Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Generally speaking, there's also the significant issue of to what extent the Native Americans lived in harmony with nature and to what extent their lives reflected a sparse population in a rich land. One theory for the disappearance of the Anasazi in the Southwest suggests that they despoiled the land and resources and had to move on.
|
Today my exploratory hike revealed an interesting perspective to this question. The Murray Springs Clovis Site in Cochise County, Arizona features 10 exhibits on an interpretive trail.
The Bureau of Land Management says this:
Quote:
|
The Murray Springs Site was created between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago, in the late Pleistocene era, by a small group of Clovis people, who camped nearby, and who probably hunted large animals as they came down to water in the arroyo.
|
One of the exhibits speculates:
Quote:
|
Clovis hunters may have been the last straw for the large ice age animals.
|
Under those words is a painting of hunters attacking a mammoth with spears.
Then this quote:
Quote:
Dr. Paul S. Martin of the University of Arizona has put forth a theory that humans contributed to the demise of the megafauna by overhunting. The environment was rapidly changing, causing strain on these animals, who were already struggling to survive. These skilled hunters arrived on the scene and may have taken advantage of the situation.
Did the Clovis people "finish them off"?
Have humans continued this trend since Clovis times?
|
In front of a deep arroyo was this sign:
Quote:
|
Across the wash, archeologists discovered the remains of at least 12 bison. Probably all were brought down in a single hunting event. Hunters may have constructed a semi-circle structure of brush across the creek to trap the animals, once the ambush began. They would have attacked from the stream bank with their spears and atlatls when the thirsty animals arrived.
|
It is believed that the Clovis people died out when the ice age animals became extinct.
But the early people had no monopoly on contributing to extinctions. Another exhibit at the site says that recent studies are indicating that if species continue to disappear from the Earth at the rate of the last hundred years or so, the current extinction will have to be considered "mass" such as ended the dinosaurs and many other species 65 million years ago.
I hope that this is not really off-topic since it is relevant to Issybird's questions. It was an interesting day for me with those questions in mind.