October 26, 2015
Participants in the University of Wyoming’s Archaeological Field School work at the
site of a mammoth kill near LaPrele Creek in Converse County during the past summer.
A new study by UW researchers supports the hypothesis that hunting by humans led to
the extinction of mammoths and other large mammals in the Americas between 12,600
and 15,000 years ago. (UW Photo)
Radiocarbon analysis of the decline and extinction of large mammals in the Americas
supports the idea that hunting by humans led to the animals’ demise -- and backs the
generally accepted understanding of when humans arrived in, and how they colonized,
the Western Hemisphere.
Those findings by University of Wyoming researchers are reported this week in an article
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a major scientific journal. The study was conducted by Professor Todd Surovell and
graduate student Spencer Pelton in UW’s Department of Anthropology; Professor Richard
Anderson-Sprecher in the Department of Statistics; and Assistant Professor Adam Myers
in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Their work supports a hypothesis forwarded in 1973 by well-known geoscientist Paul
Martin that the chronology of the extinction of animals such as mammoths, mastodons,
camels, horses and ground sloths in the Americas could be used to map the spread of
humans through the New World.
“The heavy ecological footprint of human societies throughout prehistory is becoming
increasingly apparent through a variety of environmental (indicators) independent
of the archaeological record,” the researchers wrote. “Past human societies have disrupted
ecological communities in dramatic ways for many tens, if not hundreds of thousands,
of years.”
The study involved compiling radiocarbon dates from fossils of now-extinct animals
from North and South America, and looking at how those dates correspond with initial
evidence of human colonization. The researchers found that, as Martin predicted, decline
and extinction of the large mammals began between 13,300-15,000 years ago in Alaska
and areas near the Bering Strait; between 12,900-13,200 years ago in the contiguous
United States; and between 12,600-13,900 years ago in South America.
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These are the remains of a mammoth that was killed by humans near LaPrele Creek in
Converse County about 13,000 years ago. (Danny Walker and State Archaeologist’s Office
Photo)
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That supports the generally accepted understanding of how humans colonized the Americas:
first, that they crossed from Siberia to Alaska across a Bering Strait land bridge;
and then that they moved southward across North America and into South America. Hunting
of the native large mammals is thought to have fueled rapid human population growth
and expansion.
A number of hypotheses have been forwarded to explain the extinction of those animals.
The “overkill hypothesis” connects their demise directly to overhunting by humans,
and that is supported by the north-to-south extinction trend observed in the new study.
“… (T)he north to south time-transgressive pattern is striking, and, barring significant
new data, it would be difficult to reconcile this pattern with extinction hypotheses
that invoke a single climatic, ecological or catastrophic extinction mechanism across
the entirety of the Americas,” the researchers wrote.
Still, they acknowledge that the issue isn’t completely settled. They note that the
radiocarbon results show that the initial decline of large mammals in the far north
began earlier than has been estimated by Martin and others, pointing to human colonization
earlier than the current archaeological record suggests; and that there is some evidence
of isolated human populations in North America as early as 15,500 years ago, before
significant declines in large mammal populations. Further study is needed to resolve
those issues, the researchers say.
