Re: Modern Neanderthals?

Yousuf Khan (ykhan@achilles.net)
Tue, 15 Oct 1996 11:23:57 GMT

On Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:32:10 BST, daaf@cerium.demon.co.uk (Danny Fagandini)
wrote:

>ykhan@achilles.net (Yousuf Khan) wrote:

>> We place too much importance on our own perceived skills as killers,
>> that we think that we were singlehandedly responsible for extinctions
>> of many other species.

>It is generally thought that the Clovis people, travelling from the
>Canadian plains to central Mexico around 12000BP, were very effective
>hunters leaving a trail of extinctions behind them. (Clive Gamble,
>'Timewalkers', Penguin Books 1993, pages 208-209)

>It is also said that the Pacific islands, including New Zealand,
>"witnessed catastrophic extinction rates among their local fauna due
>to human colonisation" (ibid pages 233-234).

Read what you yourself have typed there. It is interspersed with a lot of
"it is thought that", and "it is said that" type of passive sentences.
There is no evidence just a lot of speculations, and not very good
speculations.

Why would it be man the pack hunter, and not dog the pack hunter? Why not
bears who have a need to be huge, and therefore require a lot of food? Why
not just the simple obsoletion of a niche for a certain species?

Yousuf Khan

--
Yousuf J. Khan
ykhan@achilles.net
Ottawa, Ont, Canada
Nation's capital