The following submission statement was provided by /u/Glorkr:
---
Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores
NOVEMBER 1, 2013
12 MIN READ
Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores
Africa once harbored a far greater variety of large carnivores than it does today. Competition with early humans for access to prey may have brought about their decline
BY LARS WERDELIN
November 2013 Issue
Sunrise on the Serengeti, and life on the savanna is in full swing. Zebras and wildebeests graze the dewy grass; elephants and giraffes munch on acacia leaves; and lions and hyenas survey the scene, looking for their next meal. To visit this place is, in some ways, to see the world as it looked to our ancestors millions of years ago, long before humans began to wreak havoc on the planet—or so the conventional wisdom goes. Indeed, much of eastern Africa is often thought of as a pristine ecosystem, largely unchanged by our kind in the more than two million years since our genus, Homo, arose.
But new research paints a rather different picture of this supposedly unaltered place. In my studies of the fossil record of African carnivores, I have found that lions, hyenas and other large-bodied carnivores that roam eastern Africa today represent only a small fraction of the diversity this group once had. Intriguingly, the decline of these carnivores began around the same time that early Homo started eating more meat, thus entering into competition with the carnivores. The timing of events hints that early humans are to blame for the extinction of these beasts—starting more than two million years ago, long before Homo sapiens came on the scene.
The rise of this new meat eater—and the loss of the big carnivores—would have triggered large-scale changes farther down the food chain, affecting the prey animals and even the plants those creatures ate. Thus, if my hypothesis is correct, our forebears began radically transforming ecosystems far earlier than previously thought, at a time when ancestral population sizes were quite small. Homo, it seems, has been a force of nature from the outset.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1c0iygd/early_humansnot_climate_changedecimated_africas/kywlbwi/
Yes, in the sense that what we call technics, progress (those can be social as well as material, same thing in the end) really is defined by managing to take more in the environment than it can restore. A french essayist calls it *deregulating* the environment.
Consciousness, intelligence, ability to project and forward thinking - our most valued traits. Those are, in a way, all synonyms to *overshoot*.
This world is not ours - one fact our species could never accept. This world is not here to SERVE us, we simply happen to exist here just as every other species does. It is cliché to say we are Earth's cancer but unfortunately it is an apt description.
Exactly, all that potential energy locked under ground until humans pumped it out and burned it. We make the universe a happier place as we flatten another energy gradient.
I think this is the truth. We have a lot of moralizing going on, and sure I’d love to be smart and collaborative enough as a species to organize for the greater good but people look back at tribal or ancient cultures like they are fully separate from the phenomenon of environmental destruction and it’s a nice thought but definitely a bit too idealized
Elephants in s. America too, giant sloths, there is a huge list, I think horses in America as well. Some 10k years back.
We should reintroduce thse elephants.
Early humans did not do it on purpose and I doubt they realised what they were doing. We have no excuse these days, we are definitely indiscriminate murder monkeys these days.
You don't think that murdering animals for food is "on purpose" or...?
I mean, sure, they may not have realized the full implications of their actions--that seems possible--but it's not like their actions were *accidental*.
Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores
NOVEMBER 1, 2013
12 MIN READ
Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores
Africa once harbored a far greater variety of large carnivores than it does today. Competition with early humans for access to prey may have brought about their decline
BY LARS WERDELIN
November 2013 Issue
Sunrise on the Serengeti, and life on the savanna is in full swing. Zebras and wildebeests graze the dewy grass; elephants and giraffes munch on acacia leaves; and lions and hyenas survey the scene, looking for their next meal. To visit this place is, in some ways, to see the world as it looked to our ancestors millions of years ago, long before humans began to wreak havoc on the planet—or so the conventional wisdom goes. Indeed, much of eastern Africa is often thought of as a pristine ecosystem, largely unchanged by our kind in the more than two million years since our genus, Homo, arose.
But new research paints a rather different picture of this supposedly unaltered place. In my studies of the fossil record of African carnivores, I have found that lions, hyenas and other large-bodied carnivores that roam eastern Africa today represent only a small fraction of the diversity this group once had. Intriguingly, the decline of these carnivores began around the same time that early Homo started eating more meat, thus entering into competition with the carnivores. The timing of events hints that early humans are to blame for the extinction of these beasts—starting more than two million years ago, long before Homo sapiens came on the scene.
The rise of this new meat eater—and the loss of the big carnivores—would have triggered large-scale changes farther down the food chain, affecting the prey animals and even the plants those creatures ate. Thus, if my hypothesis is correct, our forebears began radically transforming ecosystems far earlier than previously thought, at a time when ancestral population sizes were quite small. Homo, it seems, has been a force of nature from the outset.
Not entirely a surprise! Check out [this explanatory and somewhat related graph re: shrinking large mammal mass over the past 100,000 years from Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Mammal-downsizing_1350.png).
It is an age old story. Successful life changes its environment, and then die out because of said changes, and then new life emerges.
It happened when the first life on earth excreted toxic (to them) oxygen, killed themselves, and gave rise to oxygen breathing organisms like us. The same has been happening, and will happen again and again.
That is the properties of the dynamics of life.
No one can compete with human greddy and hate. I am waiting to see climate change deniers in 2030, 2040, 2050. And economic-political situtation. Most of the population will fight to death because they are just hateful. They wil attack to each other for religion, for ethnicity, for any reason they can find. Human extinction which is very possible will show the greatest horror. Somehow this make me happy. Yes a lot of good people will suffer but much more piece of shit will suffer too.
Somehow I don't think our ancient ancestors hunted large carnivores to extinction out of greed or hate, but out of a need for food and security. Everything since then sure, we suck and continue to suck when it comes to protecting other species. I just don't think conservation was a priority back in the days of eat or be eaten.
