An otherwise banal radio station newsfeed notes that a mountain lion (who had a tracking device) traveled 558 miles from Tamaya, New Mexico to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado over the course of five months that included some break time.
Squeaks, the “sub-adult” male mountain lion outfitted with a GPS tracker decided to leave New Mexico and head to a new home in Colorado, hitting almost 3,000 destinations on the way.Squeaks started in Tamaya in New Mexico and headed to the Florida River in Durango, stopping to enjoy before moving on. He faced challenges like HW550, large agricultural fields and low density areas, but finally was spotted in Marcos, Colorado in late September.After his long journey of over 500 miles, Squeaks has now settled in Mesa Verde National Park…for now.
It is a good context in which to put migrations of pre-modern human hunter-gatherers and herders who were similar in size, in lethality, and in their place in the food pyramid.
Realistic models of pre-modern, pre-horseback migrations over land do not have to limit themselves to distances of a few miles per year.
Sounds reasonable... don't like the in-laws? Head down the trail a few hundred miles.
ReplyDeleteAh. . . . . who knew that in laws are responsible for the spread of humanity across the planet?
ReplyDeleteThinking back to how I felt about my in laws in my 20s though, that would be a pretty darn powerful motive.
:) :)
By pre-modern, I hope you mean to include any species of humans that could've migrated to the Americas before 130,000BP? In other words H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis, the Denisovans or even early modern humans. I set 130,000BP as the Cerruti tools used to break the mastodon bones in socal seem to have been proven to have been used by humans.. Your thoughts on the matter?
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