AHC How to keep megafauna alive in the Americas?

Another method people usually forget about is simple persistance Hunting. Seriously, it's used in Africa and much of the world still today, as the only Land Animals capable of even thinking of matching Humans in Endurance are Dogs. Everything else simply overheats itself and keels over from exhaustion somewhere between the six and twenty-hour mark, and then, when it's too weak to move, you kill it. Add some torches, and a few more people and even Mammoths will fall for it.

I don't know a lot about persistence hunting outside of sub-Saharan Africa, but Wikipedia says it's also used by a native group in Mexico called the Rarámuri. It's an interesting concept, but I see a few potential problems with this idea in relation to the megafauna extinctions, though:

  1. Persistence hunting works by making the prey animal overheat. It doesn't work as well in cooler climates.
  2. I imagine that mammoths, glyptodonts and ground sloths didn't readily run away, but would more likely stand their ground, which makes persistence hunting unlikely.
  3. The Clovis culture used long-distance projectile weapons, which are not typical of persistence hunters.
Sven said:
A Doedicurus could have killed Chuck Norris. :D
NothingNow said:
Easily. It will do him like the late Thag Simmons got done.:cool:

If Chuck Norris had ever met a Doedicurus, we'd be quoting Far Side jokes about the "chuckomizer."
 

NothingNow

Banned
I don't know a lot about persistence hunting outside of sub-Saharan Africa, but Wikipedia says it's also used by a native group in Mexico called the Rarámuri. It's an interesting concept, but I see a few potential problems with this idea in relation to the megafauna extinctions, though:

  1. Persistence hunting works by making the prey animal overheat. It doesn't work as well in cooler climates.
  2. I imagine that mammoths, glyptodonts and ground sloths didn't readily run away, but would more likely stand their ground, which makes persistence hunting unlikely.
  3. The Clovis culture used long-distance projectile weapons, which are not typical of persistence hunters.
Agreed. Still, it deserved to be brought up.
 
Two things to take into consideration:

1. The megafauna had survived climate changes before

2. The megafauna in Europe had survived even though humans had been there for centuries. However it died after the last ice age.

My guess is that humans combined with climate change proved to be very fatal.

One important factor is that most of the animals that went extinct were either grazers or predators specialized in hunting grazers. In many places in America, Europe and Asia the steppes disappeared and were replaced by forests or deserts.

Then again the last Mammoths that lived on Wrangel's Island in Siberia survived to around 2000BC, because the island was so remote that no humans had reached it before then, and had the right vegetation (grass) for the Mammoths. Perhaps you'll have to have a small isolated island and much luck to save some species.

Good assessment. Humans are certainly capable of hunting things to extinction without the help of climate (e.g. the moa and Diprotodon), but I think we needed a bit of help in the case of the Arctic megafauna.

Trouble is we might be getting into ASB territory if we try to go the "lost world" route. Maybe we could hide a few mammoths somewhere on Newfoundland, and have the pre-Dorset switch to fishing earlier, giving the mammoths a chance to repopulate. But, that seems a bit of a stretch.
 

whitecrow

Banned
How about mastodons, are they in anyway able to stay and be domisticated, i would just love the idea of the aztec emperors riding big hairy mastodons in front of cortez.:D
A mastodon species survived in Amazon until only few thousand years ago. Don't recall which species was it but you can google or wiki it.
 
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