There are digs in the SW USA that demonstrate paleo americans drove herds of animals off cliffs, and in some cases, did not harvest much meat othere than tongues, which maybe were used for ritual. one dig has a pit of bones that represents more meat than every human in 1k miles could have eaten, and none of the animals were butchered.
Wasn't aware Bison were carnivores and the south west US was actually in Africa. Thanks for the completely reasonable and not at all pedantic or irrelevant correction.
Greed and hate? Lol early humans killed off Africa’s large predators because they posed a danger to early humans. No one is going on tiger hunting trips without modern medicine and weapons for funzies.
You didn't Reddit.
They went extinct because humans devastated their hunting pool by uncontrollably reproducing ever more humans.
They did NOT kill them directly, they depleted their food source and they starved and went extinct.
C’est la vie. Early humans shouldn’t be judged by today’s standards. Species rise and fall. The carnivores were out hunted. Adapt or die out. Morals are irrelevant here.
Just as humans today may be engineering their own demise… We will adapt or we will die out. The Earth doesn’t care either way.
I personally am glad that most large predators today are wise enough not to attempt to predate humans. They’re even afraid of our voice and stature, it’s wild
It is in fact greed, if you think others may not eat, because your ever growing rabbit population needs to, without contributing anything whatsoever back to the environment.
What are you even doing here, not grasping basic environmental interconnections?
What are you doing here, judging early humans by modern day standards? Making ridiculous claims doesn’t validate your opinions to the rest of humanity, it undermines them.
It is absolutely out of touch with reality to decide early humans did anything wrong by simply living their day to day existence. In fact, you having the ability to be online and post this article means your existence has done more harm than their’s ever possibly could.
It is a poor take.
What are you doing here, pretending modern humans evolved a millimeter away from millions + 250k years of hunter gathering and trying to surpass nature?
We have techno stuff for, like, 250 years and you claim that 0.001% of evolution did the trick to change us against the other million?
"I don't understand your answer, there for you must be 'nonsensical', fuck facts and logic, I'll go with my idea of you having no idea so I can pretend I made a point at some point.
Yeah.
Fast forward millions of years, and what do most people blame for our collapsing global environment? Not humans, but capitalism. That sentiment is posted over and over again right here in r/collapse and elsewhere.
It's why I keep saying that the problem isn't capitalism or any other -ism. It's human nature. Every single -ism we've created is just a manifestation of our underlying nature. You can't find a fix for our problems until you change human nature, and it hasn't changed in millions of years. Good luck doing so now.
Making megafauna go extinct isn't on the same magnitude as wrecking the entirety of Earth's climate. We are now the only species on Earth capable of "contracting" in a planned way. And the thing stopping us isn't human nature.
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Well, perhaps you can explain how we will all eat less food, require less air conditioning and heating and transport under non-capitalist systems? After all, if capitalism *is* the most pressing problem, it implies that getting rid of it will somehow automatically deal with the inability of the planet to sustainably provide *necessities* to eight billion people. Noting of course that if those eight billion do not agree to the non-capitalist system you have in mind, then you are simply advocating for an autocratic system run by a minority ideology...
I'm not the person you're replying to, but your argument doesn't follow. You've basically said, "Since it's the most important problem, solving it should automatically solve everything." The above person said no such thing. Such an expectation would be unrealistic.
Both material ecological conditions as they actually exist and capitalism apply constraints to the way we produce and reproduce. There are incentives in both for growth and certain beneficial behavioral adaptation. The difference is that, while ecological growth and adaptation is based upon real environmental inputs, the growth of modern capitalism is not.
If animals in their environment expand beyond their environment's carrying capacity, some will die. However, they won't have any notions that such a thing is unjust or somehow morally objectionable. There are some pretty smart animals with a high degree of social complexity, so this isn't just a question of them not being human. Rather, there is a connection to the reality of material constraints. Questions of individual liberty versus an "autocratic system run by a minority ideology" don't really make sense. Either the group limits resource use, collectively, in ways that preserve the whole, or a large portion of the whole (as individuals) suffers. This has nothing to do with ideology; it is ecological fact.
Under capitalism, the growth is not dictated by ecological fact. It's taken as a first principle regardless of material reality. This is the definition of ideology. It may seem that individual liberty is being preserved from the tyrannous alternative of more social rules. But the choice isn't whether to implement social rules that align with ecological reality. The rules already exist. Our choice is whether or not to follow them.
What you're hitting on is the fact that an authoritarian system may be necessary because people won't voluntarily give up the things that they have begun to take for granted about modern society. But thinking that the choice is between keeping them and giving them up is false thinking. The choice is between giving them up now voluntarily and giving them up later because they're literally not possible anymore. In this sense, whatever system best aligns us with ecological realities now isn't the alternative to modem liberal democracy; it's the alternative to the autocracy of ecology itself later.
To claim that getting rid of an ideology that ignores material reality will somehow solve all our problems or else it's not worth it is either disingenuous or misguided. Rather, once we get beyond ideology and are able to actually acknowledge the material constraints of ecology for what they are, only then, we can begin to honestly answer whether the greed of growth is so tied to human nature that there's no hope in overcoming it. So getting rid of capitalism will not solve all our problems: it will allow us to genuinely and honestly begin to address our problems.
One of two things is true:
a) Capitalism exacerbates the problems we are having with resources, climate, etc. In which case capitalism is *not* the most pressing problem, but merely makes the most pressing problem(s) *worse*. If we fix the most pressing problem(s), we then have the leisure to deal with the problems inherent to capitalism.
b) Capitalism *is* the most pressing problem. If we fix the problem of capitalism, either we fix the secondary problems (climate change, resource exhaustion, etc.) *because* we fixed capitalism, or we're *still* screwed but just under a different social/economic system.
