[HN Gopher] Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study sug...
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Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
Author : gumby
Score : 76 points
Date : 2023-08-17 19:48 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| nologic01 wrote:
| There is a certain myth that pre-industial peoples were in a more
| balanced relationship with nature.
|
| While less powerful technologies and thus more direct dependence
| on natural processes and cycles made people more atuned to
| nature, the broad pattern seems to be one of unhindered
| consumption (deforestation, hunting etc) the impact of which was
| limited only by the relatively small population size.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And by the lack of our present day very powerful tools.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_(forestry)
|
| That sort of thing can level a whole forest in a very small
| fraction of the time it took to grow.
| [deleted]
| goatlover wrote:
| The Avatar and noble savage myth. Also used to blame all the
| ills of modern society on colonialism (and thus capitalism). If
| only we could go back to living like the indigenous lived!.
| Well, evidence doesn't favor them being any more noble.
| titzer wrote:
| We used to be limited by what our stomachs could carry, but
| every leap in technology amounted to storing up more food and
| resources for later, or consuming them conspicuously for
| social status, particularly to attract mates. So nowadays not
| even a few lifetimes of wealth (tens of millions of dollars)
| is enough to sate.
| neogodless wrote:
| So kind of interesting, in trying to find a way to view the gist
| of the content behind the above paywall, I found this article
| from about 5 years ago:
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/19/604031141...
|
| > New Study Says Ancient Humans Hunted Big Mammals To Extinction
|
| > Smith found that when humans arrived someplace, the rate of
| extinction for big mammals rose
| nemo wrote:
| The NYT article is a theory that considers human behaviors
| besides hunting:
|
| >In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, a
| group of paleontologists that analyzed fossil records at La
| Brea Tar Pits, a famous excavation site in Southern California,
| concluded that the disappearance of sabertooth cats, dire
| wolves and other large mammals in this region nearly 13,000
| years ago was linked to rising temperatures and increased fire
| activity spurred by people.
|
| This is the article the NYT is citing:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo3594
| myshpa wrote:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Extincti...
|
| Humans were the reason, on all continents.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline
|
| "By around 10,000 years ago we see a huge decline of wild
| mammals. It's hard to give a precise estimate of the size of
| these losses millennia ago, but they were large: likely in the
| range of 25% to 50%."
|
| "It wasn't just that we lost a lot of mammals. It was almost
| exclusively the world's largest mammals that vanished. This big
| decline of mammals is referred to as the Quaternary Megafauna
| Extinction (QME). The QME led to the extinction of more than 178
| of the world's large mammals ('megafauna')."
|
| We lost the biggest animals because those were the ones we
| hunted. If the reason were to be the fire (which sounds
| ridiculous), it would have caused the extinction of mammals of
| all sizes, not just the largest ones.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I note that the megafauna extinction was done by people of all
| races and creeds, long before capitalism existed.
| lumost wrote:
| Would be interesting if the myth of Dragons breathing fire was
| because we used fire to kill the largest/scariest megafauna.
| dagaci wrote:
| We probably used fire to cook them with, and probably cause a
| lot of accidental fires in the process ;) Also bare in mind
| that except for africa those megafauna would have been
| relatively tame and way too unsuspecting of meat eating
| humans.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| There's a lot of theorizing that early sapiens
| intentionally set fires to clear thick, impassable forests
| and kill game in the process. The cleared areas would make
| post-fire hunting easier as well.
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Humans were the reason, on all continents.
|
| The article doesn't disagree, saying both "increased fire
| activity spurred by people" and "Dr. Dunn emphasized that this
| pattern could not account for the notable disappearance of
| large mammals elsewhere in the world at the end of the last ice
| age".
|
| > If the reason were to be the fire (which sounds ridiculous),
| it would have caused the extinction of mammals of all sizes,
| not just the largest ones.
|
| No, not necessarily. A small animal can retreat into a burrow
| an elephant-sized one cannot. They also breed faster
| afterwards, allowing their populations to recover more readily.
| codexb wrote:
| The mass extinction of large megafauna, all around the world,
| at roughly the same time, isn't explained by humans (see woolly
| mammoths). There's far more evidence that it was driven by
| climate change as the world quickly exited the last glacial
| maximum.
| myshpa wrote:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/08/us/woolly-mammoths-
| death-...
|
| Last mammoths died 4000 years ago, and they might have even
| lived longer, if short-term events hadn't tainted their water
| and drained their food supply.
|
| It wasn't climate change that killed off the mammoths; it was
| humans.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=mammoth+house&tbm=isch
|
| We ate them all. It was only when there were no big animals
| left to hunt that we invented agriculture.
| codexb wrote:
| And yet, for some reason, ancient humans decided not to eat
| all the elephants.
|
| No, it was climate change.
|
| The last, small population of mammoths that survived until
| 4000 years ago on Wrangel Island never came in contact with
| humans. They died because they were ill suited for the
| climate they lived in.
| [deleted]
| stonetrw wrote:
| You do realize that the majority of elephant species are
| extinct and the ones left have less than a fraction of
| their historic range?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Humans got rid of plenty of elephants. "Both" is likely
| the answer in all of these extinction events.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7548514
|
| > One million years ago, elephants and their cousins
| roamed the five major continents of the earth. Then
| humans came along. Today elephants can be found only in
| portions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
|
| > The two most argued hypotheses for their decline are
| climatic changes and over-hunting by humans. A recent
| archaeological expedition dug up information that may
| support the latter.
|
| > Exploring 41 sites ranging from 1.8 million to 10,000
| years old, Todd Surovell of the University of Wyoming
| found that interactions between humans and elephants
| matched up with successive waves of human population
| expansion. As the human populations in those sites
| continued to grow, the number of elephants shrank and, in
| some sites, disappeared.
| myshpa wrote:
| > ancient humans decided not to eat all the elephants
|
| Who knows why? Larger size, slower reproductive rates,
| and adaptations to colder climates? Maybe elephants were
| more socially organized and were harder to hunt? Maybe
| their habitats were not so densely populated by humans?
| We can only speculate.
|
| > No, it was climate change.
|
| While climate change certainly played a role, it's
| undeniable that the QME would not have been as extensive
| if it weren't for human involvement.
|
| > never came in contact with humans
|
| That's not clear, iirc.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Elephants and humans must have evolved together, that
| could have helped the elephants.
| user_ wrote:
| Climate change potentially caused by catastrophic comet
| impacts.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| It's both.
|
| Human populations were growing rapidly and simultaneously the
| period from 50000-10000 was the end of the last ice age
|
| So the going theory is that the original areas of climate for
| which mega fauna were most populous, was effectively reduced
| increasingly over time as a result of warming, which humans
| were able to capitalize on to the point where we kind of
| "finished the job."
|
| This is effectively, how we see extinction patterns around
| the globe. Whereas humans aren't necessarily the primary or
| only cause, but they do make a big enough exogenous impact to
| cause a collapse.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| How big of a population are we talking here
| myshpa wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline
|
| "What's most shocking is how few humans were responsible
| for this large-scale destruction of wildlife. There were
| likely fewer than 5 million people in the world. Around
| half the population of London today."
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Well the estimates are kind of all over the place but
| basically growing from ~1M - 15M over the course of 40000
| years, before the Neolithic explosion
| stonetrw wrote:
| It seems somewhat incredible that mega fauna survived the
| previous two dozen or so ice ages just fine then went extinct
| as soon as humans figured out how to live in huts.
| sampo wrote:
| >
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Extincti...
|
| There are several findings of humans being present in North
| America much earlier than 13 000 years ego. One recent paper in
| _Science_ : https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg7586
|
| A longer list in a thread 6 months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34525911
| jlawson wrote:
| [flagged]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Expect to see more grasping at straws to try to blame
| climate change or whatever.
|
| It's grasping at straws to propose that the _end of an ice
| age_ might involve some climate change?
|
| Human predation certainly played a role, but pretending the
| ice caps melting can't have is... something.
| codexb wrote:
| I'd be highly skeptical of this claim.
|
| Large megafauna around the entire world began dying off both
| before and after the last glacial maximum, even in areas where
| there wasn't a significant human presence. The fact that they
| died off in North America around that time, too, isn't that
| surprising.
|
| It's also worth noting that at that time, a large part of North
| America was covered in savanna, which is among the most highly
| fire-prone habitats, regardless of humans.
| neverrroot wrote:
| Interesting, fits the current thing... well?
| Zamicol wrote:
| Horses are native to North America and became extinct after the
| introduction of humans.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse
|
| >Fossil evidence indicates that mastodons probably disappeared
| from North America about 10,500 years ago as part of the
| Quaternary extinction event of most of the Pleistocene megafauna
| that is widely believed to have been a result of human hunting
| pressure. The latest Paleo-Indians entered the Americas and
| expanded to relatively large numbers 13,000 years ago, and their
| hunting may have caused a gradual attrition of the mastodon
| population.
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon#Extinction
|
| As far as megafauna and climate, see also
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_woolly_mammoth
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is great new information helping to further the debate about
| causes of the Quaternary Megafauna Extinction (QME).
|
| I'll reiterate here my theory that the specific period following
| this extinction event, was catastrophic for human civilization
| and drove humanity to invent property and thus the system of
| capital and exchange.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event
|
| [1] https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Seems that Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis might fit these
| observations too.
|
| "We obtained radiocarbon dates on 172 specimens from seven
| extinct and one extant species... spanning 15.6 to 10.0 thousand
| calendar years before present (ka)."
|
| YDIH event is estimated at 12900 BP and includes vast wildfires
| in its scenario, including in North America.
|
| Contrast that with the idea that humans have been in Sapiens form
| for 200kya+, using fire for longer even than we have been Sapiens
| and have probably been in the Americas far before 13kya. Is the
| idea that despite the capability, we only at this specific time
| started the extinction program? At just the moment when there's
| sign of a globally catastrophic impact?
|
| YDIH seems more parsimonious, yet the paper doesn't mention it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Younger_Dryas_impact_hypo...
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| A little more reading..
|
| "All extinct mammals dated in this study have last occurrence
| dates older than 13.00 ka, with a modeled extirpation time
| estimate across all taxa of 13.07 to 12.89 ka [using the
| Gaussian-Resampled Inverse-Weighted McInerney (GRIMW)
| extinction estimator"
|
| Even tighter bound than my comment and still a tight fit around
| 12900. Figure 1 in their paper shows this as well.
|
| In other news, there was recently a "comprehensive refutation"
| of YDIH (pre-print) that a fave of my, Martin Sweatman, takes a
| good look at.
|
| A lot of this debate comes down to careful dating, error bars,
| etc.
|
| https://martinsweatman.blogspot.com/2023/08/debunking-hollid...
| erulabs wrote:
| What's more intriguing to me beyond the YDIH is that clearly
| something wild happened during the Younger Dryas period,
| impact or not.
|
| Regardless of what caused the dramatic fluctuations in
| temperature, wildfires, ocean levels (floods) and megafauna,
| the fluctuations did occur, and mark the beginning of human
| civilization as we know it, even though we also know Homo
| Sapiens existed long before this period.
|
| To imagine a period potentially as short as 100 years where
| the world went from unbearably cold at its warmest to the
| perpetual summer world we live in now and mega predators
| simply vanished... if I lived through that period I'd also
| tell my children to amass resources urgently (and tell
| stories of the hell world we came from). Who knows how long
| this insanely human friendly world might last!
|
| The idea that our species oldest stories might be about
| catastrophic climate change is absolutely humbling.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Nicely put!
| celtoid wrote:
| Antonio Zamora has done some research in the Younger Dryas
| Impact Hypothesis and the Carolina Bays of North America. He's
| worth the gander.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npXY8mu2hhU&list=PLmd4S3n7Pl...
| scythe wrote:
| I would suggest reading the high-ranked Google Scholar results
| rather than a highly fraught and questionably influenced
| Wikipedia talk page or a blog by a highly opinionated author.
|
| http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=younger+dryas+impact+hyp...
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Just a jump-off point for anyone not acquainted. It's a
| sprawling topic, as the 20k results of your search show!
|
| I'd also recommend Sweatman's research review:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLftb0lOpSe9PvJhFKSueZ.
| ..
|
| 24 videos, 30-60m each, stepping thru over 120 papers. It's
| the most comprehensive synthesis I've found that actually
| deals with the debate. Sweatman is an advocate for the
| hypothesis, but he does an admirable job of focusing on the
| ideas and there's a lot to learn from him.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Younger Dryas Impact Theory has always been somewhat
| controversial but it has basically become political due to
| being JRE listener coded now.
| kvetching wrote:
| I prefer Robert Schoch's theory that it was a solar
| outburst (aka micro-nova) rather than a comet that
| dramatically warmed the entire Earth.
|
| (he was also on Joe Rogan)
| samstave wrote:
| In addition to seed vaults, we need "carbon vaults" but in a
| soil core style and we can comm with futures on the states of
| our environ, not just seeds.
|
| Also, and catagorically -- we need the EVERYTHING of seed
| vaults to be open and public.
|
| How were these chosen, put in there, harvesting, maintaining,
| climates, history -- there are PBs of data that need be
| included in these things.
| MrGuts wrote:
| Dude, I wake up, turn on the radio, and feel like an extinct
| megafauna every morning.
|
| I'm sure my skull will end up in a closet at the office and taken
| out every now and again to confer on an old codebase.
| [deleted]
| paganel wrote:
| Back in 2016 the Western media was still playing the card of sea
| level rise [1]:
|
| > Human-caused climate change appears to have driven the Great
| Barrier Reef's only endemic mammal species into the history books
| (...)
|
| > In their report, co-authored by Natalie Waller and Luke Leung
| from the University of Queensland, the researchers concluded the
| "root cause" of the extinction was sea-level rise. As a result of
| rising seas, the island was inundated on multiple occasions, they
| said, killing the animals and also destroying their habitat
|
| I wonder what they'll use next.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/14/first-
| ca...
| urduntupu wrote:
| I am glad you are skeptic here. The down votes aren't
| justified. NY Times just keeps pushing a political agenda and
| they are quite successful in deceiving people to believe that
| we live in certain times where this and that are threats that
| we have to give our rights up for, unite globally under one
| governance and then "fight".
|
| > I wonder what they'll use next.
|
| You seem to be very informed. You know what's next. The UFO
| agenda is next, creating yet another enemy that we have to
| unite for, give up our rights for and fight.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Both things can be true: that ancient fires drove large mammals
| extinct, and that sea level rise cause a specific local species
| to go extinct when its habitat was fully flooded.
| paganel wrote:
| So why doesn't the Western media still push the discourse of
| sea-level rise and "NYC is going to get drowned any minute
| now!"?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Maybe you're just not reading any of it?
|
| Ten days old: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-
| environment/interacti...
|
| NYC, specifically: https://abcnews.go.com/Awards/rising-
| sea-levels-affect-new-y...
| ygjb wrote:
| Because rising sea levels doesn't get clicks anymore, but
| if you read actual literature on the topic, there are
| ongoing concerns and considerations. On a more practical
| level, it's not a major North American or European city, so
| it doesn't capture Western media's attention, but the
| Republic of Kiribati[1] has an estimated <80 years before
| it's primary land masses are completely submerged, with
| some being lost nearly 20 years ago.
|
| Kiribati is a canary in a coal mine for climate change
| related activity in coastal regions. The government of that
| nation has very progressively purchased land in Fiji, and
| presumably in other places to aid with resettlement
| efforts. There have been legal tests (and denials of
| claims) for at least one person claiming to be a climate
| refugee from Kiribati. Even before the sea levels rise, the
| arable land and liveable areas will be wiped out.
|
| This isn't theoretical, it just isn't directly affecting
| (yet) the exceedingly wealthy, major western cities, or
| white folks, so it doesn't get as much press.
|
| Some other areas that are starting to recognize the impacts
| of rising sea levels include Kolkata, Guangzhou, Miami, New
| York, and more directly personally affecting me, Vancouver!
| Unfortunately the main point of recognition is that
| significant portions of these cities will be below sea
| level at some point in the next century, barring solutions
| like seawalls, and other methods to try to save them. It's
| been almost 20 years since the levees failed in NOLA, but
| it hasn't stopped people thinking we can hold back the
| ocean. Things are going to be crazy in the next couple of
| decades.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiribati
| icameron wrote:
| Kiribati, in more than one way is living in the future.
| For two hours of the day are 2 calendar days ahead of
| most of us. (Being UTC+14)
| rralian wrote:
| I don't understand your point. It seems to be that Western
| media is somehow biased, but I'm not sure in what way. I'm
| pretty confident that global temperatures will continue to
| rise and that sea levels will rise and cause massive
| problems for coastal populations over my lifetime. But I'm
| mostly consuming Western media. Do you disagree with these
| points? And what non-Western media do you feel is more
| correct?
| cyberax wrote:
| More likely, early humans simply killed off the large herbivores,
| and the large predators simply starved.
|
| This happened in Australia. All the local megafauna disappeared
| rapidly once humans settled in.
| [deleted]
| Blahah wrote:
| The fire hypothesis is compatible with what you said. The idea
| is that humans either directly or indirectly caused frequent
| and vast wildfires that destroyed ecosystems, and those fires
| either killed animals directly or destroyed the resources they
| needed to survive.
| happytiger wrote:
| https://www.hcn.org/articles/wildfire-people-are-starting-a-...
|
| It seems to be a pattern to this day. I view the flames as a
| kind of Asmovian terraforming.
| gumby wrote:
| How do you think some of those humans hunted in Australia? They
| would travel to a burnt forest (or set fire to one) and then
| walk around eating the cooked animals until they'd rotted or
| been eaten, and then move on.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| And we still haven't outgrown that behavior. We as a species
| keep burning the proverbial forests to get an easy win.
| bendbro wrote:
| We are maturing. We will mature. We grow up with heroes
| these days. Thanks to intrepid companies like Disney who,
| and despite polluting right wingers best efforts, we have a
| trove of emotional education material for our next
| generation. Marvel and Harry Potter are the two greatest
| inventions of the past 100 years- even more than the mRNA
| vaccine.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I don't quite follow. Marvel teaches folks to punch their
| way through problems, and Harry Potter teaches people
| it's OK to be manipulated by adults because it's your
| destiny.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230817201616/https://www.nytime...
|
| https://archive.ph/cEWop
| pluc wrote:
| has anyone done a study on whether total annihilation of most
| organic life by fire is bad for us? which profit-oriented
| megacorporation is currently saying they will save us? does Elon
| know about this?
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