To be fair, the tribal peoples didn't have the capacity to log on an industrial scale.
It's not like they abstained from doing it on moral grounds or based on superior wisdom.
It's not like they abstained from doing it on moral grounds or based on superior wisdom.
Many also weren't, of course, but it's silly to make a blanket proclamation that because they were primitive, they were also stupid.
A lifestyle that does not easily accommodate mass deforestation has a lot of benefits, intentional or otherwise. I'm not arguing that we should all strive to be hunter-gatherers, but there are a lot of ways modern life could go really wrong in the next thousand years and it would be good to be mindful of those pitfalls.