The First Peoples, 10,000 BC
Did Overhunting Cause the Mammoth to Become Extinct?

Introduction

Mammoth Humans have lived in North America for at least 15,000 years, and many believe it may be much longer. It from the time of the Ice Age, or Pleistocene Epoch. The climate was much colder and it was a time of alternate expansions and retreats of the glaciers. During the time of the first people, the glaciers covered much of North America a as far south as what we know as Iowa, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The first people were hunters of big game animals such as mammoth. By the time the glaciers retreated for the last time, many of these animals had become extinct. Some archaeologists believe it was due to changing climate. Others believe it was the result of overhunting by these first people. Whatever the case, on the Great Plains the mammoth had disappeared by about 8,000 years ago. Let's take a look at what scientists think about the first case of how climate caused culture to change on the northern Great Plains.

Origins of the Paleoindians

The first people to live in North America were those who later became known as American Indians or Native Americans. Their own stories, told to generations, tell of how their peoples came to be. Most of their stories tell how the Creator made them, or how they were tricked into coming out of the ground, or how the world was created by mud brought up from the bottom of the ocean by turtle.

Archaeologists do not dispute these traditions, but have a different view that is based on the remains that people leave behind. They use these remains to construct histories that tell which cultures were in what places during what times. Archaeologists call these first people Paleoindians and have used the evidence they have found to put together a story about how the first people came to be in North America.

Newly discovered evidence of these first people is very controversial. Scientists such as archaeologists are trained to continually question the hypotheses they build around the evidence. The ideas that no longer fit the evidence must be rejected and new ideas suggested. Regarding the first people, new evidence has caused many revisions over the years. Find out what the archaeologists know about them and their lives.

Archaeological Evidence for Paleoindians

Several web sites contain information about Paleoindians. Check out a few of them from the major research center that studies the First People to a few site tours of some early sites on the Great Plains.

The Center for the Study of the First Americans is the major organization in North America that studies the Paleoindians. Their web site contains articles from their magazine The Mammoth Trumpet and can give lots of up-to-date information about new discoveries and hypotheses regarding the First People. Be sure to check there for regular information.

The Early Paleoindian Period
A web page from the Office of the State Archaeologist of Iowa describes the earliest people in Iowa. It has maps, drawings of early stone spear points, and a bibliography.

Paleoindian Sites in South Dakota

The Lange/Ferguson Site
A mammoth kill/butchering locality in Shannon County,SD, in the Badlands.

The Ray Long site
The Plano (late Paleoindian) tradition Angostura site, re-excavated. A Clovis base came from the site recently.

Climate Change and the Retreat of the Glaciers

If you want to understand what the Plains and Midwest were like during the last glacial period, be sure to go to the fascinating and colorful web exhibit assembled by the Illinois State Museum on The Midwestern US, 16,000 Years Ago. In that exhibit, you will find out all kinds of things about the climate, land and animals that had an impact on the First People.

Starting about 18,000 years ago, the glaciers began to retreat. For a fine demonstration of how this happened, take a look at an animated image of the glacial retreat. As the glaciers retreated, the climate began to grow more mild. The tundras near the glaciers were replaced by forest and grasslands. The animals such as the mammoth that lived on the tundras also moved north, but they started to die out. Some scientists have suggested that they could not adjust to the changing climate. Others have hypothesized that they were no longer able to resist certain diseases. The most controversial idea is that they were overhunted by the Paleoindians. If you would like to know what some scientists think about this, look at some of the following web sites:

The Late Pleistocene Extinctions
The Illinois State Museum exhibit does a good job of explaining the extinctions from both the viewpoint of environmental causes and the huma n overhunting hypothesis.

Extinction and Depletion from Over-Exploitation
A Biological Conservation course lecture outlines the issues well.

The Pleistocene Holocene Transition - The Case of the Arboricidal Megaherbivores
Elin Whitney-Smith presents the extinctions as a sort of detective story with Holmes and Watson, making excellent deductions along the way. It is a bit complicated for the non-specialist, but you can learn a lot by going through it.

So How Did People Survive?

As the focus of their hunting activities disappeared, the Paleoindians had to change their way of life to survive. No longer would they be so nomadic and no longer could they seek the big game animals. They began to settle in to more local environments such as in a large river drainage system. They tended to use more resources from the environment rather than just a few. The kinds of artifacts they made were more varied and included objects such as ground stone axes. Archaeological evidence shows more use of plants.

These were people of the Archaic period, as archaeologists call it. If you would like to know more about the Archaic in some of the Plains states, follow these links:

The Ray Long site
In the southern Black Hills of South Dakota, the Ray Long site shows transition process to the Archaic.

Evidence of Native American Occupation in Nebraska
The Heritage of the Nebraska Sand Hills web site has a brief discussion of the transition from Paleoindian to Archaic.

The Late Paleoindian/Early Archaic Period
This page from the Iowa OSA discusses what happened as the glaciers went away, the mammoths disappeared and the cultures changed.

Prehistoric Artifacts And Settlement Patterns In Dallas
The whole transition is documented fairly well from central Texas.

Making Cultural Adjustments

The cultures of the Archaic period throughout the Plains became very well adapted to the changes in the climate. The climate became much like the modern climate, except for a period of high temperatures and drought known to climatologists and archaeologists as the Altithermal. For the Plains Archaic people, hunting the bison became the mainstay of their varied diet. Bison were hunted communally, often running them over jumps or into surrounds.

Landform Assisted Communal Bison Procurement
A selected, classified and annotated bibliography by Michael O'Hara provides access to materials from Paleoindian, Archaic and into the historic period.

Head-Smashed-In
Head-Smashed-In is a World Heritage Site in the Plains of western Alberta where there is nearly 10,000 years of evidence for use of one buffalo jump.

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