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". . . the mind simply boggles at the idea that the Amerind, armed only with spears, killed off everything in sight .. The mammoth was a grazing animal, and while he declined another grazing animal seems to have been doing very well. He was the bison. . ." LOUIS A. BRENNAN m AN AND BUFFALO have shared much of the North American continent since man first crossed the Bering Isthmus during one of the last intra-glaciations of the Wisconsin age, about 25,000, perhaps 40,000, years ago. This paleo man-Llano man, archeologists call himfound a tundra-covered land bridge where water now stands. When millions of gallons of ocean water became entrapped in the great ice fields, the oceans receded until the floor of the Bering Sea was revealed, vegetated, and occupied by Arctic mammals such as the musk-ox and the big bison, creating a land called Beringea. About this time, man underwent a population explosion brought about by the covering of the earth by grasslands and the subsequent proliferation of grasseating mammals, animals who converted grass protein into quantities of flesh protein that fed men better than ever. Pushed perhaps by their own expanding numbers and pulled from hunting camp to hunting camp by the good living provided by the big mammals, Asians passed through what Loren Eiseley has called "the cold filter" of the Bering Arctic. In these northlands they found a hunter's paradise-just one bison would provide meals for several weeks for the skilled hunting band. I 27 These bands, carrying fine spears tipped with knifesharp , stone projectile heads, left Beringea to move from kill to kill, traveling the land extending from Point Barrow to Mackenzie Bay. At this bay they discovered the great Mackenzie River flowing out of the south along a corridor between the ice sheets. Down its great trench led innumerable game trails, some of them scuffed out by giant bison. These trails brought men south to the edge of the grasslands of North America, the Great Plains, a land filled with big mammals. The hunters found the Great Plains almost as they are today: a vast grassy expanse, drained by myriad small streams flowing into the larger eastward flowing rivers, the Saskatchewan, the Missouri, the Platte, the Arkansas and the Red-waterways lined with trees and bushes, storm-shelter for animals and men alike. On these plains grew, even as today, the highprotein grama grass, buffalo grass and needle grass, short grasses and bunch grasses that furnish good summer feed and also cure on the stem to lock in all of their nourishment for good winter feed. The highly nutritious soils of this temperate region made for lush growth that could support thousands of buffalo and other large animals. Due to the humidity and coolness brought on by the nearby ice fields, more moisture fell Heads, Hides & Horns than now falls; men and animals found many more ponds and bogs than exist today. Men moved down the eastern edge of the Rockies exploring the river courses to the east, but also moving south, always south, hunting the buffalo and other mammals. The Missouri River drainage gave passage to the Rockies to the west. Following this river to its headwaters, then following the Jefferson and the Beaverhead, animals and men could move over plainlike passages across the Continental Divide, then wander south to the shores of huge Lake Bonneville, a watery grassland later to recede into desert and the Great Salt Lake. Or they could wander west over the Divide on another easy plain onto the upper tributaries of the Columbia and out to the Pacific Coast. Other wandering groups ignored the Missouri and continued moving south on the high plains, eventually crossing the southwest desert (dry even then), into jungle, on across the isthmus of Panama and south to the bottom of South America, filling two continents with men who followed the grass eaters. But those who fed on the big mammals remained on the high plains and became the spear hunters supreme. The newly arrived high plains dweller found many mammals who had lived here 20,000 years or more, since the previous intra-glaciation period, temperateregion mammals such as the tapir and giant sloth who had been able to cross Beringea during the warm period . Now the colder, tundra-covered land was suitable only for crossing by north-adapted animals-and man. The plains also contained quantities of the native mammals, the camel and horse, as well as an early bison...

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