WAS IT CLIMATE CHANGE OR THOSE "HARMONIOUS" INDIANS THAT KILLED OFF NORTH AMERICA'S MEGAFAUNA?

Greenies are constantly saying how native people live "in harmony" with nature. They are also horrified at any animal going extinct. But what if it was those "harmonious" natives who caused huge extinctions? Big problem. Easy solution: It was "climate change" that was the real villain of course! But the facts are not very co-operative:

"When, at least 12,000 years ago, human beings first crossed into North America from Siberia, the continent teemed with large animals. Today, of course, our only encounters with giant short-faced bears, enormous sloths and dozens of other such extinct species come in museums. On this much, archaeologists and paleontologists agree. The causes of this mass extinction, however, remain clouded by conflicting findings and holes in the archaeological record....

Two recent papers, both published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., try to help settle the question. Todd Surovell and Nicole Waguespack of the University of Wyoming and P. Jeffrey Brantingham of the University of California, Los Angeles, studied the timing and location of Pleistocene encounters between humans and proboscideans (the order that includes mammoths, mastodons and elephants) and found evidence supporting the overkill hypothesis.....

Surovell, Waguespack and Brantingham outlined two possible extinction scenarios, one based on human overkill and the other on climate change. They then plugged into their models data from 41 archaeological sites in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas that contain remains of proboscideans hunted or scavenged by humans. If people hunted these animals to extinction, the authors argue, the kill sites should appear along the border between proboscidean and human ranges. So, as humans expanded south across North America, for example, the sites would also be located farther and farther south. If climate was the culprit, then people and proboscideans should have shared some of the same territory, at least until climate change shrunk proboscidean habitat. Thus, kill sites would be found both along and behind the frontier of human expansion.

The authors concluded that the location and age of the sites correlate closely with an overkill model. As humans moved north into Eurasia from Africa and, later, south from Alaska across the Americas, proboscidean range contracted correspondingly.

Climate change, then, cannot account for proboscidean extinction "unless one were to invoke serial climatic change that perfectly tracks human global colonization." The odds, they're saying, aren't good. Although the authors do not claim to have proved that humans drove other species to extinction, Surovell is skeptical of arguments for climate change. "I would like to see somebody explain how climate change could cause mass extinction on such a large geographical scale," he says. "Climate is constantly changing."....."

The article also points out that megafauna lived on in Australia longer than in North America and says that this rules out human causation for the extinctions. It does no such thing. It just shows that Australian Aborigines were less effective hunters than American Indians. And no-one who knows much about Australian Aborigines would be in great doubt about that. Would bows and arrows make you better hunters of megafauna? American Indians had them. Australian Aborigines did not

More here




SAME STORY IN SIBERIA: MEGAFAUNA SURVIVED LONGEST WHERE HUMANS WERE FEWEST

Following is the abstract and conclusions of a forthcoming scientific paper from Russia

Arctic Siberia: refuge of the Mammoth fauna in the Holocene

By: Gennady G. Boeskorov, Mammoth Museum, Lenina prospekt 39, 677891 Yakutsk, Russian Federation

Abstract

Global climate change at the end of Pleistocene led to extinction in the huge territories of Northern Eurasia of the typical representatives of the Mammoth fauna: mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, wild horse, bison, musk-ox, and cave lion. Undoubtedly the Mammoth fauna underwent pressure from Upper Paleolithic humans, whose hunting activity could also have played a role in decreasing the number of mammoths and other representatives of megafauna. Formerly it was supposed that the megafauna of the "Mammoth complex" had become extinct by the beginning of the Holocene. Nevertheless the latest data indicate that extinction of the Mammoth fauna was significantly delayed in the north of Eastern Siberia. In the 1990s some radiocarbon dates established that mammoths existed in the Holocene on Wrangel Island-from 7700 until 3700 yBP. Radiocarbon data show that wild horses inhabited the north of Eastern Siberia 4600-2000 yBP. Muskoxen lived here about 3000 yBP. Some bison remains from Eastern Siberia belong to the Holocene. The following circumstances could promote the survival of representatives of Mammoth fauna. Cool and dry climate in this region promotes the maintenance of steppe associations-the habitats of those mammals. Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic settlements are not found in the Arctic zone of Eastern Siberia from Taimyr Peninsula to the lower Yana River; they are very rare in basins of the Indigirka and Kolyma Rivers. The small number of Stone Age hunting tribes in the northern part of Eastern Siberia was probably another factor that contributed to the survival of some Mammoth fauna representatives.

Conclusions

New records and radiocarbon dates indicate that the extinction of the Mammoth fauna in Northern Eurasia between the Pleistocene and the Holocene was delayed in the north of Eastern Siberia. The following circumstances could promote the survival of representatives of the Mammoth fauna: (1) cool and dry climate of this region promotes the maintenance of steppe associations-habitats of those mammals; (2) some portions of the relict steppes exist now in Yakutia among taiga and tundra zones; (3) the larger number of Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites are found on the southern and central parts of Eastern Siberia and they are very rare in the north of this region (after Mochanov, 1977; Argunov, 1990; Fedoseeva, 1999). Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic settlements are not found in the Arctic zone of the Eastern Siberia mainland from Taimyr Peninsula to the lower parts of the Yana River; they are very rare in the basins of the Indigirka and Kolyma Rivers. Obviously this region was poorly settled by humans during the Late Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene (Fig. 1). So, the small number of hunting tribes of the Stone Age in the north of Eastern Siberia was probably another factor that contributed to the survival of some representatives of the Mammoth fauna.

(The Doi (permanent) address for the full article above is here)






French ecowarriors deflate SUVs

As the driver of a very small car myself, I regret that I must confess to some amusement at the report below. As well as my having a low fuel bill, easy parking and not being accused of anatomical deficiencies, my tyres will probably be unmolested!

"Drivers who park gas-guzzling 4x4s overnight in Paris are receiving an unpleasant surprise in the morning: flat tyres. A gang of young activists are deflating the tyres of what they regard as anti-social urban tanks which clog the narrow streets of the Left Bank. Claiming kinship with Greenpeace's war on motorised "climate criminals" in Britain, the group has immobilised dozens of Range Rovers, Mercedes, Jeeps and other upmarket quatre-quatres in the well-heeled sixth and seventh arrondissements since July.

To the amazement of furious owners, the police say that it is not a crime because property is not damaged. "We have had complaints, but it is not clear that any offence is being committed," said an officer at the sixth arrondissement. Owners may bring a civil action against the activists, who call themselves les Degonfles, the deflated ones, or in slang, the chickens or scaredycats. Thanks, in part, to their internet site (http://degonfle.blogg.org), which shows pictures of deflating raids, they say that they have spawned other groups in Lyon, Rouen, Geneva and even Australia.....

They expel the air slowly without setting off the vehicles' alarms, fixing open bicycle pump hoses to the tyre valves and returning later to collect their equipment. They leave a leaflet explaining their action. "Perhaps it's cowardly that we prefer to be anonymous, but we have received death threats," Joker added. "That's perfectly in keeping with the mentality of the 4x4 people who want to crush everything in their path."




MORE ON TEXTBOOKS AND TREES

I put up an email on this yesterday. Another reader has written in as follows:

"An interesting email about textbooks. I agree it's a racket of sorts, even with college level texts. The new edition of the textbook I use in one of my electronics courses is more or less the same as the previous edition, just a rearrangement with some cosmetic additions to make students buy new instead of used. However, this I don't agree with: "digital textbooks help save trees". Paper books are made from harvested trees, or recycled paper. I know of no real company that sells "forest products" will last long if they don't replant what they harvest. Trees are renewable."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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