> I have a hard time believing that hunter gathers in tiny tribes traveling on foot with primitive weapons could have hunted and wiped out entire species of large animals from continents. I wish they would give more specifics.
This made me recall having read something related to it in the book Sapiens [1]. Indeed, I went looking and quoting from chapter 4
> All the settlers of Australia had at their disposal was Stone Age technology. How could they cause an ecological disaster? There are three explanations that mesh quite nicely.
> Large animals – the primary victims of the Australian extinction – breed slowly. Pregnancy is long, offspring per pregnancy are few, and there are long breaks between pregnancies. Consequently, if humans cut down even one diprotodon every few months, it would be enough to cause diprotodon deaths to outnumber births. Within a few thousand years the last, lonesome diprotodon would pass away, and with her the entire species. [...]
> The second explanation is that by the time Sapiens reached Australia, they had already mastered fire agriculture. Faced with an alien and threatening environment, they deliberately burned vast areas of impassable thickets and dense forests to create open grasslands, which attracted more easily hunted game, and were better suited to their needs. They thereby completely changed the ecology of large parts of Australia within a few short millennia. [...]
> A third explanation agrees that hunting and fire agriculture played a significant role in the extinction, but emphasises that we can’t completely ignore the role of climate. The climate changes that beset Australia about 45,000 years ago destabilised the ecosystem and made it particularly vulnerable. [...]
So the extinction was on a very different timescale from your buffalo example, but an extintion nonetheless. In the ellipses the book briefly points to some evidence to support these theories.
This made me recall having read something related to it in the book Sapiens [1]. Indeed, I went looking and quoting from chapter 4
> All the settlers of Australia had at their disposal was Stone Age technology. How could they cause an ecological disaster? There are three explanations that mesh quite nicely.
> Large animals – the primary victims of the Australian extinction – breed slowly. Pregnancy is long, offspring per pregnancy are few, and there are long breaks between pregnancies. Consequently, if humans cut down even one diprotodon every few months, it would be enough to cause diprotodon deaths to outnumber births. Within a few thousand years the last, lonesome diprotodon would pass away, and with her the entire species. [...]
> The second explanation is that by the time Sapiens reached Australia, they had already mastered fire agriculture. Faced with an alien and threatening environment, they deliberately burned vast areas of impassable thickets and dense forests to create open grasslands, which attracted more easily hunted game, and were better suited to their needs. They thereby completely changed the ecology of large parts of Australia within a few short millennia. [...]
> A third explanation agrees that hunting and fire agriculture played a significant role in the extinction, but emphasises that we can’t completely ignore the role of climate. The climate changes that beset Australia about 45,000 years ago destabilised the ecosystem and made it particularly vulnerable. [...]
So the extinction was on a very different timescale from your buffalo example, but an extintion nonetheless. In the ellipses the book briefly points to some evidence to support these theories.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Hu...