Human Expansion

The Sixth Extinction: First Pulse

In the beginning

Just before humans left Africa around 50-100,000 years ago, Pleistocene mammals were at their peak. Large mammals including many species of elephants, cats, camels, cattle, deers, horses, antelopes, and wolves wandered all the five continents. That age has ended with the rise of Homo sapiens. No longer roaming the earth, the large Pleistocene mammals today survive squeezed into reserves and parks in pockets of Africa.

We are now in the Holocene, the age of Humans, and the Sixth Extinction is upon us now.

Large mammals: Tasty and Unafraid

During the first pulse of the Sixth Extinction, large mammals were the hardest hit.

In Africa, humans and large mammals evolved together over the last five million years. As humans gradually developed better hunting techniques and tools, the animals simultaneously evolved defensive tactics and fear of humans. But large mammals outside of Africa had no fear or knowledge of humans. One imagines the mammoth, the ground sloth, the xx deer,  did not run away when first encountering these strange creatures wielding long sticks and stones.  And so quite rapidly large mammals became extinct.

Image	Species	Date Extinct	Geographic Region	Cause of Extinction
	Woolly Mammoth	1700 BC	North America, Northern Eurasia	Climate Change & Overhunting
	Woolly Rhinoceros	8000 BC	Northern Eurasia	Climate Change & Overhunting
	Glyptodon	10,000 BP	North & South America	Climate Change
	Ground Sloth	4,000 BP	North & South America	Overhunting
	Saber Tooth Tiger	10,000 BP	North & South America, Eurasia, Africa	Overhunting & Competition
	American Lion	11,000 BP	North & South America	Overhunting & Competition
	Camelops	10,000 BP	North America	Overhunting
	Neanderthal	25,000 BP	North America	Climate Change & Human Competition
	Moa	1500 AD	New Zealand	Overhunting