This photo of Scottsbluff is courtesy of TripAdvisor
Posted on 06/12/2012 7:03:32 PM PDT by 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.
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This photo of Scottsbluff is courtesy of TripAdvisor
You mean like Sundaland? I don't even bother discussing anymore.
One of the drawings is about how to hunt a bear ~ first you put on your ski's. You walk up hill ahead of the bear ~ the bear follows you to the top. Then, you start skiing downhill ~ the bear follows ~ you are much faster (65 mph on your skis) .
You get to the bottom first, turn around, stand your ground with your long spear in both hands tight, and the bear slides right down hill onto your spear!
I think they estimate that one at least 5000 year old ~ but it could easily be even older. These drawings have been exposed to weathering for centuries.
The cold hard facts are the Sa'ami exterminated the bears on the Scandinavian peninsula a very long time ago.
From the beginning of Spanish exploration of Mexico and North America they'd been losing horses left and right ~ by this time the Indians at Cahokia were already riding off toward the great herds of buffalo on the West bank of the Mississippi ~ and becoming the Sioux and Cheyenne we think of today.
North America was made for the horse. They prospered beyond all belief.
The bones are safe until they uncovered, and that could happen thousands of years later during a pluvial. The boundary between the arid and wet zones in the Midwest runs pretty much along the 100 degree meridian these days. We know from other studies that it was sometimes 10 degrees further West and at other 10 degrees further East, and there were extensive salients here and there all across the continent.
This could happen repeatedly and you'd end up with bones from 250,000 years ago ending up with bones from 100,000 years back, and 10,000 years back, and 2 years back. These hills tend to form, on average, in the same spots in every interstadial ~ rivers, though, change differently even though the drainage basins that give rise to them might not change appreciably.
Also, with short summers at the Northern limits of the temperate zone most of the area wold be one big refrigerator for most of the year. Humans with the capability of entering into the near-tundra could dine well on the animals who’d simply dropped dead.
There are no close relatives in between.
The answer to that little problem is called DISTEMPER. A specific virus can wipe out an entire species of canid in short order.
Darn. That is kind of disappointing.
I agree. The people who lived some 15,000 years ago at Monte Verde in southern Chile used mammoth bones extensively in building their own shelters. Some have cited that as proof they hunted the creatures to extinction. I think it’s more likely they simply scavenged these ready-made building components from the skeletons of animals that died from other causes. Humans are magnificent scroungers and pretty ingenious when it comes to using “found” materials.
http://www.thunderridgebison.com/bison_history.htm ~ this guy has your answer. North American bison are descended from the European bison ~ which is a smaller animal. With the destruction of the large cats the buffalo simply “evolved’ into the large grazing animal niche and became much larger. Did you know these guys can jump 6 foot straight up? This is like your car jumping 6 ft in the air ~ makes it hard to hunt them efficiently without the use of horses or helicopters!
The megafauna were not hunted to extinction over centuries, period.
The extinction was sudden.
The suddenness of their extinction was one reason someone dreamed up the super-hunter model, which is otherwise based on nothing.
The other reason to push the super-hunter model is as a prop for the Clovis-First-and-Only model, which requires that the very first humans to arrive in the Americas expanded from Alaska to Tierro del Fuego in no time flat.
At the time of the extinction event, the human population was miniscule and not distributed across the entire continent.
And there was plenty of other food to eat, game much easier to obtain.
All it takes is for people to just think it through to realize how foolish and simpleminded the super-hunter model is.
And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that the Clovis-point making culture went extinct at the same time.
For what it's worth the Chinese are finding that their core culture BEGAN in foothills above 2000 ft. elevation in Western China ~ much of it in Inner Mongolia.
What I've learned over the last few days is that 2000 ft elevation marks a major difference in rainfall in an area ~ above that height, you have recurring semi-arid climate. Smaller mammals as well as both odd and even toed ungulates live there in significant numbers.
Lower than that you find large predators and large prey animals, and deep forests. Unless those guys all die the smaller mammals cannot move into the estuaries of the great rivers in the region. About 10,000 years ago the hill cultures in the West moved down hill and East. About 5,000 years ago the Chinese plains were heavily settled but the guys with the higher technology still lived uphill to the West!
The Chinese really wanted it to be different but the radiocarbon dating shows the West to be more ancient than the East.
Considering the price of ivory today those ol’boys down souf’ were living high on the hog!
:’) The search for deep-sea ancient wrecks (and they are down there) will over time lead to those kinds of discovery. Big shifts in thinking happen while no one is paying attention.
That’s the list of topics (so far) relating to the Clovis-era megafauna extinction. :’)
:’) Head-Bashed-In was used to kill buffalo, but not to extinguish whole herds simultaneously; such a site used to kill mammoths is (AFAIK) unknown, not just in the Americas.
Definitely.
***It piles up in hillocks of Wind Blow Loess and any bones lying about would be covered up.****
The bones I mentioned were found above ground and not fossilized.
Thanks Explorer89.
I don’t remember reading of any horses getting loose till after the Puebelo revolt in 1680, Santa Fe. Hogs yes! Horses, no.
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