Humans Did Not Kill Off Mammoths; Comet, Climate Change Helped, Studies Show

Indian Country Today ^ | June 13, 2012 | ICTMN Staff

[Free ThinkerNY]

Although human hunting played a part in the demise of the woolly mammoth about 10,000 years ago, homo sapiens were but bit players in a global drama involving climate change, comet impact and a multitude of other factors, scientists have found in separate studies.

Previous research had blamed their demise on tribal hunting. But new findings “pretty much dispel the idea of any one factor, any one event, as dooming the mammoths,” said Glen MacDonald, a researcher and geographer at the University of California in Los Angeles, to LiveScience.com.

In other words, hunting didn’t help, but it was not instrumental. The ancestors didn’t do it.

So what did? After thriving for 250,000 years, the huge mammals lingered on in dwarf form in the Arctic Ocean’s Wrangel Island until 3,700 years ago. Between 20,000 and 25,000 years ago, LiveScience said, the animals declined during the worst of the last major ice age, though they started to multiply in warmer interior Siberia.

[driftless2]

"warming climate"

Good comments. Many of the animals from that era adapted to changing climate. For instance, polar bears adapted from brown bears who went further north looking for food. And some didn't do well. Mammoths and mastodons were herbivorous. There should have been more food available. The "experts" are really conjecturing here. I think they're trying to promote the AGW agenda than trying to find out why the mammoths died out.

[muawiyah]

My thesis only covers from 4 billion years ago up to about 10,000 BC. Anything that happened later than that is a problem for anthropologists to resolve.

Try CAT DISTEMPER

[muawiyah]

Hard to hide a mammoth. They should be visible from space with a weather satellite.

[muawiyah]

And, speaking of prey suitible to our size, there's the case of the AUROCHS. These were ginormous European cattle and apparently among the first domesticated.

Lo and behold there were still some of these dudes around in Medieval times BUT THEY WERE TOO LARGE TO PROCESS ~ so we selected for smaller cows and bulls.

Recently someone began a project to breed back to the giant Aurochs.

Humans have an edge on the other predators no one in all of history or prehistory had ~ we can actually modify the prey animals to fit our capabilities.

The big cats were DOOMED ~ eventually.

In this case I think the Younger Dryas killed them off by killing their prey. They had nothing left to eat that was easy for them to catch.

[Windflier]

You know what it was if you're honest with yourself.

I was afraid you'd say that. Them aliens are just cold blooded, aren't they?

[Boogieman]

It’s not recent at all. We’ve been wiping out species from the start. Man colonized Australia a long time ago, and all those species didn’t die at the same time because they caught the flu from us!

If you think that man hunted mammoths incompetently and often got himself killed, I have to ask what you are smoking. That’s just not how men operate. If we want to do something, we will figure out the most efficient and least dangerous way to accomplish it, and once we have, we’ll just follow that procedure from that point on. So, when we first started hunting mammoths, yes, a lot of people probably got gored and trampled. Once we figured out the right method, then we’d follow that procedure and be taking down mammoths with near impunity just like every other animal that we set about to hunt. If we couldn’t figure out an efficient procedure, then there wouldn’t be much evidence of us hunting them, since we would have avoided it whenever we possibly could. People just aren’t suicidal or stupid, and we are talking about people, despite the popular conception of dumb “cavemen”.

“Consider also that there were quite a number of species that went extinct at the same time, also that there were islands off of Northern Siberia that had quite large mammoth populations, islands that were not inhabited by men. Mammoths disappeared from those places as well.”

The mammoths on the isolated islands without men lasted much longer than any others! They survived longer precisely because we were not hunting them.

[samtheman]

Although it might be interesting to discover what caused this or that species to become extinct, there are 4 things to keep in mind when reading articles like this:

1. Climate change happens. All the time.
2. 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct.
3. One of the great things about the human race is that we no longer depend on any particular climate to survive and that we have, in our hands, the tools to avoid extinction (including the ultimate tool of space travel)
4. In 5 billion years our sun will go red giant, causing the worst climate change the earth has ever known (and we’d better be living elsewhere by then)

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***There have been infrequent references to people in the early 1900’s having mammoth sightings in various places, ***

I have an old book,THE DEFEAT OF JOHN HAWKINS by Rayner Unwin in which survivors of a Spanish raid on their ships are dropped off near what is today Tampico Mexico.

ONE YEAR later one of the men, David Ingram, is picked up by a French ship, the GARGARINE off the coast of what is today NOVA SCOTIA.. He told of his journey overland in which he described elephants in the interior. He told his story to a committee chaired by Sir Francis Waslingham in 1582.

