[Synapsid]

vtsnowedin,

"...perhaps during ice age winters it was dry."

You touch on an important point for the large scale: glacial climate in middle and higher latitudes was cold and dry. During the times of particularly severe climate that saw Neanderthals move south it was even colder and drier. The tundra and boreal forest that occupy those latitudes today didn't exist; grasslands were a major component of the regional ecosystems, as indicated by the predominance of grass and wormwood/sagebrush in the pollen floras from that time.

That's why grazers were so abundant then in areas where they couldn't survive today; mammoth, horse, bison, saiga, wooly rhino (Eurasia only)--the quantity of skeletal remains throughout the boreal realm is staggeringly large.

Horses and bison have been re-introduced to Alaska but they live in areas that are well-drained, not on tundra. Tundras are mainly waterlogged terrain because of permafrost near the surface which prevents water soaking in, and low rates of evaporation due to low temperatures. Much tundra vegetation is well protected against herbivores by toxic compounds (although several kinds of berry are abundant.) There are large herbivores in tundra country, moose and caribou, but moose came in late in the last ice age and are found in lake and stream-side habitat (and, nowadays, along railroads where a bull moose will occasionally stare that train down and learn too late), while caribou are lichen eaters with large feet that allow them to traverse tundra.

After one field season on the stuff I swore I would never work on tussock tundra again.

Moose, by the way, are expanding northward in Alaska, presumably due to regional warming.

[vtsnowedin]

vtsnowedin,

"...perhaps during ice age winters it was dry."

You touch on an important point for the large scale: .......

........There are large herbivores in tundra country, moose and caribou, but moose came in late in the last ice age and are found in lake and stream-side habitat (and, nowadays, along railroads where a bull moose will occasionally stare that train down and learn too late), while caribou are lichen eaters with large feet that allow them to traverse tundra.

After one field season on the stuff I swore I would never work on tussock tundra again.

Moose, by the way, are expanding northward in Alaska, presumably due to regional warming.

Well moose or a close relative had to exist on some range before that as that would not be sufficient time to evolve.
Moose expanded their range south into New England (1980 to 2000)when timber harvesting clear cuts gave them an abundance of food but blood sucking ticks now plague them and have pushed them back North.
Deer family evolution is something I'll have to look up.

[vtsnowedin]

Here is a bit on Moose evolution if anyone is interested. No mention of human interaction in anything I've read so far.

MOOSE EVOLUTION AND PHYLOGEOGRAPHY

Origins of Modern Moose

Moose (Alces alces) are a young species in the evolutionary scheme of large mammals. The genus Alces first appears in the fossil record 2 million years ago (Thouveny and Bonifay 1984) and fossils attributable to A. alces are first recorded approximately 100,000 years ago (Lister 1993). Those dates are very recent considering that the subfamily Odocoileinae, to which moose belong, diverged from other deer lineages 9-12 million years ago (Miyamoto et al. 1990).

Paleontological evidence indicated Europe as the place of origin of the genus Alces (Lister 1993). The genus never was diverse, with only one species present in the fossil record at any particular time. Yet, the species assumed to be the precursor to A. alces, the broad-fronted moose (A. latifrons) was distributed across Eurasia and into northwestern North America for a time before becoming extinct in Beringia at the end of the Pleistocene (Guthrie 1995). Thus, the widespread distribution of modern moose and its immediate ancestor indicate a degree of evolutionary success despite a paucity of species diversity.

Up to 8 subspecies of moose are recognized worldwide (Fig. 1); 4 in Eurasia and 4 in North America (Peterson 1955). That number is open to question, however. Geist (1987a, 1998) contends that there are 2 predominant types of moose in the world: American and European, following the convention of Flerov (1952). To the former type he assigns all North American moose as well as eastern Asian subspecies A. a. burturlini and A. a. pfizenmayeri. He based his opinion primarily on morphology and noted similar geographic divisions in taxonomy among reindeer and caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and red deer and North American elk (Cervus elaphus; Geist 1998). He further contended that those morphological types should correspond to subspecies designations. Therefore, Geist (1998) recognized A. a. alces of Europe and A. a. americana in eastern Asia and North America. He also suggested that A. a. americanus has precedence under nomenclatural conventions as the proper name for the east Asian-North American subspecies. He referred to A. a. cameloides in northern China, Mongolia, and southeastern Russia as part of a primitive fauna native to that region and recognized that subspecies as a valid taxon although he also refers to it as an American-type moose (Geist 1998:230).

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Genetics% ... 0150584119

[dohboi]

Neanderthals apparently weren't the only hominid race in Europe done in by shifts in climate:

http://www.seeker.com/why-did-ancient-e ... covery.com

Why Did Ancient Europeans Disappear 14,500 Years Ago?
Genetic analysis shows some of Europe's earliest inhabitants mysteriously vanished toward the end of the last ice age and were largely replaced by others.

