Firearms of note and ridicule

[swerve]

A decade. To annihilate a species which was far harder to wipe out than most of the late palaeolithic megafauna, & which had been living in balance with human predation for thousands of years.

 

Nobody has argued that late palaeolithic humans could exterminate whatever they felt like hunting, only that they were likely to have been implicated in various degrees (in some cases totally, in some as a contributory factor) in the extermination of a range of large animals which were, for various reasons, susceptible to extinction. I've given examples of animals we know were exterminated by humans (note: not by simply killing. Habitat modification was also a factor), & which were also susceptible. In response, you cite an example which was harder to wipe out, but which was damn near exterminated by more intensive hunting in a fraction of the time. What about addressing the arguments? E.g. the splitting of some populations into unviably small groups, the combination of non-human & human factors, habitat modification, competition for prey and/or habitat, selective targeting of easy prey (giant sloths are very easy indeed), survival of isolated populations until human arrival (giant sloths, mammoths, etc.) etc.

 

Come on! Drop the argument from incredulity. It's never been sound.

 

BTW, of course fires are natural phenomena, but that doesn't mean people don't deliberately light them. We don't have to speculate, we KNOW it's been widely used as a hunting technique, & we've measured the effects in some places, in terms of habitat change.

Edited October 29, 2011 by swerve

[Guest JamesG123]

A decade. To annihilate a species which was far harder to wipe out than most of the late palaeolithic megafauna, & which had been living in balance with human predation for thousands of years.

 

With guns, horses, and trains...

 

Why would buffalo be any harder to wipe out than any of the other wildlife of another era?

 

Nobody has argued that late palaeolithic humans could exterminate whatever they felt like hunting,

 

Actually this is what you implicitly said in your previous post.

 

 

 

In response, you cite an example which was harder to wipe out, but which was damn near exterminated by more intensive hunting in a fraction of the time.

 

That was supposed to be a contrasting example but I didn't flesh it out because my daughter was bugging me for an apple.

Gist being, it was/is fairly easy for modern mechanized man to exterminate a species (except cockroaches), but that is not true of prehistoric man who have many few resources and knowledge to work with.

 

 

Come on! Drop the argument from incredulity. It's never been sound.

 

I'm not sure which comment this is in reference to.

 

BTW, of course fires are natural phenomena, but that doesn't mean people don't deliberately light them.

 

So then how come there aren't massive die offs of animals every time there is a fire somewhere?

 

We don't have to speculate, we KNOW it's been widely used as a hunting technique, & we've measured the effects in some places, in terms of habitat change.

 

Actually its not. Again you are assuming that the practices of modern (in the sense of up to the 19th century) aboriginal, but still modern human is what was used in prehistoric times. This presumes that there was absolutely no technological or cultural grown for close to ten thousand years...

 

There is a big period in time, and at about the time that the mega fauna started going out, where man was just a bit player in the predator scene. We were small tribal hunter-gatherer bands eking out a marginal existence. We didn't start getting the upper hand both in numbers and cultural and technological sophistication until the Neolithic/early metal ages where we started having a noticeable impact on the biosphere. But by then almost all the megafauna were all gone and the rest were in decline (retreating ranges).

 

Just the theory that I subscribe to. As I said, I think pinning human "responsibility" of the demise of the last of the Megas doesn't really make sense when you think about the limitations of the small human populations of the time period we are talking about, and seems to me more a modern view as seen thru the lens of Victorian excesses, and more than a bit of the same hubris that gives us "Global warming/climate change".

[Chris Werb]

It's also postulated that the arrival of humans spelled the end for the Steller's Sea Cow, which hung on around a few islands people couldn't or wouldn't go to until it was finally wiped out a couple of centuries ago. You don't need firearms to wipe out a species either - they managed it with the Sea Mink by trapping and possibly by habitat/resource degradation as well. That, market hunting and egg collecting probably also did for the Labrador duck.

[swerve]

 

Why would buffalo be any harder to wipe out than any of the other wildlife of another era?

 

 

Actually this is what you implicitly said in your previous post.

