Sophisticated hunters not to blame for driving mammoths to extinction
crunch
"The rise of the Clovis culture was thought to coincide with the
demise of the woolly mammoth and other slow-moving giants on the
continent, leading many researchers to suspect the animals died at the
ends of the hunters' spears.
Gill's team rules this out by putting a more accurate date on the
decline and fall of woolly mammoths and more than 30 other large
mammals that dominated the landscape as the ice sheets retreated from
North America."
"Writing the US journal Science, the researchers describe how the
amount of mammal dung started to fall around 14,800 years ago, long
before advanced spearheads became commonplace. The animals had been
almost completely wiped out a thousand years later."
"Chris Johnson, a population ecologist at James Cook University in
Queensland, Australia, said the shortage of mammoths and other easy
targets might have forced early humans to improve their weapons.
"People were still hunting them but this was more challenging, so they
developed somewhat better tools for the job," he said.
Another theory, that the larger beasts were wiped out by an asteroid
strike around 13,000 years ago, also looks unlikely in view of the
latest study. By improving their hunting techniques, early humans seem
to have played a major role in finishing off the woolly mammoths and
nine other mammal species that weighed over a tonne."
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Comments, please.
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David Christainsen
Tom McDonald
<snip>
> the researchers describe how the
> amount of mammal dung started to fall around 14,800 years ago
<snip>
> Comments, please.
The amount of dung you bring to this ng has increased
exponentially since you introduced your hobby horses. I wonder
what future Usenet archaeologists will make of this?
--
Tom
When Tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing;
When friends rejoice, both far and near,
How can I keep from singing.