“It puts to bed the whole idea that humans wiped them (megafauna) out,” said Dr. Clarkson. “We’re talking 20,000 to 25,000 years of coexistence.”
Does it? Is it not still possible that human populations increased, new (less mgafauna friendly) cultures emerged or subsequent migrations caused one of these? Humans co-existed with large animals in many places, before causing extinctions at later points.
Multiple migration theories have been all but put to bed I think, but the current theory seems to be that the migration path was mostly coastal and only pushing inland later. That leaves plenty of room for humans to be the cause of extinction.
I really don't understand why it's so hard to accept that humans are the cause, it seems to be a part of the noble savage myth.
There is a fairly strong political urge to not blame indigenous peoples for the extinctions in Australia.
It's part of the "noble savage" myth, as you say. Very much to do with a narrative about indigenous peoples living in harmony with their environment unlike us stupid modern people who are destroying it.
This is linked with indigenous rights, native title, and a whole bunch of really deep-rooted issues in Australian culture. Aborigines living in the bush are revered, those living in the cities are despised. Australia takes pride in the fact that we have the longest continuous culture on the planet, whilst simultaneously doing everything possible to destroy that same culture. It's very complicated and very political.
Unless the science says definitively that humans were the cause for the extinctions, then the default position is that they weren't.
>I really don't understand why it's so hard to accept that humans are the cause, it seems to be a part of the noble savage myth.
Because there's not enough evidence to make that claim. The structure of indigenous societies were nomadic hunter gatherers who were (as far as the evidence tells us) subsistence hunters. Truth is Indigenous Australians didn't have the population (or population density), nor the culture to hunt these creatures to extinction. Being largely nomadic within set ranges (i.e they travelled often but within their own nations land) it was suicidal to overhunt and deplete the resources, and this becomes a stronger point when you consider the timeframes on which the Aborigines existed on their land (again 20,000 years of overlap here). Also consider the sheer number of creatures that went extinct here, everything from Marsupial Lions to gigantic emus and echidnas, it doesn't match up with indigenous australians hunting behaviours that somehow they decided to overkill for this short period of time all these larger creatures, and then that behaviour suddenly stopped? (we have no evidence of Indigenous Australian's overhunting any other creatures to extinction).
To go even further, there's nothing in their oral history or paintings which gives the slightest hint that overhunting or hunting for status was ever present in any Indigenous Australian culture. Considering the ice age ended around the same time as the death of the last megafauna in Australia, I think its fair to evaluate every conclusion you make about the death of the megafauna within that context.
I'm not saying Indigenous Australians didn't have an effect on the death of the megafauna, anything being hunted in a time like a massive climate shift is going to affect population, but there's no direct evidence, nor indirect evidence about the behaviour and cultures of Indigenous Australia which point to mankind being the driver behind the numerous extinctions.
I'm under the impression that there's simply not enough evidence to make a claim either way, exactly because there's no direct or indirect evidence in terms of culture or artifact. I really can't see how you can argue that there was no overhunting given you concede there's no knowing, and it comes across as if you just don't feel comfortable with human causes.
Edit: the last sentence might come across as aggressive, it was merely my observation.
>Is it not still possible that human populations increased
This doesn't seem convincing to me, Indigenous Australian populations maxed out around 1 million people, across the entire island. Considering the population density and ranges of these creatures, I don't see how they could physically do so.
> new (less mgafauna friendly) cultures emerged
It's important to remember Australia's isolation here and the cultures of Indigenous Australia. All Indigenous Australians were nomadic hunter gatherers, with a deep seated animalistic dreamtime belief system, it doesn't make sense that a new culture suddenly rose up and caused mass extinctions, as all of these cultures remained within their land ranges, and without evidence of widescale war in Indigenous Australia, I don't see how this would happen.
>or subsequent migrations caused one of these?
Not really, again 20,000 years and Australia is a big, big place. Like really big, and most of these creatures had wide ranges. I don't find the human hypothesis has enough stock to stand up under scrutiny, especially considering these extinctions happened at the end of an ice age.
> Not really, again 20,000 years and Australia is a big, big place. Like really big, and most of these creatures had wide ranges. I don't find the human hypothesis has enough stock to stand up under scrutiny, especially considering these extinctions happened at the end of an ice age.
north america and asia are big, but it seems very possible that (with other factors) humans helped push mammoths to extinction.
you are also assuming equal dispersion across Australia, which may not be the case, especially if climate change was cutting back their habitats - like it was with the mammoth.
I understand that the science doesn't conclusively prove either claim (or somewhere midway) between definitely human caused or definitely not.
> This doesn't seem convincing to me, Indigenous Australian populations maxed out around 1 million people, across the entire island. Considering the population density and ranges of these creatures, I don't see how they could physically do so.
