As a counter point, African megafauna did not go extinct during the same time period, despite the constant presence of humans. African climate was also more stable during the time. On the other hand African megafauna would have co-evolved with humans, so they may have been adapted. But probably there was no single cause.
There’s enough food in africa where even today going out to hunt an elephant demands a brush gun and a white superiority complex, and is not how most hunt the bush.
It might have been driven by the same environmental changes that allowed humans to settle in a specific region in the first place. But in the end I guess it's several things coming together, like with most catastrophic events.
Climate change. The humans were there in part because of environmental change in the first place. Large deposits of dead animals all killed at the same time with no evidence of hunting or butchery makes mass die offs likely. Humans may have participated, but were likely only one among other factors.
and yet you've linked to an article that goes into detail about work that
may be close to a deathblow for the hypothesis.
"the hypothesis" being
First proposed in 1966 by paleontologist Paul Martin, this “overkill hypothesis” stated that the arrival of modern humans in each new part of the world brought with it the extinction of all those huge animals, whether through hunting them or outcompeting them.
So, we're back to correlation but not at all certain causation. By your link at the very least.
The Smithsonian Magazine here is being wishy washy and doing the "good points on both sides" thing .. it at least admits that the world has moved on from accepting Martins 1966 hypothesis at face value and that new work is continuing to reveal new insights.
TL;DR: no theories are beating it out human overkill. Megafauna need to show a mass extinction sans humans and that evidence is lacking. These animals survived a couple dozen ice ages but the final one ends their existence when humans arrived. We would want more hunting and butchering evidence and Africa kept much of its megafauna. So there are unanswered questions but overkill is still largely yhe leading theory
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I've always heard that megafauna disappearances coincide with human appearance; what other theories are beating that out?
As a counter point, African megafauna did not go extinct during the same time period, despite the constant presence of humans. African climate was also more stable during the time. On the other hand African megafauna would have co-evolved with humans, so they may have been adapted. But probably there was no single cause.
There’s enough food in africa where even today going out to hunt an elephant demands a brush gun and a white superiority complex, and is not how most hunt the bush.
It might have been driven by the same environmental changes that allowed humans to settle in a specific region in the first place. But in the end I guess it's several things coming together, like with most catastrophic events.
Climate change. The humans were there in part because of environmental change in the first place. Large deposits of dead animals all killed at the same time with no evidence of hunting or butchery makes mass die offs likely. Humans may have participated, but were likely only one among other factors.
These megafauna survived dozens of ice ages but not the one that had humans
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happened-...
True enough.
and yet you've linked to an article that goes into detail about work that
"the hypothesis" being So, we're back to correlation but not at all certain causation. By your link at the very least.The Smithsonian Magazine here is being wishy washy and doing the "good points on both sides" thing .. it at least admits that the world has moved on from accepting Martins 1966 hypothesis at face value and that new work is continuing to reveal new insights.
"Humans hunting megafaune to extinction" is a subset of "megafauna disappearances coincide with human appearance" (See: Venn Diagram).
The second does not imply the first, correlation is not causation.
See: almost any scholarly discussion on megafauna disappearences in (say) Australasia or elsewhee of the past few decades.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happened-...
TL;DR: no theories are beating it out human overkill. Megafauna need to show a mass extinction sans humans and that evidence is lacking. These animals survived a couple dozen ice ages but the final one ends their existence when humans arrived. We would want more hunting and butchering evidence and Africa kept much of its megafauna. So there are unanswered questions but overkill is still largely yhe leading theory
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40426463
Your article is a PopSci "both sides" summary that reinforces the notion of correlation and not causation.