Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Our old friend Chris Turney, whose ship of fools got stuck in the ice while he was attempting to study global warming in the Antarctic, and replicate Mawson’s expedition, has published a new study which claims that Mammoths were killed by climate change.
According to Turney’s abstract;
The mechanisms of Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions remain fiercely contested, with human impact or climate change cited as principal drivers. Here, we compare ancient DNA and radiocarbon data from 31 detailed time series of regional megafaunal extinctions/replacements over the past 56,000 years with standard and new combined records of Northern Hemisphere climate in the Late Pleistocene. Unexpectedly, rapid climate changes associated with interstadial warming events are strongly associated with the regional replacement/extinction of major genetic clades or species of megafauna. The presence of many cryptic biotic transitions prior to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary revealed by ancient DNA confirms the importance of climate change in megafaunal population extinctions and suggests that metapopulation structures necessary to survive such repeated and rapid climatic shifts were susceptible to human impacts.
The full study is unfortunately paywalled, but I think we get the idea.
Mammoths survived from the Pliocene epoch, around five million years ago, to around 4500 years ago – so they survived until the end of the Holocene Optimum, the peak warm period of our current interglacial, which preceded our cooler modern climate.
However, the Mammoths also survived the Eemian Interglacial, a much warmer period than today, which occurred between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago. The Mammoths survived the mid Pliocene, 3 million years ago, when temperatures were 2-3c higher than today, and sea levels were 25m higher.
So it seems likely Mammoths would have survived the comparatively feeble warmth of our Holocene, if it weren’t for humans.
History books I used to study, suggest humans built cunning traps for the megafauna they hunted. Who hasn’t seen dramatic pictures of primitive humans holding spears, surrounding some rearing colossus.
But this isn’t the full story. Primitive humans made extensive use of fire. Fire had multiple benefits; Grasslands are highly productive, in terms of food animals, more so than forests, where many of the interesting animals live up the tops of the trees, out of reach. Deliberately burning the forests on a regular basis created more grasslands. And frankly, why bother chasing big animals, risking injury and death, if you can simply set fire to the entire region, then wander over afterwards and brush the charcoal off the pre-cooked meat? Kind of a primitive version of fast food.
Turney’s abstract grudgingly acknowledges the impact of humans on megafauna. But I suspect the human influence was probably far more important than the climate influence. Otherwise, mammoths would have survived the comparatively feeble warmth of the Holocene, just as they survived much warmer past interglacials, over their long existence.
The same anthropological egoism that assumes we are much smarter than our forebears, so they couldn’t have possibly found simple, labor-saving ways of moving multi-ton stones to build megalithic structures without hordes of slaves, also assumes *their* forebears had nothing more potent than sticks and stones to bring down megafauna.
Just as it was accidentally discovered that the Incas had extremely clever ways of shaping massive stones using mainly wood, leather, and water, I expect it will someday be discovered that the same cleverness could have wiped out entire herds of mammoths using mainly teamwork and the local geography, even as the Native Americans used to do with the bison at “buffalo jumps.”
Atlatls, and fire, would help.
Auto
The death of the Mammoths has been tied to an impact event. https://youtu.be/f1GCgOI3B1o?list=PL741568C2D58A9793
Except that there is no valid evidence of an impact then. And why didn’t the alleged impact kill off thwe Caribbean megafauna?
And N. American mammoths – and mega fauna, survived to about 11,000 years ago – not BC/BCE.
A stressor – possibly, if validated. Some suggestion that it is not fully validated.
Auto
It’s not validated at all.
The carrier pigeon was also killed by climate change. So were JFK, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe.
You forgot Bigfoot.
They’ve never buried a Bigfoot.
FWIW, here’s how the Pygmies of Africa used to hunt elephants:
In his note on “.4 Wooden Spear of Third Interglacial Age from Lower Saxony,’’
Dr. H. L. Movius, Jr.? refers to the elephant hunting methods of the Pygmies of the
Cameroons, and I was especially interested in his remarks in this regard. From 1932
to 1936 I was prospecting in the Ituri Forest of the Belgian Congo among Pygmies and
elephants. There the Pygmies hunt the elephant in a manner that is very like the one
described by E. Zwilling for the Cameroons. The differences are as follows:
1. In the Ituri Forest the Pygmies use short lances with a very large and broad iron blade
(cu. 30×20 cm.) mounted on a short (cu. 75 cm.) and thick handle made of hardwood.
This weapon is razor sharp, and normally it belongs to a Bantu chieftain for whom the
Pygmies hunt under some sort of a contract.