Do we know of any comparable, but better understood / researched cultures, where population numbers plateauing were not directly correlated with local extinction events -- but did occur some time after the plateauing? Of course it's confounded by trying to estimate numbers from tens of millenia ago, climate and volcanic events, and so on, but I feel there must be some other peoples / regions on the planet that can we can compare to.
As to the last point, initiating regular large fires is one way for a small number of people to effect significant landscape change.
> All Indigenous Australians were nomadic hunter gatherers, with a deep seated animalistic dreamtime belief system, it doesn't make sense that a new culture suddenly rose up and caused mass extinctions ...
Keep in mind that there were around 250 different languages, reflecting the long-term isolation of many of these groups, and presumably at least that many different variations of 'the culture'. I think it's careless to assume a single, shared, and fully understood, culture existed across the entire continent for thousands of years, tens of thousands of years ago.
And I don't think anyone's suggesting that a 'new culture rose up and decided to eat all the giant wombats'.
> Not really, again 20,000 years and Australia is a big, big place.
True, but consider that today at least, about 5% of the landmass is considered arable, which IIRC puts us on a par with, say, France in terms of absolute arable land.
While grazing animals obviously don't require arable land per se, it helps to contextualise the landscape here -- there's immense areas of the country that are inhospitable to humans and large animals.
Almost all the useful (in terms of finding things to eat and drink) land is around the coast. Migrations of humans and megafauna doubtless occurred in response to local events, climate changes, curiosity, etc - but there are obvious constraints by and to both groups' movements due to this coastal limitation.
I can't give you a citation but I'm under the impression that many scientists who are interested in megafauna extinction actual subscribe to a hybrid theory, namely that megafauna extinction was often the result of both human hunting and climate change happening at the same time, which could stress megafauna populations far more than just one or the other.
I'll note that one of the co-authors, Ben Marwick, has been very active in elevating reproducible computing practices in research. My understanding is that there's code and data available for this research.
I prefer the version published in The Conversation [1] by the researches themselves. It contains more details including one part left out of the NYTimes version: that the work was done with the approval of the Aboriginal people who control the site:
"To make new research possible, a landmark agreement was reached between the University of Queensland (and associated researchers) and the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation representing the Mirarr traditional owners of the site.
The agreement gave ultimate control over the excavation to the Mirarr senior custodians, with oversight of the excavation and curation of the material. The Mirarr were interested to support new research into the age of the site and to know more about the early evidence of technologies thought to be present there."
Culture is one of the vitally important things which make us unique as humans.
Both as an Australian and as a linguist it's painful to understand how quickly indigenous culture here is being lost; my narrow and focused view is on language but the rate at which Aboriginal languages are dying at is absolutely alarming.
Protecting culturally significant sites here is of vital importance both for historical reasons as well as to the lives of modern indigenous Australians.
Everything changes. All those indigenous languages are going to be lost in the sense they won't be actively used anymore - and that's not a bad thing.
Even English will ultimately be lost, although it will likely be through the mechanisms of language evolution rather than first becoming moribund.
Trying to preserving language and culture for its own sake is somewhat selfish, because it restricts individuals' experience. Better to take the good parts and incorporate them into daily life. The rest can remain in the tomes of history.
Trying to preserve culture is good because it leaves choice in the hands of the individuals; they get to choose what parts to pick.
It's incredibly easy to talk about "survival of the fittest" cultures from a Western point of view, but ask almost any other peoples that have had their culture irreparably damaged by colonial policies, and you'll find a different mindset.
The individuals are doing that choosing when they choose not to preserve certain parts. They're going to abandon the parts in favor of alternatives that work better. The abandoned parts will no longer be passed down because they lack practical value - but they can be recorded.
Trying to preserve a static and separate cultural identity is pointless when knowledge, technology and our environments are changing quickly. At best the efforts are well-meaning and harmless. At worst, they present as a fetish where post-colonial guilt tries to turn the West into a zoo of distinct cultures.
This is only true in the naive case where every decision is made in isolation, completely free of coercion. In the real world, this is coming after many decades of attempts to wipe out cultures, being overwhelmed by entertainment and other forms of pressure – want to guess the odds of an indigenous person successfully getting their music published, stories turned into movies, etc. prior to very recently? In most colonial countries attempts to convert people assimilate meant that schools prevented use of native languages and traditions, often even separating children from parents, leaving multi-generation gaps where people are truly learning those things for the first time at middle age from surviving elders.
None of that is a neutral choice, and especially not one to make a historically irreversible decision. Choosing not to preserve something means it's gone forever even if people in the future disagree.
My overall view is somewhat Darwinian, with selection based on merit rather than coercion. Overt oppression of other cultures is obviously to be opposed.
