn and are guided toward deeper water and the trap; a leader that bisects the trap’s entrance to allow fish to enter the enclosure from either side of the fence (i.e., on a rising or a falling tide); a pair of bilaterally-positioned wings that form a V-shaped funnel entry to concentrate and redirect fish toward the trap enclosure’s entrance; and an entrance which incorporates species specific design characteristics (i.e., the width of the entrance and non-return devices) to only allow certain types of schooling fish to easily enter the enclosure and, once inside, prevent their escape.

Cool

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