00:00.00 archpodnet Okay, welcome back to episode one forty to 3 we're goingnna we're going to finish this off with what happened to the big freey animals here in the Americas and this you know we have 2 prevailing theories of Pleocene Megafauna so extinction plyistone being the fancy word for the ice age. Megafauna is just a fancy word for animals that you can see with the naked eye from a distance so like work megafauna, elephants or Megafauna Plyone megafauna refers to ice age bigass animals that you can see at a distance right? So the pleine epic that epic is a geological time. Typically defined as the time period that began around two point six million years ago and lasted until about Eleven Thousand seven hundred years ago so like our human species. We're basically ice age animals through the course of our history. It's not till this last couple years have we've come out of the ice age. We're fucking up the planet. According the most recent ice age occurred then is glaci is glaciers covered to huge parts of planet earth the term megafauna is especially associated with the plycene megafauna. The land animals often larger than their extant counterparts which are considered are typical of the last stone age such as mammoths the majority of which in Northern Eurasia the Americas on Australia have become extinct within the last 40000 years so just some examples of some these um posts these are these this a list of animals that went extinct around the transition of the pleistocene to the holocene and we live in the holocene now. We've lost mammoths mastodons masdons are mammoth like they're shorter smaller ears also furry. 01:30.44 archpodnet Giant Groundsloths Carriey bears short faced bear cave lions diar wolves bison anti was camels horses now I don't know about bison anti wass on that one but or technically camels like it's it's a whole thing because some of these animals just you know became a new species where they want to call it like evolution or whatever they they're they're different now right? So like we still have horses. Still at bison they're just not the same right? So this idea of what happened to the Mecafauna is just as old as this the the fucking preclos close debate and it's this huge debate across the globe. So if we we ignore the pre-clobus close debate the America's humans right here between sixteen Thousand Eleven Thousand years ago the pleone ends around ten thousand years ago now if you're a clovis person right? like Clovis was here first right before the pleocene ends and then roughly at the same time at ten thousand years ago the megafauna went extinct in the Americas like if humans get here in Eleven Thousand years ago you know with Clovis and then all of a sudden all the furry animals. Go away. This is what we call the blitzk creek hypothesis or the fucking overkill hypothesis they're like oh look at this all the animals are gone people just showed up and they went fucking murder murder hoboing their way across North and South America like just killing everything. That's what overkill is it's this idea that people came in and just over hunted the shit. Out of 30 different species of giant ass animals. Not to mention all the animals that didn't go extinct right? You could. This is my bias because I find this idea just fucking stupid and it drives me up the wall when we talk about it like people that believe in overkill because it's. 03:04.28 archpodnet Couple things here even if Clovis was first how many people first colonized it wasn't tens of thousands of people that came here in droves that's insane. There are probably a couple hundred a couple thousand across north and South America half the fucking globe we're talking about a couple groups of of. Small hunting and gathering groups of a couple dozen across the landscape going on a rampage and just killing everything in sight to know that's insane I don't buy that for a minute because also and we're going to get into this little bit more and the reason why don't buy that. Like think of today. It's really these past like hundred years that we've seen global mass extinctions caused by humans the amount of people technology and time it takes to drive species into extinction and a lot of the species. We're wiping off as a species like as humans today isn't even caused by hunting. It's like all the pollution that we're doing. So you're telling me ten thousand years ago a couple hundred couple thousand people that come into the Americas just decided to wipe out or over hunt the largest and most dangerous mammals. No and the reason why and this is gets tied into like Clovis is a big game hunting. Jesus Christ like it's just get me all worked up because you you look at not only you can look at mammoths as like calorie bangs if you kill 1 mammoth then like oh look at all this but they're super dangerous like even hunting elephants in megafaun in Africa is still dangerous. 04:40.80 archpodnet Or you could hunt deer or you could do rabbits or like there's a bunch of other sources of protein that are less dangerous to your small group of people that you need like we're not going to find bunny kills because of the taff um taff like the way the archaeological record works like. So there was like a a bunny trap rabbit buns are just so small. So ephemeral that the process of time had wiped him away and this is kind of like overkill clovis first gets tied in tied in together because these these kind of come as a package right? overkill works. If Clovis is first and there's you have 800 years of people coming in wiping out the microphone dude the end of the pleistocene into the holocene is such a major climactic event. The driver behind it is is the changing climate fundamentally. And this idea well it could be both It's like well does that does every predatory species involved contributing to the downfall of these megafauna are they also responsible like it's it's kind of this ridiculous notion of the idea that. People migrating into the north and South America are just like overh hunting the shit out of these animals that are highly dangerous. Highly hard to kill like and this is also ignoring. You guys know our stance me David Connor participated in these things like look at the episodes of Dr Pet Pedigre you could kill mammoths with adeadls. 