Another way to say that is that hominids with shorter lifespans out-evolved them. Today elephants are threatened more by habitat competition with us than demand

Another way to say that is that hominids with shorter lifespans out-evolved them. Today elephants are threatened more by habitat competition with us than demand for ivory or meat. Farmers at the edge of the wildlife parks in india and africa don't want to kill the elephants, they're protecting their crops. Orangutans are in the same boat. Another perspective is that long cancer-free lives turned the pleistocene megafauna into meat repositories for any smart, mobile team predator, and that if primates didn't use the mammoths as a safe way into the arctic some other pack animal would have (wolves, for example). Causation is hard to model in coevolution. People who study e.g. bacteriophages use the term 'domestication' to describe how coevolution partners influence each other; if you're going to read one paper about this read the one about bracoviruses and butterflies, it's eerie.