[quote]Some of Europe’s earliest inhabitants mysteriously vanished toward the end of the last ice age and were largely replaced by others, a new genetic analysis finds.

The finds come from an analysis of dozens of ancient fossil remains collected across Europe.

The genetic turnover was likely the result of a rapidly changing climate, which the earlier inhabitants of Europe couldn’t adapt to quickly enough...[quote]

And then there's: http://www.livescience.com/28954-ancien ... ished.html

Ancient Europeans Mysteriously Vanished 4,500 Years Ago

[Synapsid]

vtsnowedin, dohboi,

vt: I should have said that moose came into North America late in the last ice age, from Eurasia. My lapse.

dohboi: My, all this mysterious vanishing. (Editors often write titles, not authors.)

The first link is written sloppily but the second is better done. The background of climate swings, which could be rapid, is characteristic of the Pleistocene, particularly the latter half, and certainly played an important role in who went where and why. We're learning a lot from genomic studies about the former, but "for whatever reason" in the first link above, referring to the "why", is realism.

Look into the site Dienekes' Anthropology Blog for abstracts on this work and similar studies. Dienekes is a population geneticist and posts abstracts, often with his own commentary, from the professional literature. He seems not to be subject to enthusiasms.

That "why", now. Looking back at the Neanderthals, when they moved south it was not because of climate change except in the broadest sense. They were following their main food source, large herbivores, who were doing the same thing. It was the vegetation that responded to increased cold and aridity, and we can follow that response in the pollen record.

[dohboi]

Thanks, Syn. I was hoping you would weigh in on those.

And thanks for the blog recommendation.

Do you suppose that there is something about Europe that has made folks in the past suddenly disappear? Perhaps the same dynamics--of whatever combination of geography and climate sensitivity and maybe..."something in the water"??--also helped drive the colonial period when a number of European groups suddenly spread out across the whole globe? We think of it as seeking fortune (or less flatteringly, pirating for plunder). But maybe there was something driving them off of the very continent.

Sorry, for random speculation. I know that there are lots of 'dead ends' in hominid history, and I'm guessing that there would be many more such discovered all over the place if we could find every relevant piece of evidence.

[Synapsid]

dohboi,

Folks disappearing is part of the history of us humans, I suspect, (remember Atlantis! Sorry) but archaeology developed in Europe and that's where the most attention has been concentrated so that's what we know the most about. That and the Middle East.

There's a whole library of books about what led to the expansion of western Europeans; Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel has a couple of major bloopers in it but for this topic it's a good place to start. Pay attention to his appendix on sources for further reading. He writes very well, too.

[Synapsid]

vtsnowedin, dohboi, Tanada,

I just read two new posts at John Hawks Weblog, on the stone ovals built by Neanderthals and on the new discovery of cave art in Spain.

Hawks is an archaeologist at the University of Wisconsin and one of the best sources of information I know of for such topics.

[dohboi]

Yes, I've read that and other of Diamond's books and heard him talk. He was very clear in the lecture and especially in the questions/answer period afterwards that he does not consider his theories the last word, and that he assumes that there were other dynamics in play. I am more interested generally in the cultural presuppositions and drivers than he is. What I posted above was just random idle speculation, of course. But then most important ideas start as such.

Thanks again for the blog recommendations.
(I think Dieneke is being...generous...in calling that "WW 0" article 'imaginative.' It's really rather awful in a number of ways. But that's a bit off topic here.)

[Tanada]

vtsnowedin, dohboi, Tanada,

I just read two new posts at John Hawks Weblog, on the stone ovals built by Neanderthals and on the new discovery of cave art in Spain.

Hawks is an archaeologist at the University of Wisconsin and one of the best sources of information I know of for such topics.

Link?

[dohboi]

http://johnhawks.net/

[Synapsid]

Thanks dohboi.

[vtsnowedin]

Yes, I've read that and other of Diamond's books and heard him talk. He was very clear in the lecture and especially in the questions/answer period afterwards that he does not consider his theories the last word, and that he assumes that there were other dynamics in play. I am more interested generally in the cultural presuppositions and drivers than he is. What I posted above was just random idle speculation, of course. But then most important ideas start as such.

Thanks again for the blog recommendations.
(I think Dieneke is being...generous...in calling that "WW 0" article 'imaginative.' It's really rather awful in a number of ways. But that's a bit off topic here.)

I've read Diamonds two biggest sellers. I think in Collapse he ignores or under estimates the roll that religion played in several of his examples. The Greenland Danes were Christians and their priesthood surly preached against any adaptation of Inuit survival skills and that the second coming of Christ and salvation was imminent if only people would pray enough and contribute enough to the church.

[dohboi]

"he ignores or under estimates the roll that religion played"

I agree. Religion, and culture in general.

In the talk he gave at the local university, he acknowledged that his was a pretty rigorously materialist approach, but that he didn't intend to mean that other approaches weren't valid. All research needs to limit its scope in some way, and that is where he chose to draw the line with his.