Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

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Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

Post by macdoc » Tue Dec 21, 2021 6:40 pm

I disagree with this paper
A groundbreaking study by researchers from Tel Aviv University tracks the development of early humans' hunting practices over the last 1.5 million years—as reflected in the animals they hunted and consumed. The researchers claim that at any given time early humans preferred to hunt the largest animals available in their surroundings, which provided the greatest quantities of food in return for a unit of effort.

In this way, according to the researchers, early humans repeatedly overhunted large animals to extinction (or until they became so rare that they disappeared from the archaeological record) and then went on to the next in size—improving their hunting technologies to meet the new challenge. The researchers also claim that about 10,000 years ago, when animals larger than deer became extinct, humans began to domesticate plants and animals to supply their needs, and this may be why the agricultural revolution began in the Levant at precisely that time.
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-early-hum ... ction.html

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Australia was not human occupied during the period they discuss and nearly all the mega-fauna went extinct before humans arrived 60,000 years ago.

How they jump to their conclusion on a narrow region they say is "representative" is beyond me.

Early humans were a vanishing small number against the number of animals on a big planet. Mammoths died out in Siberia only 3,700 years ago and that island extinction was certainly due to a changing climate.

Hell Elephants are not extinct ( yet ), moose are not, and bison all qualify.
There were 10's of thousands of indigenous in North America and millions of buffalo and they did not make a dent until modern weapons and industrial slaughter arrived.
What allowed humans into North America was climate change..correlation is not causation.

Sure humans hunt out an area but it's a huge planet.

Far and away the change in vegetation/nutrition impact reproduction and violent weather swings impact survival plus there were other predators out there...smileodon and direwolves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilodon

I think this is far from settled despite rather overdone claims.
The researchers also claim that about 10,000 years ago, when animals larger than deer became extinct,
this is flat out nonsense :coffee:
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Re: Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

Post by JimC » Wed Dec 22, 2021 2:18 am

Here is a report about a recent study of the Australian megafauna extinctions, which suggests both climate change and human action could have been at work:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-22/ ... /100706682
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Re: Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

Post by macdoc » Wed Dec 22, 2021 4:18 am

sure for a limited area.

Earth is big - and our populations have never been robust until near history.
Well, we've waxed. So we can wane. Let's just hope we wane gently. Because once in our history, the world-wide population of human beings skidded so sharply we were down to roughly a thousand reproductive adults. One study says we hit as low as 40.

Forty? Come on, that can't be right. Well, the technical term is 40 "breeding pairs" (children not included). More likely there was a drastic dip and then 5,000 to 10,000 bedraggled Homo sapiens struggled together in pitiful little clumps hunting and gathering for thousands of years until, in the late Stone Age, we humans began to recover. But for a time there, says science writer Sam Kean, "We damn near went extinct."

I'd never heard of this almost-blinking-out. That's because I'd never heard of Toba, the "supervolcano." It's not a myth. While details may vary, Toba happened.
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2 ... 70-000-b-c

Now what's more likely - humans or climate?
Australia is the perfect lab - we know when humans arrived and we know the extinnction rate of mega=fauna prior to that and after

Image

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... queensland

There is also evidence uncovered in Greenland of a size large crater under the edge of the ice that may have caused the LIA.
I don't discount regional impacts of human predation but 10,000s of thousands of indigenous North Americans did not wipe out the big fauna in 20,000 years. Bisons roamed in millions, caribou and moose in tens of thousands, lots of grizzlies and polar bear and even mammoths were around.

We certainly are modern villians.....pre-history ....not so much in my view. :coffee:
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Re: Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

Post by JimC » Wed Dec 22, 2021 4:34 am

The moas of New Zealand count as megafauna, and they sure as hell were hunted into extinction. Sure, it is too simplistic to assign all megafauna extinctions across the world to human action, but our ancestors had their effects...

In Australia, some megafauna such as Diprotodons were still here when early humans arrived - not all our megafauna had disappeared via climate change before the arrival of the first indigenous people. It is certainly possible that hunting, and/or environmental changes brought on by deliberate fires were the straw that broke the dipotodon's back...
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Re: Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

Post by macdoc » Wed Dec 22, 2021 4:48 am

The guy ia going back 1.8 million years and drawing enormous assumptions. No question in smaller venues humans affected populations both prey and predator .-..Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, Australia are simply too big given the small populations of humans.

Places like Madagascar certainly but mega fauna are still in Africa despite 2+ million years of homo precursers hunting and being hunted.
Even the Hobbits island the minature elephants evolved with the hobbits ...island biogeography charts many wild impacts due to the limited land masses and restricted nutrional base.

Hunter gatherers moved with the herds and were skilled hunters but it took Euros with modern weapons to almost wipe out the bison which is clearly a megafauna. Moose on the other hand are not being wiped out by men but by a warming climate and ticks over wintering.

Mammoths need a very large amount of forage and steppe grasses are not it ....
Study shows flowers powered the woolly mammoth - Phys.orghttps://phys.org › Biology › Plants & Animals
11 Feb 2014 — U of A earth scientist Duane Froese reveals that herbaceous flowering plants called forbs were a staple in the diet of grazing megafauna,
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Re: Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

Post by Svartalf » Wed Dec 22, 2021 5:06 am

PLZ define 'megafauna', I mean, mammoths, cave bears, saber tooths and megaceroi certainly qualify, but how do we deduce whether their disappearnce was due to the hunt, or to the fact they were optimized for cold climate, and could not survive when things got too warm? Wild cattle (aurochs) survived into modern times before being indeed hunted to extinction, but for species that disappeared before we could record things, how do we deduce whether one specific factor, or a combination was in play?
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Re: Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

Post by JimC » Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:17 am

It is certainly difficult to adjudge the relative effect of all the possible factors leading to the extinction of some megafauna...
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Re: Early humans hunted the largest available animals to extinct

Post by macdoc » Wed Dec 22, 2021 8:00 am

Good article here - covers the planet
GEOL 204 Dinosaurs, Early Humans, Ancestors & Evolution:
The Fossil Record of Vanished Worlds of the Prehistoric Past
https://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G204/l ... eisto.html
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