06:13.40 archpodnet Tipped with clovis points like that's fundamentally true and Devin Ptigre has a paper coming out soon that with the research that we've done with Donnie myself. Connor and others that fundamentally proves it for taking on er at als piece. So just ignore. That people definitely hunted these things we have like over two dozen mammoth and mastodon kills I'm not arguing with that I'm arguing with the concept of overkill itself and which goes into you know Clovis people are specialized big game hunters and this is what I want to talk about sampling bias. And it's it's so prevalent in the arc in archeology today Dent Folsom Blackwater draw these early sites you find them by finding big bones first and then the points there is a sampling bias towards finding fossilized or bone like of kill sites. Because that's how you that's how you're able to find them I would love to know the ratio of how many times archeologists have gone out to a exposed mammoth remains bison remains to look for points to not finding them right? We don't talk about that. We don't talk about the failures in archeology. But we do know is you're more likely to find a point if you can find big game animals. That being said, we have over two dozen clovis aged caches and what a cache is are these amazing beautiful stone tool point basically dropboxes they would put these in like hide. 07:40.62 archpodnet Not bundles but like hide wrappings and hide them. So when people can come back like you can look at an amazing one. The mahafi cache in Boulder Colorado the fen cache is super is is super famous as well. There are also these amazing caches. So we we have over two dozen mammoth and mastodon big game animal kill sites butchering sites that are found intentionally. People archaeologists are going out to look for big kills and then finding the points. All the caches are found by fucking accident because they were hidden in time like they are purposely hidden by people that that place them and so when they come back around if they come back around. They have a readily available stone tool assemblage ready for them to go the happy cache was found. Because ah, ah, mahay the last name of the landowner was doing landscaping in his garden in Boulder Colorado and it came across it and most of the casts are found by accident. They've accidentally found purposely hidden resources whereas big game kills archeologists are going out finding them. Once again, what's what's the percentage of archaeologists going out to look for ah points associated with big game that happened at Wyoming when I was there they found ah there was there was this huge fucking hubbub because they found an eroding mammoth coming out of somewhere in like January or February of Middle Wyoming and they rounded the archeologists up to go excavate this fucking mammoth. And of course it wasn't there was no so there was no clovis of sodi it. There was no points associated with it. So as paleontological. They want nothing to do with it I want to know how many more cases are there like that where people are or archeologists are brought to a site that it's either paleontological or archeological. They don't know yet they excavate it realize there's no points and they just leave it. 09:17.81 archpodnet I want to know that percentage and this is called sampling bias right? because we know that there's a likelihood you can find points associated with these things and because archaeologists are are going out to excavate big pleistocene animal remains. They have it in their head. Well they must be big game hunters because this find them's like no, that's just easier to find it's easier to find a giant mammoth skeleton than it is to find a projectile point that is like the length of your hand across the continent of North Continents and north and South America does understand when I'm talk about this like goes into There's an amazing example of sampling bias or survivorship bias is what it's called what's more likely to survive in world war two Eighth army iroquor was losing bombers left and right bombing Germany they had and they were trying to figure out a way to make like they were losing like a quarter of bombers every run it was an obscene casualty rate the planes that come back. the army air corps general is like well we need to armor. We need. We can't armor the entire plane or if it's not take off so we need to identify where on the plane we need to up armor it and so they were looking originally at they look at the bombers they looked at where all the bullet holes were and they're like well we need to armor those areas because those were the bullet holes are right. But there was like substantial gaps in where you could see bullet holes on the returning planes one was ah it was ah the 2 points in between the wings between the engines also in the tail of the fuselage. You'd see these these large number of bullet holes like in the main cabin behind um the pilots. Um, it's parts of the tail and then tips of the wings. 10:50.52 archpodnet So like well we need to armor those places but 1 of the scientists that was working on this problem who was a statistician that was employed by the Army Air Corps was like no no this is survivorship bias you see the areas that like all the planes that we're seeing that are coming back. They've they made it back and they got shot in these places but look all the planes that came back haven't don't have bullet holes anywhere in these areas on the plane. Does these really put these 2 points in the wings this point in the in the fuselage between the tail and the main fuselage that's where we need to armor it because the planes that are getting shot down that's where the bullet holes are that's knocking him out of the sky right? You guys get what I'm saying like he he had to be like wait wait. it's the it's the it's The inverse the planes that are coming back with these bullet holes. They're fine. We need to armor the places where we don't see bullet holes because those are the planes that aren't coming back and he was right? The armored the areas on the planes that um, didn't have bullet holes by the surviving planes and then. Um, survivability of the bombers went up because they they realized they needed to armor the areas that you would that on the planes that ah came back without bolt holes area like you guys get what I'm saying right? and this is the same thing with archeology that for a long time. Paleo archaeologists they're driven to go find. Big game sites because like that's where you can find points because that's the easiest place like it's it's much easier to find a bison kill or a mammoth kill than it is to find ah a clovis age ca so there is this survivorship or sampling bias in paleing and archeology that drives people to. 12:16.40 archpodnet To look for the butchering sites to look for the kill sites or because that's where you're more likely to that's where you you can find points. You don't find the campsites. They're super hard to find and additionally like it's going to be super hard to find the remains of of smaller animals like rabbits birds deer you know things with. Much less dense bones that over 10000 years get absolutely degraded in time. It's easy to find giant elephant bones and they last