Death of Megafauna

"prd" <X_header@xxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:SIQvf.429187$zb5.82601@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> In sci.archaeology message news:dpo9or$2pn$1@xxxxxxxxx by "Uwe
> Müller" <uwemueller@xxxxxxxxxx> . . . :
>
> >> If the composite blades that were on display in Japan are the
> >> similar to those in the the americas, I wonder what else they
> >> might have been hunting. Your not killing bambi with a blade 7
> >> or 8 inches long and 3 or 4 inches wide. I Japan they did find
> >> mammoth bones in the same regions as the microblades that made
> >> the composites.
> >
> > It reminds of daggers made from flint, about the same size, very
> > thin and very pretty. But nothing you would ever like to have to
> > use to defend yourself with against some bad tempered Aurochs
> > etc. Or of early bronze age bronze hilted daggers
> > (Vollgriffdolche), very beautifull weapons, but the only signs
> > of wear ever discovered were from cutting (not stabbing), maybe
> > used for cutting the throats of sacrificial animals.
>
> Theres no doubt that these composite could have been used for
> ceremonies. However I thing for sacrifies weapons are typically
> with very sharp and delicate edges. These composite microblade
> assemblages appear really designed to be thrown and a little blood
> letting, as the animal tries to dislodge them tearing more flesh,
> possibly causing infection to set in.
>
> >> Obviously not, but that is a not a logical basis for concluding
> >> hunting for opportunity.
> >
> > But there are certain periods were hunting seemed to be centered
> > on big game, mammoths, and other times, were the preferred game
> > was for instance reindeer. The mammoth in the Old World survived
> > the mammoth hunters, and the reindeer survived the reindeer
> > hunters. I wonder why the mammoth should then have been hunted
> > to extinction by hunters that did not specialise to prey on a
> > certain species anymore, that were hunting non-migrating animals
> > in a certain area.
>
> I would answer that during the later period culture changed, the
> weapons improved, and the decline in megafauna falls the appearance
> of these new technology cultures.

Migratory animals need a vast territory to themselves, if non-migratory
animals start to feed all year round on what is supposed to be the winter
feeding grounds of lets say mammoth, what can mammoth do but starve?
With the warming of temperatures all kinds of small insects and
microorganism might multiply, driving animals away, that were not used to
them.
Rising temperature may have blocked migratory passages, by making rivers and
bogs ice free, or not frozen deep enough, to carry the weight any more. The
rising humidity may wel have played an in important part.
Humans like other predators were dangerous to very young and very old
animals, to sick and wounded ones. They took mammoth that got trapped in a
bog, but I know of no hunting pits with remains of trapped mammoth in them,
no large killing sites with dozens of dead mammoth, ....

Could a couple of hundred or even thousand palaeolithic hunters hunt mammoth
to extinction in a time were mammoth bones a scarce in human settlements?
Maybe, even though not very likely. But who would have hunted for the rest
of the humans, those that could not roam the steppes just for the killing?
We know, that when whole tribes specialised in hunting mammoth, they did not
exterminate them.

On the whole, it seems rather unlikely, that humans were the single cause
for the extinction. And as you seem not to be able to point at killing
sites, where more than single animals had been taken, there is no evidence
for that scenario. There is just a coincidence, a parallel in time.

I live at the border of an old glaciation age river, the
Warschau-Berlin-Urstromtal. I have been told, that about any piece of higher
elevated ground shows traces of some palaeolithic hunters camp. Any
migrating herd had to pass through this river valley and would have been
hunted. There are single-mammoth kill sites, but lots more with horses,
reindeer etc.

At the time, when according to your scenario they should have specialised in
following mammoth all year round, hunting thm to extermination, they settled
down to at least semi-sedentary living styles, hunting deer and boar and
fishing, preying only on migrating herds when they passed through the
region. AFAIK there is nothing to indicate late paleaolithic hunters had the
abilities or the the need to exterminate mammoth, the wooly rhinos, giant
stag, smilodon, whatever.

Maybe if they had had a convenient railroad they might have considered.

>
> >> > The pleistocene overkill hypothesis is a dead issue.
> >> > Whatever caused the extinction of ice age megafauna, it
> >> > wasn't human hunting.
> >>
> >> Bologne. The types of weapons created were not designed for
> >> small swift game but for large easy targets. It may be true
> >> that there is a current swing in the literature for other
> >> causes, I am confident it will swing back again, these blips in
> >> thinking always occur, as soon as some of the critiques are
> >> addressed it will once again point the finger at humans.
> >
> > That is certainly true, but it is equally true, that after
> > swinging back to human hunting as a main reason, it will
> > certainly swing back to non-human causes again. So the data is
> > simply inconclusive. Mass hunting or slaughtering of horses, on
> > a scale that has never been done on the big animals, has not led
> > to the extinction of horses.
>
> Horses are dually functional, as with pachyderms. If you look at the
> elaphids as a group, they did not go extinct, the asian elephants was
> domesticated, the Aroch did not go exint, the oxen is its descendant.
> But you can look at the variety of horses or pachyderms in one place
> and discern that, for example, before the horse was introduced in the
> new world, it also went extinct in the New World. In fact the wild
> population from which horses were derived is at risk of going extinct
> (if in fact that is the same population). The buffulo almost went
> extinct, and was replaced by cattle, the technology that made it
> possible was the rifle. The wolf has gone extinct in many areas and
> certain varities are extinct, one of the key issues was trapping,
> trap styles, and rifles.

But neither rifles, iron traps, railroads to carry supplies nor a giant
population overhang existed in the palaeolithic, the brown bear, wolf and
other predators survived, the cave bear and the smilodon did not. Wisent,
(old world bisons), Aurochs, Horses, Antelopes, Reindeer and many others
survived, the giant stag, wooly Mammoth and wooly Rhinos did not.

> There are many other animals in the New
> World that disappeared, the giant sloths, etc, where the introduction
> of humans might be the cause and there ease of kill, but consider
> that humans may have coexisted with sloths for 1000s of years until a
> new style of hunter appears.

A number of other animals and plants disappeared as well, without anybody
wanting to blame human hunters for it.
>
> > Why not just say, that there is no
> > conclusive evidence for a single cause extinction scenario?
>
> You can't blame every late pliestocene/holocene extinction on humans,
> but humans are complicit in almost all of the megafauna extinctions.

If you insist on phrasing that as a statement, there should be at least some
proof for it. If you phrase it as a possible reason for the exterminations,
we could argue if they had the means to do so (I would be sceptical about
that, but wouldn't be able to provide evidence against that).

> snip >

have fun

Uwe Mueller




.

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