Destructive by nature? What human-driven extinctions of mammoths and mastodons mean for today’s planetary environmental crisis

Scientists still debate whether small groups of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers caused the extinction of large Ice Age animals like prehistoric elephants, giant sloths and cave lions. Beyond paleontology, this question has deep sociological implications and is relevant for how we understand the role of humankind in today’s environmental crisis. A human-driven megafauna extinction has often fostered the idea of a naturalization of human environmental impacts and the belief that all people (modern or ancient, rich or poor, from any part of the world) share responsibility for the current crisis. But is that true? In the review, I discuss whether a long evolutionary history of impacts really makes us inevitably destructive, compelling humanity to accept a devastating anthropocentric dominance as the fateful destiny natural selection built for us. In contrast, I argue that, while our exceptional ability to shape environments has made us a ‘hyper-keystone’ species, benefiting only a few species and humans, this same ability also has the potential to help us restore balance to the world. That requires rejecting anthropocentric supremacy and placing ecosystems at the center stage of our relationship with nonhuman nature. We may have wiped out the mammoths and mastodons, but human destructiveness is not fate.