Humans arrived in the Kaliko Islands about 7,000 years ago, and within 3,000 years most of the large mammal species that had lived in the forests of the Kaliko Islands had become extinct. Yet humans cannot have been a factor in the species’ extinctions, because there is no evidence that the humans had any significant contact with the mammals. Further, archaeologists have discovered numerous sites where the bones of fish had been discarded, but they found no such areas containing the bones of large mammals, so the humans cannot have hunted the mammals. Therefore, some climate change or other environmental factor must have caused the species’ extinctions.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The speaker here makes a case that humans could not have been responsible for the extinction of the large mammals on the islands, claiming that there is no archaeological evidence to prove that humans ever hunted the mammals. However, the case he makes is flawed. First, he fails to consider that human’s arrival on the islands may have coincided with the extinction of the large mammals, which could have been a result of climate change or other causes. Secondly, the archaeological evidence he cites only proves that humans did not hunt the mammals. Just because humans did not hunt the mammals does not mean that human hunting was not a factor. For example, the extinct dodo bird on Mauritius was hunted to extinction by humans. Additionally, humans hunted the Newfoundland wolf to extinction in Newfoundland. Human hunting may have occurred on the islands in the past, but the evidence does not support the theory that human hunting caused or contributed to the extinction of the large mammals.
Some of the assumptions made by the speaker may be true. For example, humans may have arrived on the islands after most of the large mammals had disappeared. This may have accounted for the absence of archaeological evidence of hunting. However, it is highly unlikely that humans arrived on the islands after the last large mammals disappeared. The Kaliko Islands were populated by Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Prior to about 10,000 years ago, these hunter-gatherers were limited to gathering plants and hunting small game. They did not have the technology to hunt large game effectively. Moreover, the Kaliko Islands lay too far south for Neanderthal man, the precursor of modern humans, to have reached the island. Therefore, it is most likely that humans arrived on the islands before the last large mammals disappeared. If the speaker is correct that human hunting was unaccounted for, he must provide evidence that humans hunted the large mammals before their disappearance. Additionally, if human hunting was the cause of the extinction of the large mammals, then all large mammals that were once on the islands must have died out as a result of human hunting. However, there is no evidence that suggests that humans hunted all of the large mammals that lived on the islands. There are several species of large mammals that the speakers fails to mention. The elephant and rhinoceros were large herbivores that thrived on the islands until the extinction of the dinosaurs. Humans hunted the rhinoceros and elephant, but they did not kill them to extinction. The hogs and monkeys that lived on the islands were hunted by humans, but they survived. Therefore, human hunting alone cannot explain the extinction of the large mammals. The extinction of the large mammals on the Kaliko Islands may have been the result of a combination of factors, including climate change, natural predators, and human hunting.