Ricardo,
Your original message was about Africa
versus the rest of the world. I would agree that
there is strong evidence that a lot of big mammals
in the Americas got zapped when Homo
Sapiens arrived on the scene (I don't know about
Australia). But the claim that Africa has a higher
density of big mammals than Asia looks highly
questionable. For that matter, in what way have
such critters as rhinos, elephants, lions, or giraffes
"coevolved" with humans in Africa? I don't see them
as having gotten themselves domesticated the way
water buffalo or yaks have in Asia.
Where do I get the nerve? I don't know. Probably
it's the pepto-bismol I take after I smoke my surrealistic,
but Freudian, cigar that is not a cigar, :-).
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Ricardo Duchesne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, September 29, 1999 9:29 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:11939] Role of Total Foreign Trade
>
>> Ricardo,
>> I think we would be more inclined to fall at
>> your feet in fawning admiration if you did not
>> keep giving us major bloopers like this last one
>> about large mammals.
>> Last time I checked there still are elephants
>> in Asia.
>> Barkley Rosser
>>
>Where do you get the nerve to talk about "bloopers" when each one of
>your interventions/criticisms of my position has ended with a
>correction on my part? Was it a (pseudo) Freudian slip? It is well
>known that Australia/New Guinea, and the Americas were full of big
>mammals, but around 17,000 to 12,000 years ago (in the Americas) they
>disappeared, which so happens to have been the period when humans
>migrated into that area. The same goes for Australia and Siberia: big
>mammals there (as indicated by dating of fossil remains) disappeared
>as humans arrived there. Africa today has the
>largest concentration of big mammals, because such animals there had
>the fortune of adapting to a less effective, proto-human hunter, as
>it evolved into homo sapiens.
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