Before the Rise of Civilization, Our Hunter-Gatherer Ancestors Drove Most Ice Age Big Mammals to Extinction
By the end of the last ice age, roughly 11,500 years ago, most mega fauna around the world, except those in Africa that had evolved to fear us, was extinct. Conventional wisdom used to absolve our hunter gatherer ancestors from responsibility for those extinctions. It was fueled in no small part by “noble savage” mindsets that wanted to believe that our primitive ancestors were gentle environmentalists who respected nature and could do no wrong. Unfortunately, our ancestors were often inclined to be just as selfish, destructive, and shortsighted as we are today. They simply lacked the technology and numbers to wreak as much havoc on their environment, and as quickly, as we can today.
However, within the parameters of their capabilities, our hunter-gatherer ancestors wreaked enough havoc to drive or tip over many species into extinction. That coincided with climate change at the tail end of the Ice Age. It brought floods from melting glaciers, and warmer weather that blighted plant life in many biospheres that had developed in a cooler era. For many humans around the world, that spelled the end of the idyllic conditions that had enabled earlier generations to feast upon seemingly limitless and easily hunted game. Life was about to get tougher.
