At https://phys.org/news/2024-11-megafauna-mystery-australia-year-cold.html …. Australian megafauna were common in the Late Pleistocene period. They appear to have rapidly increased in size after 2.5 million years ago – basically, most of the Pleistocene. Thy began to disappear around 40,000 years ago = the Laschamp Event, and again, around 34,000 years ago. This marks another catastrophic event that heralded in the Late Glacial Maximum on the other side of the world. We are told these animals did not die in a massive extinction event but declined over a 10,000 year period. This is of course the uniformitarian interpretation but we may note that two closely spaced catastrophic events obviously played a role. Put the Laschamp Event into your search engine. Bear in mind the author ignores catastrophism as that is contrary to what he learnt during his spell at university. His idea is that both climate change and human hunting acativity were to blame. Climate of course changes during major catastrophic events – even during the Holocene. Humans arrived in Australia long before 40,000 years ago, whilst the Laschamp Event came to prominence as it included a reversal of the earth’s magnetic field. No one knows what that might entail but it involved mass die off of mammals in other parts of the world. Why would Australia be any different?
At https://phys.org/news/2024-11-ancient-dna-early-europeans-dawn.html … a statistical analysis of ancient DNA extracted from human skeletal material over 7000 years of European history.
Another interesting study at https://phys.org/news/2024-11-genetic-analysis-hazelnut-trees-british.html … indigenous people in British Columbia appear to have cultivated hazelnut trees long before the arrival of Europeans. British Columbia is a long way from Britain but there is plenty of evidence that Mesolithic people in the British Isles also favoured hazelnuts as they were an outstanding seasonal crop. It is not farming but the rudiments of cultivation. Other plants and trees are discouraged from a given location, near a seasonal or permanent camp, and hazelnuts are protected as a source of food. The Maya did something similar with favoured plants in Mexico and no doubt this sort of thing goes way back into the Palaeolithic period. It is just that we don’t have the evidence that far back. Farming clearly didn’t just pop out of the woodwork but there was a process leading up to the idea of growing your own crops rather than relying on wild sources. In the modern world hazelnuts remain an important plant of hedgerows in Britain. In the Canadian study hazelnuts were cultivated over many generations. One area in which the indigenous people had settled permanently was abandoned around 1500BC as a result of an unknown catastrophe, we are told. It could have been anything from an earthquake to a tsunami wave. The point they make is that natural dispersal by squirrels and birds is usually local in extent. However, transplanted hazelnuts as far away as 800 km must have been by human activity, a process that took place over a long period of time. It was defined by genetic similarities.