Also on the menu
They (1) likely also ate Bambi, Baloo and Sebastian.
Does this mean we should consider Disney an animal welfare activist?
(1) "They" being anyone on the same continent
Native Americans KILLED AND ATE DUMBO, say archaeologists
The primitive folk assessed by many archaeologists as being the original native Americans – that is, the Clovis people – killed and ate the lovable prehistoric elephants that inhabited the continent alongside them, scientists say. From left to right: Mastodon, mammoth, gomphothere. Credit: Sergio de la Rosa Majestic, …
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Tuesday 15th July 2014 21:33 GMT Bobcat4424
Re: Also on the menu
You know, there is another possibility that archeologists seem to have missed: that ancient elephants hunted, killed and ate Clovis people, accounting for their extinction. This would account for the stone spearpoints found comingled with their bones --- spearpoints are very hard to digest. It would also explain why these elephants went extinct about the same time that Clovis people came up missing. The elephants no longer had a food source because they had eaten them all.
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Tuesday 15th July 2014 16:42 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Re: Nice job making the illustration captions illegible
Associated text:
"From left to right: Mastodon, mammoth, gomphothere. Credit: Sergio de la Rosa"
I suspect that El Reg did not reduce the resolution of the image and instead just went with what they happened to find first. Just a hunch.
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Tuesday 15th July 2014 16:45 GMT Anonymous Blowhard
Re: Bloody Americans
WMD? Not at all; the National Spear Association campaigned for hunting rights, along with the right to bear arms (although the shirt hadn't been invented anyway), and there's no way the Clovis People are giving them up. Not until you prise the spear from their cold, dead hands!
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Tuesday 15th July 2014 18:21 GMT Don Jefe
Lovable Gomphothere
I wish I had known the word gomphothere before just now. That's a great username.
I take exception to the 'lovable' descriptor though. Humans are terrible at assessing behavior based on looks. Just look at copperhead snakes and whistle pigs. 'Everybody' is scared of the mildly poisonous snake and thinks the whistle pig is cute. That's just stupid. The snake is slow, not really dangerous and wants nothing to do with you. The whistle pig on the other hand wants to tear your face off, is capable of doing so and will lay traps to disable the unwary by breaking their legs to prevent escape while their young feast on your dying, but not yet dead, body. They can also kill a dog almost instantly, but generally have no malice toward other quadrupeds.
Also. The hippopotamus! You rarely see depictions of a hippo covered in the entrails and fluids of their trampled foes. But that's how they normally appear in the wild. That's why they hang out in the water so much you know. Trying to clean the fear shit of enemies from their hide. So I think assuming the gomphothere was lovable is not only foolishly arrogant, it is dangerous.
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Tuesday 15th July 2014 21:54 GMT rainjay
Re: Lovable Gomphothere
That gomphothere might not be so lovable and cuddly after running its tusks through your guts... but a killer whistle pig? If you're talking about groundhogs, those things are cute and lovable vegetarians! They also go well with a side of sauteed fresh American veggies.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 07:15 GMT John Smith 19
Re: Lovable Gomphothere
"I take exception to the 'lovable' descriptor though. Humans are terrible at assessing behavior based on looks. Just look at copperhead snakes and whistle pigs. 'Everybody' is scared of the mildly poisonous snake and thinks the whistle pig is cute. That's just stupid. The snake is slow, not really dangerous and wants nothing to do with you. The whistle pig on the other hand wants to tear your face off, is capable of doing so and will lay traps to disable the unwary by breaking their legs to prevent escape while their young feast on your dying, but not yet dead, body. They can also kill a dog almost instantly, but generally have no malice toward other quadrupeds."
This fellow?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog
OTOH Hippos are one of the biggest killers of people in Africa.
There tendency to stay in water means they can mount as effective an ambush as a crocodile and those jaws are powerful, while the lack of a big horn up front leads the clueless to think they are harmless.
They aren't
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 11:25 GMT ian 22
Re: Lovable Hippos
Hippos are not only in Africa. A now deceased (he is no more, dead, passed on, etc.) drug lord imported several for his estate in Colombia. After said drug lord met his end, the hippos were left to their own devices, one of which is reproducing. There are now almost 100 of these demonic beasts, and they continue to multiply as no one has the temerity to challenge them.
It's this sort of knowledge has made me the success I am today (for some value of 'success').
