Ever since the Pleistocene era, human societies have expanded rapidly, developing innovative ways to defend their territories and migrate across the land. Consisting of an aggregate of humans living together, these societies became more powerful as time progressed by consuming more meat (megafauna). Supporting this development, the more mammals that humans would eat, the more protein their bodies would absorb. When humans consume high amounts of protein, they develop stronger muscles, which leads to the stimulation of brain activity. By way of further explanation, amino acids from the proteins are used to make the neurotransmitters that allow your brain cells to network and communicate. Amino acids that come from the protein you eat are the building blocks of your brain’s network. They can excite or calm your brain as well as nourish your brain throughout its lifetime. Also, they allow the body's own proteins to be used to support life, particularly those found in muscle. This led humans to develop intelligence and create a wide variety of tools. These tools are what the early hominids used to develop their culture into that of hunter-gatherer-fishers, making humans a more dominant mammal within that ecosystem. Rapidly evolving throughout the late Pleistocene to the early to mid Holocene, hunter-gatherer-fisher societies hunted megafauna creatures in a systematic and ethical way. When one species migrates to a different ecosystem, that species is not usually recognized as a threat to other species. Survival, during the late Pleistocene and Holocene era, was one of the most important aspects to life. Any organism, regardless of size, living within their environment had to stay alive and reproduce. During these two eras, it seems... ... middle of paper ... ...val then humans were not responsible for killing the massive creatures. There are arguments for both sides, however, I found the overkill hypothesis more compelling. The attributes toward such a massive event to human intervention seems beyond what the evidence actually provides. The early hominids expanded rapidly and were very innovative in how they developed their culture into that of hunter-gatherer-fishers. Being able to exploit their resources, the hominids themselves turned into a more dominant mammal within throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene eras. Works Cited Kohak, Erazim V. "Part II." The Green Halo: a Bird's-eye View of Ecological Ethics. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2000. 54-102. Print. Dunn, Frederick L. "Edemiological Factors: Health and Disease in Hunter-gatherers." KU Library. Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1978. Web. 6 Mar. 20111.
In July of 2001, a group of archeologists discovered the skull and jaw bone of the oldest member of the human family. The skull is a new discovery and was found in the Djurab Desert of Northern Chad by a group of archeologists lead by Michel Brunet, and is thought to be six to seven million years old (Walton). The age of the skull and jaw bone were approximated through the association of the fauna that were found with the fossils (Brunet). The skull is a major find for archeologists because they now have a new piece of the puzzle that shows the evolution of humans from apes and it provides information to a period that scientists had very little knowledge about because of the lack of evidence (Whitfield).
I stated that brief evolutionary supposed history to prove my first point. If there is a certain change within the animals that were "supposedly" roaming the...
The AHH suggests that food shortages and predators forced a branch of our primitive ancestors out of the trees ...
During the late Pleistocene, a mystery occurred in which large mammals went extinct in North America while they survived in other parts of the world. Scientists studying the late Pleistocene extinction provided a plethora of explanations, including overkill by humans, extraterrestrial events, and climate changes (Faith and Surovell, 2009). However, there was no unified explanation that they all agreed upon. Taking note of this, J. Tyler Faith and Todd A. Surovell conducted tests to discover whether the extinction was a single event or a long-term process. Their findings were important to other scientists in the same field, as they served as a guideline for their explanations of catalysts of the extinction.
An ecological ethic as defined by Aldo Leopold is “a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence.” Leopold’s Land Ethic is an ethical viewpoint that acknowledges the vast and complex interconnection of all living and non-living things in biota that make up our planet and points to a way of living that, according to Leopold, “tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.” Part of the understanding involved in the Land Ethic is that biota are a complex linkage of diverse and interdependent chains which form a pyramid with soil and microbes forming the base and apex predators forming the top.
Van Wensveen, L. (2000). Dirty Virtues: The Emergence of Ecological Virtue Ethics. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
(6) Holmes Rolston III, "Environmental Values in and Duties to the Natural World" in Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle, eds. Herbert Bormann and Stephen Kellert (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 82-96.
McBroom, Patricia, “Meat-eating Was Essential for Human Evolution.” UC Berkeley. University of California at Berkeley. CA. Jun 14, 1999. Web. 28 Apr.
Thousands of years ago, hunting may have been the cause of the extinction of the North American large land mammals. “Moving up into the 1940’s and 50’s some of today’s most prominent game animals were almost non-existent.”(Kerry G) Over-hunting will directly cause the decline in the particular animal’s species. This will effect everything around it, for example ...
The separation of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages mark a great divide in the lives and cultures of prehistoric peoples. Many aspects of everyday life were modified to suit a new standard of living. Society, Economy, and Technology were greatly affected by the "Agricultural Revolution" that spawned the Neolithic Age.
* Pajman, Louis. Environmental Ethics: Reading in Theory and Application. Wadsworth Publishing Co. March 2002.
Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., The Greening of Ethics, Cambridge, U.K.: The White Horse Press, 1994.
“Changes in climate may have been partly responsible for the decline in availability of big game, particularly the large herd animals. Another possible cause of that decline was human activity, specifically overkilling of some of these animals” (Ember 180). These changes in climate, extinction of big game, as well as population growth, led humans to begin searching for other ways to eat.
In the history of humankind, the extirpation of predators has always been at the top of the priority list. However, no one ever thought of the backlash it would have on the environment. Large predators have always been looked at as the enemy of man people have learned to fear these remarkable animals that they were directly competing with for resources and survival. The decline of large predator populations has caused ecological complications all over the world (Weber and Rabinowitz 2010). From tigers and wolves to fishers and orcas, the human species has extirpated these primary consumers for economic development, safety, and hunting preference (Weber and Rabinowitz 2010). In the past, these actions were encouraged, but as recent ecological studies have shown these top predators have proved to provide a necessary balance to ecological hierarchy (Beyer et al. 2006).
Environmental philosophy tries to make sense of the unexamined values, assumptions and ideologies behind humanities treatment of the environment and, in doing so, aims at helping to elicit an effective human response to related issues (Curry, 2011). Environmental philosophy, has gone beyond being merely an academic pursuit, now requiring the world’s population take moral responsibility for the damages caused by their industrial advances on natural systems.