pamp@bcsaic.UUCP (pam pincha) (08/27/85)
In article <377@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes: > > I love it when some of these people who obviously don't know what >they're talking about try to refute my articles point by point! Lets >consider Stanley Friesen's latest such attempt, point by point. I DO know what I'm talking about-- having helped dig and research some of these topics. I also love correcting misinformation. >>n article <367@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes: >>> >>> >>> 1. Several useful animal species including horses and camels >>> became extinct in the Americas several thousand years ago. >>> No ancient tribe in its right mind would exterminate all of >>> the horses in it's local. >> > Men don't RIDE anchovies, Stanley. Ancient man protected horses to >the limit of his ability. During the great catastrophies of the past, >this limit was often exceeded. Sorry.You are a few centuries too late!!! Bone studies of garbage heaps and kill sites HAVE SHOWN that ancient man DID EAT HORSES!!! REMEMBER the hunters we are talking about lived 30,000 to 12,000 YEARS AGO. This is quite a bit PRIOR to the domestication of the horse!!! You cannot use what you know of current tribe attitudes toward animals in this context -- it's much too current!!! > >>> >>> 2. The natives which the first white men in America encountered >>> were living in perfect harmony with nature, killing only for >>> food. Since one mammoth would feed a large tribe for a hell >>> of a long time, there is no chance that these people >>> exterminated the mammoths. >> > Yes it has occured to me, Stanley. So has the likelihood of the sun >coming up in the West tommorrow morning. The American Indians regarded >animals as their BROTHERS. >The chance of them or their ancestors ever having >exterminated any species by hunting is zero. See above. Again you are looking at the wrong thing.You are taking a long line of tradition and trying to apply it before it evolved. This is going to lead to very wrong conclusions that are NOT SUPPORTED BY THE EVIDENCE FROM THAT TIME PERIOD!!! >>> >>> 3. There is a hell of a difference between trying to kill a >>> lone elephant, a straggler or lone bull, and trying to >>> exterminate elephants generally. The latter would involve >>> attacking HERDS of elephants in which the females would be >>> attempting to protect the young, FAR more dangerous. >> >> Admittedly, but the archeological evidence is unquestionable, >>early man did just that! The basic method of hunting mammoths &c was >>to stampede them over cliffs and then pick up the remains. There are >>just too many of these massacre sites to doubt that this happened. >>Of course it was dangerous, and people probably got killed doing it, >>but people get killed flying airplanes, a much less necessary >>activity, and we still keep doing it. > > Elephants, when stampeded, tend to stampede TOWARDS the stampeders, >Stanley. That's why it's hard to get volunteers for stampeeding them. >It is entirely possible, however, that at the times of the great catastrophies >which we catastrophists believe in, that a herd of elephants occasionally got >WASHED over a cliff. Fire, dear boy, fire. A very important weapon! Be it torches or set range fires. It was and still is very effective against bison, horses, and ELEPHANTS. Especially if they think they have a way out. The technique is that you start the stampede far enough away from the cliff that they feel they can run. Granted, this may not work every time, but it works often enogh to make it viable. (Note: neither does this method kill of all of a herd just a significant portion -- but that was enough at the time. these animals were in a highly stressed position at this time period. All it took was a little of the wrong push to wipe them out.) ALSO -- the sites show NO EVIDENCE OF THE ANIMALS BEING WASHED OVER THE CLIFFS!!!!!!!! (Believe me, as a geologist AND archeologist ,it isn't difficult to tell when water has played a role in such an event. REAL EASY!!!!!) FURTHERMORE -- These sites have indesputable evidence of lots of human involvement at these sites. The bones show good evidence of stone cutting tools being used to scrape, chop, and saw the animals apart. Some of the animals still have fluted stone points imbedded in vertebrae and shoulder bones (some still fresh indicating that the kill was succesful; others showing growth over the point indicating that the hunter blew it!). The placement and positions of the points, bones, landscapes and such are all too related to indicate these were just scavengers after a big catastrophy (ESPECIALLY when the is no evidence of one. It is not difficult to tell when water,fire, or earthquake has affected an area!). >>> 4. Attempting to kill the PREDATERS of the archaic world would >>> require modern weapons. NEVER underestimate human ingenuity!!! These guys made it across frozen tundra with little food sources and little but skins and stone tools (which are VERY SHARP! In fact some surgens are using obsidian blades in some delicate operations because it holds an edge longer and is sharper than metal!). It's not that difficult. > Ever try dragging a mammoth back home to the camp, Stanley? Or moving >the camp to each new mammoth you kill? Sounds like a lot of work to me. That's exactlly what the sites indicate! (Actually they cut the beasts up right at the kill sites and carted of the food to the nearby camp sites. These guys were nomadic. They followed the herds. That may be one reason that they migrated into North America in the first place.) At this point, I am disapointed in the quality of these responses in this article. It seems fraught with numerous instances of either no information of massive mis-information on the large body of evidence involved in this particular hypothesis about the these extinctions. Please go to the nearest university library and check into the reams of site descriptions and VERY detailed studies of the Big Game Hunter Gatherer tradition in North America. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- P.M.Pincha-Wagener (bcsaic!pamp) (usual disclaimer) --------------------------------------------------------------------