What caused so many species of Ice Age megafauna, such as the woolly mammoth, to go extinct? Occam’s razor would suggest that the arrival of humans, especially of tough Siberian hunters, was often the decisive factor in spectacular extinctions in the Old World and especially in the New.
The idea that a managed herd could surpass a natural one in any but narrowly defined ways is incomprehensible to modern readers unfamiliar with animal husbandry.
The way writer Carl Zimmer frames this info on "evidence of human hunters on this island 400 years after the disappearance of the mammoths" reveals one or more of these three things:
(1.) An unlikely) blind spot by Carl Zimmer or how data and logic work ("absence of evidence [of humans present on the island] is not evidence of absence." And, in fact, a definite human presence so close to the end of the millennia-long mammoth presence points TOWARDS the Sailer theory, not away from it);
(2.) A lack of respect for readers' ability to deduce the information in number-1;
(3.) A political signal to readers about which side the Good People are on, without saying so overtly.
Number-3 can probably cause a bit of Number-1. Too much of '3' which spills over into '1' can probably boost an already-existing tendency towards '2'. So all three may be at play.
This reminds me how the scientific "discourse" also twists itself in knots to avoid the Occam's razor explanation that syphilis was brought from the New World to the Old by Columbus's returning men, because to admit that would somehow diminish the suffering of Native Americans to Old World diseases they had no natural immunity to.
The story about the Steller's sea cow is pretty much the same. Supposedly climate change caused their decline and they were genetically isolated before they were finally extirpated by white baddies in the late 18th century.
However, the only sea cows that remained when Bering explored the North Pacific just happened to be living around the undiscovered, uninhabited Commander Islands which, like Wrangell Island, must have had some magic ice age dirt or something. Somehow they vanished from the nearby (and inhabited) Aleutian and Kuril Islands. The archeological record in these islands also happens to be lacking.
This leads me to wonder whether anyone does any serious archeology at all in such miserable places. How many kids see some windswept, barren island in the arctic and think "that looks way more interesting than the Great Pyramids or the Roman Colosseum."?
So I guess nowadays where there's lack of evidence, one simply defaults to the narrative that "indigenous peoples" were noble stewards of Mother Earth who never, ever would have barbecued majestic beasts to extinction.
I once wrote an article explaining that hunting caused the extinction of North American megafauna, and a commenter insisted that I was just promoting some liberal guilt trip.
It amuses me to see liberal science also being blamed for promoting the opposite theory.
Right-wingers prefer the comet impact theory because they see overhunting and climate change explanations as liberal coded, left-wing ideologues prefer the climate change one while rejecting the comet and overhunting theories, the latter of which they perceive as racist and depressing for reasons that Sailer laid out. The sane, non-tribalists accept the overhunting theory which is the only viable one.
Steve, thank you for your amazing work. I have been thinking exactly this for a while, and bizarrely enough was doing a crazy amount of research about the topic just as the story broke. Pleasantly surprised to see that your take on it is the same as mine.
The idea that a managed herd could surpass a natural one in any but narrowly defined ways is incomprehensible to modern readers unfamiliar with animal husbandry.
perhaps an immense quantity of surplus milk is the narrowly defined definition of animal husbandry.
In the video, had a lot of the males been sitting in "mud," or is that their natural coloring?
did not go extinct but was converted to useful livestock.
jared diamond may be crankey, but his thesis on the domesticability of species seems somewhat sound.
look up the nazis trying to reinvent the aurochs
They survived for too long for inbreeding to account for their demise. It seems that way to me.
The way writer Carl Zimmer frames this info on "evidence of human hunters on this island 400 years after the disappearance of the mammoths" reveals one or more of these three things:
(1.) An unlikely) blind spot by Carl Zimmer or how data and logic work ("absence of evidence [of humans present on the island] is not evidence of absence." And, in fact, a definite human presence so close to the end of the millennia-long mammoth presence points TOWARDS the Sailer theory, not away from it);
(2.) A lack of respect for readers' ability to deduce the information in number-1;
(3.) A political signal to readers about which side the Good People are on, without saying so overtly.
Number-3 can probably cause a bit of Number-1. Too much of '3' which spills over into '1' can probably boost an already-existing tendency towards '2'. So all three may be at play.
(2.) is wrong: Sailer's Theory of Subscription Journalism explain that subscribers want the bandwagon, so they refuse to deduce the info's in n. 1.
This reminds me how the scientific "discourse" also twists itself in knots to avoid the Occam's razor explanation that syphilis was brought from the New World to the Old by Columbus's returning men, because to admit that would somehow diminish the suffering of Native Americans to Old World diseases they had no natural immunity to.
Are there people arguing syphilis did not originate in the Western Hemisphere?
Yes! Check out the wiki entry lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis
Wrangel Island is 150km off the mainland with a 1,100 metre summit so clearly visible to the naked eye.
Stone Age people made much more challenging sea voyages and my money is on a few guys finding it on a hunch.
News of easy meat spreads fast and in subsequent years they may have moved the whole tribe over for a month of feasting during the summer.
“News of easy meat”…click bait for hominids since forever!
On a small island, several consecutive years of bad weather would be enough to do them in. Were there other herbivores on the island at the time?
The story about the Steller's sea cow is pretty much the same. Supposedly climate change caused their decline and they were genetically isolated before they were finally extirpated by white baddies in the late 18th century.
However, the only sea cows that remained when Bering explored the North Pacific just happened to be living around the undiscovered, uninhabited Commander Islands which, like Wrangell Island, must have had some magic ice age dirt or something. Somehow they vanished from the nearby (and inhabited) Aleutian and Kuril Islands. The archeological record in these islands also happens to be lacking.
This leads me to wonder whether anyone does any serious archeology at all in such miserable places. How many kids see some windswept, barren island in the arctic and think "that looks way more interesting than the Great Pyramids or the Roman Colosseum."?
So I guess nowadays where there's lack of evidence, one simply defaults to the narrative that "indigenous peoples" were noble stewards of Mother Earth who never, ever would have barbecued majestic beasts to extinction.
If Wrangell Island has had 0.01% of the per square metre earthwork carried out in Athens or Rome in the last two centuries I’d be very surprised.
I once wrote an article explaining that hunting caused the extinction of North American megafauna, and a commenter insisted that I was just promoting some liberal guilt trip.
It amuses me to see liberal science also being blamed for promoting the opposite theory.
Right-wingers prefer the comet impact theory because they see overhunting and climate change explanations as liberal coded, left-wing ideologues prefer the climate change one while rejecting the comet and overhunting theories, the latter of which they perceive as racist and depressing for reasons that Sailer laid out. The sane, non-tribalists accept the overhunting theory which is the only viable one.
Steve, thank you for your amazing work. I have been thinking exactly this for a while, and bizarrely enough was doing a crazy amount of research about the topic just as the story broke. Pleasantly surprised to see that your take on it is the same as mine.