4 ms·
The mass extinction of large megafauna, all around the world, at roughly the same time, isn't explained by humans (see woolly mammoths). There's far more eviden
by codexb 3y ago
The mass extinction of large megafauna, all around the world, at roughly the same time, isn't explained by humans (see woolly mammoths). There's far more evidence that it was driven by climate change as the world quickly exited the last glacial maximum.
- myshpa 3y agohttps://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/08/us/woolly-mammoths-death-scn-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/08/us/woolly-mammoths-death-... Last mammoths died 4000 years ago, and they might have even lived longer, if short-term events hadn’t tainted their water and drained their food supply. It wasn't climate change that killed off the mammoths; it was humans. https://www.google.com/search?q=mammoth+house&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=mammoth+house&tbm=isch We ate them all. It was only when there were no big animals left to hunt that we invented agriculture.
- codexb 3y agoAnd yet, for some reason, ancient humans decided not to eat all the elephants. No, it was climate change. The last, small population of mammoths that survived until 4000 years ago on Wrangel Island never came in contact with humans. They died because they were ill suited for the climate they lived in.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 3y agoHumans got rid of plenty of elephants. "Both" is likely the answer in all of these extinction events. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7548514 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7548514 > One million years ago, elephants and their cousins roamed the five major continents of the earth. Then humans came along. Today elephants can be found only in portions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. > The two most argued hypotheses for their decline are climatic changes and over-hunting by humans. A recent archaeological expedition dug up information that may support the latter. > Exploring 41 sites ranging from 1.8 million to 10,000 years old, Todd Surovell of the University of Wyoming found that interactions between humans and elephants matched up with successive waves of human population expansion. As the human populations in those sites continued to grow, the number of elephants shrank and, in some sites, disappeared.
- myshpa 3y ago> ancient humans decided not to eat all the elephants Who knows why? Larger size, slower reproductive rates, and adaptations to colder climates? Maybe elephants were more socially organized and were harder to hunt? Maybe their habitats were not so densely populated by humans? We can only speculate. > No, it was climate change. While climate change certainly played a role, it's undeniable that the QME would not have been as extensive if it weren't for human involvement. > never came in contact with humans That's not clear, iirc.
- actionfromafar 3y agoElephants and humans must have evolved together, that could have helped the elephants.
- stonetrw 3y agoYou do realize that the majority of elephant species are extinct and the ones left have less than a fraction of their historic range?
- user_ 3y agoClimate change potentially caused by catastrophic comet impacts.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoIt’s both. Human populations were growing rapidly and simultaneously the period from 50000-10000 was the end of the last ice age So the going theory is that the original areas of climate for which mega fauna were most populous, was effectively reduced increasingly over time as a result of warming, which humans were able to capitalize on to the point where we kind of “finished the job.” This is effectively, how we see extinction patterns around the globe. Whereas humans aren’t necessarily the primary or only cause, but they do make a big enough exogenous impact to cause a collapse.
- candiddevmike 3y agoHow big of a population are we talking here
- myshpa 3y agohttps://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline "What’s most shocking is how few humans were responsible for this large-scale destruction of wildlife. There were likely fewer than 5 million people in the world. Around half the population of London today."
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoWell the estimates are kind of all over the place but basically growing from ~1M - 15M over the course of 40000 years, before the Neolithic explosion
- stonetrw 3y agoIt seems somewhat incredible that mega fauna survived the previous two dozen or so ice ages just fine then went extinct as soon as humans figured out how to live in huts.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoSomething so innocuous turning catastrophic... But don't worry guys AI will totally 100% be aligned with not fucking humanity over.
- stubish 3y agoGiven historical and prehistorical evidence, I think it fair to say that even in the cases where humans were not responsible, it was not through lack of trying. Human societies gorged themselves until they had to adapt to scarcity, at which point I think we started developing concepts like living in harmony with nature, agriculture and land management.