THE TRILOGY: "Conquering the world" Chapter 3

When megafauna became a delicatessen

Here we are, in the last chapter of our trilogy where we are going to learn what consequences the human expansion through the world had in relation to biodiversity.

So far, we have seen how Homo sapiens developed both socially and technologically having an important impact in their food gathering skills as hunting would be, until the development of agriculture (in 12,000BC), the principal source of food. As their hunting techniques improved the population of humans increased and as a result more food was necessary for their survival. Humans had no problem in eating different types of animals as long as they gave them energy. This way they could expand through the world eating the animals they found on their way.

Of course the rest of species of this world would not let humans eat them easily and would change their behaviour to fight or escape from humans. This is evolution and as we know this process needs time, that is why, animals that were in contact with humans or other Homo knew how dangerous they were and prepared themselves to protect from this new hazard.

African, Asian and to a lesser extent European animals are included in the “contacted” group who were not annihilated and shared their territory with humans. On the other hand American and Oceanian animals did not know about humans until they were overwhelmed by human waves.

This would be a summary of the idea that some prehistoric animals were hunted to extinction by humans but, how did this situation developed? Let’s show it stage by stage:

• In Africa replaced other hominids due to their successfulness and extended through the continent. Their hunting skills were very advanced but the animals of the continent knew how to counter them. It is also important to know that the human populations were not extremely big as Africa has dangerous characteristics like the climate or the diseases.

• 70,000-55,000 years ago humans expanded to Asia and Europe successfully. Again outclassed and outgunned their competence and as a result their rivals perished. The species found great places to live in with plenty of food. Many of the animals they would encounter would disappear (In Europe a large part of the local megafauna became extinct) but many others survived and made their way in these continents as they had some experience against hominids thanks to living along with and for quite some time.

• Finally 45,000 years ago humans got to Oceania. The megafauna disappeared as they knew nothing about humans and how dangerous they were. 14,000 years ago the same happened in America with humans conquering all the continent while large animals did not find refugee from the new hunters, in both cases nearly 75% of the great mammals became nothing else but fossils.

You can see how quickly this expansion happened. The success of our species was incredible and it seems that in our mind we still want to get everywhere in this world, it does not matter how difficult living there may be. Nowadays a new massive extinction seems to be happening with the same philosophy as before.

Now that we supposedly rule the world, it is on our hands to decide what we want to become.

• Wise protectors of the Earth OR

• Infamous dictators of a decadent planet

Where do you see yourself?

#TRILOGY