I think this shows that there's been a misunderstanding here. I've assumed that you have some basic knowledge of population dynamics. To me, it was obvious that in any discussion of the extinction of megafauna we're discussing how megafauna (not animals in general) might become extinct, & that everyone participating would understand how the characteristics of megafauna which distinguish them from other animals would affect the ease of exterminating them.

 

All the examples I cited have been animals with characteristics which made them relatively easy to exterminate, & the whole anthropogenic late palaeolithic debate is based on whether, & how, particular animals were vulnerable to extinction by humans, & why & how animal A rather than animal B became extinct.

 

Large animals are inherently easier to exterminate. Animals of the same size are not equally easy to exterminate: diet, habitat, breeding habits etc. will affect it. Palaeolithic man couldn't exterminate whatever he chose, but could have been able to exterminate species which were vulnerable. Note my use of the words 'susceptible', 'vulnerable' etc. in my previous replies. I've consistently tried to restrict the debate to vulnerable animals (e.g. the biggest ones), because it doesn't make sense otherwise.

Edited October 29, 2011 by swerve

[Guest JamesG123]

I think this shows that there's been a misunderstanding here. I've assumed that you have some basic knowledge of population dynamics.

 

Of course! Anyone who disagrees with your position/opinion must be ignorant!

 

 

All the examples I cited have been animals with characteristics which made them relatively easy to exterminate, & the whole anthropogenic late palaeolithic debate is based on whether, & how, particular animals were vulnerable to extinction by humans, & why & how animal A rather than animal B became extinct.

 

All of your examples were modern or were species in specialized niches/physiologies that would have been vulnerable to being written off by natural selection if there was any change at all. Also the human cultures in question may have been aboriginal and look primitive, they are not the same human cultures of 15K years ago. Modern humans have far greater numbers and superior tools and tactics. Modern humans have systematically eliminated or domesticated all of the animals large and small. Paleolithic man was only beginning that process. This is the kernel of our difference of opinion.

 

Large animals are inherently easier to exterminate.

 

This statement is not true on its own. Giantism has distinct survival advantages in many situations, its why it has occurred over and over again. Against modern humans, with bows, or guns and the ability to plan and set traps, yes it is a disadvantage. But we aren't talking about modern humans in this context.

 

Animals of the same size are not equally easy to exterminate: diet, habitat, breeding habits etc. will affect it.

 

Exactly, also and a more important factor that you are not considering is that early hominids were not wandering around alone with mega cows, but they were in a complete ecosystem full of other predators. Some of whom were likely more effective than man.

 

Palaeolithic man couldn't exterminate whatever he chose, but could have been able to exterminate species which were vulnerable. Note my use of the words 'susceptible', 'vulnerable' etc. in my previous replies. I've consistently tried to restrict the debate to vulnerable animals (e.g. the biggest ones), because it doesn't make sense otherwise.

 

Big does not mean vulnerable. I disagree with your correlation. Mammalian giantism peaked out before humans even evolved. They were going extinct, evolving smaller bodyforms, and changed regions due to climactic influences long before we stopped swinging from trees in Africa. That the end of this era of megafauna cooincided with the emergence and expansion of homo sapiens is coincidental. Fortuitous and probably contributed to the rate of which humans expanded (or that we are even here at all). But the theory that prehistoric man was responsible for driving species, vulnerable or otherwise, to extinction is not supported by evidence until well into Neolithic. Again, modern man has systematically caused broad mayhem to the biosphere. But its not been exclusive to large animals. The passenger pigeon et. al.

Edited October 30, 2011 by JamesG123

[Yama]

In Australia & the Americas, humans didn't evolve alongside the big beasties then migrate with them. Humans with fire, spears, spear throwers, high-quality stone tools & weapons, etc. arrived on continents with big beasties which had no exposure whatsoever to humans.

 

You're making the same mistake as Pikachu & assuming that humans wiped out big animals only by sticking spears in them. Too simplistic. In a fauna-rich environment, prehistoric humans could be incredibly wasteful. Anything for an easy life. Burning down a forest to kill a few big animals in it was no big deal, when you thought there were plenty more forests to go round. Note that this is not hyperbole: this hunting method was used by Maoris to kill moas until they ran out of suitable forests with big moas, & there's plenty of evidence of it being used long before that, in Australia & the Americas.

