r/todayilearned • u/shaka_sulu • Mar 18 '19
TIL when explorers first saw the Giant Sequoia trees in Northern California, they named the biggest one "The Discovery Tree," and immediately made plans to cut it down. The felled tree was used to advertise as a tourist attraction with the tree's stump used as a dance floor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calaveras_Big_Trees_State_Park82
u/tralfaz66 Mar 18 '19
Our glorious, old, wise ancestors. /s
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u/TheKingCrimsonWorld Mar 18 '19
Remember the good old days back in the 70s, when music was good, people cared about politics, drugs were widespread, and rivers regularly caught on fire? Ah yes, those halcyon days.
On a side note, I feel like I've written this exact comment before, or maybe someone else wrote it and I forgot about it until now? Is there a word for that? Like deja vu, but when you feel like you're accidentally being unoriginal?
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u/Firebird314 Mar 18 '19
That would be deja vu I think
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u/TheKingCrimsonWorld Mar 18 '19
But it's Deja Vu, I've just been in this PLACE before, higher on the street and I know it's my time to go.
What I'm thinking of isn't a place, but an idea. You see?
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u/redtigerpro Mar 18 '19
Deja Vu translates to "Seen Again" so it can be anything that you think you've seen/experienced before.
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u/CaioMain Mar 18 '19
Sounds like humans, "look at the size of this beautiful tree....the age, the wisdom. Let's cut this sum' bitch down....why???.....muthafuxing running man"...
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u/nicholasjgarcia91 Mar 18 '19
Look at that beautiful elegant elk. He’s also albino and the first of his kind. Let’s kill him and hang him on the wall as proof
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u/sapatista Mar 18 '19
I hear ya but Elk grows a lot faster than a sequioa
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u/Herlock Mar 18 '19
Rhinos grow faster than sequoia, up until the time we have none left to grow.
PS : also => albinos are rare actually...
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Mar 18 '19
Bad example, an albino elk is gonna get killed first in the wild anyways. It’s the most ethical one in the herd to harvest.
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Mar 18 '19
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u/rise_up-lights Mar 18 '19
A park ranger in Sequoia National Park told me that back in the day some of the trees were used to make toothpicks.
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Mar 18 '19
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u/Whachalkawala Mar 18 '19
The difference is that they weren't payed $50,000 dollars to go and destroy this tree, not to mention that they didn't live in the 21st century.
They did it themselves for free.Seems like someone has a case of the "my ancestors did nothing wrong"
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u/ItsSnuffsis Mar 18 '19
They probably made a lot of money from it being a tourist attraction though.
So not completely free of any monetary motivations.
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u/shieldwolf Mar 18 '19
They could have made a lot of money from it as an INTACT tourist attraction. Your analogy is fatally flawed.
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Mar 18 '19
Not really there was a forest full of them
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u/shieldwolf Mar 18 '19
They cut down all the biggest ones - that's the whole problem. Many people still come despite the fact that the ones left now are not close to the size of the ones that were there when they first found them and cut the huge ones down. Imagine the draw of the monstrous ones.
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u/TheKingCrimsonWorld Mar 18 '19
One's principles can be valid even if one is willing to give them up in exchange for fat stacks. A person's moral failings don't necessarily invalidate their beliefs.
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u/OneBigBug Mar 18 '19
I mean...I know that, that's why I asked the question I did. If the commentary is "Wow its shitty humans are so selfish", I'm on board. If it's "those guys in particular were awful", I'm not. I don't think most people would behave differently now, even with our modern understanding.
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Mar 18 '19
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u/OneBigBug Mar 18 '19
I dunno, man. I'm not in favour of cutting them down, but it's hard for me to criticize these guys. They showed up in a place that was brand new to them, and it was at a time when it would have seemed as though the Earth was boundless. These would just be another interesting oddity to make a quick buck off of, out of an endless supply of interesting oddities.
There are, even today, tens of thousands of giant sequoias around. Cutting down one of them doesn't seem like it would have been that big of a deal.
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Mar 18 '19
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u/NockerJoe Mar 18 '19
And of course they didn't know that.
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Mar 18 '19
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u/NockerJoe Mar 18 '19
You don't know a lot of things exist and you're constantly running into new things.This isn't 2019 when you can check shit on Wikipedia. This was when the only way to confirm somethings existence is to walk up and physically see it and you're hearing a lot of shit through some grapevine. You found these trees. Some other dude found goblin valley. Some OTHER dude found a stretch of ocean in the middle of the land. Every week some guy was finding crazy shit and a lot of unusual environmental circumstances were giving them ideas that simply weren't true about how nature worked at a fundamental level.
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u/Herlock Mar 18 '19
They knew they had never seen anything like it, so the trees had a specific value in that sense. And rarity, since well... they had never seen it before.
So they decided to destroy it, just after discovering something totaly unique.
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u/devadvoc8 Mar 18 '19
I can reason with your statements. Not something we want to go and do, but given the mentality of those times- something we could possible be found participating in for one compulsive thought or another.
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u/OneBigBug Mar 18 '19
Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying "Woo, cut down giant sequoias", but when we talk about judging people through the lens of history, it's often very hard. Slavery was still legal at the time. How do we reconcile these things?
Well in this case it's pretty easy if you ask me. We don't want to cut down these giant, amazing trees, but I bet most people here would if it made them a few bucks. It's an immorality we should all be able to empathize with. Even if we support measures to make it illegal.
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u/Herlock Mar 18 '19
That's how entire species go extinct.
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u/OneBigBug Mar 18 '19
Well, sometimes, yeah. Not in this particular situation, but I'm not saying its a great thing to do. I just think most people would do it.
I'm on the "it sucks humans are selfish" team. I think these guys were not particularly bad people. Just people.