It seems to me that the idea that, aggregate individual choices always give the best results, should be discredited by now.
It's totally possible for individuals to be trapped in game theoretical situations where they will lost very valuable things to them little by little. Ecology is the most famous example.
Anyway, the efforts for "trying to preserve a static and separate cultural identity" is something done by individuals that choose so, too. How could be otherwise?
> More worrying is that I read previously that they had veto rights over any published findings as well, which creates all sorts of integrity problems.
Then it should definitely be captured in the story. As a potential conflict of interest.
> Under the agreement, the Mirarr people have had a right to veto the excavation at any time, control over the artefacts and final say about findings announced about the site.
This leaves it open to abuse like we see in other fields where they can conduct an experiment 10 times and only publish the result that comes out how they want.
For the record, I have no reason to believe the scientists involved are being dishonest, but imposing these conditions should not be acceptable.
It seems a strange contradiction that someone would get flustered about the accurate preservation of a cultural history, and in the same breath demonstrate little interest in the conservation of that culture.
What's your motivation for wanting this information? Is someone's appetite for inconsequential information more important than a people's dignity? These aren't rhetorical questions, it seems there's an incompatible split in moral leanings on this thread and I want to get to the bottom of that.
Careful here. I would by no means pretend to understand them, but I'm at least aware that there are a number of special sensitivities that must be considered when it comes to Aboriginal culture. So it's certainly not about abusing the research, but about respecting their culture (if I have it right).
Especially given that the British/Australians hunted them like animals, exterminated them by the thousands, displayed them in circus like fashion back in Europe, and forcibly sent their kids in concentration/"re-education" (whitening) camps up until the 80s.
I see a pretty obvious contradiction here. You would think that the respect of ancient cultures that motivates such excavations would motivate the protection of those related and endangered cultures of today.
And if the only reasonable claim on a piece of dirt is sovereignty, not to mention that that sovereignty been placed back in the hands of aboriginal elders, the sovereignty alone isn't enough justification to go digging for the past - it would seem that curiosity is part and parcel of a respect for culture.
> This is one of my favorite things about Australia, because science has absolutely no explanation for how humans arrived in Australia that long ago.
It's perfectly explainable, they arrived by boat. The exact time and migration path is still pretty open for interpretation and revision, but building boats is not beyond the capability of the people at the time. All they needed was a fairly simple raft.
>In fact nobody has even really bothered to try an explain it, because it's way, way, way outside the story that everyone came out of Africa.
No it isn't, it's perfectly consistent with the out of africa hypothesis.
Why? Humans first migrated out of Africa at least 100,000 years ago, which would give plenty of time to reach Australia by 65,000 years ago. The technology to build boats or rafts could easily have been forgotten over thousands of years if seafaring was not crucial to surviving on the new continent.
It was, but never low enough to make it the whole way without boats. There's a line called the "Wallace Line," dividing distinct ecological regions of flora and fauna. No matter when migration happened, they would have needed to cross seas.
The seahore-travel-travel hypothesis, that people traveled the coastline in boats, would have most of its evidence hidden along shorelines inudated by a hundred meters deper water at that time.
Perhaps the 65000 years people didn't leave any descendants. Or perhaps that DNA research wasn't definitive.
You say there are multiple things that contradict it. What are the others? It can't be evidence of people being there at more recent times -- that doesn't contradict evidence that they were there earlier.
"Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link)"
But that's obvious. The field of paleontology/archeology works with any evidence that suggests older. One confirmed finding of "older" is enough to redate and trump multiple newer findings.
In other words, dating an archaeological finding gives you a lower bound of how long there has been human activity on the site. Finding something older does not contradict previous results - and there are good reasons why older things are more difficult to find so absence of evidence is not (strong) evidence of absence.
I'd hesitate to generalize across fields which attack problems of different scopes of difficulties, but when I see authors follow a scientific dialogue, I see them publish twists of experiments which efficiently answer a few critical potential avenues of an argument, rather than simply replication vs. refutation.
The particular lead scientist in this case is a huge proponent of replication. They published the raw data along with their findings so that others can repeat the experiments.
What he is saying is that there are no kudo's for publishing work that just confirms something. Research grants are given for new work not for doing confirming followup work.
This has become a problem in recent decades and has led to certain systemic problems that have been discussed in various places in recent months.
If you say something like "I am submitting this grant request to replicate the experiments of X who have published results Y so that we can confirm X's results" then your grant application will most likely be refused.
Why is it so hard to get published when you attempt to reproduce a study and fail to do so? Papers rejected by the journals the published the original research is apparently the norm.
Does it? Is it not still possible that human populations increased, new (less mgafauna friendly) cultures emerged or subsequent migrations caused one of these? Humans co-existed with large animals in many places, before causing extinctions at later points.