Surovell Todd, Waguespack Nicole, Brantingham P Jeffrey
Department of Anthropology, P.O. Box 3431, 1000 East University Avenue, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Apr 26;102(17):6231-6. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0501947102. Epub 2005 Apr 13.
One million years ago, proboscideans occupied most of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Today, wild elephants are only found in portions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Although the causes of global Pleistocene extinctions in the order Proboscidea remain unresolved, the most common explanations involve climatic change and/or human hunting. In this report, we test the overkill and climate-change hypotheses by using global archaeological spatiotemporal patterning in proboscidean kill/scavenge sites. Spanning approximately 1.8 million years, the archaeological record of human subsistence exploitation of proboscideans is preferentially located on the edges of the human geographic range. This finding is commensurate with global overkill, suggesting that prehistoric human range expansion resulted in localized extinction events. In the present and the past, proboscideans have survived in refugia that are largely inaccessible to human populations.
一百万年前，长鼻目动物分布在非洲、欧洲、亚洲和美洲的大部分地区。如今，野生大象仅存于撒哈拉以南非洲的部分地区和南亚。尽管长鼻目动物在全球更新世灭绝的原因仍未得到解决，但最常见的解释涉及气候变化和/或人类狩猎。在本报告中，我们通过利用长鼻目动物捕杀/ scavenge 遗址的全球考古时空模式来检验过度捕杀和气候变化假说。跨越约180万年，人类对长鼻目动物生存开发的考古记录优先位于人类地理范围的边缘。这一发现与全球过度捕杀相一致，表明史前人类范围的扩张导致了局部灭绝事件。在现在和过去，长鼻目动物都在人类难以到达的避难所中生存下来。 （注：原文中“scavenge”可能有误，推测可能是“scavenging”，意为“觅食、 scavenge 的现在分词形式” ，这里暂且按原文翻译）
