2.5 million years after the evolution of genus homo, we valiantly stand as members of the most cognitively developed species. We have transversed undulated topographies, have made a huge leap of not just faith but scientific limitations, equally evolving culturally from a half naked ape to a tuxedo wearing statesman. Climate change today is a hot topic. We have documentaries, magazines, interviews, press conferences and debates on how modern human is killing the environment. And guess what, it's actually true! But it's equally true that earth's climate has been in a constant flux since time immemorial. During the last million years, there has been an Ice Age on average every 100,000 years. The last one ran from 75000 years ago to 15000 years ago. And a lot of flora and fauna got extinct. But hiding behind the shadow of climate change doesn't deny that humans were equally responsible for extinction of creatures not just 300 years but also 30000 years ago.
Extinction of the Australian Megafauna
When humans first landed on Australia they were greeted by the stangest creatures of the planet. We may not call them strange today but to an ancient man who landed on a stranded island 40000 years before google Maps, would share the same eerie expression on his face as you would if you see iron man flying over your head. These alien creatures were our very own 200kg 2 meters tall kangaroos, and a marsupial lion, as massive as a modern tiger, and guess what it ruled the jungle back then as well.
The koalas were far too big to be cuddly, the lizards were more of a dragon and snakes were as long as five meters. The giant diprotodons , 2 and a half tonne wombats, roamed the forests. To a modern day man, the scenery might seem scary but our ancient hero had to push his limits to survive in a new environment.
Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty four Australian animal species weighing 50 kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct. Smaller species disappeared in large numbers too. Food chains throughout the entire Australian ecosystem were broken and rearranged. The giant diprotodons that appered more than 1.5 million years ago, after surviving 10 ice ages and the peak of the last ice age (70000 years ago) disappeared around that time too. More than 90% of Australia's megafauna disappeared along with the diprotodon.
While climate change may be considered a reason behind this large scale ecological damage, we cannot unsee that climate change equally affects aquatic species. Yet there has been no significant disappearance of oceanic fauna 45000 years ago! Researchers claim that one of the prime reasons behind the extinction of Australian megafauna is that the species, unlike species in Africa which evolved along with sapiens, were completely untouched by human intervention. They couldn't adapt to a new species in a food chain, and thus fell out of the race of the survival of the fittest.
If our Ancestors were ecological serial killers too, then why brag about animal extinction now?
Well because our ancestors didn't realize what they were doing. They can't be attributed wrong because their acts eventually led us to where we stand today. Imagine an environmental activist goes back in time to stop sapiens from killing a mammoth, our present won't remain the same, and it would definitely be a lot different than seeing mammoths in zoos and national parks. And we need to brag about animal extinction today because humans can't make the whole food chain. Now that we realise the value of ecological balance and the downsides of ecological imbalance it becomes our primal duty of conserving it.
Footnotes
1. Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari;
2. The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australian Lands and People's, Timothy F. Flannery;
3. A Review of Evidence for a Human Role in the Extinction of Australian Megafauna and an Alternative Explanation, Stepen Wroe and Judith Field.
Image credits
1. Google, Wikipedia.
For more, see wiki article on Australian Megafauna.
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