LogFAQs > #979301158

ForsakenHermit posted...

I don't think stone age people would have driven them extinct for food if they did.

General scientific consensus was that it was the combination of both human hunting and climate change that brought the mammoths to extinction. The isolated Wrangel island population that survived until the time of the Ancient Egyptian pyramids were smaller and inbred. Humans and mammoths had coexisted for tens of thousands of years until the climate changed, which affected the mammoths' food sources. When the mammoths could get food, even with human predation, they were stable. When food became scarce and unreliable, the populations became more vulnerable, probably wearing the beasts out more and while human predation on them didn't change.
I think the case for mastodons is more unclear however.