{"id":52979,"date":"2020-05-04T11:22:19","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T16:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52979"},"modified":"2020-05-04T11:22:24","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T16:22:24","slug":"were-other-humans-the-first-victims-of-the-6th-mass-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52979","title":{"rendered":"Were other humans the first victims of the 6th mass extinction?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2020\/were-other-humans-the-first-victims-of-the-6th-mass-extinction\/\">Were other humans the first victims of the 6th mass extinction?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Preface<\/strong>. This article makes a good case that we did indeed wipe out other hominids. \u201c\u2026Yet the extinction of Neanderthals, at least, took a long time\u2014thousands of years. While Neanderthals lost the war, to hold on so long they must have fought and won many battles against us, suggesting a level of intelligence close to our own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I seriously doubt we\u2019ll drive ourselves extinct, though carrying capacity of the earth is at best 1 billion (pre-fossil fuels) or less (topsoil erosion, deforestation, pollution, climate change, etc).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Longrich, N. 2019.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-11-humans-victims-sixth-mass-extinction.html\">Were other humans the first victims of the sixth mass extinction?<\/a>&nbsp;The conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nine human species walked the Earth 300,000 years ago. Now there is just one. The Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, were stocky hunters adapted to Europe\u2019s cold steppes. The related Denisovans inhabited Asia, while the more primitive Homo erectus lived in Indonesia, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/108371a0.pdf\">Homo rhodesiensis<\/a>&nbsp;in central Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Several short, small-brained species survived alongside them: Homo naledi in South Africa, Homo luzonensis in the Philippines, Homo floresiensis (\u201chobbits\u201d) in Indonesia, and the mysterious Red Deer Cave People in China. Given how quickly we\u2019re discovering new species, more are likely waiting to be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By 10,000 years ago, they were all gone. The disappearance of these other species resembles a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/mass+extinction\/\">mass extinction<\/a>. But there\u2019s no obvious environmental catastrophe\u2014volcanic eruptions, climate change, asteroid impact\u2014driving it. Instead, the extinctions\u2019 timing suggests they were caused by the spread of a new species, evolving&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/358\/6363\/652.abstract\">260,000-350,000 years ago<\/a>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-019-1714-1\">Southern Africa<\/a>: Homo sapiens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The spread of modern humans out of Africa has caused a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2017\/jul\/10\/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn\">sixth mass extinction<\/a>, a greater than 40,000-year event extending from the disappearance of Ice Age mammals to the destruction of rainforests by civilisation today. But were other humans the first casualties?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Were other humans the first victims of the 6th mass extinction? Preface. This article makes a good case that we did indeed wipe out other hominids. \u201c\u2026Yet the extinction of Neanderthals, at least, took a long time\u2014thousands of years. While Neanderthals lost the war, to hold on so long they must have fought and won [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[29599,11836,11859,29601,5329,29602,29600],"class_list":["post-52979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-6th-mass-extinction","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-hominids","tag-humanity","tag-n-longrich","tag-neanderthals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52980,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52979\/revisions\/52980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}