ABSTRACT
The rate of colonization is critical because, if it were fast, and it does appear to have been so in some cases, people would not have been able to learn their landscapes, since learning requires personal experience that is gathered from a very early age and that is encoded in folklore that requires some time depth for its development. If the environment cannot be learned, then people will need to rely upon a more generalized knowledge, resulting in a more regionally uniform, and perhaps less “optimal,” adaptation (see Webb and Rindos 1997).
