Humans are "Off the Hook" For African Extinction

[Tamara Taylor]

I won't say that humans are off the hook because maybe not the indigenous people of Africa cause the extensions to happen, but I would believe that the Europeans might have caused it because of their rapid industrialization that created a lot more pollution and overwhelmed the earth. Also, they fully colonized Africa in 1913 hey had the weapons to hunt these species for what the Europeans wanted, so that's what I think what had happened.

I do not think this is exactly the case in the referenced article. I agree with Blake in regards to who the blame belongs to. I think it is very unlikely the early people in Africa were able to create advanced nd efficient enough tools and methods that allowed them to hunt the large scale animals that were in coexistance with those people. It is confirmed that the large animals were highly dependant on trees as their source of food, and with the decrease of CO2 taking a toll on the growth and nourishment of the trees, results in the death of the animals that depended on them. The article expresses that the extinction of of these mammals happening over many years, supporting the idea the CO2 levels dropping, aided in the death of certain large mammals and eventually the extinction. With that being said, arises the idea that humans, yet there hold a substantial amount of blame for extinction of certain species, they are not the sole contributors.