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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: more on killing large animals/reply to S. Friesen
Message-ID: <679@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Aug-85 19:53:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: psivax.679
Posted: Mon Aug 26 19:53:22 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 04:46:50 EDT
References: <377@imsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 77
Summary: 

In article <377@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes:
>
>
>     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.
>
	Ancient Homo sapiens in areas where hore-riding had been
learned, but there is no evidence that early hominids in the Americas
had ever ridden horses until *after* Europeans came and showed them it
could be done. Under those conditions the horse would have been
considered another food source. Actually, however, I seem to remember
that the extinction of the horse in the Americas is *not* one of the
ones that may be laid to man's hunting, I seem to remember that it
occured before humans got to the Americas.

>>Has it occured to you that this harmony was a result of
>>learning from thier mistakes! That perhaps after wiping out several
>>major food species they learned how to hunt without excess.
>>
>     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.  They formally appeased the totem of the deers
>after killing a deer.  The chance of them or their ancestors ever having
>exterminated any species by hunting is zero.  Likewise, the pygmies of today
>make no dent in the elephant herds of Africa by their hunting.
>
	The fact that recent American Indians consider animals their
brother is no evidence that their ancestors did! That attitude could
easily have devloped in response to ecological disasters that tey
themselves had caused. Look at the modern conservation movement and
the attitudes it is starting to produce, they are very similar to the
Indian attitude.

>     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.  Tribes of men, finding all this a day or two later, might
>have feasted (if you could call eating elephants a feast), on the remains.
>Scientists, like some on the net, finding the remains of said feast along with
>campfire signs and a spear point or two which someone lost or left lying around
>naturally assume that, at great risk to themselves and for no sensible reason,
>ancient tribes STAMPEDED those elephants off that cliff. 

	Haven't you heard of post-mortem examination to determine
cause of death? A flodd kill such as you suggest would have a
completely different post-mortem appearence than the sites actually
found! When I said that the archaological evidence is so powerful, I
meant that the sites had been studied *in depth* and other
explanations had been ruled out. Or do you really think that such a
concept would go unchallenged in sceintific journals? Or don't you
realize how much delight some scientist take in proving each other
wrong! The very points you are bringing up have already been evaluated
and found inadequate.
>
>>Actually, early man probably didn't actively hunt these
>>preditors, but the lion, at least, has a tendency to attempt to steal
>>other predators food, and I am sure early man tried to defend his
>>hard-won prey. Remember, early hunting was a *group* effort, so the
>>difficulty a *single* had in killing a bear has little bearing on
>>the results of 20-30 hunters shooting at the same bear. Modern sport
>>hunting is quite different from the subsistence hunting of early man!
>
>     The super-lions and wolf-bears hunted in packs of 20 or thirty too,
>Stanley.  And they were VERY big and had VERY BIG and SHARP teeth.
>
	I never said the fight would be one-sided, early hominids
probably lost such fights as often as they won. Please remember a
five foot spear is every bit as dangerous as sharp teeth!
>
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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