Overkill, Overchill, Overill? Megafaunal extinction causes

The systematic extermination of other major hunters by humans caused a population explosion in the mega-herbivores that destabilised the environment and led to a population crash.Maybe.

Hypothesised? No, hypothesised about it, M. We know of many megafauna hunters, sabre-tooth tigers being the most famous example.I don't really see why kill-sites (meaning a site showing the remains of vast numbers of prey species, yes?) are expected. A Mammoth carries a lot of food, so I would expect killing individuals and moving to the corpse to be a sane strategy for nomadic tribes peoples.I got this hyopthesis from an excellent web-site, unfortunately I can't find the thing now. I'll probably have another search later.

Mammoths are by no means the only mega fauna of the age. I think it's highly likely that the very large carnivores that lived in the same period as the very large herbivores ate said herbivores. Otherwise I can see no explanation for their also increased size. I was also under the impression that adult mammoth remains had been found with teeth marks consistent with those of sabre-tooth tiger, although this might have been after-death scavenging. I'm not advocating the overkill hypothesis.

What is your prefered hypothesis then? Do you see the correlation of mega-fauna extinction with the arrival of man as purely co-incidental?

It is my understanding that Homo (Sapiens?) Neanderthalis has three major disadvantages when compared to Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We can run better. We have arms better suited to throwing. In other words we have range and mobility on our side should it come to a fight. We eat a wider variety of food (from analysis of bone data from Neanderthals - they ate a higher proportion of meat, much closer to a pure carnivour diet).Secondly, larger brain capacity does not directly imply higher intelligence. Without external evidence I see little reason to believe Neanderthals were actually smarter than humans.

Hmm, I don't think that follows. While Neanderthals would require (almost) exclusively meat and Cro-Magnons wouldn't. Cro-magnon man still hunted, and probably the same kind of prey. That's pretty direct competition, and what's more only in one direction (a more successful Neanderthal would have limited impact on the more diverse diet of the Cro-Magnon while a successful Cro-Magnon would impact the main resource of a Neanderthal). I'd say that's a boon for replacement theory.