Human beings did not kill off the megafauna!
Posted On: Aug 29th, 2015 at 14:43
The World
I have never been comfortable with the “humans killed the mammoths” idea. It’s another one of those theories that just does not hold water under scrutiny. For a start, human beings still today haven’t explored large parts of the lands where these animals roamed, like in Siberia, northern Russia, so to suggest human beings were responsible for their demise is bad science.
There is no doubt that these creatures were hunted and their numbers reduced by human activity, but it is almost certain that these creatures were killed off by climate changes and many different factors that combined to make a sure disaster on a large scale. One of those factors was a comet that struck the northern hemisphere, probably in North America, around 12,800 years ago. That idea, although not originally my own, has been put forward in my book, The Evolution, and it is clear these animals were on the verge of extinction when human beings, who were themselves looking for food after the abrupt climate changes, hunted them as a valuable food source during hard times. It is likely that before the comet impact human beings never bothered hunting these animals unless it was absolutely necessary. A massive elephant, twice the size of the ones living today, is not a wise animal to attack if other food is available. Common sense is sometimes lacking in the minds of the intellectuals.