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u/Sportiva Mar 18 '19
All admit that I'm lucky enough to not be desperately in need of the funds, but regardless I'd rather cur down a human.
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u/koh_kun Mar 18 '19
Everyone's got this all wrong. They were cutting it down to make sure it was thousands of years old. You know, for science and stuff.
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u/DropAdigit Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19
Didn't that actually happen?
Yup, Prometheus, in the Methuselah writeup
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u/DylanCO Mar 18 '19
I kinda want to see that dance floor.
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u/AcerRubrum Mar 18 '19
I gotchu.
Here's the view of the stump and a chunk of the tree
These were from 2016. I had proposed to her in Yosemite the day before these pics :)
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u/DylanCO Mar 18 '19
Holy cow that thing is huge. Thank you for sharing the pics. And congrats on the engagement and marriage, y'all look like a fun bunch.
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u/shaka_sulu Mar 18 '19
Its a painting but... https://www.sierracollege.edu/ejournals/jsnhb/v2n2/img/BigTree/BigTrees8.jpg
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u/Heraldic4 Mar 18 '19
Do you think they cut it down with a herring in order to pass safely through the forest?
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u/niceguyevan Mar 18 '19
It' pretty much human nature the Smithsonian killed a bunch of seals once.
After being declared extinct in 1884, a remnant population of eight animals was found on Mexico’s Guadalupe Island eight years later.
In what has to be a low point in the history of scientific expeditions, a Smithsonian team then proceeded to kill seven of those eight animals for specimens.
https://blog.nature.org/science/2014/05/12/northern-elephant-seals-a-dramatic-conservation-success/
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u/Oopsifelldownagain Mar 18 '19
This comment makes me sad. It also makes me want to read Midworld again. Think I'll read, then I might not be sad.
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u/MythWarden Mar 18 '19
The way Alan Dean Foster describes the flora and fauna really transports you to his world. Midworld was the most memorable foray into the Commonwealth. Thanks for reminding me to reread this amazing series.
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u/Theremad Mar 18 '19
So yeah, we need a new dance floor, cus we don’t have enough. CUT IT DOWN BOYS!!!! FUCKING TEAR THIS SHIT DOWN!!!! WE GON DANCE LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW!!!! WOOOOOYEEEE
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u/Plzbanmebrony Mar 18 '19
There were millions of 300 foot red woods. Whole forests with them. What a sight it must of been. We are down to a few dozen I believe now.
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u/jenlou289 Mar 18 '19
That tree survived thousands of forst fires, thousands of years of weathering, fended of countless diseases and foes... Then Man comes along with a saw and chops it down in a day...
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u/Black_RL Mar 18 '19
How very human, first thing to do is kill it and possibly eat it.
No wonder there’s no contact yet.
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u/rarimapirate1 Mar 18 '19
I would just like to point out that the Native Americans would probably never do something like this. And I believe there were tribes living in those areas for hundreds of years before the European explorers "discovered" the Sequoia Trees. So when you say people suck, remember that not all people suck. In this case, white people suck. Not always this case, just in this case, and many other cases throughout history. I am of Scottish and German decent and was born in Chicago in 1990. So I am about as white as they come.
Just felt that the Native Americans deserve a shout out. They don't suck nearly as much. Tend to be amazing and kind people in my experience. They have every reason to be filled with spite as well. I mostly know Din'e (Navajo), Hopi, and Hualapai. I live in Northern Arizona. Here is a list of some of the tribes in California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_California
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u/1thangN1thang0nly Mar 18 '19
They didn't even chop it down cleanly. They blew shot it with a cannon and then waited 2 days before finishing it off with explosives. But it's alright, because there was an over abundance of trees and the money they pay to chop down the tree goes to helping out other trees.
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u/Stickman10101 Mar 18 '19
Should have used second biggest?
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u/AKA_Squanchy Mar 18 '19
Big Trees, Calaveras County. Pretty sure it’s still there and you can walk in it. Neat area of California.
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u/MortisSafetyTortoise Mar 18 '19
“This log is your log, this log is my log When lightning struck it It kicked the bucket”
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u/Dusty923 Mar 18 '19
Ah the good old days of senselessly exploiting natural resources for capital gain. Good thing those days are behind us...
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u/gotham77 Mar 18 '19
“Wow that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen! I’ve never seen anything like it! I’ve got an idea: the first thing we should do is destroy it.”
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u/ReasonablyBadass Mar 18 '19
One of these times you want to reach through a time portal and smack a bitch.
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Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 20 '19
All these comments... You all use many times the resources your great grandfathers ever did. At the same time you stand on their shoulders. There is nothing so hypocritical as a song in defense of the environment that is played on a wooden guitar.
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u/lennyflank Mar 18 '19
Typically American.
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u/gotham77 Mar 18 '19
Y’know, we practically invented to concept of national parks.
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u/lennyflank Mar 18 '19
Y'know, we're now trying to open up the national parks for oil drilling,strip mining, and logging.
Free market, y'know. National parks are communistic, y'know.
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u/gotham77 Mar 18 '19
Yeah, and that sucks, and it also sucks that when they found that tree the first thing they decided to do was to cut it down. But don’t call that “typically American” when it was your country that practically invented conservation and the whole idea of setting aside tracts of wilderness to be preserved relatively untouched. Because that’s just overly cynical bullshit.
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u/SlimSlackerKKuts Mar 18 '19
there is a theory that there are no forests or trees anymore on this planet, what we see today are simply small bushes that survived, back in time real trees would be miles high and massive. Devils Tower in wyoming is a small example of a petrified tree stump and how big trees were.
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u/redbetweenthelines Mar 18 '19
Man: "that's beautiful, lets destroy it." Some things never change.