15,000 years ago..
- Thread starter 1899
- Start date
It is an odd coincidence then that the megafauna became extinct soon after humans arrived in North America. I was talking to my friend about this yesterday (he does have a background in anthropology) and he said some people theorize that humans did play a large role in the extinction of megafauna. The animals here evolved without human contact and suddenly you have hunters with bows/arrows, spears and atlatls basically walking up to slow moving uninitiated mastadons. It wouldn't take much effort to wipe out a whole herd, especially considering the long lifespan and long maturing process of those animals.
Part of that belief is the "myth of the native environmentalist". Given the lack of ability to preserve food, humans probably killed as much as they could, as often as they could, and moved when one area became unproductive.
well, obviously i don't know since i wasn't there, but the melting of the glaciers would cause huge changes in the weather, precipitation etc.
i also do not believe the "myth of the native environmentalist". witness head-smashed-in buffalo jump and the wiping out of the beaver by indian trappers.
btw, the bow and arrow had not been invented at the time we are talking about. also, there where many preditors around so i doubt the mastadons would behave like dodos.
i don't think that the animals that survived did so at random and believe that their characteristics point to grazers having a very difficult time. note that horses also because extinct, they are not ruminants and cannot survive on as poor of forage as the surviving species.
Part V of the 'Human Jouney' made some good points
There's a theory that a large astroid broke up over North America resulting in multiple hits. Huge fires that may have wiped out vast areas of food and causing the decimation of animals. Ancient man may have finished the job on mega-fauna. Theory is backed up by sub-surface areas of ash that is the right age.
Other stuff
Human bones have been found that pre-date Clovis by 1000 years. Locations are Santa Rosa Island off California and in southern Chile. These bones are roughly 14000 years old.
Compelling evidence that ancient man populated the west coast of the Americas first then spread eastward. The route was Siberia-Western Alaska then down the coast. The theory that man made his way through the glaciers of N. America doesn't hold up.
Fasinating stuff.
There's a theory that a large astroid broke up over North America resulting in multiple hits. Huge fires that may have wiped out vast areas of food and causing the decimation of animals. Ancient man may have finished the job on mega-fauna. Theory is backed up by sub-surface areas of ash that is the right age.
Other stuff
Human bones have been found that pre-date Clovis by 1000 years. Locations are Santa Rosa Island off California and in southern Chile. These bones are roughly 14000 years old.
Compelling evidence that ancient man populated the west coast of the Americas first then spread eastward. The route was Siberia-Western Alaska then down the coast. The theory that man made his way through the glaciers of N. America doesn't hold up.
Fasinating stuff.
Archery has been around for ~12,000 years or so, but I think an atlatl would be even more effective and that weapon certainly was here at the material time.
My point about the mastadons was that they probably had no natural fear of humans, whereas they evolved side by side with other predators. Take a look at some parks where humans do not hunt prey animals. For example in Jasper you can walk right up to an elk, and it would be very easy to kill one with a spear. Not to mention that there are probaby few, if any, people today that are as skilled with a spear or atlatl as the average man +10,000 years ago. Is that what it was like back in the days of first human contact? We will never know, but it is a possibility.
I suspect it wasn't one single thing, but perhaps human contact was a significant factor in the demise of some species of megafauna. It is a very interesting topic!
Ancient aliens devised a scheme to starve man, then proceeded to wipe out all of its food sources, they failed and will try again in 2012.
Its all cool theories, but they are just that. We dont even know for sure what happened in human history 5000 years ago, let alone past 10,000. Cool story though.
Its all cool theories, but they are just that. We dont even know for sure what happened in human history 5000 years ago, let alone past 10,000. Cool story though.
well, the elk in jasper would wise up in a hurry. look at the accounts of elephant hunting over the last hundred years to see how they have reacted.
i think people could have pushed animals over the brink, if the available habitat/winter range was very concentrated and limited. but i think these species where already on the edge due to increasing snow cover. i cannot imagine a few people on foot having the mobility necessary to wipe out the grazers continent wide.
i think people could have pushed animals over the brink, if the available habitat/winter range was very concentrated and limited. but i think these species where already on the edge due to increasing snow cover. i cannot imagine a few people on foot having the mobility necessary to wipe out the grazers continent wide.
