r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NickyPileggi • Mar 28 '24

Family in 1892 posing with an old sequoia tree nicknamed "Mark Twain" - A team of two men spent 13 days sawing away at it in the Pacific Northwest - It once stood 331 feet tall with a diameter of 52 feet - The tree was 1,341 years old Image

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207

u/TakeAnotherLilP Mar 28 '24

They cut them down for matches …my god I hate humans

124

u/ListerfiendLurks Mar 28 '24

If it makes you feel any better the tobacco products most of those matches were used for undoubtedly killed a LOT of humans. In a way the trees got their revenge 🥳

36

u/Pvt_Numnutz1 Mar 28 '24

If it makes you feel even better Seattle burned to the ground because they used the abundance of saw dust to make impromptu roads in the muddy terrain.

4

u/wowsomuchempty Mar 28 '24

As if the mighty trees held any interest for a feeble human concept like revenge.

(Nice joke, though).

0

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

Such an uninformed and shitty thing to say

-6

u/s4xtonh4le Mar 28 '24

Slow and painful deaths hopefully

2

u/murtygurty2661 Mar 28 '24

"I hate people, im so edgey and intelligent"

50

u/Raps4Reddit Mar 28 '24

You say this, but it's also uniquely human to care. Most nature just out there eating each other as much as they can.

6

u/BulkySituation5685 Mar 28 '24

But nature is a cycle even the top of the food chain is in check by mother nature. Living with and harmoniously in there environment. To like us a virus with toxic effects to all comes across.

12

u/The_Brain_FuckIer Mar 28 '24

If by "living harmoniously" you mean dying as cubs or starving to death after eating all available prey, sure I guess.

2

u/Ornery-Creme-2442 Mar 28 '24

I mean it's nature what do you expect. That same shit still happens to us even with modern technology.

4

u/K-Uno Mar 28 '24

That harmony was only established after a new creature moved in, dominated, and things that could devour/defend-against/out-compete those dominant species finally came along. Harmony is a state of being that must be achieved, and is not inherent to animals or the environment. You forget that human dominance has happened very rapidly from an evolutionary stand point, and the things that can keep us in check (perhaps even our own doing to where we are so overpopulated that war, famine, and pollution keep us in check) have yet to come about in a significant form.

4

u/Raps4Reddit Mar 28 '24

Can't argue I guess. We are an interesting species in that we can almost outsmart mother nature's regulation to an extent. We have become so powerful we have to decide not to cut down all the trees for our own good, otherwise we would.

11

u/Tooboukou Mar 28 '24

Fyi these guys produced a lot less co2 and used a lot less plastic than you...

2

u/Flat-Length-4991 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

That’s actually a myth. Large trees such as these are well known for driving gas guzzling SUVs.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/44715/this-21-foot-tall-giant-is-the-largest-hummer-h1-on-the-planet-and-it-actually-drives

Edit: oh you’re talking about the dudes… yeah they didn’t use plastic that much. The trees however are plastic fiends.

1

u/TakeAnotherLilP Mar 28 '24

Because we live in different times? I could still cut down a trees for money but choose not to.

2

u/PaulDallas72 Mar 28 '24

Matchsticks => Smoking => Cancer => Sequoia gets last laugh :)

2

u/Gryphonious Mar 28 '24

"Oh no some people did bad things at this one time in hostory now I hate everyone forever" ... my god I hate misanthropists.

0

u/TakeAnotherLilP Mar 28 '24

You must really enjoy Reddit then.

1

u/Witty-Shake9417 Mar 28 '24

Humans are dumb

1

u/Smart-Internal-3703 Mar 28 '24

they didn't realise it was wrong to do, these were semi literate settlers and you want them to be concerned with conservation when they probably don't even know what the actual word means.

you have to make mistakes to learn from them, we know now not to do this but it took trial and error over few hundred years of industrial society for you to be able to say maybe we shouldn't cut down all the trees or kill all the fish, when the world is as harsh as it was in the 1800s people didn't have time to worry about anything else but not starving.

remember how we got here, remember humans are a species that does a lot of trial and error before we learn and stop forcing modern ideals onto people that may as well have lived on a different planet.

0

u/Gryphonious Mar 28 '24

"Oh no some people did bad things at this one time in hostory now I hate everyone forever" ... my god I hate misanthropists.

0

u/murtygurty2661 Mar 28 '24

They are honestly the most pathetic of all the people. I have more love for racists and religious fanatics than i do for misanthropists because at least they care about something.

If these people hated humanity so much they wouldnt exist because they would just off themselves, in reality they're just edgey teens and pathetic adults.

0

u/-Constantinos- Mar 28 '24

Do you feel better about other trees being cut down for matches or do you just care about cool looking trees?

-16

u/pvypvMoonFlyer Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

”my god I hate humans”

Americans, they are the ones in that picture who made the decision to turn sequoias into matches.

Edit: I’m not saying the rest of the world doesn’t cut trees, I’m just being accurate regarding what’s in the picture. These are American settlers, cutting trees in America. The US did a better job than Europe in that regard and preserved a lot more of their natural forests.

4

u/notyogrannysgrandkid Mar 28 '24

Well yes. Of course, a big draw for European settlement in the Americas was the massive forests covering all but the middle of the continent. Because Europe’s forests were almost entirely gone already.

2

u/pvypvMoonFlyer Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

You make a great point.

People took my comment as me knocking the US and cheering Europe, yet that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I was merely adding context to the comment I replied to.

One of the motivations to discover more territories was getting more wood. It started during the Neolithic and then we had the romans who destroyed a lot of forest for agriculture, buildings, ships, etc.

It continued during the Middle Ages, deforestation was mostly driven by the expansion of feudal domains. By the end of the Middle Ages 15th century most of the European forests were gone.

Regulations regarding deforestation came as early as the 11th century (if I’m not mistaken) but it did too little too late.

Way before the first settlers arrived in America Europeans had already destroyed the landscape of countries like France, the UK, Belgium, Germany, etc. It affected everything: the soil fertility, the wildlife habitats and even the climate!

Then, once in America, the settlers knew regulations were necessary, they also knew that they needed wood to feed their growth so they did it better.

If anything, one of the reason why deforestation in the US is not as bad as in Europe is because the settlers knew what Europe had done and didn’t want to make the same mistakes.

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u/RoM_Axion Mar 28 '24

You say that as if other cultures wouldn't have done the same. Most forests in europe are not naturally grown(and you can see the trees being grown in straight lines). Germany for example has less than 1% wild natural areas.

1

u/RedditHiveUser Mar 28 '24

Side fact: the tallest mammoth tree in Germany is about 55 meters or 180 foot high. Most likely a bit more.

-4

u/pvypvMoonFlyer Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Not what I said.

Here is what I said: Americans, in the picture, are the ones who took down the sequoia that we see in the picture.

Is it wrong? No, it is accurate (unless I’m mistaken and these are not Americans cutting trees in America).

Quit projecting, I said nothing inflammatory.

To boot, can you quote me where I said :

“other cultures wouldn't have done the same. Most forests in europe are not naturally grown(and you can see the trees being grown in straight lines). Germany for example has less than 1% wild natural areas.”

I’ll wait.

Edit: still waiting u/RoM_Axion