34406 Y87 But the Antropocene isn't a novel ......

Q&@

PHENOMENON
OF THE LAST FEW CENTURIES:
ALREADY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO,
WHEN OUR STONE AGE ANCESTORS SPREAD FROM
EAST AFRICA TO THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH,
they changed the flora and fauna of every continent & island on which they
settled; we drove to extinction all the other human species of the world, 90% of the large animals,
75% of the large mammals of America & about 50% of all the large land mammals of 'our' planet -
and all before they planted the first wheat field, shaped the first metal tool, wrote the first text or
struck the first coin! Large animals were the main victims because they were relatively few, & they
bred slowly? Compare, for example, mammoths (which became extinct)
to rabbits (which survived)!

A troop of mammoths
numbered no more then a few dozen individuals, and bred at a rate perhaps
of two youngsters per year?! Hence if the local human tribe hunted just three mammoths a year, it
would have been enough for deaths to outstrip births, and within a few generations the mammoths
disappeared! Rabbits, in contrast, bred like rabbits. Even ìf humans hunted hundreds of rabbits each
year, it was not enough to drive them to extinction. Nòt that our ancestors planned on wiping out
the mammoths; they were simply unaware of the consequences
of their actions.

The extinction of
the mammoths & other large animals
may have been swift on an evolutionary timescale, but slow &
gradual in human terms. People lived no more than 70 or 80 years, whereas the extinction process
took centuries. The ancient Sapiens probably failed to notice any connection between an annual hunt
on mammoth - in which no more than two or three mammoths were killed - and the disappearance
of these very furry Giants?!! At most, a nostalgic elder might have told
skeptical youngsters that 'when I was young, mammoths
were much more plentiful than these days.
.......
And so were mastodons and
giant elks. And, of course,
the tribal chiefs were
honest, and children
respected their
elders!'


12 apr 2019 - bewerkt op 17 apr 2019 - meld ongepast verhaal
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