Posted on 09/11/2013 3:59:46 AM PDT by Renfield
Yep, that’s why they have used obsidian for eye surgery.
“Not being sarcastic - but skeptical. Please inform on the primitive weapons that were used to kill elephants.”
American Indians used to hunt buffalo by using the terrain and strategically set wild fires to stampede them off of cliffs.
That was often wasteful, of course, but there were far too many buffalo to worry about ever killing them all.
Cave Man 1: “I got an idea: let’s dig a huge pit on the mammoth trail and put long, sharp sticks at the bottom. We’ll cover it with branches and leaves, and see if we can stampede a mammoth into it.
Cave Man 2: “I’ll help dig, but you can do the stampeding.”
Cave Man 1: “Hold muh beer.”
***However, the claim that they hunted the mammoths to extinction is b.s.***
Unless...they took less risk & killed too many small, young mammoths; thus diminishing the numbers of future breeders.
Have noticed how my dogs do not attack baby rabbits or squirrels....they just play with them and chase them away.
Which, in the wild, allows for breeders and future food.
You might investigate the John Marshall film The Hunters. There's a youtube video blurb that introduces the subjects.
Shot in the early '50s, Marshall follows the Ju/'hoansi, a band of diminutive Kalahari Bushmen, as they successfully hunt a giraffe with their toy-like neurotoxin laced arrow. I submit that a giraffe certainly qualifies as mega fauna. Certainly some of their tool kit utilizes modern materials, but not to the extent that it changes the outcome.
Briefly, scouting parties deploy, one group finds and shoots a giraffe and subsequently follows for several days as the neurotoxin takes effect. When the quarry is finally brought down, the band assembles to butcher, transport, distribute, and preserve their bounty.
You should have more confidence in the ability of your fellow man to adapt and profit in their environment.
"A farmer, digging his cellar, almost two meters below ground level, struck the massive lower jaw of a mammoth with his spade. The jawbone was upside down, and had been inserted into the bottom of another jaw like a child's building brick. In fact, as subsequent excavation showed, a complete ring of these inverted interlocking jaws formed the solid base of a roughly circular hut four or five meters across. About three dozen huge, curving mammoth tusks had been used as arching supports for the roof and for the porch, some of them still left in their sockets in the skulls. Separate lengths of tusks were even linked in laces by a hollow sleeve of ivory that fitted over the join. It has been stimated that the total of bones incorporated in the structure must have belonged to a minimum of ninety-five mammoths. This need ,not be a measure of some prodigious hunting feat, since gnawing marks of carnivores suggest that many of them were scavenged. However, the task of dragging the enormous skulls across country should not be underestimated since a-small one weighed about one hundred kilograms." link
Like the article says, they didn't necessarily hunt and kill all the mammoths used to create the structure, but they have found many of these sites in Russia, the Ukraine and Poland, so this isn't some rare anomaly. It's difficult to believe that these structures were all constructed by tidy humans policing up mammoth litter.
They've also found numerous "butcher sites" in the U.S. consisting of mammoth bones with cut marks, and stone artifacts. Maybe these were just examples where humans found a dead or dying mammoth and they took advantage of an opportunity, but I don't see why it would be beyond their abilities to spear a mammoth with a 6-inch long Clovis point and then follow it for a few days until it dropped. After all, thousands of pounds of meat could be gained with a fairly low risk.
The reason I don't believe humans are responsible for causing the extinction of the mammoth is because dozens of other species went extinct around the same time.
Not clear how many mammoths in a herd - but the math of female maturity & reproduction vs. hunting and climate should be considered also.
A female mammoth reaches maturity at 15 with a gestation period of 22 months. Not clear on life expectancy - but if hunters killed off pregnant females (or in estrus) and/or their young...that could have caused a severe repopulation problem.
I just think too much was going on to blame humans for the mammoths. Too many other species (dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, cave bears, giant bison, North American camels and horses, etc.) died out at the same time.
There is a natural sort of husbandry involved in the hunter-gatherer lifestyle - Game becomes scarce long before any regional extinction level - The economy of successful hunts depends upon flourishing herds. When the fishing gets bad because of over-fishing, when herds diminish and get spooky because of over-hunting, when resources diminish to a point of difficulty (wood for fire as an example), a Hunter-Gatherer culture begins to starve, and is forced to move on.
As a general principle, this can be seen in native tribes, that would often travel great distances between summer and winter habitation. It is the advent of farming - a food source not tied to the natural economy of the land - and the eventual construction of cities, that made (make) humans capable of extinction level hunting.
As for rope, give me a nettle patch and an afternoon, and I can make you more cordage than you ever thought possible - and nettles grow everywhere. And that cordage can be twisted together to make very serviceable ropes. And for more strength and durability, let's not forget sinew and rawhide, which would probably be used for things needing more permanence (putting an axe head onto an handle, as an instance).
Metal is overrated. Again, give me an afternoon and a decent quarry site, and I will hand you a serviceable axe, a knife, six arrow-heads, and a spear-point. The difficulty is really not in the knapping (albeit that it takes a touch), so much as in the handles. Finding long, straight shafts can really be a difficulty... Shaping wood is very hard, and binding the stone to the handle is equally difficult using plant-based cordage (only necessary until one gets a kill, where rawhide or gut will do much better). Really, the stone work is the 'easy' part.
Flint and obsidian are surprisingly durable, and putting an edge back on is not a terrible chore.
Small game is probably easier - in that you are correct - but small game is virtually *gone* in the winter, when it is very difficult to move around. No, I will guarantee that large prey was certainly on the menu, and for the same reason that a moose is preferred to a deer... One hunt can guarantee the winter for a family. One mammoth would likewise supply the needs for possibly four families in the same case.
No doubt, an Hunter-Gatherer tribe would certainly take advantage of carrion and wounded animals, but these cannot be *counted on*. There is no doubt in my mind that large animals were hunted purposefully.
Found some interesting notations here:
http://www.thebigzoo.com/animals/Woolly_Mammoth.asp
Wonder if this thread will reach 1,000 posts;)
ping post #51
I agree with you. Imho, modern man is too dismissive of early man’s intelligence and adaptability. Our ancestors may not have had our access to technology, but I believe that they were equally capable, if not more so. They had to be, or they didn’t survive.
Yeah, saw this earlier...
I was never one who believed that the cause of the extinctions was man. Just like global warming: the influence of man on nature and other species is way overrated.
Certainly they were hunted, but not to extinction.
Shoot, 'modern' man is even dismissive of redneck tech! I can't tell you how many times a city boy has preached to me about how dumb I am while I am fixing the things he doesn't know how to fix.
Knowing your penchant toward religious things, I might bring up 'false signs and wonders' and the bowing down toward 'sophistication' that they produce. True things are invariably far more simple... and in my eyes, more elegant.
Folks that have never hunted their own game and harvested their own greens are already so far down the rabbit hole of sophistication that they seldom can see what lies above. You are absolutely right that they were infinitely more capable. Even as our father's generation was more capable than us.
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