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| | No Moa: Modeling an Extinction |
 | | As usual in archaeology, the clearer the basic facts, the more debated their interpretation, and questions about exactly how and when the moas became extinct, and the degree to which people were responsible or not, have been kicked around for some time. |
 | | The big birds survived for about 600 years after the arrival of people, according to what Holdaway and Jacomb term the "orthodox model." Recent scrutiny of radiocarbon dates suggests, however, that people arrived in New Zealand in the late thirteenth century, not tenth or eleventh century (Anderson 1991). |
 | | Alan Simmons, excavator of Akrotiri-Aetokremnos, an early site on Cyprus with bones of pygmy hippo and elephant, notes that, "In the few well-documented Mediterranean island cases where there is a temporal overlap between human populations and extinct fauna, it invariably is short..." (1999: 31). |
| www.archaeology.org /online/features/moa (967 words) |
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