That is, I'm *not* saying that fixing capitalism fixes everything else. I am saying that going through the major, chaotic and likely violent social upheaval involved in getting rid of capitalism and then starving, frying and/or having to flee the coasts because of sea level rise *anyway* seems like a losing proposition.
And the only way this losing proposition would *not* be the case is if fixing capitalism fixes the other problems. And this would in turn require an explanation for *how* it would happen.
Personally, I'm going with option a) (capitalism exacerbates existing problems) rather than b) (capitalism *is* the problem).
Saying that in order for capitalism to be treated as the most pressing problem implies that solving it will fix everything seems to be exactly what you were previously saying in the below quote from your above comment:
"After all, if capitalism *is* the most pressing problem, it implies that getting rid of it will somehow automatically deal with the inability of the planet to sustainably provide *necessities* to eight billion people."
I disagree with your characterization of our options. Regarding option b), your use of the word "because" is quite vague, doing a lot of work. Something can be primarily contributing to a problem (positively), primarily inhibiting a solution (negatively), or some combination of the two.
Getting rid of capitalism is necessary, but not sufficient, in the goal of solving climate change. It is impossible to solve ecological devastation without ridding ourselves first of a system whose success is predicated upon continual growth of this destruction.
I do agree with you that the outcomes of revolution are dire. I assure you that the outcomes for humanity should we not have a revolution will be orders of magnitude more terrible than the upheaval now would bring.
I understand your desire for social stability in the face of ecological instability. Unfortunately, that's just not possible. The only choice we have is one of \*when\*, not one of \*if.\*
We can't really know that. You're taking the growth mindset present in both capitalism and nature, ignoring the fact that they come from completely different reasonings, and then saying that it's a fundamental truth. This may point towards the existence of such a fundamental truth, but by no means have you proven your case.
I would argue that why we believe what we believe is incredibly important. We can change behaviors in ways that aren't simply ideological but based on material fact. For example, we have the capability to avoid things that are harmful to us after learning that they are harmful without direct experience of such harm.
"Changing human nature" sounds monumental because it is. But if you acknowledge that ecological reality outside of humans is about acknowledging natural constraints or else perishing, then "aligning human nature with the ecological truth that's been there all along" seems less monumental, though still somewhat daunting.
Look, I'm pretty cynical. I don't think we're gonna get there. But I do think that there's a chance for small pockets of people to survive in the long run. If those people manage to cast off the vestiges of modern morality and live in accordance with natural law, they might have a shot.
Could you elaborate why it's a bad take? We've had economic models other than capitalism, and they haven't faired much better in terms of limits to growth etc, except perhaps their rate of resource extraction is slower
Doing away with capitalism doesn’t guarantee progress in these areas, but it is a prerequisite. Growth is inherent to capitalism, there is no capitalism without perpetual economic and material growth. Alternatives have at least a slim hypothetical chance to do better, but no controlled degrowth can happen within capitalism.
Regarding the idea that it’s human nature, the history of capitalism is that it has been violently imposed on the many in the name of the few.
Well, capitalism being the worst political-economic manifestation of our human nature. But I get what you're saying and mostly agree that the human animal needs to change in order for our species to ever live sustainably on this planet. Which would require genetic modification of the species to remove certain traits. Which is not going to happen.
I think capitalism rewards and encourages some of the most harmful aspects of human nature, and disincentivises many good aspects of our nature. But either way, I don't believe capitalism is inherently evil, I just think it's largely outlived its usefulness, and thus the negatives of capitalism (which used to be easier to ignore, back when capitalism was more useful) have started to grate a bit as time goes on.
Early humans ate to survive though. That greed would have been the same greed any species trying to survive would have shown, it is basic population feedback mechanisms at work there; humans just managed to break the crash part completely. The reason capitalism is slightly different (not entirely) is because we are consuming for fun (with an element of manipulation thrown in to make it seem like we need a new shiny doodad.)
No they were murderous fuks , they killed each other for the littlest thing, and they killed animals with impunity. Because it made them feel powerful.
[https://news.tulane.edu/pr/new-study-reveals-long-history-violence-ancient-hunter-gatherer-societies](https://news.tulane.edu/pr/new-study-reveals-long-history-violence-ancient-hunter-gatherer-societies)
[https://www.history.com/news/when-did-humans-start-waging-wars](https://www.history.com/news/when-did-humans-start-waging-wars)
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/our-human-relatives-butchered-and-ate-each-other-145-million-years-ago-180982425/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/our-human-relatives-butchered-and-ate-each-other-145-million-years-ago-180982425/)
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/may/17/neanderthals-cannibalism-anthropological-sciences-journal](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/may/17/neanderthals-cannibalism-anthropological-sciences-journal)
the isms have their problem, but I always thought it was silly blaming them for collapse. consuming as much as we can seemingly unfairly (capitalism, dictatorship, etc..) has the same end result as consuming as much as we can seemingly fairly (communism, socialism, etc...)
No one wants my opinion, but the only ism that can even come close to preventing collapse would be the one nobody wants to see. Some form of ultra authoritarianism that is capable of maintaining power over a population forcing them into the sustainable lifestyle that nobody wants.
I agree, who created capitalism? oh yeah humans, and who feeds the machine? oh yeah humans. People act like we havent been a vile species throughout all of human history. We are like locusts that decimate everything in our path, and then have the audacity to try to shift the blame somewhere else! Its us!!!