 

Mmm. Difficult to read prehistory is.

 

It is certainly not contested that humans played a major role - if not outright primary cause - in disappearence of megafauna in various island environments (New Caledonia, New Zealand, Madagascar etc). But those populations were small, geographically limited and extremely vulnerable. Could it happen in continent-sized environment? There certainly is some good evidence about that in Australia. But elsewhere it becomes fuzzier.

 

Obviously, megafauna in Africa did not disappear. It is alleged this is because they evolved alongside humans, whereas in North America, modern humans with their advanced Clovis technology suddenly appeared into 'ecologically naive' environment and massacred large animals by the thousands: so called 'blitzkrieg theory'. It makes sense, no? But there are major problems:

 

1) 'Naive' populations don't stay naive for long. From island environments, it is known that animal populations learn to become wary of humans within few decades, or centuries at most, unless they are wiped out before that. It seems unlikely that a continent full of animals could be hunted to extinction before that.

 

2) It is extremely difficult, if not outright impossible to fit 'blitzkrieg theory' in the extinction pattern on Eurasian landmass. In Europe and northern Asia, megafauna largely was extincted, roughly during same time as in North America. This megafauna was living alongside humans for hundreds of thousands of years, nearly for as long as in Africa. We know that Neanderthals certainly hunted big game, and they did that for some 200 000 years, through full glacial cycle (interglacial and glacial maximum) and large animals were not driven to extinction. Eurasian megafauna was certainly not 'ecologically naive', so what explains its disappearance?

 

3) And why did not South Asian megafauna go extinct? They were just as 'naive' (or not) as their northernmost cousins, and probably had to deal with considerably larger human populations. Yet the Asian elephants, rhinos et al were not in any danger of extinction until modern times.

 

4) Just how much hunting pressure those small hunter-gatherer populations could exert? Population densities in Northern latitudes were sparse. Example: 16th century Swedish tax records show that entire Torneo Lappmark (about half of the present day Swedish and Finnish Laplands) had taxable population (ie. able bodied male hunters) of around 100 Sami, which puts total population to perhaps 600 people, 1000 at most. That's not a whole lot over such a large area (less than 1% compared to present population, which is also regarded as very scarce). Large hunts could kill lots of animals on occasion, yes, but they were not everyday occurances. They were major undertakings, not necessarily done more than once a year.

 

5) But perhaps large animal populations were sparse too? Well, that's not a given. Mammoths etc. did not live on a tundra, but on mammoth steppes, a biome much richer and which is now almost totally disappeared. Did mammoth steppe disappear because mammoths disappeared, or vice versa? We don't know.

 

6) And finally, in North America, entire 'Clovis first' model of New World settlement has been more or less debunked. Clovis technology was invented by population living already in North America, and humans had lived there for at least 1000 years, but possibly as long as 40 000 years.

Edited October 30, 2011 by Yama

[swerve]

 

This statement is not true on its own. Giantism has distinct survival advantages in many situations, its why it has occurred over and over again. Against modern humans, with bows, or guns and the ability to plan and set traps, yes it is a disadvantage. But we aren't talking about modern humans in this context.

 

Exactly, also and a more important factor that you are not considering is that early hominids were not wandering around alone with mega cows, but they were in a complete ecosystem full of other predators. Some of whom were likely more effective than man..

Doh!

 

What have early hominids got to do with anything? I'm only discussing the late palaeolithic. I keep saying that, & keep reminding you that I'm only talking about the impact of modern humans, with the ability to plan & set traps. No guns, maybe bows (nobody really knows when bows were invented - could have been too late), definitely spears & spear-chuckers. Best land hunters on the planet, by far.

 

You keep setting up straw men, & this 'early hominid' stuff is one of them. Do you think early hominids were wandering around the Americas, Australia, & northern Eurasia in the last 50000 years?

