But then, why are Africa and India untouched? Africa is the place where you would expect this to have occured soonest, and as far as I know there was NO megafauna dieoff in Africa. And there were Moa in Australia coexisting with human beings until very very recently.
I don't know about you, but if I were a neolithic hunter I would have to be pretty hard up to go after a giant sloth. Let's see, I can hunt the giant, multi-ton animal with claws that can rip through trees -- or I can hunt the tapir. Which do I choose?
--- On Fri, 12/26/08, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> In the case of Australia, that smoke may be due to the
> fires that aboriginal people set in the bush, which may have
> altered the ecology of the outback enough to cause an
> extinction cascade. A cascade which has left Australia
> bereft of indigenous large animals, with the exceptions of
> red and gray kangaroos. In other words, anthropogenic
> influences beyond mere over-hunting might have contributed
> to these mass extinctions.
>
>
>
>
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