How did he get from Mexico to Nova Scotia in one year overland through completely unexplored country has never been explained.

Another interesting thing is some American explorers often found mammoth bones above ground and one group even propped some of the ribs up and made a temporary shelter out of them. How did such bones survive thousands of years above ground?

[djf]

Even in modern times, some places are what most would consider “remote”.

Not geographically remote, remote as far as human habitation.

I spent some time in Western Ontario. Flat, flat, flat. Pothole lakes everywhere.

Skeeters by the billions. I never checked whether there have been verified deaths due to mosquito attacks on people, but an unprotected human there would be in dire jeopardy. Seriously!

But a mammoth? Probably wouldn’t bother him near as much. And because of it’s “remoteness” to human populations, seems to me it would be a simple thing for populations of some kinds of animals to survive and even thrive.

Anybody who says man wiped them out has a way, way, way too inflated view of the hunting and fighting capabilities of stone age man.

Stone age man killed some of them. But they DID NOT track down the remaining populations to cause them to go extinct.

[Bernard Marx]

The "mega-fauna" were wiped out, but the run-of-the-mill fauna weren't.

That's a very interesting point. It was animals that weighed over 200-250 pounds that died off mostly. Since very large critters require more food, some sudden decline in food sources makes sense to me as the cause for the big animal die-off. I've never bought into the idea that human hunters caused the megafauna extinctions. They may have picnicked on already-dead mammoths and even killed one now and then but they were much more likely to go after smaller and less dangerous prey given their primitive weapons. In general this new theory makes sense to me.

[djf]

Ask yourself if “bullfighting” is an easy occupation.

Then imagine that the bull was twenty times bigger!

;-)

[TigersEye]

They fly in, flash freeze a heard of mammoths, load them up (leaving some behind) and fly off. Aliens gotta eat just like worms!

[TigersEye]

Following up on that last post; you have heard of mammoths right!?!

(herd - doh!) LOL

[Flag_This]

"I think the problem is, you might be looking for a “big pattern” that explains them all, while each separate extinction probably has its own unique causes."

I'm not really looking for a "master key" exactly, but in this particular case, I don't understand why a comet could wipe out camels and horses, but spare the buffalo.

I could see how hunting by humans might put enough extra pressure on a particular species - one that is already on the brink - to wipe them out; but the Pleistocene extinctions wiped out hundreds of species. I don't think humans hunted the short-faced skunk to extinction, for example.

[TigersEye]

The example of the buffalo is flawed because they were not very dangerous to humans, and because the sheer size of the buffalo population was massive compared to the amount of mammoths that could be supported in a similar sized region. I’d guess we’re talking on the order of thousands to one.

I doubt that a mammoth ate a thousand times more than a buffalo or that buffalo are not dangerous. Modern bison are very dangerous. But what happened to the Ice Age Bison and where did the modern Bison come from?

Bison Latifrons is an extinct Bison that had a huge horn span measuring 7 to 8 feet (2.5M) long tip to tip. The Florida fossil vertebrate giant measured 8.5 feet (2.5M) at the shoulder and survived through the last Ice Age.

This Giant Prehistoric Buffalo appeared, in Florida, during the middle Pleistocene period about 500,000 years ago. From the Bovidae Family, of even toed Artiodactyls, these long-horned Bison went extinct 21,000-30,000 years ago. This large wide-horned Bison was the largest of the North American species, of Bison.

[BrandtMichaels]

Dr. Walt Brown PhD Mech. Eng. M.I.T.has an online book describing the hydroplate theory and also detailing the latest science on the wooly mammoth. It explains much more of the confounding natural features found on Earth and in our Solar System than any other theory I’ve encountered.

Center for Scientific Creation - In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html

Excerpt on wooly mammoth theories...

“Theories Attempting to Explain Frozen Mammoths

Ten theories have been proposed to explain the frozen mammoth puzzle. Each will be described below as an advocate would.

Fruitful theories answer not only the obvious, initial questions but also solve perplexing and seemingly unrelated problems. As we unravel the mystery of the frozen mammoths, we may answer broader questions and even uncover a sequence of dramatic, global events.

Robust theories also provide details that result in surprising and testable predictions. Keep this in mind as we examine all ten explanations. With each, ask yourself, “What predictions can this theory make?” If few predictions are forthcoming, the theory is probably weak.118 If theories could not be published unless they included many details and specific predictions, we would be mercifully spared many distractions and false ideas.

