Someone explain to me how prehistoric hominids allegedly drove so much of the world's megafauna to extinction, when the continent hominids originated from is the only continent that still has megafauna that survived to the modern day?
This seems like a glaring contradiction.
We've got moose in north america
People will annihilate anything dangerous to their tribe nearby. Just look at predator culling.
Predator culling and over hunting combined with probably finnicky animals that do stupid and weird shit to reproduce, or eat very specific things, and you got the recipe for extinction.
A lot of animals do really stupid and needlessly complex shit to mate and eat. It's fucking retarded.
Why is Jesus fighting with animals?
They were tasty and abundant sources of meat. They hunted them for food. I hear they are bringing back Mammoths within a year or two, I will hunt and eat Mammoths too and honor my ancestors.
It's the same reason for why Africa didn't have the same concentration of civilisations as Europe: it's a really fucking big place where biomes stretch for hundreds if not thousands of miles. In Europe the terrain is broken up by rivers, mountains etc.
>Africa
>Megafauna live in massive biome
>Local tribe kill the shit out of them
>Makes no difference as the same megafauna species just recolonises from further down the road
>Europe
>Megafauna are in restricted or isolated biomes
>Local tribe kill the shit out of them
>Repopulation is either difficult or impossible
>Go extinct
>Africa
>Neighbouring tribe act like fucking dicks and want to take your resources
>lmao w/ever, just move a few miles away, it's exactly the same land as the one you just left
>Your way of life continues as normal
>Europe
>Neighbouring tribe act like fucking dicks and want to take your resources
>There is literally nowhere else for you to go
>Fight tooth and claw to keep your shit because otherwise you're fucked
>Develop fortifications and better weapons to fight off competitors
>Suddenly civilisation happens
>Africa
>Neighbouring tribe act like fucking dicks and want to take your resources
>lmao w/ever, just move a few miles away, it's exactly the same land as the one you just left
>Your way of life continues as normal
>Europe
>Neighbouring tribe act like fucking dicks and want to take your resources
>There is literally nowhere else for you to go
>Fight tooth and claw to keep your shit because otherwise you're fucked
>Develop fortifications and better weapons to fight off competitors
>Suddenly civilisation happens
This is completely wrong. There are actually fewer "places to go" in Africa than Europe. Europe is more or less a paradise for hunter gatherers, but it's an even greater paradise for agrarians and herders which is why civilization developed there and then took over. Asia is similar, but the Himalayas kind of fuck things.
This doesn't explain why the Americas didn't grow the same way - it is just as good if not better than Europe.
If there is something to the size point brought up, then the size of America could help explain why paradise didn't lead to comparable levels of civ in that region.
Personally, I'm putting metallurgy as a higher factor than either. Africa and America were way late to the game on obtaining and using metals, especially bronze and iron.
They did. Their civilization collapsed multiple times, and they never started using bronze.
To add: never assume that because someone doesn't increase in technology that they are stupid or somehow broken. Civilization in the Americas was advanced and relatively comfortable. Europe is the outlier here, and it likely has to do with constant warfare.
I never said stupid or broken. I said they did not have comparable levels of civilization, a huge measure of which includes tech understanding and use.
Glad they had language and science and comfort. They never even worked with bronze. And they collapsed several times.
Not comparable.
>and it likely has to do with constant warfare.
So - like anon said - having such a large area meant you didn't have to be as warlike.
Europe was in a state of constant warfare because it had a massive trade route over the Mediterranean that connected it with Africa and the Middle East - two other regions with their own civilizations - and they constantly fought not just over resources but expansion into neighboring regions. Egypt fought Persia, Persia fought Greece, Romans fought everybody, Huns invaded. The conditions were all about who had the better tech. Oh, the Aryans have chariots? They fucking take India now. Oh, Egypt has Bronze? Yeah, they rule east North Africa and parts of the Middle east now. Oh, Persia just developed advanced governance and horse archers? They rule ALL of the Middle East now. Rome develops advanced military logistics? They rule Europe and North Africa. Etc, etc. It isn't just technology, it's everything. You want constant progress and reform in Europe. You stop moving, you die.
North America had no such cross continent trade system, and no such constant struggle over those continental civilizations. Civilizational collapse seems to have been about breakdown of local political structures, or failures in urban development. Cities weren't conquered, people just left. There's a huge difference in Mayan ruins and the ruins of ancient Troy.
its because america doesnt have easy to access iron, and think theyre missing either tin or copper for bronze, all they got is worthless silver and gold
Agriculture didn't make it North of Mesoamerica until 1000 B.C. That's a fairly significant gap relative to everyone else. And the Mississippians experienced exactly one collapse, then the Europeans popped up one, two centuries later.
