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You're correct that there is no consensus on WHY but it's very well agreed upon that the crash did happen 1, 2, 3 below

In my research, it seems to follow pretty closely that within 5,000-10,000 years of humans arriving in a territory with abundant mega-fauna, that the megafauna are completely wiped out. However the increase in global temperature put additional pressure on mega-fauna as the earth warmed

My naiive interpretation is that climate warming into the Holocene put significant pressures on mega-fauna ecology, and humans took advantage of these new pressures and over-consumed the fauna. They did not realize there was such a thing as "running out of food."

It seems pretty clear to me that 200,000-10,000BC was this kind of wonderland of human growth because all of the conditions were perfect for humans to just totally dominate the landscape with relative ease.

The problem is, we are just smart enough as a group to mess things up really efficiently for short term benefits (within two generations), but we're not smart enough to act as though we're planning for 5-10 generations into the future.

[1] Christopher, S., et.al. (2014). Global late quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

[2] Ellis, E.C. (2021) People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (17).

[3] Stewart, M., Carleton, W.C. & Groucutt, H.S. (2021) Climate change, not human population growth, correlates with Late Quaternary megafauna declines in North America. Nat Commun 12, 965.

>The problem is, we are just smart enough as a group to mess things up really efficiently for short term benefits (within two generations), but we're not smart enough to act as though we're planning for 5-10 generations into the future.

We could be smart enough. All the past cultures with monuments were building them to last.

All the past cultures that have monuments that still stand built them to last

Highlighting the distinction between the minority rule and the majority rule. If 1% of people decide to build monuments to last millenia, there will be monuments from thousands of years ago. If 1% of people decide to be carefully conservationists and only consume what the land/ecosystem can support... say goodbye to that ecosystem.

Great analogy and this is the challenge of humanity

Yes you're correct, certain ruling psychopaths wanted the future to remember them forever and as a result used slaves and domination to create long term artifacts with extraordinary narcissistic effort.

I wouldn't call that being "smart as a group"

However I think Ozymandias is a good reminder here

All the cultures that were smart in the 5-10 generation planning scale got wiped out in the short term by the ones that weren't.

Late Pleistocene lasted from 129,000 to 11,700 BC. Younger Dryas happened like 12k years bc. That's not a very long period of time to me. How long did humans and mammoths co-exist? I've no idea but I've always assumed for tens of thousands of years at least. I'm sure humans hunting mammoths didn't help their population to survive but I think it's a bit harsh to blame humanity for wiping out mammoths when there was a huge extinction event happening 12k BC that almost wiped out humans too along with the megafauna.

Meanwhile africa didn't have this extinction event and their megafauna is still intact regardless of humans. Well, now with gunpowder and whatnot they're threatened but it's not like stone age hunter gatherers had guns to shoot mammoths with.

>How long did humans and mammoths co-exist?

The research seems to indicate that the overlap was from ~150,000BC until the QME crash ~10,000BC that you describe.

So, the answer would be "for the majority of anatomical Human's history until they all died off"

Is that humans specifically, or hominids generally? Not that the distinction matters too much, but it could be a source of confusion.

Anatomically modern Humans, the wikipedia on this is strikingly well written:

>Early modern human (EMH) or anatomically modern human (AMH)[1] are terms used to distinguish Homo sapiens (the only extant Hominina species) that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans from extinct archaic human species. This distinction is useful especially for times and regions where anatomically modern and archaic humans co-existed, for example, in Paleolithic Europe. Among the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens are those found at the Omo-Kibish I archaeological site in south-western Ethiopia, dating to about 233,000[2] to 196,000 years ago,[3] the Florisbad site in South Africa, dating to about 259,000 years ago, and the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, dated about 315,000 years ago.

This is THE most important distinction to make as people seem to think that Humans prior to the year zero were neandertal or some proto-human

Humans just like you and me are about 200,000 years old

What is the "QME crash"?

Quaternary Megafauna Extinction

https://www.csus.edu/indiv/k/kusnickj/geology105/modelpaper....

Another explanation could be that African mega-fauna evolved in close proximity to hominids, making them less susceptible to the pressures of being over-hunted. That could by why Eurasian, American and Australian mega-fauna went extinct shortly after the arrival of humans whereas they survived in Africa.

The isolated mammoth population on Wrangel Island in the Arctic lasted until ~2000BC. [1] They died out before humans arrived at their island, possibly driven extinct by 'genomic meltdown'.[2]

[1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027737911...

[2]https://www.science.org/content/article/last-lonely-woolly-m...

>The notion of hunter-gather societies living harmoniously in equilibrium with nature that some people seem to view as an optimal societal arrangement doesn't fit very well with this scenario.

Where is this notion? I've been involved in environmental circles and humans wiping out mammoths, giant sloths in south america, or logging easter island to bareness are pretty well known.

I think this notion is pretty common amongst the general population. I'm just speculating but I feel like a lot of people think of hunting and there being an apex predator as the natural order of things, and it's only post-industrial society that has meaningfully affected nature. I mean, do most people even know there were ever giant sloths roaming South America or know anything about Easter Island other than there being some big stone statues there?

In popular culture there is the idea that hunter-gatherer societies live in balance with nature. It is a modern version of the “Nobel Savage” trope.

It's a very outdated but common notion, popularized around about in the 17th and 18th centuries by the likes of Rousseau. It often gets tied up with enlightenment ideas and is popularly espoused by many (naive) people even today.

It is associated with the controversial phrase "noble savage", which is sometimes said sincerely and sometimes sneeringly.