Mammoths, Pharoahs and 3000BC - any ideas Shark?

[Carnifex]

Consider the extremely low populations of humans during the periods when some people claim they overhunted mammoths - I feel that lends weight to the hypothesis that it was in fact other factors that led to their demise. Following on from that, I doubt it was other human-related factors (animals accompanying us, our diseases, etc) that were the major influences on the decline of mammoths either.

 

[Tonguez]

Okay the Discovery Channel programme mentioned the overhunting hypothesis as being wrong too and said that it was probably climate change. That is that Mammoths were animals of the Tundra back when most of the Europe including the whole north sea was Tundra.

Climate change meant that the areas of Tundra were reduced (and the Vast North Tundra covered in Water to become the North Sea) so that Mammoth no longer had available grazing areas sufficient to sustain the species. As such they were already dying out - humans and neanderthals simply sped up the process until that last enclave on a Siberian Island died in 3000BC...

 

[Desdichado]

If i remember correctly, Smilidons are roughly three times as large as the African lion, and the Megalonyx have bony plates under their skin that makes them almost invulnerable.

The smilodon species that is famous from California (all of a sudden I'm drawing a blank on the species name!) was about the size of a jaguar. Smilodon populator from South America, which supposedly hunted the giant ground sloths, were about lion sized. Actually the largest examples of Siberian tigers and African lions seem to be about at the top of the cat size chart. Even the largest cats ever found are about lion/tiger-sized, with jaguar-sized being more common for large, powerfully built cats.

There's a great book (probably at your local library) called, I think (grabbing the title from memory) Big Cats and their Fossil Relatives which is the best modern treatment of the cat family through history that I've ever seen.

As to the original question, I've very often done holdovers of animal populations into civilized ages. Or, if you prefer, civilization started earlier than it actually did. I've been kicking a campaign idea around in my head for some time for ancient Europe/Middle-east about 30,000 years ago, but with civilizations much as they were about 3-4000 years ago.

 

[sword-dancer]

SHARK

Why not use Assyirians, these militaristic, force driven empire of wlltrined farmersoldiers, led by merciless King and Princes who orvertook Mesopotamia, and a bit mor IIRC like egypt.
I think of mage priests who serve dark, proud, cruel and lawful Gods.

Cruel and efficient war machine, efficient and merciless administration.
Who needs drow then

 

[Chimera]

Ok, ok, I'll concede that I am very probably wrong.

How about this? What if a moderate size population of Neaderthals had survived till the Babylonian or Egyptian era, then been (re)discovered?

 

[mmadsen]

If a small, isolated population survived to be found and exploited, then it really makes a big difference in WHO finds them. Are they mounts or meat?

I love mammoths, but really, what impact could surviving mammoths have that real-life elephants didn't have? The only thing I can think of is that we'd have mammoths doing what elephants have always done, only in cold northern Europe and Asia, not just in tropical Africa and India.

 

[mmadsen]

The smilodon species that is famous from California (all of a sudden I'm drawing a blank on the species name!) was about the size of a jaguar.

The smilodon species that is famous from California is...Smilodon californicus.

I've read that it was lion-sized though. From the California Conservation site:

The body and limbs of the sabertoothed cat, though approximately the same size as the present-day African lion, were slightly different. The sabertoothed cat's hind limbs were relatively light while the front limbs, rib basket, and breastbone were strong and powerful. The short lower segments of the limbs indicate that this cat was not a fleet-footed carnivore like the modern lion or tiger, but rather a predator of slow-moving mammals such as mammoths, mastodons, and ground sloths. The sabertoothed cat probably gripped its prey with its powerful front limbs and, with its upper canines and strong head and neck muscles, repeatedly stabbed a vulnerable spot on the victim's body. Presumably, the backward position of the nasal openings allowed the sabertoothed cat to continue breathing while its head was buried inside its victim. A strongly grooved gum covering the ridges of the hard palate may have aided in sucking blood.

From the Dino Land site:

In reality, Smilodon wasn't a tiger at all, but instead a unique member of the family Nimravidae, an extinct carnivore family that was related to both the true cats and the mongooses. In life Smilodon would have grown to about the size of a modern day lion, but was twice as heavy. Its most striking characteristic was undoubtedly the large, seven-inch long set of canines protruding from its mouth....Unlike modern cheetahs and lions, though, sabertooths were not very quick. Instead, they were most likely ambush predators, and would surprise their prey, probably large ground sloths and other smaller Pleistocene herbivores, and use their large teeth to deliver a single fatal blow to the abdomen or neck.

(All those quotes referred to the California sabre-tooth.)

 

[MythandLore]

mmadsen answered a bit on the California Smilodon, but I'd like to add they really don't know what they ate.
I live pretty close to the La Brea Tar Pits and my mother goes to lectures on the saber tooth cats, one of the biggest "experts" on them is in Los Angeles and they still don't know clearly what they ate or how they killed it.

The other thing is the biggest cats today are Ligers, they are a hybred and are way way larger (longer, taller and thicker - they can get around 6' at the shoulder 12 feet long and 1200 pounds) then lions and tigers, there are some extinct cats that were of that size though.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Is the Liger the 50/50 merge of the tiger and lion? Or is this a further hybrid of the Tigon?

mmadsen answered a bit on the California Smilodon, but I'd like to add they really don't know what they ate.
I live pretty close to the La Brea Tar Pits and my mother goes to lectures on the saber tooth cats, one of the biggest "experts" on them is in Los Angeles and they still don't know clearly what they ate or how they killed it.

The other thing is the biggest cats today are Ligers, they are a hybred and are way way larger (longer, taller and thicker - they can get around 6' at the shoulder 12 feet long and 1200 pounds) then lions and tigers, there are some extinct cats that were of that size though.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Also, a lot of the hominid species didn't do much past Africa (and there's the raging debate as to exactly how many different species and how many were just minor variations, local evolutions, etc. I mean, someone could look at a male human skeleton today and a female human skeleton today and perhaps think they are different species entirely).

The only hominid species to come to the Americas (that we know of, anyway) was sapiens sapiens, and it's still hotly debated as to how soon they came over (with things like cocaine mummies and stuff).

Anyhoo, yeah....I think it took us a little while before we started killing off things propperly human-style (though it even happened before the "great European Imperial Phase" with things like some north american fish species and the like).

And about those alien life forms in the far future...an interesting book was published called After Man that uses some genetic and evolutionary sciences to establish what life forms may evolve into after Mankind destroys itself...

Give you a little peek: Rats with opposable thumbs. WHEE!