 

I don't understand why you're bothering to engage if you can't tell the difference between late palaeolithic & early hominids. Yama has the good arguments against anthropogenic extinctions, the ones which have to be addressed with respect.

 

It's a debate which isn't settled: there's no scientific consensus. Only loonies argue that it can be completely excluded, & AFAIK nobody claims that Homo sapiens was solely responsible for the large scale extinctions of the late palaeolithic, but there's huge scope for argument, with the pendulum swinging back & forth with new discoveries & analyses. Right now, it seems to be swinging back towards a significant, & in some cases decisive, modern human role (earlier human & hominid species were less efficient hunters) where animal populations were already under stress from climate change or were particularly vulnerable for other reasons. As you'll have gathered, I find this argument persuasive. I'm prepared to accept that it may be wrong, if presented with good enough data & analyses (though we may never know for sure), but in the current state of knowledge, I don't see any reason to accept the 'no human role' view.

 

Yama: S. Asian elephants had the luck (as a species) to be domesticated. Apart from that, they & rhinos lived in a high-productivity environment which remained so throughout the last glaciation & its retreat. This could be significant.

 

The mammoth steppe question is an interesting one. There's debate about the question you raise, whether its disappearance may have been a cause or result of mammoth decline. Maybe we'll live long enough for that debate to be settled, maybe not. It existed on Wrangel Island for a few thousand years, along with mammoths, after the last traces found on the mainland - until humans arrived there. Suggestive, but not proof. One (definitely unproven) possibility mooted is climate change breaking up the mainland mammoth steppe into pseudo-islands where hunters could reduce the isolated herds below viability. It would be relatively easy for people to live & hunt on mammoth steppe - much easier than what's replaced it.

 

This is something which has interested me since I was at school. I dip into the literature from time to time, to see if anything new has emerged.

Edited October 30, 2011 by swerve

[rmgill]

Mmm. Difficult to read prehistory is.

 

It is certainly not contested that humans played a major role - if not outright primary cause - in disappearence of megafauna in various island environments (New Caledonia, New Zealand, Madagascar etc). But those populations were small, geographically limited and extremely vulnerable. Could it happen in continent-sized environment? There certainly is some good evidence about that in Australia. But elsewhere it becomes fuzzier.

 

Obviously, megafauna in Africa did not disappear. It is alleged this is because they evolved alongside humans, whereas in North America, modern humans with their advanced Clovis technology suddenly appeared into 'ecologically naive' environment and massacred large animals by the thousands: so called 'blitzkrieg theory'. It makes sense, no? But there are major problems:

 

1) 'Naive' populations don't stay naive for long. From island environments, it is known that animal populations learn to become wary of humans within few decades, or centuries at most, unless they are wiped out before that. It seems unlikely that a continent full of animals could be hunted to extinction before that.

 

You have to admit that the Mega Fauna in Africa has a much more testy attitude.

 

Compare and contrast the Cape Buffalo with any other bovine ungulate. Cape Buffalo reflect a much more aggressive nature that seems to be far more consistent among a lot of African variants of mega fauna found in other pats of the world.

[Guest JamesG123]

What have early hominids got to do with anything? I'm only discussing the late palaeolithic. I keep saying that, & keep reminding you that I'm only talking about the impact of modern humans, with the ability to plan & set traps.

 

You keep holding up modern humans but during the time of greatest overlap between "humans" and mega fauna, (you do remember that point of this is the impact of "humanity" on mega fauna extinction right?) there were still holdouts of other sub-speces of "hominids", Neanderthal etc. I include them because at that time period, many of them were tool users with about the same capabilities AFAWK. By the time homo sapiens had reached dominance and spread globally most of the big critters were already gone and those that remained were in terminal decline.

 

You keep setting up straw men, & this 'early hominid' stuff is one of them. Do you think early hominids were wandering around the Americas, Australia, & northern Eurasia in the last 50000 years?

 

You really should brush up on your pleistocene. Even if just scanning wikipedia for it, before posting.

 

Yama has the good arguments against anthropogenic extinctions, the ones which have to be addressed with respect.