No smelting, either. Only cold-hammered copper.
The deserts of northern Mexico served as a pretty hard barrier for the spread of civilisation.
>Oh, Egypt has Bronze?
For the longest time it didn't. It had shittons of gold, but was remarkably poor in bronze for a very long time, relative to Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The adoption of iron also took longer than elsewhere.
Egypt basically solved its problems by throwing its ridiculous manpower at them. In terms of bronze and iron per capita, it was shit.
Egypt did have bronze, they just traded for it or went to Sinai to mine it.
>Europe is more or less a paradise for hunter gatherers
And suddenly, Winters
>The Himalayas kind of fuck things
How so? If anything, they have been more beneficial and supportive to civilizational advancement and growth than any other mountain range as both the Indo-Gangetic and Yellow-Yangtze river systems (The sole reason for the existence of China and India) originate from there.
Also civilization as we know it began in the Near East, chuds. Egypt and Iraq (before the sand hordes and the Classical Age) were the only places which held some semblance and structure of a civilized, advanced, hierarchical and intricate social structure and society.
Then how did the megafauna disappear from Asia and America? The mammoth steppe ranged from western Europe, through all of Russia, across Beringia and deep into north America.
Was there highly concentrated civilization there too?
The mammoth steppe habitat disappeared at the end of the ice age. They simply lost their environment.
The mammoth steppe disappeared because the megafauna disappeared, not because of climate change. All of the boreal forest in siberia and canada and parts of the arctic tundra could be mammoth steppe if there was megafauna to trample down and graze the vegetation.
The trees grew after the megafauna was gone.
Ok right.
Survive an asteroid you trumpet snout fuckbeak.
>continent hominids originated from
Out of Africa is a fragile theory, both supported and contradicted by numerous other studies.
Regardless, Africa is large enough and has enough year-round resources to allow populations of large animals to survive comfortably WITH hominids without too much conflict.
In areas where resources are more difficult to access, the slightest disruption can be dramatic for the survival of populations.
A very simple example is the case of Moa birds in Australia.
It was a bird that needed a lot of food, it could be dangerous and it was enough to destroy the nests or the young to get rid of it in the long term.
I think that competition, the systematic elimination of the young and the climate changes of the time slowly got the better of Megafauna
Or it's aliens idk
>Out of Africa is a fragile theory
it's only fragile for fragile-minded incels that don't want to accept all of our first ancestors were black
I'd argue that a theory that implies africans are closer to primitive humans is more racist, but who am I to question it.
>implies africans are closer to primitive humans
how does it do that?
I'm guessing, people knowing jack shit about evolution without denying it will assume that if a trait didn't change (here, the skin color) no evolution occured at all.
Like the retards saying crocs, coelacanth and shit like that never evolved because their morphology barely changed.
>People knowing jackshit about evolution
The fossil record shows horseshoe crabs had little to no changes since they first evolved. One could argue they are kinda primitive since they evolved little traits that other crustaceans have. Yeah they sure had adaptation periods but if they are similar to basal they could be called 'more primitive'. I think people have a problem with this concept because they somehow think that proves evolution isn't real, but thats retarded.
Horseshoe crabs aren't crustaceans, you fucking moron. That alone just let me know you have zero clue what you're discussing here.
Yeah they're arthropods, same argument. Have you eaten breakfast today anon?
If a species remains in the same environment it's been in for hundreds of thousands or millions of years it's likely already fairly optimized for it, so the chance of beneficial mutations occuring and spreading through the gene pool will naturally be lower compared to a species placed in a foreign environment.
Pathogens, predators and stuff are only part of the environment, but behaviours and immune systems fossilize poorly. They still evolve constantly.
Do you have any evidence of different behavior? It would be bad to just assume it and then use it for argument.
Maybe their behavior was evolving is a pointless thing to put forward on its own.
Behaviour exist today so they have evolved. I know no proof of fossilized behaviour for horseshoe crabs, but we have found fossilized nests full of eggs for various aninals, and we can even infer on their diet from the wear on mouthparts or stomach contents if that fossilized as well. Diet, nesting, even fighting are part of behaviours. Even if the horseshoe crab didn't change much anatomically, the shit it eats changed over time so it at least had to adapt internally.
But even throwing this all aside, the fact that there are still different species of horseshoe crabs today proves that they in fact evolved.
>Behaviour exist today so they have evolved
Form exists today and it didn't evolve.
>it at least had to adapt internally.