2. The hunter sneaks una?meath the standing elephant and thrusts the spear upward into its
soft belly with a lightning-quick movement. This is a choice place because the shortnecked
elephant can neither see under its belly nor reach there with its trunk. Of course,
the hunter seizes the first second during which the wounded beast is wondering what
has happened to him to jump aside. Sometimes they have time to give the handle a jerk
thereby enlarging the wound.
Before approaching his quarry the Pygmy hunter goes to one of the shallow pools,
where the animals have their daily mudbath, and smears his entire body with mud, so
he cannot be smelled out by his quarry. He is absolutely naked when hunting.
JEAN JANMART
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1952.54.1.02a00440/pdf
Pygmy killing elephants did require BALLS. I find it amusing that some anthropologists thought that the mere presence of the short faced bear was enough of an obstacle to human migration from Asia to the Americas as to influence the timing of that migration.
The LaBrea tar pits provide evidence that many animals adapted to ice age conditions were replaced as climate changed.
Chunky dire wolves and sabertooth cats were replaced by more nimble gray wolves and cougars. A larger species of bison was replaced by the one almost killed off by Europeans with guns.
Meanwhile, coyotes, a more adaptable canine that existed along with dire wolves, thrive.
The mammoth species that went extinct recently was itself a replacement for a previous mammoth species. Perhaps it too would have evolved if not for more efficient grazers and predators encroaching on its preferred habitat (it did evolve on Wrangel Island, becoming smaller).
I don’t understand why the cause of the mammoth’s demise is such an issue. If humans don’t kill off the elephants, the next ice age might produce a replacement.
“Thverdeviewer: “The LaBrea tar pits provide evidence that many animals adapted to ice age conditions were replaced as climate changed.”
Except ice age conditions did not exist in Southern California as they existed elsewhere. Whatever it was that killed off the mammoths in Southern California, it wasn’t ice.
I think you’ve got some difficulty with reading comprehension, Combotechie. Nowhere did I suggest that ice age mammals were killed by ice. And whatever conditions existed in Southern California during the last ice age were “ice age conditions” at that location. Southern California was definitely cooler and wetter at the last glacial maximum, with temperate forest. Sea level was over 300 feet lower. Then things changed.
I’m saying “invasive species” can contribute to the demise of resident flora and fauna when climatic conditions favor the invaders. And I don’t understand how climatological causes for the mammoth’s extinction provides any argument for climatastrophy.
One must realize that the mammoth is only one species of many that died out, and not only North America, also the other America’s and Eurasia. Megafauna has also died out at places that are totally devoid of any sign of humans at that time, like for instance the Taymyr peninsula and Wrangel island. We do know that climate changed dramatically in North Siberia, distroying the megafauna steppe.
But that does not explain why camels died out in the Yukon and Alaska thousends of years earlier etc, etc, and why the giant deer died out only some 5000 years ago, let alone the extinction of the European Straight tusked elephant much earlier during the late Pleistocene, like the European hippo’s and rhino’s and the european Sabertooth cat. It’s not that a single species died out at a single place at a single time.
Honor the wolf, for the wolf keeps the caribou strong.
Funny how “climate change” is code for warming for Warmunist “researchers”.
Ah dear Chris, he set me off writing jolly little ditties
When I was in school, I was told that Mammoths went extinct over 10,000 years ago. But the date keeps moving up. That makes sense because, as the population got smaller, their remains would be fewer and harder to find. In 2013, Discover Magazine put the date at about 3700 years ago:
“Scientists believe the last of them may have died on Russia’s Wrangel Island in the Arctic around 1700 B.C.”
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/oct/05-what-killed-off-the-woolly-mammoths
Funny how we’re now finding their remains, frozen in permafrost.
Yup it was climate change that done it. It also wiped out some of my distant relatives from the neander valley. It is becoming apparent some small groups of distant relatives survived nearly intact, and have gone on to write papers and do climate research. The concern about climate change must be imprinted into the genes of the survivors, any change triggering climate paranoia. The concern must be real in their minds, especially after such a climate related disaster.
I see that none of the comments mention the Younger Dryas period, an abrupt cold spell between 12,900 and 11,500 years B.P. Prior to that time mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, glyptodonts, short-faced bears, the American lion, Dire wolves, horses, and camels roamed North America. By the end of the Younger Dryas cold spell, most of these animals had disappeared. The cause of the disappearance is controversial. Perhaps it was a combination of climate (cold), hunting, and disease. Bison were in North America at the time and they survived. It’s still a mystery.
Eric W: this Turney article has a little information about the climate change extinctions.
https://theconversation.com/dna-evidence-proves-climate-change-killed-off-prehistoric-megafauna-45080
I wonder if we can prove the climate also killed the dodo?
