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RootBeerMan

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Jan 3, 2016
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By what looks like an asteroid or cometary impact. And it caused worldwide cooling, the extinction of the megafauna and the disappearance of the Clovis civilization in North America. This is a really interesting article (and a scholarly paper linked to in the piece). The entire world was changed with one cosmic event and it could happen again at any time, (as we saw with the recent report of a space rock exploding over the Bering Sea a little while ago).

https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2019/019375/day-world-burned
 
Glad this is getting more attention. The idea that humans exterminated the megafauna is preposterous.
That's a theory I've always found ludicrous, too. As if there were enough humans here at the time to exterminate every living creature from Alaska to Patagonia in that amount of time. This makes vastly more sense and we have global evidence for it.
 
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My thought has always been - why didn't the same thing happen in Africa? with Elephants / Giraffes, Rhinos and Hippos and with many more humans at that time.

But somehow in North America humans wiped out an even larger population of more robust animals - like saber tooth cats, dire wolves and Mammoths?
 
My thought has always been - why didn't the same thing happen in Africa? with Elephants / Giraffes, Rhinos and Hippos and with many more humans at that time.

But somehow in North America humans wiped out an even larger population of more robust animals - like saber tooth cats, dire wolves and Mammoths?
Do not forget that the megafauna also existed in Central and South America, too as far south as Patagonia. Literal hordes of early immigrants would have had to sprint to South America, killing everything in their path to suit the theory of humans killing off everything. That literally makes no sense, especially given the sizes of the land masses and the populations of humans. This impact event actually makes much more sense and fits the evidence for a mass extinction.
 
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Do not forget that the megafauna also existed in Central and South America, too as far south as Patagonia. Literal hordes of early immigrants would have had to sprint to South America, killing everything in their path to suit the theory of humans killing off everything. That literally makes no sense, especially given the sizes of the land masses and the populations of humans. This impact event actually makes much more sense and fits the evidence for a mass extinction.

Or both. Animals in Africa evolved alongside their human predators. Animals in areas largely untouched by humans may have had no reason to fear humans and just went about their day, until they were swarmed with spears and sharp sticks. Couple that with potentially slow breeding rates and it’s quite feasible that’s humans would have wiped out large megafauna across Australia and the Americas - especially so because why would you hunt a rabbit when you could hunt something much larger that can’t really run away?

I think the idea that it “literally makes no sense is a bit of an oxymoron given that it does make sense that this could have and probably did happen. If you couple that with an impact event or some other event, it just further increases the likelihood.
 
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By what looks like an asteroid or cometary impact. And it caused worldwide cooling, the extinction of the megafauna and the disappearance of the Clovis civilization in North America. This is a really interesting article (and a scholarly paper linked to in the piece). The entire world was changed with one cosmic event and it could happen again at any time, (as we saw with the recent report of a space rock exploding over the Bering Sea a little while ago).

https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2019/019375/day-world-burned

How do u know it wusn't a neanderthal arsonist?

I never did trust those Geico people.
 
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