Tuesday, April 02, 2002- - -
Evidence Found of Ferrous Huevos Culture.
I read often that this or that Pleistocene species 'may have been hunted to extinction when humans entered the western hemisphere.' The Clovis peoples, being the earliest generally accepted inhabitants of North America, are probably the most frequently fingered for these Terminal Pleistocene orgies of extinction.
While human predation was certainly a factor to be considered, how heavily that factor weighed in the extinction of any given species is an issue of considerable debate. I couldn't begin to sum up the current state of the debate nearly as well as Doc Frison already has. In this passage Doc employs a wit so dry that folks often miss it entirely:
Any discussion of mammoth hunting inevitably bring forth the question of mammoth extinction. Since Martin's (1967) article, Pleistocene overkill versus extinctions by natural causes has been a subject of numerous articles and debates with no indication that the problem will be resolved, at least in the immediate future. The Colby site [about 2 miles east of where I blog this] constitutes a significant part of the present data base on Clovis mammoth hunting in North America, and, being the principal investigator of the site, I claim the privilege of making comments, being fully aware they will probably serve only to fuel the controversy rather than resolve the problem.
The Colby site provides the only known evidence to date on the Northwestern Plains from which it is possible to propose an actual mammoth procurement strategy. This is because of the unequivocal association of Clovis materials in an identifiable landform, a deep, steep-walled arroyo, strongly suggesting some sort of natural trap. Juvenile animals were apparently the preferred target of long-term, systematic exploitation of a resident mammoth herd. The area was apparently capable of supporting mammoths at that time but the same is untrue today. Consequently, and based on paleoecological analyses of climatic studies at the terminal Pleistocene and beginning Holocene, we can assume that a deterioration of the area in terms of its animal-carrying capacity was in the process, which was not favorable for the mammoth populations.
At the same time, mammoths in the Colby site area which were facing problems due to diminishing forage were faced also with an intrusion of obviously successful human predators who were killing mostly young animals. For a species in which females produced young at the age of about 15 years, had a gestation period of under 2 years, and a mean calving interval of somewhere around 6 years (see Laws et al. 1975), the combination of human predation and a deteriorating environment were operating against survival of the species. Consequently, both human predation and climatic factors could have had strong implications in mammoth extinction on the Northwestern Plains.
On the other hand, deterioration of the environment was toward present conditions, which were continually more favorable for horse habitat, as can be demonstrated today by ever-increasing herds of feral horses. The archaeological record has produced little if any reliable evidence that either the Pleistocene horse or camel was systematically hunted by Clovis (see Frison et al. 1978) or any other cultural group, and both species became extinct in the area. However, the bison, which was the most heavily hunted of all the species by human predators, did manage to escape extinction along with the pronghorn, which was the next most heavily hunted species. .. We are left with the conclusion that more data are needed before the Pleistocene extinction problem can be resolved.
I might add that the African lion-sized Smilodon and the Short-faced bear, "the most powerful predator of the American Pleistocene," [think Grizzly bigger than a Clydesdale here] also became extinct about that time, and no one I've read has ever suggested that they were hunted to extinction. On the contrary, someone (who? Hmm. I can't remember.) has suggested that humans couldn't occupy the western h