(I ask because like you, I find parts of his work compelling while others lacking. As a result, it’d be great to see what light some of these academic disciplines can shed on his theories.)

Hi Andrew! Thanks a lot for your writing.

I’m wondering if you could point out the (i)  anthropological publications you say outdate the anthropology Zerzan relies on and (ii) the cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology which provides better explanations on symbols and language than Zerzan’s. Thanks again. 

Shepard? I assume you mean Martin.

Well, I guess we'll just have to disagree. Could I quibble with some of what Meltzer says? Of course. There's speculation and assumption involved in the topic, so… But I think he makes some excellent points, as do others.

At any rate, anthropologists and others have not settled the debate, and neither will we, regardless of how sure you feel about it.

"it makes Indian tribal elders extremely grumpy when you tell them that their distant ancestors killed off far more species than the white man."

Well, on that, I don't think there's a biologist or anthropologist who would agree with you that "their distant ancestors killed off far more species than the white man." The Sixth Extinction we're in today tells the story.

Meltzer ("First Peoples In A New World") is so full of transparently obvious baloney that I had to restrain myself from throwing it across the room — and I hadn't even read "Twilight of the Mammoths" yet! (In fact, I read it partially as a reaction to Meltzer's blatantly irrational bias against Shepard.)

Just for example, I quote: ""Here was a high-ranked resource [bison] that could be dispatched at relatively low risk…" Bison are low-risk prey? Has Meltzer ever seen bison? According to him, Paleoindians were capable of driving a 1.5 ton animal of "wild and ungovernable temper", with sharp horns, capable of running at 40 MPH, that travels in giant herds and is prone to stampedes, into extinction — but they were incapable of killing solitary and largely immobile ground sloths?

The rest of his case against Shepard is of similar quality. I was so offended by his terrible "scholarship" that I took notes and wrote a rebuttal — and, again, this was before I'd even read Shepard!

The reason archaeologists are publicly opposed to overkill is purely political: it makes Indian tribal elders extremely grumpy when you tell them that their distant ancestors killed off far more species than the white man. Since most archaeology in the USA takes place on tribal land, this means "no more fieldwork opportunities for YOU".

JS

My body rebelled against ag-imperialism before my brain caught up but now we're/I'm all on the same page.

Instead earlier this week I picked up 100 lbs of organic lamb and beef from Wagon Wheel Ranch, just 35 miles from my home. I live in the DC area so it is possible to get the good stuff close to major metro areas.

Yeah, you're right for sure that it doesn't destroy the hypothesis. I doubt anything will for the time being. It does put a dent in it, though, since the correlation between the time of first human arrival and megafauna die-off has always been one of the key elements of the overkill argument. Without it as the general rule I don't think there would be any overkill hypothesis.

And really, overkill advocates seem guilty of the very thing you describe. Ignore this one new exception, which didn't exist when the theory was developed, and you could say they see all hunter-gatherer societies as exactly the same.

Heh, so maybe because it weakens that kind of thinking, the evidence of earlier North Americans makes the hypothesis *stronger*. 😉 Don't think so though.

I'm sure the debate will go on. Personally, I find the overkill hypothesis "civilization-centric" in feel. It violates much of what we know of hunter-gatherer societies. I find the arguments of people like Eugene Hunn and David Meltzer ("First Peoples in a New World") and Grayson more compelling. As Hunn says concerning hunter-gatherers, "Hunters who prefer killing and persist in killing until the last animal is gone exist only in the tortured imaginations of misanthropic scholars."

I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading pro/anti-overkill books and arguments, and can perhaps offer some insight.

People arriving pre-Clovis doesn’t destroy the overkill hypothesis unless you believe that all hunter-gatherer cultures were, and are, exactly the same. That’s the same mistake the “everything before agriculture was savagery” people make.

As far as the geography and climatology is currently understood, it was impossible to get from Beringia to the continental US via land before c.12,000 BP, due to glaciers. The opening of an interior land passage through modern-day Canada is the timing of the Clovis migration, whose signs are abundant, and whose spread coincides with the megafaunal extinction in America.

Due to glaciers, previous migration(s) to the ConUS could not have come over land: they must have come around the coast on boats, or (a longer shot) blown in from Polynesia. This would have been a long voyage either way…so any previous migration would have been a very small founding population from a seafaring culture, which would have been inclined to settle the Pleistocene coastline (now under perhaps 200 feet of water). Thus the lack of archaeological remains, the lack of megafaunal hunting, and the lack of megafaunal extinctions until the mammoth-hunting Clovis culture showed up.

JS