Humans arrived in the Kaliko Islands about 7,000 years ago, and within 3,000 years most of the large mammal species that had lived in the forests of the Kaliko Islands were extinct. Previous archaeological findings have suggested that early humans generally relied on both fishing and hunting for food; since archaeologists have discovered numerous sites in the Kaliko Islands where the bones of fish were discarded, it is likely that the humans also hunted the mammals. Furthermore, researchers have uncovered simple tools, such as stone knives, that could be used for hunting. The only clear explanation is that humans caused the extinction of the various mammal species through excessive hunting.
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The arguer has concluded that extinction of several mammal species is because of practice of excessive hunting by humans. Several evidence and reasoning has been put forwarded to support the premise of the conclusion which are ripe with fallacies and renders the fact of extinction unjustifiable. However, there may be several other factors working behind extinction that are neglected by the arguer.
To begin with, availability of abundant living spaces plays a significant role to live. As humans arrived at the island 7000 years ago, they are bound to take away spaces which are the homes of other mammals previously because of their intelligence. If humans fill up ponds then fishes may have moved from small ponds to sea. But if humans cut down forests to make space for them, the mammals will have no space to move and live and will die eventually. The existence of tools like stone knives doesn’t prove anything as human may have used it to keep those large animals away from them. So although the human doesn’t directly hunt mammals down, they play an indirect role to their extinction.
Secondly, the arguer has assumed that human consumes most of the mammal species as their foods and as a result hunted them down. However no concrete evidence exists for this conclusion. Extinction depends on lot of factors like survival adaptability in a dynamic environment. It is not also clear from the argument that most of the extinctions happened after human set their feet on this island. It is possible that the mammals were unable to adapt changing environment before humans came and became extinct. Some of them those were able to adapt themselves in extreme weathers and changed their food habits lived. 3000 years is a long time period that is considered here and a drastic change is possible anytime in between.
Moreover, it is not clear about human food habits at that time. It is likely that human didn’t liked flesh of large mammals and thus depend on fishes for protein source. However, scarcity of food may force larger mammals to compete against each other for their food source. These species may eventually fight among each other and died. The conclusion that humans depend on hunting is supported by the fact of discovery of fish bones in the island. However, being an island several migrating birds may come and deposit the waste here and can support these evidences of fish bones.
In conclusion, the argument that humans are solely responsible hunting down larger mammal species and thus contributing to make most of the species extinct remains unconvincing to readers. The argument could have been corroborated by several proofs which shows that the surrounding environment remained more or less same over the time and doesn’t play any role to extinction, concrete evidences of mammal hunting by humans rather than some vague fish bones and simple tools like knives to support or provide evidence to show that there were abundance of spaces in the island which could support humans and other mammals to live side by side and thus spaces have no major impact as discussed earlier. In absence of these concrete evidences, the argument is rendered fallacious.
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Argument 1 -- OK
Argument 2 -- NOT OK.
Where did you get this: human consumes most of the mammal species as their foods?.
and this sentence is wrong too: It is possible that the mammals were unable to adapt changing environment before humans came and became extinct.
Argument 3 -- NOT OK. You don't refer something new. 'it is not clear about human food habits at that time.'.
Our arguments:
1. The sites where the fish bones were discarded show that people on the island may relied on fishing. But we can’t conclude that they also hunted mammals.
2. The find of simple tools can’t also prove that people hunted mammals. People may use these tools to build their houses, get food, carve and so on.
3. The extinction of the mammals is not necessarily related to human activities. The mammals were extinct maybe because of the reasons as follows: the change of the climate of the island; people ate up the food they lived on; their living environment were destroyed; people brought exotic animals that eat and attack mammals.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
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No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
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Number of Paragraphs: 5 5