British Archaeology, no 12, March 1996: Features
By the time early humans (Homo erectus,archaic Homo sapiens, Neanderthal Man, and the rest) first reached temperate Europe, at least 500,000 years ago, their diet clearly included a large amount of meat. We know this both archaeologically (for instance, by studying animal refuse at archaeological sites), and anatomically - with their large brains and small guts, these people needed to run on high-quality fuel. Moreover, according to work by the American anthropologists Thomas Berger and Erik Trinkaus, the Neanderthals had high rates of injury involving skeletal trauma most like that seem in modern rodeo performers - suggesting, they say, `frequent close encounters with large ungulates [ie, hoofed animals] unkindly disposed to the humans involved'.
But what we don't see at this time is evidence of overhunting - that is, an increase in the rate at which European herbivore species went extinct. If anything, after about 450,000 years ago, there seems to be an increase in herbivore diversity in Europe, and this is particularly marked among the rhinos, large bovids (cattle), ovicaprids (sheep and goats) and antelopes.
One of the reasons to blame low human population densities and poor hunting technology for this increase in animal biodiversity - rather than some `instinct for conservation' - is that when anatomically modern humans evolved later, armed with a more efficient hunting technology, more extensive social networks (we believe) and bigger hunting-group sizes, their impact on species biodiversity was marked - with some of the most notable evidence coming from the Americas.
Anatomically modern humans arrived in the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age 13,000- 14,000 years ago, and their arrival coincided with a peak in the extinction rates of endemic large animal species. At the end of the Ice Age in North America, 33 genera (or individual species) were lost, including several families of species, and one whole order (the mammoths and mastodons). In South America during the same period, at least 46 genera became extinct, including sloths, giant rodents, large carnivores, mastodons, horses, and various types of peccary (South American hogs), camel and deer.
Some of these extinctions must have been caused by indirect effects of human actions - removal of some large-bodied herbivores, for example, may have had knock-on consequences for other species. Some were surely due to the rapid climate changes of that time, altering ground vegetation cover at rates which may have outstripped the ability of many animals to adapt or migrate. But in cases such as the mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, horses, camels and giant tortoises, where remains of extinct species have been found in association with Early Palaeoindian artefacts, a role for human predation seems undeniable.
It need not, in fact, take much hunting to push such large-bodied, slow-reproducing species away from an equilibrium balance of births and deaths. Dr Steven Mithen of Reading University has calculated, for instance, that an expanding population of Palaeoindian colonists hunting mammoths at a rate of just one animal per hunter per year, with a random killing pattern cutting across all age and sex classes, could have driven the mammoths of North America to extinction in less than a millennium.
What is more, recent radiocarbon dates on bone collagen show that mammoths survived in a unique refuge on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean off north-east Siberia until 2000BC or later. By implication, the climatic changes associated with the post-Ice Age warming are not sufficient to account for their extirpation from the mainland of America and Eurasia thousands of years earlier. That's as close as we're likely to get to proof that humans were responsible.
Gee, someone ought to tell these paleontologists that early man didn't eat a lot of meat. They ate egg whites and fruit and flaxseed and salmon.
By the time early humans (Homo erectus,archaic Homo sapiens, Neanderthal Man, and the rest) first reached temperate Europe, at least 500,000 years ago, their diet clearly included a large amount of meat. We know this both archaeologically (for instance, by studying animal refuse at archaeological sites), and anatomically - with their large brains and small guts, these people needed to run on high-quality fuel. Moreover, according to work by the American anthropologists Thomas Berger and Erik Trinkaus, the Neanderthals had high rates of injury involving skeletal trauma most like that seem in modern rodeo performers - suggesting, they say, `frequent close encounters with large ungulates [ie, hoofed animals] unkindly disposed to the humans involved'.
But what we don't see at this time is evidence of overhunting - that is, an increase in the rate at which European herbivore species went extinct. If anything, after about 450,000 years ago, there seems to be an increase in herbivore diversity in Europe, and this is particularly marked among the rhinos, large bovids (cattle), ovicaprids (sheep and goats) and antelopes.
One of the reasons to blame low human population densities and poor hunting technology for this increase in animal biodiversity - rather than some `instinct for conservation' - is that when anatomically modern humans evolved later, armed with a more efficient hunting technology, more extensive social networks (we believe) and bigger hunting-group sizes, their impact on species biodiversity was marked - with some of the most notable evidence coming from the Americas.
Anatomically modern humans arrived in the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age 13,000- 14,000 years ago, and their arrival coincided with a peak in the extinction rates of endemic large animal species. At the end of the Ice Age in North America, 33 genera (or individual species) were lost, including several families of species, and one whole order (the mammoths and mastodons). In South America during the same period, at least 46 genera became extinct, including sloths, giant rodents, large carnivores, mastodons, horses, and various types of peccary (South American hogs), camel and deer.
Some of these extinctions must have been caused by indirect effects of human actions - removal of some large-bodied herbivores, for example, may have had knock-on consequences for other species. Some were surely due to the rapid climate changes of that time, altering ground vegetation cover at rates which may have outstripped the ability of many animals to adapt or migrate. But in cases such as the mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, horses, camels and giant tortoises, where remains of extinct species have been found in association with Early Palaeoindian artefacts, a role for human predation seems undeniable.
It need not, in fact, take much hunting to push such large-bodied, slow-reproducing species away from an equilibrium balance of births and deaths. Dr Steven Mithen of Reading University has calculated, for instance, that an expanding population of Palaeoindian colonists hunting mammoths at a rate of just one animal per hunter per year, with a random killing pattern cutting across all age and sex classes, could have driven the mammoths of North America to extinction in less than a millennium.
What is more, recent radiocarbon dates on bone collagen show that mammoths survived in a unique refuge on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean off north-east Siberia until 2000BC or later. By implication, the climatic changes associated with the post-Ice Age warming are not sufficient to account for their extirpation from the mainland of America and Eurasia thousands of years earlier. That's as close as we're likely to get to proof that humans were responsible.
Gee, someone ought to tell these paleontologists that early man didn't eat a lot of meat. They ate egg whites and fruit and flaxseed and salmon.
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