 

LOL. Yama makes the same argument I do, only spending more time explaining it in verbose fashion. I don't have the time to write in essay fashion.

 

As for the rest, whatever.

[Yama]

Yama: S. Asian elephants had the luck (as a species) to be domesticated. Apart from that, they & rhinos lived in a high-productivity environment which remained so throughout the last glaciation & its retreat. This could be significant.

 

The mammoth steppe question is an interesting one. There's debate about the question you raise, whether its disappearance may have been a cause or result of mammoth decline. Maybe we'll live long enough for that debate to be settled, maybe not. It existed on Wrangel Island for a few thousand years, along with mammoths, after the last traces found on the mainland - until humans arrived there. Suggestive, but not proof. One (definitely unproven) possibility mooted is climate change breaking up the mainland mammoth steppe into pseudo-islands where hunters could reduce the isolated herds below viability. It would be relatively easy for people to live & hunt on mammoth steppe - much easier than what's replaced it.

 

It is questionable whether Asian Elephant could be called 'domesticated', at any rate, it is relatively recent occurance. And domestication is hardly a guarantee of survival in the wild, often quite the contrary: auroch is extinct, wild horse nearly so, reindeer herding has meant demise for wild reindeer etc.

 

Of course, it's possible that historical hunter-gatherer population densities are no more representive about prehistorical situation than contemporary animal population densities: this is an impasse, essentially impossible to solve with what we presently know. Maybe fertile environment full of megafauna supported larger population of human hunters as well, who knows? Extinction of major prey species then might have caused a population crash amongst humans too.

 

It is suggested that humans overhunted a 'keystone species' to extinction (likely, the mammoth, of which the mammoth steppes may have been dependant), this then caused a 'cascade' of extinctions amongst other large species. I find this somewhat unlikely, as many other types of herbivores, carnivores and scavengers became extinct during same time. Mastodons, for example, were browsers and not dependent from mammoth steppes.

 

Overkill, or 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis on its own is, in my opinion, unviable in light of other contemporary evidence. Pleistocene extinction event in North America was too dramatic to have happened by human hunting alone and 'naivety' of the populations does not explain it. Even Australian extinction event was not as dramatic, but was spread over something like 30 000 years (indeed, continuing until historic times - Tasmanian tiger being last victim on the Mainland Australia, until ca. 1000 years ago).

 

Notion that hunting and habitat loss might have split the populations to small, local subpopulations, which then each perished on its own, sounds attractive. There has been datings of megafauna remains (mammoths, mastodons etc) considerably younger than usually suggested extinction dates. It is possible these represent last remnants of the local subpopulations which survived thousands of years after their species had suffered severe decline elsewhere.

 

Survival pattern of large herbivores is too obvious to ignore: outside of few exceptions like bison, moose, musk ox etc, they tend to be concentrated on subtropical or tropical zones, warm regions far from the Poles. Those regions did suffer some large herbivore extinctions (stegodons, stegomastodons, some rhino species) but not anywhere so dramatic as in more northern latitudes. I cannot imagine that this is a coincidence, and it suggests some sort of climate connection.

Edited October 31, 2011 by Yama

[swerve]

You keep holding up modern humans but during the time of greatest overlap between "humans" and mega fauna, (you do remember that point of this is the impact of "humanity" on mega fauna extinction right?) there were still holdouts of other sub-speces of "hominids", Neanderthal etc.

 

You really should brush up on your pleistocene. Even if just scanning wikipedia for it, before posting.

Dear oh dear. Neanderthals are 'early hominids'? Several million years too late. I don't think you know what the Hominidae are. The family includes all the great apes, not just humans. Neanderthals were human. They just weren't modern humans. Depending on your point of view, they were either a closely related human species (Homo neanderthalensis) or a subspecies of Homo sapiens. The latter view is more popular nowadays, as there is good evidence to suggest interbreeding between modern humans & neanderthals.

 

You don't seem to understand the difference between a family (hominids), species & sub-species, either, let alone any intermediate categories. It's a long time since I got my degree in biology, but I think I've still got that straight.

