I seem to remember reading on a plaque somewhere in the park that they tended to avoid the region which they perceived as haunted by evil spirits.

I would take this with a grain of salt for several reasons. First off, informational plaques at parks and musea are actually not anywhere near as rigorous as they should be (though, in general, the National Park Service is pretty good about this sort of thing). Secondly, it hits a lot of "lol stoopid savages" tropes that depict indigenous people as slaves to superstition. And finally, Yellowstone National Park is HUGE, beautiful and very abundant for people who live off the land. It would be stupid to avoid the entire region ignoring the material benefit to living there. (I seriously cannot stress enough how enormous Yellowstone is. It's not the largest national park, but it's up there. Please don't clog up Grand Loop Road trying to get in and see Old Faithful and then go back to your hotel in Jackson. Take Yellowstone slow and take it all in.)

I'd be interested in hearing some input from someone more familiar with the topic than me. I would email my old anthropology professor but I think she's getting sick of me bugging her every time I have a question about Native American archaeology or culture. 😅

Ah! That changes a lot. I parsed that as "[things] and and economy that worked]". As if the "that worked" was referring to just the economy not the rest of the things they listed.

I wasn't asking about the parenthetical about Egyptian agriculture being different from the rest of Roman territory. It was the implication from how that comment was worded that Rome introduced the very concept of agriculture to most of the places they conquered which is extremely wrong.

In fact, the whole comment was worded in such a way that it seems like the author literally thought Rome was going into places and introducing the very concepts of farming, language (?!???! what?!) and government....

See:

>Instead of being a Roman settlement, Egypt...

(contrasting Egypt with the rest of Roman territory)

and

>No need for the Romans to come in and establish things that were already there.

Does this mean the author of the comment literally thought people in, say, pre-Roman Gaul were just walking around, grunting wordlessly until the Romans taught them Latin? I'm pretty certain that's not what they meant, but you have to admit it was worded very ambiguously. However, in light of the fact that they (apparently?) assume the Romans introduced agriculture to most of their empire, I'm not sure what to think...

>They already had agriculture (which was very different than the rest of the Roman world), language, a system of government, and economy that worked.

I'm sorry, but I'm confused by this. Could you clarify what you mean? I'm fairly certain that many of the other places the Romans conquered already practiced farming before the Romans conquered them. And what do you mean by "language" here? Surely you mean written language, right? Because people have been speaking for tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands!) of years.

I'm appreciating all the geologist love in this thread. I should go back to college and finish my degree...