Manda Jo, I’ve been reading about the early early Americans and thought that group may have been arrived in the US of A via ocean rather than land bridge (the easy way) and even may have different blood groups than the later arrivals - heard anything more about this?
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Consider how many species have become extinct just by us “Cavemen in bluejeans” expanding our territory or miss-managing our resources. We’re not even TRYING to kill stuff these days. If the game is humans vs megafauna, back the humans.
Boris, I’ll admit straight out I can’t back up my claim. It was in an article I read and I don’t remember where I read it or who the author was, much less whether he (or she) cited specific cases. Shoddy evidence, I know. I’d guess if an unarmed man was trying to kill an elephant, the best tactic would be to to try to stampede it into some kind of natural trap like a cliff or swamp.
I did try to do some research online on this question and came up with the following findings: 1. If you type “hunting” and “unarmed” into most search engines, you will end up in a lot of 2nd Amendment sites where the term “unarmed” seems to be synonymous with “made into a eunuch”. 2. If you Ask Jeeves “(I’m) Looking for stories of unarmed hunters”, his first interpretation of this question is “Where can I learn more about the history of the Gay Pride Parade?”. My conclusion at this time is that there is a disturbing inability to differentiate between a gun and a penis in the minds of a lot of people.
LittleNemo
Now, I think we’re really onto something. There was a funny spoof of this concept in the first Austin Powers when Austin pulls out his compact pistol, and Elizabeth Hurley pulls out her Desert Eagle, and Austin looks very intimidated.
I do know what you mean about using the stampede as a way to hunt. I remember seeing an artist’s impression of a bunch of American Indian women and children stampeding bison off a cliff at some natural history museum. (How the bison got into the museum I don’t know.)
Little Nemo, there are rhino in Java (Indonesia) and elephants from India to Vietnam (at least until recently). Why have Africans not killed off the wildebeests and zebras? Why did (American) Indians not kill off the buffalos? Probably because there were too many of them to physically kill.
You will need to postulate a pretty high population density over the Clovis-like points period in order for man to physically kill off the megafauna even assuming overkill practices.
I think you have to differentiate environments where there are essentially no predators (like Hawaii) where someone like a Stone Age man can walk up to a flightless bird and hit it up along side the head from a continent wide ecosystem where the prey-predator relationship is “red in tooth and claw”.
When there is a new land bridge there is bound to be new invaders bringing new deadly scourges. They don’t have to be two legged with stone weapons. They could be four legged with ticks, fleas and germs that the locals have never encountered.
You seem very sure that the introduction of a new disease is not a strong factor. There was a massive depopulation of the Indians in the SE United States between the time of De Soto’s expedition and the Europeans’s more intensive exploitation and settlement 100 years later. This has been explained as the effect of disease. Without knowing that, the evidence could indicate that early European settlers killed them off. The advancing frontier of disease always preceded the physical presence of the Europeans and made their conquest much easier.
Jois, has anybody kept a long term score in the pygmy vs elephant death match? On any given Suday, I bet that is a toss up.
Hey! Mipsman!
Look at this: “You seem very sure that the introduction of a new disease is not a strong factor.” Look at the the flu, dozens of us were at death’s door this winter with the flu, did the cats get it? The dogs?
Not all diseases are suited to all animals and the kinds of things that would kill a hoofed animal might not bother an elephant or mammoth or split hoofed beast.
Plus diseases have to have a sizable population to spread or the host dies before the disease can be transmitted.
4-5 different people have given 4-5 different versions of lethal-humans-knock-new-world-big-beasties but just give it a bit of thought. Why would diseases seem more logical when you already know what big time killers we are!
Or better still - email your email address and I’ll send you a copy of that map I mentioned.
Mipsman: “Jois, has anybody kept a long term score in the pygmy vs elephant death match? On any given Suday, I bet that is a toss up.”
It couldn’t be a toss up, what a waste of father/husband/son that would be - they are supposed to be highly skilled hunters. It is hard to imagine the skill level in a culture so different from our own. I wonder what they would think of a NARCAR(?) race? (And, they go around this little circle because?)
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
To Mipsman and other interested parties:
{url=http://www.wkap.nl/sampletoc.htm?1059-0161+8+1+2000]Peopling of the New World
Friedel, Stuart J “The Peopling of the New World: Present Evidence, New Theories and Future Directions”, Journal of Archaeological Research, Volume 8, Issue 1 (March 2000)
pps 39-103
You’ll need adobe acrobat and a little time - tons of pages.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Humans as hunters could not & did not wipe out the Pleistocece fauna in America. If they were that good, they would have wiped out the Bison 1st, as Bison are REAL easy to kill, in mass quanities, by humans (we stampede them off cliffs, the Amerinds were still doing this until the whiteman came up w/ guns). Did man hunt & kill the direwolf, cavebear & sabercat, too (yes, if we killed off most of what they ate, they would have dwindled, but not gone away entirely. The Tule Elk & CA condor are still remnants of the Pleistocene fauna, and they were in CA).