[swerve]

Overkill, or 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis on its own is, in my opinion, unviable in light of other contemporary evidence. Pleistocene extinction event in North America was too dramatic to have happened by human hunting alone ...

 

Survival pattern of large herbivores is too obvious to ignore: outside of few exceptions like bison, moose, musk ox etc, they tend to be concentrated on subtropical or tropical zones, warm regions far from the Poles. Those regions did suffer some large herbivore extinctions (stegodons, stegomastodons, some rhino species) but not anywhere so dramatic as in more northern latitudes. I cannot imagine that this is a coincidence, and it suggests some sort of climate connection.

No argument from me. I think the most likely explanation in most cases is, as I've said several times, a combination. The northern populations were made vulnerable by climate change, & Homo sapiens sapiens was the final straw. A few mega species, e.g. giant sloths, were extremely vulnerable to human predation whatever the environmental conditions, & hunting may be the sole explanation in their case, as with moas & elephant birds. We know giant sloths survived on islands much longer than on the mainland (like mammoths), which is hard to reconcile with climate change being the sole reason.

Edited October 31, 2011 by swerve

[Guest JamesG123]

"Early" is a relative term. The context was versus modern humans. In that Neanderthal and others were "early". I used to as an inclusive term for all of branches of the hominid family that were existent, known and unknown, at the time period in question (late Pleistocene to modern times).

 

 

You don't seem to understand the difference between a family (hominids), species & sub-species, either, let alone any intermediate categories. It's a long time since I got my degree in biology, but I think I've still got that straight.

 

You were wrong of a different opinion so you're nit picking over terminology. Got it.

[swerve]

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

 

Anyone who uses the terms "early hominid" to mean neanderthals (which existed only in the the most recent few percent of the era in which there have been hominids) is talking bollocks. To claim that pointing that out is "nit picking over terminology" demonstrates either clutching at straws or a complete failure of understanding.

 

Calling neanderthals 'early humans' would be very dodgy. Calling them 'early hominids' is ridiculous.

Edited October 31, 2011 by swerve

[Guest JamesG123]

If you want to think so. Be my guest.

[rmgill]

"Early" is a relative term. The context was versus modern humans. In that Neanderthal and others were "early". I used to as an inclusive term for all of branches of the hominid family that were existent, known and unknown, at the time period in question (late Pleistocene to modern times).

 

Just to chime in here, having studied a bit of anthropology before realizing I didn't want to do that as a career....

 

Early is a relative term. But when you combine it with Hominids it conjures up conjures in my mind something FAR FAR FAR before from Neanderthals. To use a different example one cannot refer to a term such as say "early tanks" when speaking of say, M60s vis a vis a comparison to an M1 Abrams. No matter how early an M60s may seem as compared to an M1 it's a useless term to apply "early tank" to M60s. Speaking about an FT17 or Mother, or Big Willie would be very correct. Using the term to relate to say a Matilda I mostly workable. To use it for a Tiger....stretching..... M60....nope.

 

The same thing goes for Neanderthals vis a vis Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Early sapiens would be say, potentially H. sapiens idaltu

 

Note the relative ages here.

 

If you had said, Early Sapiens...then you'd have a defensible point on your use of the term Early + "something else". Or perhaps "sapiens of the early pleistocene".

 

Also, given that some of the pleistocene mega-fauna (mammoths) existed into the holocene (4,500 years ago) you're decidedly out of the pleistocene age and well into the Mesolithic development of humans and stone tools. Also note that there's little evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were active or present in North America. There were no great apes in North America or South America prior to the arrival of Homo Sapiens, monkeys yes, great apes no.

 

 

Back to the basic point though. Given that there seems to be some very interesting common points between the extinctions of mega fauna and the arrival of humans in North America, it does conjure some dissonance to the "American indians are in tune with their environment and don't waste anything!"

Edited October 31, 2011 by rmgill

[Colin]

*cough* firearms *cough*

 

Not that the thread drift isn't interesting in it's own right.

[rmgill]

*cough* firearms *cough*

 

Not that the thread drift isn't interesting in it's own right.

