Soru

Passage A

The debate surrounding the extinction of large mammals, or megafauna, at the end of the Pleistocene epoch has long centered on the role of human expansion. Proponents of the "overkill hypothesis" argue that as modern humans migrated into the Americas and Australia, their advanced hunting technologies decimated megafauna populations that had completely failed to evolve behavioral defenses against such novel and efficient predators. The fossil record demonstrates a compelling and undeniable chronological correlation: the sudden, catastrophic disappearance of dozens of large mammalian species closely tracks the established arrival dates of human hunters in these pristine regions. While it is undeniable that the global climate was rapidly warming during this transitional period, causing significant ecological shifts and putting natural stress on these large mammals, climate change alone simply cannot account for the sheer speed, severity, and selectivity of the extinctions. After all, previous interglacial periods featured remarkably similar climatic warming without triggering massive, worldwide die-offs. Instead, the warming climate likely fragmented megafauna habitats, making the animals highly vulnerable and geographically isolated. The decisive blow, however, was delivered by human hunters who exploited these concentrated, environmentally stressed populations. The archaeological evidence of butchered mammoth bones and specialized stone projectile points leaves absolutely no doubt that humans actively and successfully hunted these giant mammals, pushing them irrevocably over the brink of extinction. The widespread nature of this phenomenon across varied continents strongly suggests a biological driver—our ancestors—rather than a purely environmental one.

Passage B

For decades, the popular assumption that early human hunters caused the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions has overshadowed a far more scientifically sound culprit: profound and rapid environmental transformation. At the close of the last ice age, the earth experienced violent, unprecedented fluctuations in temperature and atmospheric moisture. These drastic climatic upheavals caused the complete collapse of the highly diverse "mammoth steppe" ecosystem, replacing it with lower-nutrient tundra and dense, impassable forests. Megafauna, which fundamentally required vast quantities of specific, high-quality forage to sustain their massive body sizes, simply starved as their traditional habitats vanished beneath their feet. The fact that human populations were migrating into the Americas around this same time is largely a coincidence of geological timing rather than a causal smoking gun. While archaeological sites undeniably confirm that early human populations did occasionally hunt megafauna—as evidenced by sparsely scattered, localized kill sites—the demographic scale of early human populations was mathematically far too small to single-handedly eradicate entire species across massive continental landmasses. Furthermore, it is a crucial piece of evidence that many species of megafauna that were rarely or never hunted by human populations also went totally extinct during this exact same chronological window. Therefore, while humans were certainly present as active components of the Late Pleistocene landscape and occasionally utilized megafauna for survival, they were primarily witnesses to an ecologically driven mass extinction event, not its primary biological architects.

Which one of the following expresses a view about the Late Pleistocene period that is shared by the authors of both passages?