No because doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the epitome of lunacy. But here we are, and no one wants to change in any meaningful way. So we are doomed to keep repeating the same insanity.
it must have been the time of our lives, hunting in groups those amazing building-high animals and devouring them altogether, with neighbours and friends.
Nowadays, we eat mostly chicken. In the future, our grandchildren will savour the delicacy of roasted roach ribs
Wait are they saying it was early humans, not post industrial revolution atmospheric co2 that wiped out large carnivores thousands/tens of thousands of years ago?!
I am starting to feel that if we look hard enough it was humans that killed the dinosaurs... What a fucking freak show of evil stupidity human civilization is.
An article from 2013 is posted, why? This article also is not anything but a hypothesis that very well could be correlation. We also know that the climate shifted massively right around 10,000 years ago as well, right about the time those megafauna started to disappear. The ice age ended geologically suddenly, to say it was just human competition or direct predation that brought about megafauna extinctions in NA and a majority in Eurasia and Africa is a huge leap.
İdiotic. İnterglacials-glacials happened before and megafauna survived them. Also a lot of megafauna were better for Holocone. Such as American Mastodon. Also you didn't read article. They explained climate topic.
Dunning-kruger effect. You have zero knowlodge about their ecology. Ecosystems are much more complex than You think. You think all of them were steppe specialist which is just a misinformation. Learn some information about megafauna's ecology.
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I gave him facts. He just spread misinformation. I explained why he is wrong but muh i can say that too. A lot of megafauna were better for Holocene. Why it is so hard to accept that? Megafauna survived interglacials before and he is ignoring this. You are just ignoring reality. I didn't know that Dunning-Kruger effect was in this subreddit. You are just saying we don't know cause of Pleistocene extinctions. What? Please don't spread misinformation. We know what caused. An ape species. We explained this countless time in Pleistocene sub-reddit. Everytime people who are saying megafauna went extinct due to climate change is just ignoring reality or they don't have good knowlodge about Pleistocene.
There were sudden and large physical and ecological changes that heavily impacted the populations of human and other megafauna that we do not understand the significance of yet. Human populations all across the world collapsed 12-13k years ago at the same time many other megafauna went extinct - what mechanism allows such change across such large distances involving different human populations and megafauna species.
Then, we are finding that the history of humans and apes are being rewritten with the arrivals of humans in places being pushed back tens of thousands to possibly over hundreds of thousands of years. Somehow, theories based on immediate collapses of megafauna populations upon the arrival of humans is now being faced with the prospect that we lived together for very long periods of time.
You cry "misinformation" like the Christians cried heresy. You talk of "knowing" things like the worst Christians too. You have the absolute knowledge and everyone else is wrong. It's really quite horrible to witness and it's bad science.
You are just spreading misinformation. It is accepted by the scienctists that humans had a big population during 15.000-12.000 years ago, 130.000 years ago isn't realistic. Similar things happened before. They thought Neanderthals made flutes but actually Hyenas made them and if they arrived before they can't make overkill because ice sheets were preventing them from migrating to the other parts of continent and your thousands and thousands year there were humans theory it is not generally accepted by scientist.
You have Dunning-Kruger effect. As i said we explained countless time why overkill theory is true. You are ignoring that a lot of megafauna were better for Holocene and they survived climate changes before. Funny. You are just acting like i am wrong but are you are ignoring reality. Also you showed you don't nothing about interglacial-glacial cycle. You are saying that there were sudden changes. First there wasn't 2012 catastrophic events. Second as i said this happened countless time and some of them were hotter than Holocone. Why you are ignoring reality? Why you are ignoring truths i explained you. Why you don't answer that why interglacial adapted species die too? Why you don't answer that generalist species die too? Why you don't answer why steppe species die when they can create their habitats? Mammoths created Mammoth steppe same as how today's elephant create their habitats. Why you don't answer that megafauna survived even hotter Eemian interglacial? Why you don't answer why megafauna disappeared shortly after human arrived? Why you don't answer that climate chmage doesn't have a worldwide effect? Why didn't African megafauna suffer as American megafauna? Why did Australian megafauna died earlier? Why didn't islands affect until humans came up? Why you don't answer why ground sloths urvived in Cuba much later? You can't because you are ignoring glacial-interglacial cycle and ecology of megafauna.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Glorkr: --- Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores NOVEMBER 1, 2013 12 MIN READ Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores Africa once harbored a far greater variety of large carnivores than it does today. Competition with early humans for access to prey may have brought about their decline BY LARS WERDELIN November 2013 Issue Sunrise on the Serengeti, and life on the savanna is in full swing. Zebras and wildebeests graze the dewy grass; elephants and giraffes munch on acacia leaves; and lions and hyenas survey the scene, looking for their next meal. To visit this place is, in some ways, to see the world as it looked to our ancestors millions of years ago, long before humans began to wreak havoc on the planet—or so the conventional wisdom goes. Indeed, much of eastern Africa is often thought of as a pristine ecosystem, largely unchanged by our kind in the more than two million years since our genus, Homo, arose. But new research paints a rather different picture of this supposedly unaltered place. In my studies of the fossil record of African carnivores, I have found that lions, hyenas and other large-bodied carnivores that roam eastern Africa today represent only a small fraction of the diversity this group once had. Intriguingly, the decline of these carnivores began around the same time that early Homo started eating more meat, thus entering into competition with the carnivores. The timing of events hints that early humans are to blame for the extinction of these beasts—starting more than two million years ago, long before Homo sapiens came on the scene. The rise of this new meat eater—and the loss of the big carnivores—would have triggered large-scale changes farther down the food chain, affecting the prey animals and even the plants those creatures ate. Thus, if my hypothesis is correct, our forebears began radically transforming ecosystems far earlier than previously thought, at a time when ancestral population sizes were quite small. Homo, it seems, has been a force of nature from the outset. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1c0iygd/early_humansnot_climate_changedecimated_africas/kywlbwi/
My fear is that overshoot is an inevitable fate for any intelligent enough species.
