68,000–10,000 BCE: (Mass Extinctions of Megafauna Everywhere Except Africa — Fully Modern Humans with New Hunting Technologies Having a Major Impact on the N…

68,000–10,000 BCE: (Mass Extinctions of Megafauna Everywhere Except Africa — Fully Modern Humans with New Hunting Technologies Having a Major Impact on the Natural World, the Arrival of Humans in New Lands Recurrently Setting in Motion Mass Extinctions of Large Mammals, at Least Fourteen Genera of Mammals and More Than Eighty Species Extinct in Australia by 30,000 BCE, Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros Persisting in Eurasia Until Around 10,000 BCE Only in Sparsely Settled Peripheral Siberian Regions, but Mass Extinctions Did Not Take Place in Africa Because Wild Animals and Humans Had Coevolved and Coadapted): Our fully modern ancestors with their new kinds of hunting technologies appear also, even in these early periods, to have gained the capacity for having a major impact on the natural world around them. Recurrently, the arrival of our human ancestors in new lands seems to have set in motion new mass extinctions of many of the large mammals previously thriving in those places. Already by 30,000 BCE in Australia, the human presence had led to the extinction of at least fourteen genera of mammals and more than eighty species of animals overall, including giant kangaroos and a huge flightless bird, Genyornis newtoni. Across Eurasia a similarly great set of extinctions took place, although occurring over a longer span, with such animals as the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros able to persist down to around 10,000 years ago in the peripheral, northern Siberian regions, which were settled later and more sparsely by humans. So the capacities of our species for vastly changing the world and the environment around us is not at all a development of recent history. Notably, though, mass extinctions of megafauna did not take place in Africa. There, elephants, rhinos, hippos, lions, leopards, cheetahs, gorillas, Cape buffalo, and most of the vast variety of plains herbivores have persisted down to modern times. In our home continent of Africa, differently from elsewhere in the world, wild animals and our human ancestors had coevolved and coadapted to each other over the millennia — in Africa we were not an intrusive new challenge to the natural order. This is one of the most profound ecological observations in the entire book. The reason Africa still has its megafauna is that Africa’s megafauna grew up alongside humans. They learned to fear us as we learned to hunt them, and the arms race between predator and prey unfolded gradually enough that both sides adapted. Everywhere else in the world, where humans arrived as a sudden, novel predator, the large animals had no evolutionary preparation and were annihilated. Africa’s wildlife survived because Africa is where humanity was born. The continent that gave the world its people is the only continent whose animals were ready for them.