Re: weapons and Megafauna
- From: prd <X_header@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 16:30:08 GMT
In sci.archaeology message news:dpqjhb$5pq$2@xxxxxxxxx by "Uwe
Müller" <uwemueller@xxxxxxxxxx> . . . :
> Mammoth were animals of the cold steppe, groups of them might
> have been passing through this terrain, but it was nowhere near
> central to their style of living.
They migrated into other regions, and the point was the only way they
could get from point A to Point B is some areas would have been to
travel down these riparian corridors. Since they have been found on
the peripheral grasslands it probably means that they were traveling
in some kind of seasonal modality down the corridors.
>> The persistent incipient Jomon artifacts are found in caves,
>> however it was established that this paleolithic/mesolithic
>> culture, particularly in the north of Japan migrated with the
>> herds, and rock cavitations were not available everywhere, it
>> is likely that they had animal skin houses which they used as
>> they followed prey, ergo they and families may have been in
>> harms way as these giant animals migrated around along their
>> migratory paths.
>
> Caves are good at protecting sites, so their is a good chance of
> finding sites in caves. Most of the camps would have been in the
> open, especially the hunters camps. A number of these have been
> excavated.
In the north, at least.
>> snip >
>> I would make this point as it appears to me. Prior to 18,000
>> years
>> ago in the east, and 35,000 years ago in the west, people
>> appear to have facilitatively and opportunistically traveled
>> along the coastal regions and island hopping, even as far as
>> 100-200 miles, the focus was on coastal exploitation, with a
>> limited ability to impact those enviroments or manipulate the
>> environments.
>
> With continental climates being what they are, it is highly
> probable that man stuck to the regions with less severe maritime
> climates.
>
>> snip >
>
>>During these period mammoths may have
>> been able to roam out of the highlands into the valleys at
>> will. So this is another explanation as to why some instances
>> of megafauna could survive.
>
> What would mammoth want in the highlands? They are animals of
> the cold steppe.
Because the climate in more southern latitudes at higher elevations
is comparable to the climate in higher latitutudes at lower
elevations, so as these animals range to the south they would
probably have favor climates of elevation, particularly in the summer
time.
> In Europe they are numerous too, called kjoekkenmoedinger.
I am assuming that the european shell mounds of <30,000 years ago are
not progenitors of the eastern shell mound cultures of >30,000 years
ago.
>> down the and through china and eastern asia. Even so far as
>> PNG. Since this culture is an inland hunting culture, it leaves
>> far more evidence that the coastal culture, whose archaeology
>> is at the mercy of sea levels.
>
> This is certainly not true for the old world, palaeolithic
> settlements have been excavated (Dolni Vestonice), hunting camps
> from people from very different times. And it has been noted,
> that hunting patterns changed, as I have indicated a number of
> times, that technologically advanced people turned sedentary,
> hunting a great number of different species from a smaller
> territory, while the older folks had specialised in hunting one
> or two species and had had to follow them through a very large
> area.
This may be the western pattern, the eastern pattern appears to be
the opposite, at least in terms of inland exploitation, which may be
a reason why european shell mounds are widely visible.
> You seem to have missed out the mammoth, or the extinction of
> the megafauna to put it more general. Even if those japanese
> people had hunted mammoth, even if they had succeeded in driving
> them away from their territories, they would not even touch the
> heartland of the mammoth species. How could this clarify mammoth
> extinction?
No but it shows that humans could eliminate ranges, and if these
extreme ranges were place mammoths migrated to when things got bad,
it could mean that they would be cut off. If this style of hunting
occurred in many places on the fringe then during times of intense
climatic change a species could get pushed in essentially traps.
> Sorry, I'am not convinced.
But the reality is that I don't need to convince you that humans
drove Mammoths extinct, all I need to do is provide evidence that
that played a role that no other predator/competitor played during
the LGM/early holocene period. The point is that in previous cycles
mammoth may have approached extinction, and yet finally avoided it,
but that their survival of the same circumstance in a repeated
manner, although not assurred, was probable. All one needs to do is
to throw in something the makes their survival through the process
improbable, and that something then becomes the straw that breaks the
camels back. Its a matter of perspective, imagine a stone age culture
that survives with access to natural medicines that it uncovers and
dietary shifts to deal with chronic problems, now imagine a new age
civilization moves in and removes their natural medicines and changes
their food culture, after a while they begin suffering from chronic
disease, the culture is disrupted because old people fail to live,
and the children abandon that culture and assimilate into the new
culture. You can't blame the new culture for the extinction of the
old culture, but if the new culture had not been added, the old
culture would have continued to successfully dealt with episodic
crisis.
I should note that shelters on the steppe were uncovered that were
made of mammoth bones. And the wool of the woolly mammoth may have
been extremely prized by stone age peoples of that region. These
shelters place humans in a region of eurasia that corroborates with
allelic diversity of HLA suggesting that this was an important place
of North Eurasian, Native American evolution. I think it is rather
obvious the humans of northern eurasia were complicit in the
extinction of the mammoth.
.
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