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While
the extinction of large mammal species within 3000 years of human
habitation is admitted, the possible cause of it has been left to
conjecture. Since no other possible reason for the disappearance
of large mammal species has been speculated upon, the inference
in obvious that human habitation had much to do with it, however
indirectly.
There may be no evidence that the humans had any 'significant' contact
with the mammals, but in the absence of any other evidence to support
any theory about the possible reason for the extinction of the large
mammal species, the needle of suspicion inevitably points towards
humans. Use of the word 'significant' in the passage is a sort of
giveaway to the extent that the possibility of humans having created
conditions in which the large mammals could not live is not ruled
out.
If archaeologists have discovered numerous sites where the bones
of fish had been found discarded and no areas containing those of
large mammals, it would be facile to conclude that humans in those
days consumed only fish and left the bones for posterity and archaeologists,
and did not touch large mammal species.
That
they may not have hunted the species is only a theory based on the
failure of archaeologists to discover the bones of the species.
In the absence of evidence, conjecture is the only way to reconstruct
the dim distant past.
Even if humans did not hunt the mammals, it is possible, even probable,
that they polluted the atmosphere to such an extent and in such
a way as to render it impossible for the mammals to survive. Considering
daily reports in newspapers nowadays of one animal species or another
having become extinct or of being on the verge of extinction, thanks
mainly to environmental pollution, it cannot be put beyond human
ingenuity even in the dim distant past that the environment was
so polluted as to make it impossible for the mammals to survive.
If
no bones of large mammal species have been discovered, that may
well be because they have been consumed by Time. If the same Time
proved less ravenous in the case of the bones of fish, it does not
necessarily exonerate humans from blame.
All this is, however, not to deny that at various times in the geological
past many species have become extinct as a result of natural, rather
than human, processes. But there is no evidence of such a thing
having happened in the case of the large mammal species in the forests
of Kaliko Islands. Besides, the fact that they became extinct within
3,000 years of the arrival of humans makes it suspect.
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