Early human occupation evidence, elephant bird hunting (10,000 years ago)
(originally posted 7/22/2020)
Today’s site from 10,000 years ago is the Christmas River Dig Site in Madagascar. Here, scientists found evidence that humans butchered an elephant bird, the largest bird to have ever lived. This was a bit surprising because humans weren’t thought to have arrived in Madagascar, a large island a good distance from the African coast, until 1000 years ago. The only other evidence that humans may have been there that long ago was the presence of some birds thought to have been brought to the islands by the humans. How did they get there that long ago? Unlike many islands, Madagascar was never connected to the continent when the sea levels were lower. We know humans built boats back then in Africa and Europe for traversing lakes and rivers, but could they make it across the ocean? How long did they last on the island? Did they die out soon therafter or even leave the island without actually settling on it? That reminds me of us getting to the moon, but going a long time before actually building a permanent base there.
Back to the giant birds. These kind of remind me of giant ostriches. Their legs were taller than a person. Could you imagine how many meals you could make out of an elephant bird’s drum stick? Their eggs were also larger than any other animal to have ever existed, including the largest dinosaurs. What an omelette those would make. They were thought to have gone extinct when humans entered the area 1,000 years ago, along with giant lemurs and pygmie hippos. Human hunters are thought to have driven many other large animals around the world to extinction before 10,000 years ago. If humans were on the island at that time, why was didn’t it go extinct a long time ago? Maybe human hunter gatherers weren’t as responsible for giant animal’s extinction as we thought, or maybe they just weren’t on the island long enough for them to go extinct until they came back in force 1000 years ago as part of a booming commercial system that included the rest of the Indian Sea civilizations. Maybe they practised unusual conservation methods? As usual, more discoveries will hopefully answer these questions.
Sources:
News Stories-
First Assessment (Jun 2012)
Extinction of Elephant Birds (May 2019)
10,000 year radio carbon (Dec 2019)
https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10129318
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-timeline-human-presence-madagascar.html
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