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Thursday 17th July 2014 20:51 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Lovable Hippos
Hippos are not only in Africa
They were very nearly in Louisiana. A number of influential people lobbied Congress to allow large-scale importation of hippos to the US to solve the "meat problem". (That Atavist piece - a long essay, like the non-fiction equivalent of a novella - is worth reading, both for phrases like "lake-cow brisket" and for the rather interesting stories of some of the personalities involved.)
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 17:19 GMT Don Jefe
Re: Lovable Gomphothere
Fools. You give me a Wikipedia reference? WTF! Their tag line isn't 'The Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit', not 'The Encyclopedia any Human can edit'. Of course the whistle pigs are going to edit the entries about their bloodlust. Christ.
I've never eaten a whistle pig. Never had the chance. My 220 Swift varmint rifle left nothing but a fine red mist and some teeth. The teeth are cool for cuff links, and for filler in piñatas, but not good for eating. I'm all about varmint management through engineering and science now anyway. I built some tiny tanks to drive into their dens so I could engage them at close range, but the umbilical gets snagged too easily and radio won't penetrate that deep. I'm working on a system of micro repeater arrays that I will hide in baited whistle pig food and then deposit around their dens, so as to let their own greed be their undoing.
Whistle Pig brand Rye Whiskey is good. It's not my favorite, but their 3-Liter travel bottle is nice for an afternoon with a couple of friends who may not like more robust whiskey. It's also useful as a last ditch tactic in strategic retreats where a small alcohol fire can give you time to throw women and children at the enemy. Everybody should have a barrel or two around the house.
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Tuesday 15th July 2014 20:23 GMT Charles Manning
But... native people have an affinity with nature
The Native Americans lived in peace and harmony with nature for tens of thousands of years, just killing enough to survive and always being respectful of nature and saying prayers of thanks. It was only the evil white man and his destructive ways that damaged USA.
The same too of the NZ Maori and Aboriginal Australians.
Gotta love PC revisionist history!
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 11:51 GMT TrishaD
Re: But... native people have an affinity with nature
I trust that you're nor for a moment suggesting that the Clovis people (or whoever) hunted those things for fun, are you?
Running around after an n ton pachyderm with big tusks, even with the assistance of a few mates armed with bits of stick with sharp stones tied on the ends, doesnt strike me as being an enterprise you'd take on unless survival was an issue.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 07:09 GMT Thomas Harlan
Back in 1956...
This song made the rounds among the graduate students at Point of Pines archaeological field school:
The Great Naco Mammoth Hunt
Doc went out on a chilly night
And he prayed to the moon for to give him light
For he had many a mile to go that night
Before he got to Naco, Naco, Naco (again)
There he ran to the city zoo
He stole the elephants one and two
Said people be startled before I am through
When I plant them down at Naco, Naco, Naco (again)
Down in the wash by the Naco site
Doc and the elephant had a great fight.
They battled and they battled all through the night
But the elephant died in the morning, morning (again)
The elephant charged with a horrible howl;
Doc lit his pipe and started to scowl,
He clobbered the elephant with a trowel
And the elephant died shortly after, after, after
And the elephant died of laughter.
Doc scratched his head and he bit his lip
A Folsom point he started to chip
But he couldn't get it fluted all the way to the tip
So he had to settle for Clovis,Clovis, Clovis (again)
Doc struck at the flint to make it fracture.
He said this will cause a wild conjecture,
And I don't have to fake any architecture
Like I did down at Cuicuilco, cuilco, cuilco (again)
Doc said I think anyone who wouldn't
Believe me now would be very impudent
But always can mummify a graduate student
For I've done it before at Ventana, Ventana, Ventana, (again)
Doc and his wife without any strife
Cut up the elephant with a fork and knife.
They never had such a supper in their life
And Loren chewed on the bones-o, etc
Now many people a fuss were creating
They wanted an elephant for purposes of mating
All of Doc's elephants had masculine ratings
But he is taking one to Denmark,etc
"Doc" was Emil Haury (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Haury) who would have been beside himself to miss this dig in Sonora.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 09:18 GMT Caesarius
Re: Back in 1956...
I haven't heard that melody since I was a lad. I found a version of the song I knew:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3798TcSq9vY
But this one caught my eye:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgzl1Sai4Y0 "I'm gonna be an engineer", and I can't help thinking that as a male engineer I share some of the frustrations. There, that's almost restored the IT content :-)
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
