How to get the Megafuana to Survive

aspie3000

Banned
Don't know if this should be here or ASB and counts as an evolution based topic but I'm putting it here as its grounded in reality (if this isn't the right place I ask it be moved to ASB.) I was reading Guns, Germs, and Steel and at one point in the book the author speculates on why the megafuana that lived in the Pleistocene (mammoths, Smilodons, giant Australian Komodo Dragons etc.) went extinct and concluded that it was probably caused by humans as in North America for example ice ages had began and ended many times and the megafuana survived all of them. The extinction of the megafuana coincided with the colonization of the land areas in which the megafuana lived by human hunter gatherers. His theory is that the megafuana survived in Africa because they had evolved alongside humans and thus had a greater fear and coping mechanisms against them which allowed them to survive. North American, European, South American, Oceanian, and other megafuana weren't adapted to dealing with humans. So, if this theory is true, how do you get the megafuana to survive into the modern era and have history play out as normal or at least in a recognizable fashion? To put it another way, is there a POD possible which allows humans and megafuana to coexist in the Americas and Oceana like they do in Africa? And if the megafuana survive and its impossible for it not to change history, how does it effect history?
 
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It's possible in Australia, because of its relative isolation for centuries. South America not so much, because various cultures may develop different due to the presence of different creatures around to domesticate or need protection from.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
-1. climatic POD, population of Megafauna already declined pre-appearance of humans, probably because climatic reasons / ice age. a good climate, with Megafauna population rebound might cause them to better deal with human hunter.
-2 disease POD, some disease, probably pre-human, probably brought by humans, help reduce megafauna population. non-existence of megafauna disease might help them have larger population to deal with human hunter.
-3, human disease POD, Africa have a lot more disease that weaken human and limit its growth, if some of this disease carried off by human leaving Africa, they might delay human expansion, giving megafauna time to learn how to deal with human hunter.
-4, dog disease, humanity effectiveness is caused by alliance/domestication of dogs, reducing number of dogs who live with humanity might make human hunter far less effective. failure of dogs to cross Bering will give American megafauna bigger chance to survive.
-5, homo erectus domesticate dogs, if megafauna had experience with erectus-dog hunter, they might better prepared to deal with sapiens-dogs hunter.
 
What we need is for the megafauna to coevolve with hominids for a long period of time before they become good enough hunters to wipe out whole species.
Like Africa.
So if we have an ice free link from Canada to Kamchatka and a version of early pre-human (erectus?) prodded into spreading world wide but without good hunting strategies then when true homo sap move in the animals have evolved a fighting chance. We would probably still lose some but American "elephants" and "lions" might still exist.
 
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