Turney may be right. He probably is not, but what do I know.
I would like to know if he ever planted those kauri trees he promised, to offset his disastrous southern jaunt
It has always struck me that there is an almost pathological aversion by many earth scientists to the idea that astronomical events can have major influences on life on earth. Several of your contributors have mentioned the possibility of a major impact event in North America being involved in the mega-fauna extinction and a look at the extraordinarily long list of very well adapted animals that disappear seems to indicate something more dramatic that handfuls of early people developing a serious grudge against mammoths when there was plenty of other game at hand besides. After all there are still plenty of earth scientists about – volcanologists in particular – who are in denial about the severity of the KT impact being sufficient to kill the dinosaurs.
It took modern Americans armed with repeating rifles and backed up by serious monetary reward a couple of decades to not quite wipe out the bison. Yet we are seriously asked to believe that handfuls of early people embarked on the extermination of vast herds of dangerous animals in a way that is at odds with everything we know about the behaviour of subsistence tribal people.
Or we can think about widespread evidence of an impact event leaving shocked impact materials and glasses that appears to be right in date for the mega-fauna extinction and the undoubted climate change that would have followed.
But then I forget that the only climate change allowed is when it is caused by people burning fossil fuels.Put another mammoth on the fire please.
The impact hypothesis for Holocene megafauna has been debunked over and over, yet is still out there. You are evidence. The supposed layer in various deposits in the Northern hemisphere have been radiocarbon dated. They all come in at different ages, probably the result of forest fires. So unless you think radiocarbon dating is bunkum, the hypothesis is busted. Don’t have the URL to hand, but IIRC the definitive paper came from or was in rebuttal to U. Arizona.
Clovis man appears on the North American continent 12-13k years ago. The Younger Dryas period of drastic NH climate change, possibly caused by an impact, occurs from 11-12k years ago. Wooly Mammoths go extinct 10k years ago.What was the population of North American people 10k years ago? Maybe a few tens of thousands? Pre-Columbian estimates are only in the range of 2 million people and that’s 9.5k years after the major mammoth extinction. So, how many people would it take, 10k years ago, to wipe out the mammoths on a continent of 9.5 million square miles? The hunting hypothesis is ‘bunkum’ and likely serves to confirm Paul Ehrlich’s Anthropocene extinction ideas.
Ockham:
I believe the consensus estimate has been moving much higher in recent years. By a factor of five to ten and possibly more. Post-Columbian disease probably reduced native North American populations significantly and made it easier for Euopeans to steal their land.
-“After all there are still plenty of earth scientists about – volcanologists in particular – who are in denial about the severity of the KT impact being sufficient to kill the dinosaurs.”
Claiming someone is a denier when the evidence for your hypothesis is becoming weaker & weaker, hmmmmm where have I heard that before?
Actually the Impact people are like the Geocentrists, in that instead of adding more & more epicycles they keep adding more & more impacts.
I always thought the woolly mammoth faded away when polyester came out.
Max
Fortunately my coffee mug was empty. Plus one!
Auto.
The use of fire by ancient humans is pretty well established in Australia where it is now clear after more than 2 centuries of european ‘settlement’ that the ‘natural’ landscape now is very different from that when the ships first arrived.
There are many, many references from the early days to the landscape looking like ‘an english gentleman’s park’ which is now how one would describe it now. It turns out that the Australian Aborigines were ‘constant gardeners’ whose primary large scale tool was fire. They emlpoyed a number of fire regime stragetgies to ‘sculpt’ the flora typically say creating open clearings with grass adjacent wooded areas from which grazing animals could be attacked. Other outcomes were also achieved which made life more convenient. They turned a natural idiosyncracy of the Australian flora, fire adaption which achieved what cold winters and snow achieves where decidiuous flora dominate, to their advantage.
It does not take much imagination then to appreciate that the same human intelligence and keen sense of understanding of the environemnet necessary for survival could have developed a stratagy to kill megafauna including one which employed fire.
You would think Turney, being based in Australia, would make the connection or does the ship of fools metaphor apply to UNSW more generally, that outpost of modern academia recently settled (invaded) by a particularly toxic strain of educated idiot.
The paper in question sounds like a classic LPU ( least publishable unit) which is the ‘big mac index’ unit that applies to academia these days. Essentially it is about published papers being a unit of marketing impact not intellectual output. A bit like those flyers you get from your local elected representative telling you what a great job they are doing and to contact them any time to tell them your ideas or concerns… but without the substance.