Oh that's a good falsification. Did it?
>different species of horseshoe crabs today proves that they in fact evolved
Agreed.
But there IS an unbroken original species, yes?
>Form exists today and it didn't evolve.
It had to.
>Oh that's a good falsification. Did it?
Unless you assume all the pathogens, parasites etc in the horseshoe crab environment never evolved, yes it had to adapt internally.
>But there IS an unbroken original species, yes?
If there is, show it to me
>Nani?
Even better, the clovis culture in north america, that must have been responsible for killing of many millions of giant mammals belonging to dozens of species disappeared at the same time as their prey during the younger dryas.
They must have gotten so bored after everything big was gone that they genocided themselves after.
they chased them off cliffs
there aren't any cliffs in africa
They didn't. They only helped along what climate cycles started.
elephants are baby sized compared to mammoths and contrary to popular belief, africa is veritable gold mine of food, theres food everywhere that you dont have to hunt giant animals to survive a winter which a season doesnt exist in africa
mammoths aren't that different in size from modern elephants. Woolly mammoths were actually smaller on average than african elephants (though some of the other mammoth species are a little bigger)
There are still elephants in SEA, so it can't be attributed to some unique characteristic of Africa or Africans. I'd assume different concentrations of other prey, different concentrations of mega fauna, and environmental differences in the viability of early human hunting techniques would be major factors, but I'm ignorant on the subject.
A lot of African megafauna went extinct too. And a lot of Asian megafauna survived, either into the present day or into the Holocene.
Do you count bison, bears, and alligators as megafauna? If so, you can count North America too.
Humans are literally a self-invasive species. Ain't that hard to understand.
Do you want the race realist answer or the trust the experts answer?
African megafauna evolved together with them so it had time to adapt a bit better than all the others that never encountered them for millions of years.
There's two theories, one being and the more racey theory being that only the humans who left Africa were dangerous enough hunters to be a genocidal threat.
>africans cant into genocide
i'd like to dispute this one
Machetes don't work too well on rhinos.
What about a third theory: that climate is what drives everything to extinction, and humans are just a very prolific disaster species that's very good at traveling and managed to populate most biomes left barren after the previous ice age?
4th theory: it was both hominids and climate that did it, just like what's happening today
5th theory: there's no incentive to Africans to kill large animals as most of the meat would go to waste. The more cold environments allowed humans to preserve meat, so they started hunting primarily big animals.
Yeah okay but what about south american and australian megafauna then?
>australian megafauna
>every land animal over 100kg died out
I will never forgive ancient humans
>verification not required
Confirmed
>abos
>humans
>Megafauna in a glorified island
They were bound to die out either way
>They were bound to die out either way
Africa is also a more food and resource rich environment than Ice Age Eurasia I'd imagine.
Just go eat some berries or something easier and smaller instead of trying to butcher the big armoured meat truck when you can't even finish all the meat anyway
This is what I personally believe
>Very prolific disaster species
This is also true, we are part of nature, simple as. In concept humans increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere os akin to the great oxidation event with the small difference that we can talk about it in an anime forum.
>Someone explain to me how prehistoric hominids allegedly drove so much of the world's megafauna to extinction,
They didnt. Overkill theory is pretty much dead now that we know humans lived side by side with these animals for far longer than we thought and that the data shows, Australian and African megafauna declined independently of human interactions.
African Megafauan started declining in number and size BEFORE homonids had the ability to hunt them and Megaufauna in Eurasia, and the Americas lived with homonids for tens of thousands of years ( hundreds of thousands in the case of Eurasia) without driving them extinct. Overkill was, is, and always will be a garbage hypothisis fueled by anthropocentric guilt
Very interesting proposition, however you only claimed what didn't kill them. If we didn't, what did
NTA, but an impact of a fragmented comet on the north american ice shield, causing wildfires, massive flooding and the sudden climate shift during the younger dryas.
>Overkill theory is pretty much dead now
lol no, it's the current one, the climate change is actually the dead one, there were multiple stages of climate change even more severe than current ones with volcanoes, floods, solar flares, etc and megafauna survived just fine, it was until humans started to settle and form big communities around the end of Pleistocene that megafauna started to decline and finally went extinct. humans caused it, there's absolutely no way to sugarcoat it, it's how it happened.
>Lmao guys correlation implies causation
Why did you need that many words to imply something so basic.
"Corelation != causation" is the argument equivalent of "nuh uh!"
"Correlation = causation" is the argument equivalent of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw
>correlation == causation
This picture always makes me laugh. Why wouldn't there be a causal relation between the two?