Megafauna Whodunnit
Who killed off all the big mammals?
Imagine we had come into the world as humans tens of thousands of years ago, mainly hairless due to the tropical climate, and we found ourselves living as hunter gatherers in a nomadic clan following big-game animal herds across vast distances. Unlike the other animals, we were capable of imagining the past and future, for thinking several moves ahead of our quarry. Beyond the hunt, we performed tasks involving our own clan’s survival: learning to share tasks involving food preparation and raising our offspring.
Viewed from our world, this past gets harder to see the farther back we look. There are too many gaps to fill. Artifacts are so rare that estimates of when our ancestors’ relatives reached the Americas varies by tens of thousands of years—longer than all of recorded human history. DNA analysis furnishes more evidence about how long ago we came into being, but the amount of time involved is speculative. The best guess today is that we go back around a quarter of a million years—the blink of an eye in Earth’s history.
Among the things we would like to know about our earliest ancestors is what we were evolved to do. We assume that most of our past was as hunter-gatherers who were probably carnivores. Evidence for this includes our shortened digestive tract, typical for scavengers. It is also possible that a significant portion of our diet was taken from other predators, since we’ve got one of the most potent levels of stomach acid in the animal kingdom, exceeded by carrion-eating vultures.
Our closest wild relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—are herbivorous. Eating plants requires a long digestive tract in order to neutralize all the toxins plants use to defend themselves from being eaten. Nor is vegetation especially dense in accessible nutrients, so eating and digestion occupy a lot of herbivores’ time.
As Homo sapiens sapiens, we don’t have this problem; our problem was always finding game. Not only that, we appear to have evolved requirements for fatty meats, preferably cooked or predigested by means such as salting, drying, or fermentation. This suggests that we were evolved from predecessors who hunted in social groups and had mastered the use of fire.
Our ancestors spread across the world from Africa some 150,000 years ago, plus or minus tens of thousands of years—our knowledge is not that exact. Everywhere they went, large mammals disappeared. Cause and effect appear straightforward, but many indigenous groups in Australia and the Americas object to the insinuation that their ancestors caused extinctions. The conventional presentation, thus, avoids adding the insult of such an accusation to the injury of having displaced and marginalized these peoples in recent centuries.
Nevertheless, quite a few researchers have pointed out this correlation and argued that it tells us a lot about the diet we are evolved to eat as a species. Here, retired physician and Protein Power (1996) author Michael Eades summarizes the case for this reading of the evidence:
The summary is quite compressed, given that it covers the entirety of human history and prehistory in just under an hour. It omits a lot from the archeological record, but still makes for a strong case.
The answer to the whodunnit question, then, is that we very probably did.
Today I read "Third Girl from the Left" by Martha Southgate. It was not a very long book but it was pretty powerful. For some reason, my book selections have had themes of separation, isolation, secrets, pride and resentment. This one had some other themes of racial trauma, institutional discrimination, misogyny, exploitation, the delusion of meritocracy and personal freedom (to love who you love... I guess, there is a gay relationship but it is not political... just personal). It is definitely a book with Black American point of view as it references the Tulsa Massacre (although it references it as a riot) and the racist Hollywood system of the late 60's and early to mid 70's. Anyhow, if you are interested in a different point of view than you have had for most of your life, this is an interesting fictional novel about three-four generations of American Black women from 1920's to 1990's.
The book I read prior to this was a novel about Marjorie Merriweather Post-- her life. My favorite part was the beginning when they arrive in Battlecreek, Michigan in the 1890s. I kind of wanted to be there too. But after her father's recovery and business launch and success, it is like a litany of rich people problems. (Why does someone who already has over 30 million dollars need to hold a big party fundraiser to raise up $100K to build a hospital -- why not just build one and fund an endowment? Must one build a MarALago and hold a big party to raise a fraction of the cost?) Anyhow, I honestly did not connect with the person in this book. Maybe the author should have just focused on a certain period of her life and not tried to shove the whole thing in. I really was puzzled why she married more than twice.
The book I read the day before that was "Hello Beautiful" and I fully recommend this one. It did bring me to mind the novel "Black Cake" from the week prior. Anyhow it is a book about relationships, separation, pride and abandonment... But it was really really good and I think I cried in a few different places.
I also read "The London Seance Society" which was a bit of a mystery with a twist. Paranormal and LGBT friendly. "A Man Called Ove" which I really loved and watched the American film adaptation starring Tom Hanks with my husband. "The Evening and the Morning" by Ken Follet which is a historical drama set in the Dark Ages and that was entertaining. And "Birnam Woods" which was amazing and I am sure will win some kind of award or at least hit the bestseller list. It pits a amoral billionaire of the Peter Theil variety against an anarchistic gardening group and some kind of hunter/rancher type.
Every time I read stuff about the news/politics... I just borrow more books and escape. My next selection is lighter fare-- about a precocious British 11 year old chemist who solves mysteries...
Good morning! Good conversation! Piquant radical common sense is a great way to start the day!