Almost never in a large area, is man fully responsible for wiping out a species by hunting. Even w/ modern firearms, only a few rare & marginal species were “extincted” soley by hunting. The Passenger Pidgeon you say? Nope, it was the cutting down of the great hardwood forests of the East that did them in. In Environmental Science, you learn that predation alone rarely wipes out a species, as long as the niche is intact. After a while, the prey population gets too small to bother hunting it. Oh, don’t get me wrong, by wiping out habitats, and introducing new creatures to compete for the niche, and etc, Man has certainly done his share of harm, and more. But NOT by just hunting.
If we have problems wiping out a species with guns, and 1000’s time more people, how did a few guys do it w/ spears?
That map; coinidence. I am not willing to rule out the spread of a disease, tho.
Hi Danielinthewolvesden,
IF you are not willing to rule out the spread of disease, how about naming a couple that would destroy that many species over that wide an area in that amount of time.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
AUK!
Peopling of the New World
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
None that would be that good, I’m afraid, but there could have been a couple/3+. Anthrax will attack many mammals, and is very fatal & very fast. Deadlier than a stone tipped spear, anyway. I’m not locked into the disease idea, but that, plus climate, plus hunting could have done it.
Jois, I am not a veterinarian, just trying to hypothesize a mortality mechanism that could spread out quickly over a continent and eradicate most of the big furry parts of the ecosystem. A pathogen is much more potent than a projectile point.
Hoof-and-mouth disease, rabies, “mammoth” flu … something that the New World never saw before. Since the big hairy, herding animals were irradicated maybe it was tick or flea carried (but deer, elk, moose, and reindeer have ticks and fleas too).
What about something like the disease brucellosis? That is the disease that the ranchers say the buffalo communicate to their cattle and result in still births and miscarriages. If I recall correctly, it is spread by buffalo spit. That would be a vector that would focus on herding animals.
I am familiar with your map. Whatever caused the extinction almost certainly came out of the northwest over the landbridge.
This was also a joke in the film City Heat. Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood have been trapped by the bad guys and are under fire. Burt pulls out his gun which has a eight inch barrel. Holding the gun up he looks at Clint with a smirk. Clint then pulls out his gun which has a twelve inch barrel and Burt’s smirk collapses.
Too true, Little Nemo, we just haven’t been doing this often enough lately. 
Do you remember Brecker’s (was that his name?) sharp description an exchange of opinions that goes to an exchange of quotes and then goes to an exchange of “I don’t care, I believe what I believe any way.” Who ever did it did a great job and I wish I had copied it when I saw it. I seldom have the patience for the “search” function of SDMB.
You needn’t be a veterinarian, just think back to your old biology classes or micro biology? A “germ” that is deadly and pretty slow to kill so it could get from host to host to host without dying with the host of the moment. Not an easy trick to catch up with the kind and variety of the animals at got lost.
Look at how little dammage (relatively) is being done to us by Lyme disease. Individually one by one as it occurs, it is a disaster but it hasn’t killed off the deer or local human populations.
MIPSMAN: “What about something like the disease brucellosis? That is the disease that the ranchers say the buffalo communicate to their cattle and result in still births and
miscarriages.” Well, half and half, the cattle are imports, the buffalo are naturals and probably share the same grazing area.
At disease that spreads through short coated, long haired, (I think I already mentioned foot/paw differences) tree eating, grass eating and so on.
Plus doesn’t that book with Martin’s map talk about how difficult it is to get hunter gatherers to give up that way of life? Hey, Mikey, they like it! Culture changes (and replacements) took place in Europe at the rate of 1km per year. Would have been easier than that to walk the Americas.
Have to go and put the 200 lb chicken in the basement now, neighbors will shoot it if I don’t.
never saw before. Since the big hairy, herding animals were irradicated maybe it
was tick or flea carried (but deer, elk, moose, and reindeer have ticks and fleas
too).
What about something like the disease brucellosis? That is the disease that the
ranchers say the buffalo communicate to their cattle and result in still births and
miscarriages. If I recall correctly, it is spread by buffalo spit. That would be a
vector that would focus on herding animals.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Ok folks, but those who blame hunting, here is a challenge: name a major species that was wiped out by hunting w/ guns.
If we can’t do it with weapons a hundred times more lethal, and 10000-100000 times more people/hunters, how do you explain under a million w/ stone tipped spears?
Wolves in England.
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
Danielinthewolvesden,
Along the same lines, name a megafauna fossil find without without Clovis points or other human killing tools.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
Danielinthewolvesden,
Along the same lines, name a megafauna fossil find without without Clovis points or other human killing tools.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley