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?
Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
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Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#52There 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.
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.
Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#53[flagged]
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Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#54https://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 e…
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.
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.
Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
You do realize that the majority of elephant species are extinct and the ones left have less than a fraction of their historic range?
Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#56https://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 e…
> 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
Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#57More 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.
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Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#58Dude, 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.
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Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#59Seems 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 200…
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...
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.
Re: Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would be interesting if the myth of Dragons breathing fire was because we used fire to kill the largest/scariest megafauna.
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.
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.