A civilization is measured by the size of the creatures it renders extinct

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Cave people extincted (should be a word...) most of the world's very large mammals. Our prey were ill prepared, most outside Africa having evolved without factoring in surviving overly clever apes, and their long gestation periods made them actuarial sitting ducks (sitting mammoths?)

When the white man arrived on New Zealand most of the big animals were bones and legends, but it turned out that the non-white people had only been in New Zealand a few centuries themselves and had wiped out the big animals in fast order without the benefit of gunpowder. So we know it doesn't take much industrial technology to whack all the animals larger than a person. (They tend to have evolved thinking they have nothing to fear from smaller creatures. D'Oh!)

As our technological reach expanded we got to smaller and smaller land critters, and large sea critters.

I suspect some virus finished off the Passenger Pigeon but it took shot-guns to get their population down to perilous levels.

With climate change we will indirectly extinctify (an even better word) some algae and what not... that's pretty civilized stuff.

But I doubt we will ever improve on our greatest show of prowess as hunters——the elimination of the smallpox virus.

That's tiny!

[amborin]

1. K&R