Text 25770, 51 rader
Skriven 2006-12-10 18:19:15 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 25758 av VERN HUMPHREY (1:123/140)
Ärende: Election
================
VERN HUMPHREY -> MIMI GALLANDT wrote:
 VH>>>>> Global warming? :-)

 MG>>>> Ice age :)

 VH>>> I wish they'd make up their mind -- I bought a .458 Winchester
 VH> back in
 VH>>> the '70s when they were predicting an Ice Age, so I'd be ready
 VH> for the
 VH>>> Mammoths.  :-)

 MG>> You could eat for a year with one of those. :)

 VH> I was listening to an anthropologist talking about the impact of man on
 VH> the mammoth (there is a theory they were hunted to extinction.)  He said
 VH> a tribe might kill one, "And spend the rest of their lives talking about
 VH> it." :-)


He's probably right.  I don't buy the theory they were hunted out of existence.

The African elephant has existed alongside man for tens of thousands of years
in Africa without suffering any such danger of extinction.  It wasn't until the
introduction of firearms that elephants in Africa became endangered. There is
no logical reason to assume the mammoth was any different.

The mammoth had very few enemies.  The sabertooth cat and possibly the cave
lion were the only natural predators that could take down a healthy adult
animal, and then only under perfect conditions.  Humans at that point were
spread extremely thin across the southern edge of North America, down the west
coasts of North and South America and the edges of central America.  It took
mankind thousands of years to cross over the Siberian landbridge and spread
across those areas.  Given that they were still hunter gatherer bands at that
point, there weren't that many of them.  Certainly not enough to wipe something
like the mammoth.

What DID kill them off was the change in habitat climate.  The thing that shut
off the land bridge was the melting of the glacial ice sheets that covered most
of the northern hemisphere, causing the ocean levels to rise significantly.  As
the ice retreated, the climate changed and the mammoths simply couldn't adapt
fast enough to survive.  That is the same reason most of the megafauna - the
giant sloths, dire wolves, cave lions, sabertooths, and the huge herbivorous
mammals died out as well.

Another clue that it wasn't man is that of the hundreds of mammoth fossils
found over the years, very few have the characteristic markings on the bones
that would be indicate butchering with stone tools in common use by man at that
time.

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