“Evidence that these earlier humans caused appreciable losses is mostly poor to nonexistent, which suggests that it was deleterious cultural practices—overhunting, excessive resource exploitation—of modern humans that were behind later insular extinctions. Prior to migration of modern Homo sapiens across the planet, other populations and species of hominins lived on a number of the world’s islands,” says Ross MacPhee, senior curator at the American Museum of Natural History’s Department of Mammalogy, and a co-author on the study.
“In fact, there were only two islands we recorded where all the extinctions which occurred are coincident with human arrival - Kume Island in Japan and Cyprus in the Mediterranean. All the other islands, the records of extinctions don’t seem to line up with human arrivals, they are staggered, with no clear discerning cause,” said Professor Louys.