I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that things like asteroid impacts, ice ages, etc, caused some extinctions. Like I said to another poster, though, just because you can find evidence of one thing causing some extinctions, doesn’t mean it or a similar event caused all of them. An asteroid could account for some extinctions in North America, and man could still be responsible for other extinctions. History’s too complex to say either asteroids or men caused them all.
Well, I agree with that. And no doubt, man HAS BEEN involved in some extinctions.
But when I read reports of them finding yet another mammoth frozen in the permafrost of Siberia (in quite good physical shape, I might add(, well I KNOW man wasn’t responsible for like killing them and freezing them. If a man or men had done it, we’d see bones, not intact animals.
And the sheer NUMBER of samples MUST lead us to conclude that whatever happened, it was an extraordinary, Earth-changing event.
Combine that with the fact that a large number of other mega-fauna went extinct in the same period, you simply can’t get there with some ideas about hungry hunters. Even really good, experienced hunters.
And something I should point out that argues AGAINST the comet theory is that not all of the frozen samples they find come from the same time, fairly recent specimens are found, yet there have been specimens from 30,000 years ago.
But no matter what, I end up coming to the same conclusion that although early man DID hunt them, with a modicum of success, whatever caused their decline and extinction was something else. Perhaps something we don’t even know about yet.