Someone needs to get Turney back on message. If pre-pre-pre-industrial climate change extinctified the mammoths, that means at least one major extinction wasn’t our fault. This is not politicially correct and cannot be permitted in the consensus discourse. Everything bad that happens in the world is the fault of humans. Sheesh — it’s like herding cats with these guys.
Alan,
Are you implying – despite lack of /sarc tag – that the demise of the dinosaurs (except the dinoaves) might not have been caused by H sapiens and his’n’hers SUVs?
I have a particularly stringent soap if you do need to wash your mouth out after uttering an obvious impiety!
Auto
PS mods – yeah – /sarc
I know the Permian mass-extinction was entirely due to careless Chelsea Tractor drivers.
But the real problem was that getting rid of all those dead animals was a mammoth undertaking so to speak.
turkey buzzards – still not extinct!
They should be, as Turkey vultures are not buzzards.
Big land animals were killed by climate change not stone age humans. Don’t let these people buffalo you.
So that is why there are no ice bears, brown bears, elk and moose. Thanks. I always wondered about that.
You need a tuneup on your pun filter.
Just for reference regarding Pleistocene megafauna extinctions & cometary participation:
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/18/6520.full
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20641.abstract
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/45/E4171.full
http://cintos.org/SaginawManifold/ObliqueImpacts/Taurid/index.html
http://www.saguaro-juniper.com/i_and_i/history/clovis_folsom_transition.htm
There was an excellent paper posted at scribd (http://www.scribd.com/doc/27825834/Napier-Astro-Model-Ras) entitled “Palaeolithic extinctions and the Taurid Complex” by W. M. Napier that has unfortunately been taken down due to copyright infringement – may be available elsewhere.
My sense is that the debate regarding Pleistocene extinctions is far from over.
The problem with the humans-did-it hypothesis is that widest variety and largest numbers of megafauna are located precisely where humans have the most persistent and ancient presence….Africa. Secondly, they are currently found where humans have a very ancient and possibly the densest current presence…India. Both locations which, I add, are in the tropics.
And clearly, climate change killed the literally millions of flash frozen megafauna in Siberia….but I have never seen anyone, other than Velikovsky or Hapgood, attempt an explanation of this true “elephant in the living room”.
1) The African megafauna evolved a long side of humans. Therefore they had an advantage over their European/American counterparts
2) Humans did actually cause many extinctions. There were several different species of elephants, hippos, giraffes, Saber toothed cats living in Africa when humans first came about.
3) A new dominant predator on the scene is often the cause of mass extinctions.
For example, About 2 million years ago, the isthmus of Panama rose out the sea. This allowed the Saber toothed tiger in the north to enter South America where it wreaked havoc on the previously isolated continent. Much of South American’s mega-fuana was no match for the Saber Toothed cats and were driven extinct (most notably the continent’s dominant predator at the time, the Terror Birds).
So if Saber Toothed Tigers can cause all that damage, it’s not hard too see human who are much better and efficient hunters doing the same.
‘Odd then, that one of the so-called terror birds – Titanis lived in Florida and Texas before the land bridge formed.
“A University of Florida-led study has determined that Titanis walleri, a prehistoric 7-foot-tall flightless “terror bird,” arrived in North America from South America long before a land bridge connected the two continents.”
http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2007/01/terror-bird-arrived-in-north-america-before-land-bridge-study-finds.html
http://www.wired.com/2011/02/terror-birds-aint-what-they-used-to-be-a-titanis-take-down/
Odder still, that despite their fearsome reputation, imposing beaks, and talons, most of the terror birds lacked binocular vision. Killer whales lack binocular vision, but these marine mammals use echolocation for sensory input while hunting.
Unless someone can present evidence of a modern predator lacking both binocular vision and echolocation, I remain unconvinced that the terror birds were predators.
“The presence of many cryptic biotic transitions prior to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary revealed by ancient DNA confirms the importance of climate change in megafaunal population extinctions and suggests that metapopulation structures necessary to survive such repeated and rapid climatic shifts were susceptible to human impacts. ”
Quite possibly true but so what? Nothing here not already known. I wonder if he would count the great auks and the beothuks among those (mega)fauna eradicated by climate change?
dp
July 24, 2015 at 10:12 am
I don’t think so. The First People were smarter than you might realize. Why would they want to “wipe out” their primary food source?
When a European joined the Inoca for a buffalo hunt, he was too terrified to do much, but eventually mustered the courage to kill a bison calf, for which he was scolded by the tribe elders for wasting a bullet.