Hydroplate Theory. [For a more complete description of the hydroplate theory, read pages 110–144.] On that terrible day, the rupture of the earth’s crust passed between what is now Siberia and Alaska in minutes. Jetting water from the fountains of the great deep first fell as rain. During the next few hours, some of the accelerating and expanding subterranean water that went above the atmosphere (where the effective temperature is several hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit) froze and fell as hail.120 Some animals were suddenly buried, suffocated, frozen, and compressed by tons of cold, muddy ice crystals from the gigantic “hail storm.” Dirt in this ice prevented it from floating as the flood waters submerged these regions after days and weeks. Blankets of this muddy ice, hundreds of feet thick, insulated and preserved many animals during the flood phase. As the topmost layers of ice melted, the dirt in that ice remained and settled—blanketing and further insulating the deeper ice and buried animals.

Months later, after mountains were suddenly pushed up, the earth’s balance shifted, the earth slowly “rolled” 35°–45°, so Siberia and Alaska moved from temperate latitudes (similar to south-central Canada and central United States today) to their present positions. [For details, see Endnote 66 on page 141.] As the flood waters drained off the continents, the icy graves in warmer climates melted, and buried animals decayed. However, many animals, buried in what are now permafrost regions, were preserved.

These conclusions can be reached quite simply. The evidence showing compression and suffocation of the frozen mammoths implies rapid burial. Rapid burial and sudden freezing suggest a supercold “ice dump.”

compression + suffocation = rapid burial

rapid burial + sudden freezing = an “ice dump”

[ Removed the 9 other theories on mammoth extinctions due to space considerations ]

Why Did It Get So Cold So Quickly?

Let’s put aside all possible explanations for the frozen mammoths and just ask what must happen for atmospheric temperatures to drop to at least -150°F (so rapidly that large animals and the food in their warm bodies are preserved).

Temperatures can drop for several reasons: expansion of a gas, evaporation of a liquid, chemical reactions, reduction of heat from the Sun, or the transfer of heat. First, let’s eliminate a few possibilities. Chemical reactions within the atmosphere have trivial thermal consequences. Could the Sun have suddenly put out less heat, thereby lowering the temperature of Siberia and Alaska? That happens every night, but temperatures drop too slowly.

If heat was transferred away from Siberia and Alaska, where and how was it transferred? Heat, which always travels from hot bodies to cold bodies, is transferred by three means: conduction, radiation, and convection. Conduction mainly applies to solids, as when heat travels (conducts) along a metal rod whose tip is held in a fire. Conduction would not play a big role for a large volume of gas such as the atmosphere. Radiation transfers too little heat too slowly at atmospheric temperatures.

Convection occurs when a moving fluid (liquid or gas) transfers heat from a hot to a cold region. For example, heat is transferred by convection up a chimney. The heat is transported from the hot air just above the fire to the cold air outside the chimney. If, at one time, Siberia and Alaska cooled to -150°F by convection, an even colder region had to absorb the heat; engineers call this a heat sink. Finding a supercold sink would be even more difficult than explaining a temperature drop to only -150°F. No sufficiently cold sink exists in or below the atmosphere, but such a sink lies above the atmosphere—in the vacuum of space—where temperatures are much colder than -150°F. This may answer the “where” question.

We could not eliminate the two possibilities highlighted above: expansion of a gas, and evaporation of a liquid. Both would drop temperatures drastically if enough water was very rapidly accelerated out of the atmosphere. That is precisely what the fountains of the great deep did. By the end of Part II of this book, you will see that nuclear energy provided astonishing accelerations and expansions of supercritical water into outer space, dropping the temperatures in most of the fountains to almost absolute zero (-460°F)! This then answers the difficult “how” and “where” questions.”

[gleeaikin]

My goodness, these scientists are finally discovering that Firestone and company were right after all.

Next thing you know they might even starting looking underwater for evidence of well developed civilizations long before the Egyptians and the Sumerians

[muawiyah]

Ron C, what you are missing out on is that every time a 'family' is disposed of by its predators or disease the guys on the great mothership that circles endlessly above box up and ship out a reasonable replacement.

That's why the adjustments to the genome appear in quanta of significant size.

[muawiyah]

Ron C, what you are missing out on is that every time a 'family' is disposed of by its predators or disease the guys on the great mothership that circles endlessly above box up and ship out a reasonable replacement.

That's why the adjustments to the genome appear in quanta of significant size.

[muawiyah]

The other way around ~ every where the mega fauna went extent humans were able to proliferate in large numbers.