Notes

The overview of overkill was by Paul S. Martin who decrypted the autotrophic extinction. He was geoscience whose work is used in a variety of fields such as geoscience, anthropology palaeontology and ecological fields. In his book, he strongly believes the Home sapiens have been held accountable for playing a large role towards global warming and
possibly, it has been spectated that the appearance of humans correlates with ice age animals
being extinct. Paul S. Martin evaluates and discusses the “overkill” thesis,
in order to prove that extinction in the late quaternary is due to human intervention. In the
overkill thesis, Martin dismisses other proposed reasons for extinction like: “Meteor strikes,
climate change, nutrient shortages and disease” (Martin,48), and that only human’s effect could
do he describes is at as the “Near Time’ In the passage it shows how climate change is always a topic of interest but, not a defining factor for explaining extinction even tough with current knowledge showing how climate change is an important issue. Martin institutes that it is evident that through the early Quaternary, there was climate
change, and there was no extinction of large mammals, he then adds that the climate change of
the early Quaternary period was also severe and rapid. This clearly highlights that the issue in
question started when extinction levels arose in the late Quaternary period... Furthermore, Martin
goes on to discuss the correlation of how when the Clovis people who are “the earliest humans in
America”(51), came, then North America experienced “explosive extinction’(51) and lost two thirds of large animals, then he further proves his point by stating that Mexico, Central, and
South America suffered a much larger extinction. Mexico central and south amerces even lost commensals and parasites that disappeared with the host. This shows the correlation. Of extinction and human movement and activities within a certain place Highlighting that the drive to this extinction is the practices of “over-hunting, habitat destruction, or the introduction of other aliens”(51). He then points out that the African and Asian continent faced the least damage with extinction, which is due to the coevolution, meaning as “human hunting skills, advanced” (52), the prey evolved and adopted a better-suited defence mechanism. In addition, a thesis that has been
famously discussed, which works to give reason to the extinction of dinosaurs and other large
mammals is the apocalyptic occurrence of a large meteorite landing on the earth. Whilst, this is
largely agreed upon by many geologists u4for the extinction of “other terrestrial and marine species
along with many vascular plants” (52). However, Martin argues that this argument lacks any
evidence as to why such a sudden apocalyptic incident might happen. Moreover, as discussed
earlier on about the overkill thesis, which can also be referred to as the lightning war. It brings to
light the point that 1000 of years ago when North America started being populated by Native
Americans, they faced multiple animals, who never encountered humans before thus, lacked
experience. This weakness was abused by humans who hunted such mammals quite easily, till
they wiped them out to extinction. Then, they moved onto hunting smaller species until they
became extinct too. Moreover, Martin highlighted the need to assess the dates of human impact in
order to be able to make the comparison between, when extinction occurred and when humans
arrived into the picture. Whilst, this proved to be difficult due to dependency on palaeontology,
stratigraphy and chronology, as none “allowed for dating on the scale required for our
purposes” (49). That being said, with the rise of radiocarbon dating, there is the ability to regain
estimation of age, accurate to a century or even less. Using radiocarbon, gave us accuracy for
dating for non-human and human fossils from 50,000 years ago. These results allowed us to have
the ability to make informed ideas on the timelines for different species’ extinction, and the pace
of the extinction. With the aid of other geological methods and progression of radiocarbon
dating, patterns of extinction can be assessed to the most trivial and detailed aspects
he explores the desensitized affect that has
been cast on humans due to the extinction of early species, humans now lack care for the
extinction of present-day animals and the threats on several species. A trait amongst humans
Martin discusses is the ability to care and empathize towards large mammals this is due us being
able to see the similarities between us and other large mammals, and thus we are more
susceptible to them. In comparison, to ‘reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds, and tiny
mammals’ (55).
The conclusion to the reasoning Martin arrives to is if during the Quaternary
period if this would have been the human mindset, the drive to conserve and preserve would have
been much more pre-relevant allowing us to obtain global sustainability. Therefore, he correlates
that the more awareness there is about long-extinct mammals, the more likely there will be
conservation plans for the rest of what remains. He then proceeds to underline ignorance to
prehistoric extinction as the issue as to why humans manage to devalue the riches of the earth,
and due to this our plans for the future is narrowed. He then deduces that to allow the population
to develop involvement in this field, we must create matching attention, interest and vitalize a
similar awareness that is created to the topic of dinosaur extinction to great mammals’ extinction.
The main aid for the overkill hypothesis is that the only way to justify extinction is through,
humans practising hunting and the effect of that is not fixable by any other factor. The chapter was quite interesting but there where some points MArntin stated that I had to criticize. research, I believe that Martin’s argument lacks validity, provided the availability of
evidence that refutes the conclusion.
To start off archaeologists for more than a hundred years,
have collected a tremendous amount of research specifically in North America, which was pointed
out as the continent where most of the extinction occurred. The research should have previewed
results that display that there was human hunting of myriad animals through the course of
extinction. However, there is the only evidence that out of 35 genera only 2 - 4 were hunted to
extinction (Surovell Grund, 2012). Martin clearly dismisses any theory that does not account for
human involvement in causing extinction, nonetheless, through this proof, it is then evident that
this is not the scenario faced here, in-fact Martin’s statement is an extremely generous
declaration to the number of animals that humans have actually affected. Also, a point worth criticizing is that Martin
states that climate change did not aid or cause extinction. In my opinion, this is unnecessary due
to the fact that it diminishes the role that climate change plays and pedestals placing homo sapiens as
the antagonists. It is validated through the evidence of the myriad collected, that climate change is
swiftly getting worst during that time. Furthermore, it is argued that many megafauna species
seized to exist during the late Quaternary, this is derived from many facts, the existence of
megafauna species during the late Quaternary is the period Martin highlighted as the time where
extinction happened due to human involvement. With that being said, it can be seen that climate
change indeed would have contributed largely to the extinction of these animals and therefore
should not be dismissed as a theory for the catastrophe.
In conclusion, his lacks of in-depth analysis and a viable thesis and lack of information show how weak his thesis is.