Inoca (Ilimouec, Illinois, Illini, Peoria) Ethnohistory Project:
Eye Witness Descriptions of the Contact Generation,
1667 – 1700
http://virtual.parkland.edu/lstelle1/len/center_for_social_research/inoca_ethnohistory_project/inoca_ethnohistory.htm
To return to the hunt in which our savages engaged, they killed 120 buffalos from which they brought back a hundred tongues. The people from my cabin smoked these and distributed them among themselves to carry to me.
We remained a week in this place in order to dry all this meat. They make for this purpose a kind of cradle ten feet long, three feet wide, and four feet high, which they call gris, upon which they spread out their meat after preparing it. Under this they kindle a little fire. They are at it for a day, ordinarily, when they wish to dry a flat side. There are two of these in a buffalo. They take it from the shoulder clear to the thigh and from the hump to the middle of the belly, after which they spread it out as thin as they can, making it usually four feet square. They fold it up while still hot, like a portfolio, so as to make it easier to carry. The most robust men and women carry as many as eight, for a whole day. This is not possible in autumn nor in winter, however, as the cows are then very fat; they then can carry four at most.
The drying of this meat by the women and girls does not prevent the young men from going to the chase every day each for himself, for it is only when they all go together that they have guards. If anyone has no luck (which rarely happens in buffalo hunting), his relatives contribute from their share. These little hunts are ordinarily for bucks, bears, and young turkeys, on which they feast, not failing to invite the strangers whom they have among them (a very frequent thing), such as Miami, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and others; so that there were days when I was invited as many as ten times. We did not dare to refuse, having learned that they were grieved if anyone who was among them did not come.
Some days later they again surrounded a large herd of buffalos. I went to the chase in the hope of finding some one of these isolated so as to surprise and kill him, and thus redeem in some sort the poor opinion they had formed of me because of the apprehension I had shown at the sight of the first buffalos.
About an eighth of a league from the spot where we were camping I heard a loud breathing in the brushwood. I listened very intently, and, having assured myself that I was not mistaken, I advanced as softly as I could and saw a calf stretched on the ground, its mother having been killed. It was completely exhausted. I did not wait long to discharge my gun. Several women who were in the vicinity, engaged in peeling off bark, came up on hearing the report. One of them, leaving the others, went off to the village to announce that I had killed a calf. Two old men came up, who gave me to understand that the animal was not worth the shot, as the calves are never fat;
Memoir of De Gannes Concerning the Illinois Country
http://virtual.parkland.edu/lstelle1/len/center_for_social_research/inoca_ethnohistory_project/DEGANNES.HTM
By the time Illinois became a state in 1818, most of the surviving Inoca had “sold” their land to the U.S. Gov’t, and shuffled off first to Kansas, then to Oklahoma, where their descendants remain.
The point here, however, is it was not the seeming extravagance of the Inoca’s buffalo hunts that threatened to wipe out bison in N. America, but rather a coordinated effort to deprive the native people of their primary food source:
Some scholars suggest that in order to make migration to the west easier, the US government, through the Army, adopted a policy to exterminate the buffalo. Extermination of the buffalo would inevitably mean the demise of the Indians who so relied on them for almost every aspect of their existence.
“Although the army was plagued by strategic failures, the near extermination of the American bison during the 1870s helped to mask the military’s poor performance. By stripping many Indians of their available resources, the slaughter of the buffalo severely reduced the Indians’ capacity to continue an armed struggle against the United States. The military’s role in this matter is difficult to asses. Sheridan and Sherman recognized that eliminating the buffalo severely reduced the Indians’ capacity to continue an armed struggle against the United States. The editors of the Army and Navy Journal supported the proposition, comparing such an effort with Civil War campaigns against Confederate supplies and food sources.”
http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/buffalo.htm
Color me highly skeptical that hunters with bows and spears exterminated the mammoths and mastodons that populated N. America. The accounts of the cliff drives are interesting, but I suggest that there are not many suitable cliffs where such a maneuver may be executed, and as the DeGannes memoir makes clear, the meat has to be lugged back to the camp/village at some point.
It’s pretty well established (at least I thought it was) that First Nations often exhausted their food supply. That’s why their settlements were temporary and scattered around. If you’ve ever been to a northern First Nations settlement you will know why most don’t bother to hunt and fish anymore. The lakes near the settlements are all fished out and the wildlife has been hunted to extinction. You will often find caribou near the exploration camps – places where hunting is not allowed.
Thanks Steve P,agreed.
I am surprised not to read on this thread about the different abrupt and catastrophic climate changes at the onset of the Younger Dryas, during and at the end.
There is a book from Allan and Delair : Cataclysm ! Compelling evidence of a cosmic catastrophe in 9500 BC
This explains the extinctions much better in my opinion. A specie can be extinct in a couple of weeks if it has no food supply.