General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men…" [View all]mikekohr
(2,312 posts)source for that is the excellent work "The First Americans," by J.M. Adovasio and Jake Page published by Modern Library out of NY, NY. This book destroys the "Clovis First Theory," and lays waste to a century of calcified science that denys the obvious, that the human presence in the Western Hemisphere is far longer and more varied than previously postulated.
You would be well served if you also read "1491, New Revelations of the America's Before Columbus," written by Charles C. Mann, published by Vantage Press a division of Random House Inc..
The extinctions that occurred here, approx. 11,000 to 17,000 AFTER the arrival of man, also occurred simultaneously across the globe and coincided with the end of the last ice age and rapid climate change. Did man play some role in that extinction? Certainly. But the in ability of the mega fauna to adapt to that climate change most likely played a far larger role.
Look to Wrangle Island. There, undisturbed by human hunters, mammoths survived until 4,000 years or so ago. They mutated into miniature versions of their ice age cousins in response to limited forage but in the end went extinct anyway.