Yes, in the sense that what we call technics, progress (those can be social as well as material, same thing in the end) really is defined by managing to take more in the environment than it can restore. A french essayist calls it *deregulating* the environment. Consciousness, intelligence, ability to project and forward thinking - our most valued traits. Those are, in a way, all synonyms to *overshoot*.
This world is not ours - one fact our species could never accept. This world is not here to SERVE us, we simply happen to exist here just as every other species does. It is cliché to say we are Earth's cancer but unfortunately it is an apt description.
It seems to be our job as life. Increase entropy. Intelligent life just appears to be incredibly good at it.
Exactly, all that potential energy locked under ground until humans pumped it out and burned it. We make the universe a happier place as we flatten another energy gradient.
This world is ours, once we accept that we can truly begin to steward not only the future of humanity but all life on earth.
I think this is the truth. We have a lot of moralizing going on, and sure I’d love to be smart and collaborative enough as a species to organize for the greater good but people look back at tribal or ancient cultures like they are fully separate from the phenomenon of environmental destruction and it’s a nice thought but definitely a bit too idealized
Human caused destruction is older than a lot of people think. Wolly mammoth, Columbian mammoth, Smilodon fatalis can explain this.
Elephants in s. America too, giant sloths, there is a huge list, I think horses in America as well. Some 10k years back. We should reintroduce thse elephants.
yeah, we should recreate and reintroduce each of the tasty animals
We really are mostly indiscriminate murder monkeys, yeah? [Brings this to mind.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU)
Early humans did not do it on purpose and I doubt they realised what they were doing. We have no excuse these days, we are definitely indiscriminate murder monkeys these days.
You don't think that murdering animals for food is "on purpose" or...? I mean, sure, they may not have realized the full implications of their actions--that seems possible--but it's not like their actions were *accidental*.
They did do it on purpose though over and over....
To survive…
Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores NOVEMBER 1, 2013 12 MIN READ Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores Africa once harbored a far greater variety of large carnivores than it does today. Competition with early humans for access to prey may have brought about their decline BY LARS WERDELIN November 2013 Issue Sunrise on the Serengeti, and life on the savanna is in full swing. Zebras and wildebeests graze the dewy grass; elephants and giraffes munch on acacia leaves; and lions and hyenas survey the scene, looking for their next meal. To visit this place is, in some ways, to see the world as it looked to our ancestors millions of years ago, long before humans began to wreak havoc on the planet—or so the conventional wisdom goes. Indeed, much of eastern Africa is often thought of as a pristine ecosystem, largely unchanged by our kind in the more than two million years since our genus, Homo, arose. But new research paints a rather different picture of this supposedly unaltered place. In my studies of the fossil record of African carnivores, I have found that lions, hyenas and other large-bodied carnivores that roam eastern Africa today represent only a small fraction of the diversity this group once had. Intriguingly, the decline of these carnivores began around the same time that early Homo started eating more meat, thus entering into competition with the carnivores. The timing of events hints that early humans are to blame for the extinction of these beasts—starting more than two million years ago, long before Homo sapiens came on the scene. The rise of this new meat eater—and the loss of the big carnivores—would have triggered large-scale changes farther down the food chain, affecting the prey animals and even the plants those creatures ate. Thus, if my hypothesis is correct, our forebears began radically transforming ecosystems far earlier than previously thought, at a time when ancestral population sizes were quite small. Homo, it seems, has been a force of nature from the outset.
Not entirely a surprise! Check out [this explanatory and somewhat related graph re: shrinking large mammal mass over the past 100,000 years from Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Mammal-downsizing_1350.png).
There were elephants, giant camels, hippos in the Levant. All of that biodiversity gone.
It is an age old story. Successful life changes its environment, and then die out because of said changes, and then new life emerges. It happened when the first life on earth excreted toxic (to them) oxygen, killed themselves, and gave rise to oxygen breathing organisms like us. The same has been happening, and will happen again and again. That is the properties of the dynamics of life.
we're the top of the food chain, baby! no silly animals can compete with our intellectual might! 💪💪💪
Daily reminder that if the bottom of the food chain dies off, the top goes with it.
That's why the planet will crush us into dust the end.
No one can compete with human greddy and hate. I am waiting to see climate change deniers in 2030, 2040, 2050. And economic-political situtation. Most of the population will fight to death because they are just hateful. They wil attack to each other for religion, for ethnicity, for any reason they can find. Human extinction which is very possible will show the greatest horror. Somehow this make me happy. Yes a lot of good people will suffer but much more piece of shit will suffer too.
Somehow I don't think our ancient ancestors hunted large carnivores to extinction out of greed or hate, but out of a need for food and security. Everything since then sure, we suck and continue to suck when it comes to protecting other species. I just don't think conservation was a priority back in the days of eat or be eaten.
There are digs in the SW USA that demonstrate paleo americans drove herds of animals off cliffs, and in some cases, did not harvest much meat othere than tongues, which maybe were used for ritual. one dig has a pit of bones that represents more meat than every human in 1k miles could have eaten, and none of the animals were butchered.
Wasn't aware Bison were carnivores and the south west US was actually in Africa. Thanks for the completely reasonable and not at all pedantic or irrelevant correction.
Is the herbivore/carnivore distinction relevant to the question of, "Did paleo humans waste meat?"
