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From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: more on killing mastodons etc.
Message-ID: <372@imsvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 17:09:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: imsvax.372
Posted: Tue Aug 13 17:09:15 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Aug-85 08:35:33 EDT
Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD
Lines: 31


	This one just gets better.  My original reply to Don Heller's comment
about killing mastodons with rocks was:

>           In real
>           life, of  course, a  thirty lb. boulder  falling on  a Mammoth or
>           Imperial elephants head MIGHT have gotten  his attention.  Twenty
>           people throwing  rocks at  him would  undoubtedly have gotten him
>           pissed off.

Mr. Heller now replies:

>Getting the [mastodon|elephant|...] pissed off is the whole point.  Then you
>can get it to do something stupid, like killing itself in the fall off a cliff.


	Remember now, the original discussion was about the possability that
man caused the total EXTINCTION of mammoths, mastodons, imperial elephants etc.
I will admit that men could have killed an occasional elephant, although at a 
cost in human lives.  That is a very far cry from killing ALL of them.  If any
of you readers are planning an elephant hunt anytime soon, use a 460 Weatherby
safari rifle;  please don't use rocks.  Rocks couldn't hurt an elephant's body
and it's damned unlikely they could hurt his feelings badly enough to make him
commit suicide by jumping off of a cliff.  A far more likely reaction would be
to stomp the rock thrower(s) flatter than one of Aunt Jemima's finest;  even if
the elephant had planned to commit suicide that day anyhow for some ulterior
motive known only to him, he would probably stomp the rock throwers FIRST, and
then commit suicide.  
	There also remains the problem of how this technique was used to 
exterminate the elephants in Oklahoma and the plains states, where excavating
artificial cliffs would have been very difficult in the age before bulldozers.