Peter Douglas WardThe Call of Distant MammothsWhy the Ice Age Mammals DisappearedMonika says:
What if somebody built a time machine that could take you to any given point in time, past or future, as you like it, and enable you to solve the big mysteries of science. In his new book Peter Douglas Ward takes us on such a journey, even if it’s only in our minds, that is to shed light on the secret of three big extinction events: the mass extinction at the end of Permian approximately 245 million years ago, the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago and the disappearing of the big Ice Age mammals in the near geological past ca. 10000 years ago at the beginning of the Holocene, the present Interglacial Period. In what respect do those three events differ from each other? Are there common traits or do we have to regard them each in its seperate context? Ward believes that a deeper understanding of the past is necessary to judge present day events. There are many theories about the extinction of the mammoth, the mastodon and the Wooly Rhino: did they die out "naturally" because of the change of climate at the end of the last ice age or was our own species, man, involved? The book offers fascinating insights into new methods of solving old riddles. E. g. drillings from the ice of Greenland brought amazing things to the light of day, i. e. that our modern climate is atypical as far as its stability is concerned. During the last 2.5 million years abrupt changes in climate in periods shorter than a decade were pretty much the order of the day. During the entire Pleistocene warm and cold periods alternated so that it seems strange that the last warming is responsible for the disappearing of the big Ice Age fauna. Another interesting aspect is Ward’s look at the evolution of mankind. Modern man as we know him has existed for approximately 100000 years or maybe even a little longer. Since then his morphology hasn’t changed and neither has the size of his brain. Although our intellectual abilities developed already 100000 years ago strangely enough it took us 90000 years to settle down and start farming. And we did that in the very moment when the climate stabilized after two and a half million years and the last giant mammals vanished from the face of the Earth. A mere coincidence? The author says no and backs up his theory with a new computer model that points out that the mass slaughter assumed earlier isn’t necessary to exterminate a species. The book closes with a look into the future, a journey to the year 3001 in one of the big African wildlife reserves to see if there in this (by human standards) far future elephants, the last living relatives of the mammoth, still exist. Once more Douglas Peter Ward manages to fascinate the reader with his attempt to explain a complex subject with simple means. His literary talent provides for pleasant reading, because the subject isn’t treated as a dry scientific paper and yet isn’t presented in an over-simplyfied way. A highlight of popular science literature. Published by Copernicus, Springer Verlag New York 1997 |
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Copyright 1999 Christina Gross & Monika Hübner |