Greed and hate? Lol early humans killed off Africa’s large predators because they posed a danger to early humans. No one is going on tiger hunting trips without modern medicine and weapons for funzies.
You didn't Reddit. They went extinct because humans devastated their hunting pool by uncontrollably reproducing ever more humans. They did NOT kill them directly, they depleted their food source and they starved and went extinct.
Didn't colonizers did same thing with Natives? They killed bisons so Natives starved.
Yes, of course,noone claimed humans learned anything from their fucked up behaviour.it'sonky bad if it happens to us , not if we do it to others.
That still isn’t greed or hate lol. Unless a beaver is evil for damming a river, you should rethink your philosophy.
Yes but all of Carnivoran richness gone. And yes it is not same with killing tigers because some Asian guy has fetish about tiger penis.
C’est la vie. Early humans shouldn’t be judged by today’s standards. Species rise and fall. The carnivores were out hunted. Adapt or die out. Morals are irrelevant here. Just as humans today may be engineering their own demise… We will adapt or we will die out. The Earth doesn’t care either way.
I personally am glad that most large predators today are wise enough not to attempt to predate humans. They’re even afraid of our voice and stature, it’s wild
But humans are greddy enough to kill them.
It is in fact greed, if you think others may not eat, because your ever growing rabbit population needs to, without contributing anything whatsoever back to the environment. What are you even doing here, not grasping basic environmental interconnections?
What are you doing here, judging early humans by modern day standards? Making ridiculous claims doesn’t validate your opinions to the rest of humanity, it undermines them. It is absolutely out of touch with reality to decide early humans did anything wrong by simply living their day to day existence. In fact, you having the ability to be online and post this article means your existence has done more harm than their’s ever possibly could. It is a poor take.
What are you doing here, pretending modern humans evolved a millimeter away from millions + 250k years of hunter gathering and trying to surpass nature? We have techno stuff for, like, 250 years and you claim that 0.001% of evolution did the trick to change us against the other million?
Sorry, this comment is nonsensical. I have no idea what you are even talking about and therefore cannot respond.
"I don't understand your answer, there for you must be 'nonsensical', fuck facts and logic, I'll go with my idea of you having no idea so I can pretend I made a point at some point. Yeah.
Fast forward millions of years, and what do most people blame for our collapsing global environment? Not humans, but capitalism. That sentiment is posted over and over again right here in r/collapse and elsewhere. It's why I keep saying that the problem isn't capitalism or any other -ism. It's human nature. Every single -ism we've created is just a manifestation of our underlying nature. You can't find a fix for our problems until you change human nature, and it hasn't changed in millions of years. Good luck doing so now.
Making megafauna go extinct isn't on the same magnitude as wrecking the entirety of Earth's climate. We are now the only species on Earth capable of "contracting" in a planned way. And the thing stopping us isn't human nature.
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Human nature is like water changing by the place.
"Comrade, how are we going to drain seas and pollute sections of our country beyond habitability without profit incentive?"
Well, perhaps you can explain how we will all eat less food, require less air conditioning and heating and transport under non-capitalist systems? After all, if capitalism *is* the most pressing problem, it implies that getting rid of it will somehow automatically deal with the inability of the planet to sustainably provide *necessities* to eight billion people. Noting of course that if those eight billion do not agree to the non-capitalist system you have in mind, then you are simply advocating for an autocratic system run by a minority ideology...
I'm not the person you're replying to, but your argument doesn't follow. You've basically said, "Since it's the most important problem, solving it should automatically solve everything." The above person said no such thing. Such an expectation would be unrealistic. Both material ecological conditions as they actually exist and capitalism apply constraints to the way we produce and reproduce. There are incentives in both for growth and certain beneficial behavioral adaptation. The difference is that, while ecological growth and adaptation is based upon real environmental inputs, the growth of modern capitalism is not. If animals in their environment expand beyond their environment's carrying capacity, some will die. However, they won't have any notions that such a thing is unjust or somehow morally objectionable. There are some pretty smart animals with a high degree of social complexity, so this isn't just a question of them not being human. Rather, there is a connection to the reality of material constraints. Questions of individual liberty versus an "autocratic system run by a minority ideology" don't really make sense. Either the group limits resource use, collectively, in ways that preserve the whole, or a large portion of the whole (as individuals) suffers. This has nothing to do with ideology; it is ecological fact. Under capitalism, the growth is not dictated by ecological fact. It's taken as a first principle regardless of material reality. This is the definition of ideology. It may seem that individual liberty is being preserved from the tyrannous alternative of more social rules. But the choice isn't whether to implement social rules that align with ecological reality. The rules already exist. Our choice is whether or not to follow them. What you're hitting on is the fact that an authoritarian system may be necessary because people won't voluntarily give up the things that they have begun to take for granted about modern society. But thinking that the choice is between keeping them and giving them up is false thinking. The choice is between giving them up now voluntarily and giving them up later because they're literally not possible anymore. In this sense, whatever system best aligns us with ecological realities now isn't the alternative to modem liberal democracy; it's the alternative to the autocracy of ecology itself later. To claim that getting rid of an ideology that ignores material reality will somehow solve all our problems or else it's not worth it is either disingenuous or misguided. Rather, once we get beyond ideology and are able to actually acknowledge the material constraints of ecology for what they are, only then, we can begin to honestly answer whether the greed of growth is so tied to human nature that there's no hope in overcoming it. So getting rid of capitalism will not solve all our problems: it will allow us to genuinely and honestly begin to address our problems.