a long time right? or like the bison drives like you know how many bison were driven off of cliffs or just murdered and mass and even in the archaic early holocene. You know, but they're not the ones you know they still survive so really by this point of this rant and this is a rant like the other two were more of a lecture but this is just kind of like how bonkers some of these ideas like overkill is especially how it's tied in with with clovis first and if people were here longer than you know. Eleven Thousand years ago with some of these clovis components like so that go up to like sixteen thousand years ago then people were living in harmony not necessarily in harmony but they they had like 5000 years of living with placeton megafauna didn't drive them totin so preclovis generally like threatens not just clovis first but also overkill hypothesis. They're linked. You'll find many clovis archaeologists clovis first archaeologists. They're also supportive of of clovis being big specialized big game hunters as well as overkill. Those are really tightly woven things and pre clovis threatens that and that's probably why the debate is also so fucking heated is because. 13:49.56 archpodnet This idea of how old people are whether it's clovis preclovis if it is and generally people are here longer than what we consider Cloviss first then it it falls apart the concepts and theories holding blitzrieg the blitzkrate hypothesis and specialized big game hunters that falls apart too. So that's that's the background behind these things that these things are interwoven especially when it comes to the you know the clovis first mafia they're also the overkill mafia they're also the big game hunter mafia and they'll often point there are these amazing structures that are in Ukraine and Russia along the volga and Nipah River where people built houses out of mammoths and like well we know then there they'll point to those people and be like well they were specialized like we know those were big game hunters because they made their fucking houses out of bones turns out the bones that used to create those structures. This was like a recent report these past couple years. Those people that were using those structures were looting mammoth graveyard so you guys have all seen Lion King right there's the elephant graveyard elephants do that they have graveyards where they go and put the bones of their dad on it like these massive Elephant Graveyards Mammoths did that too apparently and especially in central eurasia and these. Ancestral ukrainians or eastern europeans were going to these mammoth graveyards and pulling bones out and making their houses out of the dead relatives of these elephants. They weren't hunting them some were I will say that there there are definitely some have butchering marks now whether they were hunted or scavennged who the hell knows. 15:22.74 archpodnet But this idea that clovis people were were specialized. Big game hunters like it's it's romantic. It's romanticized we don't know if they're hunting other things they're more than likely like hunting elephants is fucking dangerous. It's much easier to hunt other things and get feud sources from others. So like there's this bias in in paleo neuro archeology towards. They must have been killing big game and so well yeah, of course you think that because you're going out and specifically looking at kill site or at the fossilized or not fossilized dam I'm just stepping on myself. You're looking for mammoth bones and and for this now granted there are a bunch of sites that are proccurement sites right? That's another thing like we. No are more than likely to find like um powers powers to ochre mine and some of these places where people are mining rocks throughout time. Well yeah, they have highly stratified components not just clovis and today because like that's where you go to find Lithic material for your rocks like yeah we know that I mean that's that's a really good. People need rocks. People need to make stone tools where are they going to find the stone from another example of sampling bias but it's kind of right like rocks just don't appear out of nowhere. We know like okay people are coming to these outcroppings through time a lot of those sites highly stratified that are amazing because people throughout tens of thousand ten thousand years. Going back to the same place to get stone because everyone knows where the stone's from but you know once again overkill I think is just silly for a couple reasons. How many people does it take to do it how many people actually arrived here to do that the amount of animals like tens of thousands of animals people would have had a murder. 16:57.10 archpodnet Within 800 years is fucking insane second people are probably here long are longer than um, Clovis what we accept is clovis so people didn't just show up and murder everything it wasn't like you know here's this invasive species killing everything in the mammo sin hard rack like no, they people have been here longer. They. Probably not intensively hunting these animals. They're fucking dangerous. It's the climate. It's the change in climate the holocene changes like bison becomes smaller and it becomes the world of bison very quickly. Bison love the prairie that's when we start seeing the beginning of the prairie maximum. Mammoth's not so much. The main factor is climate. Humans aren't helping but neither are the short noseed but like neither no predators ever help a herbivore during a time of a herbivores crisis like it's not just humans. There were other predators on the landscape. It wasn't like it was fucking the garden of eden here like there was still predators. You know what? I mean it's so it's just kind of silly. Idea to me of Clovis first and that people were these clovis people that had clovis points for specialized big game hunters like what? no ah doubtful people are way more varied than that. So. That's my rant I hope you guys enjoyed this I really do find. People in the Americas these colonization theories like overkill like what happened to the megafaune. It's fun to talk about this is one of my favorite lectures I hope you guys have some got something out of this I enjoyed speaking to you guys um. 18:27.64 archpodnet Let me know like please email us if you if you liked this format I'd be more than happy to kind of do these kind of podcasts in the future where I can just like lecture to the audience about what I think I'm going to put some links down below. Um some things that you guys can read. Ah. 18:44.97 archpodnet And yeah, so please be sure to rate and review the podcast I of course have given the chance again which is to live life in ruins and until next time everybody will catch you again on the life froms Podcast byebye.