 

Ok....

 

I have no information beyond that one photo.....

 

Needless to say I'm intrigued.

[Guest JamesG123]

Wow... what is that 12 gauge magazine too? A P900?

 

Just to chime in here, having studied a bit of anthropology before realizing I didn't want to do that as a career....

 

Same here, or rather, I don't want to be a teacher or a hand to mouth researcher.

 

 

Early is a relative term. But when you combine it with Hominids it conjures up conjures in my mind something FAR FAR FAR before from Neanderthals.

 

Jez... I picked Neanderthals because it was the one I knew autospell check would correct for me and they were in existence at the time period in question. NOT that they were in some chronological pecking order. Besides most of the creatures we would all agree were "early hominids" never made it out of Africa, and are non-players AFAWK.

 

To use it for a Tiger....stretching..... M60....nope.

 

But if you were talking about the M60 family. If you were characterizing the M60 vs. the very last M60A3+ then "early" would be appropriate would it not?

 

If you had said, Early Sapiens...then you'd have a defensible point on your use of the term Early + "something else". Or perhaps "sapiens of the early pleistocene".

 

Yes... If I were writing a paper. Or this were not tanknet. In a thread about firearms.

 

Also note that there's little evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were active or present in North America.

 

I never claimed they did. My reference to them implicitly indicates Europe and Eurasia.

 

Back to the basic point though. Given that there seems to be some very interesting common points between the extinctions of mega fauna and the arrival of humans in North America, it does conjure some dissonance to the "American indians are in tune with their environment and don't waste anything!"

 

They were human beings with the same failings and tendency towards destruction as any. However the point I was trying to make before we started chasing pedantic red herrings, was they simply didn't have the capacity due to population numbers and technology and techniques to effect macro populations and extinctions. That mammoth bones have been found with human tools and tool marks does not mean they killed them all.

[Colin]

Ok....

 

I have no information beyond that one photo.....

 

Needless to say I'm intrigued.

A far better idea than that silly revolver mag at the far of a pump shotgun. Methinks it would not like reloaded ammo much.

[rmgill]

Wow... what is that 12 gauge magazine too? A P900?

 

Still digging...

 

Jez... I picked Neanderthals because it was the one I knew autospell check would correct for me and they were in existence at the time period in question. NOT that they were in some chronological pecking order. Besides most of the creatures we would all agree were "early hominids" never made it out of Africa, and are non-players AFAWK.

 

So just say Neanderthals....BUT as you say, in the context of North America, even Neanderthals is not correct. So, it's Homo Sapiens or Homo Sapiens Sapiens right?

 

Nothing Early Hominids about it.

 

 

But if you were talking about the M60 family. If you were characterizing the M60 vs. the very last M60A3+ then "early" would be appropriate would it not?

 

Early M60 yes. Early Tank....No.

 

Is an M60 an early tank? Sure, if you grew up with nothing older than a Nintindo around. Anything older than an M60 would be from the stone age before Berignia right?

 

Yes... If I were writing a paper. Or this were not tanknet. In a thread about firearms.

 

Yeah...Tanknet...where Mr Picky has multiple accounts....

 

I never claimed they did. My reference to them implicitly indicates Europe and Eurasia.

 

No but we were in a large part talking about North America or so I thought....

[rmgill]

Some sort of test model....

 

Halo P-12

 

 

 

"A new prototype is expected to be released in summer 2008."

 

So apparently, vaporware...

[DougRichards]

Some sort of test model....

 

Halo P-12

 

 

 

"A new prototype is expected to be released in summer 2008."

 

So apparently, vaporware...

 

All were sent to Terra Nova...

[swerve]

...That mammoth bones have been found with human tools and tool marks does not mean they killed them all.

James, have you actually read my posts? Your arguments suggest that you haven't.

[Guest JamesG123]

I have, but that is the implication of what you wrote/ the theory in question. Whether you realized it or not.

 

 

"A new prototype is expected to be released in summer 2008."

 

So apparently, vaporware...

 

I guess they couldn't find any gov. interest and a civilian application would be... problematic.