Archaeologists and paleontologists examining the historical pathways of modern humans as they left Africa and colonize the remainder of the planet have discovered a disturbing combination of effects.
Mastodon Sculpture, Page Museum La Brea Tar Pits, California, photo by Rons Log
It seems that, wherever we went, severe impacts to both plant and animal life and climate change came with us. After humans colonized the Americas and Australia, those lands were irreversibly altered. Dozens of species of plants and animals died, and cooling and then warming of the local climate occurred at the same time. The problem is and likely will be for some time to come, that we don't know which came first. It is possible that climate change in the form of glaciation and deglaciation drove migrating peoples from one continent to another. It is possible that humans over-predated the new species they found, because those species were on able to save themselves from the new predator. It is also possible that the death of massive number of animals drove climate change by upsetting the existing balance of plants and animals in the region.
So we don't really know who's at fault: it is perhaps most likely that the three elements of massive movements of human population, climate instability, and massive extinction of the genera of species of animals fed into each other, eventually creating the current balance of life and climate on our planet.
- Megafaunal extinctions
- American megafaunal extinctions
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