Its just like "people" are responsible for the climate change. I dont buy it. Mother nature is a cruel b!tch.
There wasn't "continent wide" as we have it today - the Cordileran and Laurentide ice sheets covered much of North America and, as you mentioned, created corridors of survivable habitat. This effectively corraled much of animals into concentrated pockets that would make them even more vulnerable to over-harvest. You would think that the retreat of these ice sheets would have provided more suitable habitat in many areas.
The more compelling counterargument to me is that the European megafauna also became extinct at roughly the same time, even though humans had inhabited that area for at least 15,000 years prior to North America.
I think the difference between present day climate change and what happened historically is the rate of change, which is much faster now than in the past. I think it is foolhardy to believe that human activity in the past 100 years hasn't drastically affected the environment. To what extent that activity versus, for example, the natural wobble of the earth is causing climate change is open to debate.
+
I "heard" that one super Volcano can put out as much greenhouse gas as twenty years of human polution. No doubt all of our junk has an effect, but it is not the root cause on a global scale. Interesting subjekt indeed.
ok, i've changed my mind. people did wipe out the megafauna. the glaciers start melting, a corridor opens up, a few small groups go through. they find grasslands teaming with large herbivores.
it's late summer, some brothers and their dogs chase down a mammoth which doesn't take much in the late summer heat. they bring it down. then the women and children come to the site and make jerky like crazy. 1 family will camp at the site for the winter. the men and dogs go off and bring down another and another, the other families will camp at these sites. winter comes, there's no need to hunt and risk the elements, there's no tv, no ipad, no beer, no cgn, nothing to do during those winter nights except make babies. the women are giving birth every two or three years. out in the open with visibility, with spears, dogs, and fire, the big predators are no real threat.
infant survival is high since no infectious diseases came with them. there is lots of food/protein. if the mother dies in childbirth there are other women to wet nurse the babies. the living is easy and population explodes. there could be over a million people in 500 years. then the megafauna is in step decline, people start moving in all directions in a hurry. this explains the short time it took to colonize the americas.
the mammoths are all eaten, the large predators starve since they can't catch the smaller/faster deer, pronghorn, bison, elk. with the people dispersed, many predators gone, and the larger herbivores gone, the bison population explodes. the nature of bison and bison hunting does not allow a similar human population explosion to take place.
so the mammoth was the agent of it's own doom. tonnes of protien, easy to catch in the summer heat, that allowed people to stay in one place all winter and multiply rapidly.
it's late summer, some brothers and their dogs chase down a mammoth which doesn't take much in the late summer heat. they bring it down. then the women and children come to the site and make jerky like crazy. 1 family will camp at the site for the winter. the men and dogs go off and bring down another and another, the other families will camp at these sites. winter comes, there's no need to hunt and risk the elements, there's no tv, no ipad, no beer, no cgn, nothing to do during those winter nights except make babies. the women are giving birth every two or three years. out in the open with visibility, with spears, dogs, and fire, the big predators are no real threat.
infant survival is high since no infectious diseases came with them. there is lots of food/protein. if the mother dies in childbirth there are other women to wet nurse the babies. the living is easy and population explodes. there could be over a million people in 500 years. then the megafauna is in step decline, people start moving in all directions in a hurry. this explains the short time it took to colonize the americas.
the mammoths are all eaten, the large predators starve since they can't catch the smaller/faster deer, pronghorn, bison, elk. with the people dispersed, many predators gone, and the larger herbivores gone, the bison population explodes. the nature of bison and bison hunting does not allow a similar human population explosion to take place.
so the mammoth was the agent of it's own doom. tonnes of protien, easy to catch in the summer heat, that allowed people to stay in one place all winter and multiply rapidly.
No, no, no...I demand further debate! You have been on CGN long enough to know that!
I don't know if there is any one correct answer. I suspect it is like a perfect storm with all of the reasonable ideas coming together at once.
No, no, no...I demand further debate! You have been on CGN long enough to know that!
I don't know if there is any one correct answer. I suspect it is like a perfect storm with all of the reasonable ideas coming together at once.
can't i argue both sides?
IIRC, wasn't there some mammoths found preserved in the ice that still had food in their mouths suggesting whatever happened to them was fast and catastrophic not a slow starvation or even predation as they weren't eaten?