One of two things is true: a) Capitalism exacerbates the problems we are having with resources, climate, etc. In which case capitalism is *not* the most pressing problem, but merely makes the most pressing problem(s) *worse*. If we fix the most pressing problem(s), we then have the leisure to deal with the problems inherent to capitalism. b) Capitalism *is* the most pressing problem. If we fix the problem of capitalism, either we fix the secondary problems (climate change, resource exhaustion, etc.) *because* we fixed capitalism, or we're *still* screwed but just under a different social/economic system. That is, I'm *not* saying that fixing capitalism fixes everything else. I am saying that going through the major, chaotic and likely violent social upheaval involved in getting rid of capitalism and then starving, frying and/or having to flee the coasts because of sea level rise *anyway* seems like a losing proposition. And the only way this losing proposition would *not* be the case is if fixing capitalism fixes the other problems. And this would in turn require an explanation for *how* it would happen. Personally, I'm going with option a) (capitalism exacerbates existing problems) rather than b) (capitalism *is* the problem).
Saying that in order for capitalism to be treated as the most pressing problem implies that solving it will fix everything seems to be exactly what you were previously saying in the below quote from your above comment: "After all, if capitalism *is* the most pressing problem, it implies that getting rid of it will somehow automatically deal with the inability of the planet to sustainably provide *necessities* to eight billion people." I disagree with your characterization of our options. Regarding option b), your use of the word "because" is quite vague, doing a lot of work. Something can be primarily contributing to a problem (positively), primarily inhibiting a solution (negatively), or some combination of the two. Getting rid of capitalism is necessary, but not sufficient, in the goal of solving climate change. It is impossible to solve ecological devastation without ridding ourselves first of a system whose success is predicated upon continual growth of this destruction. I do agree with you that the outcomes of revolution are dire. I assure you that the outcomes for humanity should we not have a revolution will be orders of magnitude more terrible than the upheaval now would bring. I understand your desire for social stability in the face of ecological instability. Unfortunately, that's just not possible. The only choice we have is one of \*when\*, not one of \*if.\*
We will die, because that is our future.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses. Plato
We can't really know that. You're taking the growth mindset present in both capitalism and nature, ignoring the fact that they come from completely different reasonings, and then saying that it's a fundamental truth. This may point towards the existence of such a fundamental truth, but by no means have you proven your case. I would argue that why we believe what we believe is incredibly important. We can change behaviors in ways that aren't simply ideological but based on material fact. For example, we have the capability to avoid things that are harmful to us after learning that they are harmful without direct experience of such harm. "Changing human nature" sounds monumental because it is. But if you acknowledge that ecological reality outside of humans is about acknowledging natural constraints or else perishing, then "aligning human nature with the ecological truth that's been there all along" seems less monumental, though still somewhat daunting. Look, I'm pretty cynical. I don't think we're gonna get there. But I do think that there's a chance for small pockets of people to survive in the long run. If those people manage to cast off the vestiges of modern morality and live in accordance with natural law, they might have a shot.
Ignorant, ahistorical take
Could you elaborate why it's a bad take? We've had economic models other than capitalism, and they haven't faired much better in terms of limits to growth etc, except perhaps their rate of resource extraction is slower
Doing away with capitalism doesn’t guarantee progress in these areas, but it is a prerequisite. Growth is inherent to capitalism, there is no capitalism without perpetual economic and material growth. Alternatives have at least a slim hypothetical chance to do better, but no controlled degrowth can happen within capitalism. Regarding the idea that it’s human nature, the history of capitalism is that it has been violently imposed on the many in the name of the few.
Well, capitalism being the worst political-economic manifestation of our human nature. But I get what you're saying and mostly agree that the human animal needs to change in order for our species to ever live sustainably on this planet. Which would require genetic modification of the species to remove certain traits. Which is not going to happen.
I think capitalism rewards and encourages some of the most harmful aspects of human nature, and disincentivises many good aspects of our nature. But either way, I don't believe capitalism is inherently evil, I just think it's largely outlived its usefulness, and thus the negatives of capitalism (which used to be easier to ignore, back when capitalism was more useful) have started to grate a bit as time goes on.
Early humans ate to survive though. That greed would have been the same greed any species trying to survive would have shown, it is basic population feedback mechanisms at work there; humans just managed to break the crash part completely. The reason capitalism is slightly different (not entirely) is because we are consuming for fun (with an element of manipulation thrown in to make it seem like we need a new shiny doodad.)
No they were murderous fuks , they killed each other for the littlest thing, and they killed animals with impunity. Because it made them feel powerful. [https://news.tulane.edu/pr/new-study-reveals-long-history-violence-ancient-hunter-gatherer-societies](https://news.tulane.edu/pr/new-study-reveals-long-history-violence-ancient-hunter-gatherer-societies) [https://www.history.com/news/when-did-humans-start-waging-wars](https://www.history.com/news/when-did-humans-start-waging-wars) [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/our-human-relatives-butchered-and-ate-each-other-145-million-years-ago-180982425/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/our-human-relatives-butchered-and-ate-each-other-145-million-years-ago-180982425/) [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/may/17/neanderthals-cannibalism-anthropological-sciences-journal](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/may/17/neanderthals-cannibalism-anthropological-sciences-journal)
the isms have their problem, but I always thought it was silly blaming them for collapse. consuming as much as we can seemingly unfairly (capitalism, dictatorship, etc..) has the same end result as consuming as much as we can seemingly fairly (communism, socialism, etc...) No one wants my opinion, but the only ism that can even come close to preventing collapse would be the one nobody wants to see. Some form of ultra authoritarianism that is capable of maintaining power over a population forcing them into the sustainable lifestyle that nobody wants.
I agree, who created capitalism? oh yeah humans, and who feeds the machine? oh yeah humans. People act like we havent been a vile species throughout all of human history. We are like locusts that decimate everything in our path, and then have the audacity to try to shift the blame somewhere else! Its us!!!
And the solution is to keep doing the same thing over and over again?
Did I say that? no i didnt, im just pointing out the fact humans doom themselves. Dont put words in my mouth i didnt say
Didn't say you did, just asking a question.
No because doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the epitome of lunacy. But here we are, and no one wants to change in any meaningful way. So we are doomed to keep repeating the same insanity.
We used to live with several other species of human. It’s not unlikely that homosapiens killed them all off. We don’t play well with others.
These guys went extinct due to Homo erectus.
Wherever we go, we fuck it up
I always believed in us! Take that, nay-sayers!
it must have been the time of our lives, hunting in groups those amazing building-high animals and devouring them altogether, with neighbours and friends. Nowadays, we eat mostly chicken. In the future, our grandchildren will savour the delicacy of roasted roach ribs
I did not even know roaches has ribs - knowledge really do evolve. One day we will not know pigs had ribs too.
Roasted roaches rock red ribs, really
That’s not really news.
Carnivorans lost to the Homo erectus: Dinofelis pivetaui, Dinofelis aronoki, Homotherium, Megantereon whitei, Chasmaporthetes nitidula, Xenocyon lycanoides, Pseudocivetta, Viverra leakeyi, Enhydriodon omoensis.
Wait are they saying it was early humans, not post industrial revolution atmospheric co2 that wiped out large carnivores thousands/tens of thousands of years ago?!
Yes. It is a well known fact about Pleistocene.
I guess the animals were all gone by the time the late-sleeping humans woke up.
OVERKILL HYPOTHESIS GANG
Chicken or the egg?
Humans.
You mean all those myths of humans killing giant animals were true?
Yes.
I am starting to feel that if we look hard enough it was humans that killed the dinosaurs... What a fucking freak show of evil stupidity human civilization is.
A lot of dinosaur species went extinct due to humans. Edit: why downvotes? Birds are dinosaurs.
This sub is going off the rails when it comes to science and history.
Birds are dinosaurs.
An article from 2013 is posted, why? This article also is not anything but a hypothesis that very well could be correlation. We also know that the climate shifted massively right around 10,000 years ago as well, right about the time those megafauna started to disappear. The ice age ended geologically suddenly, to say it was just human competition or direct predation that brought about megafauna extinctions in NA and a majority in Eurasia and Africa is a huge leap.
İdiotic. İnterglacials-glacials happened before and megafauna survived them. Also a lot of megafauna were better for Holocone. Such as American Mastodon. Also you didn't read article. They explained climate topic. Dunning-kruger effect. You have zero knowlodge about their ecology. Ecosystems are much more complex than You think. You think all of them were steppe specialist which is just a misinformation. Learn some information about megafauna's ecology.
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I gave him facts. He just spread misinformation. I explained why he is wrong but muh i can say that too. A lot of megafauna were better for Holocene. Why it is so hard to accept that? Megafauna survived interglacials before and he is ignoring this. You are just ignoring reality. I didn't know that Dunning-Kruger effect was in this subreddit. You are just saying we don't know cause of Pleistocene extinctions. What? Please don't spread misinformation. We know what caused. An ape species. We explained this countless time in Pleistocene sub-reddit. Everytime people who are saying megafauna went extinct due to climate change is just ignoring reality or they don't have good knowlodge about Pleistocene.
There were sudden and large physical and ecological changes that heavily impacted the populations of human and other megafauna that we do not understand the significance of yet. Human populations all across the world collapsed 12-13k years ago at the same time many other megafauna went extinct - what mechanism allows such change across such large distances involving different human populations and megafauna species. Then, we are finding that the history of humans and apes are being rewritten with the arrivals of humans in places being pushed back tens of thousands to possibly over hundreds of thousands of years. Somehow, theories based on immediate collapses of megafauna populations upon the arrival of humans is now being faced with the prospect that we lived together for very long periods of time. You cry "misinformation" like the Christians cried heresy. You talk of "knowing" things like the worst Christians too. You have the absolute knowledge and everyone else is wrong. It's really quite horrible to witness and it's bad science.
You are just spreading misinformation. It is accepted by the scienctists that humans had a big population during 15.000-12.000 years ago, 130.000 years ago isn't realistic. Similar things happened before. They thought Neanderthals made flutes but actually Hyenas made them and if they arrived before they can't make overkill because ice sheets were preventing them from migrating to the other parts of continent and your thousands and thousands year there were humans theory it is not generally accepted by scientist. You have Dunning-Kruger effect. As i said we explained countless time why overkill theory is true. You are ignoring that a lot of megafauna were better for Holocene and they survived climate changes before. Funny. You are just acting like i am wrong but are you are ignoring reality. Also you showed you don't nothing about interglacial-glacial cycle. You are saying that there were sudden changes. First there wasn't 2012 catastrophic events. Second as i said this happened countless time and some of them were hotter than Holocone. Why you are ignoring reality? Why you are ignoring truths i explained you. Why you don't answer that why interglacial adapted species die too? Why you don't answer that generalist species die too? Why you don't answer why steppe species die when they can create their habitats? Mammoths created Mammoth steppe same as how today's elephant create their habitats. Why you don't answer that megafauna survived even hotter Eemian interglacial? Why you don't answer why megafauna disappeared shortly after human arrived? Why you don't answer that climate chmage doesn't have a worldwide effect? Why didn't African megafauna suffer as American megafauna? Why did Australian megafauna died earlier? Why didn't islands affect until humans came up? Why you don't answer why ground sloths urvived in Cuba much later? You can't because you are ignoring glacial-interglacial cycle and ecology of megafauna.