“In a variable world, good times
inevitably give way to bad times.
That was an ancient lesson. Basing
your numbers on the good times
set you up for disaster.”
“In a variable world, good times inevitably give way to bad times. That was an ancient lesson. Basing your numbers on the good times set you up for disaster.”
- Dan Flores, Wild New World
02-20-24 • 17:33Repeated afternoons spent wondering what wildlife once roamed the now-paved library parking lot I crossed led me to an encounter with Dan Flores’ 2022 nonfiction book, Wild New World. After many failed attempts at researching information online about extinct North American fauna, Flores’ book felt stumbling upon the secret recipe to the land. Each page told the story of the continent’s turmultuous past, bringing the events a little closer to home. I read the book like a fairytale and was astonished by the huge gaps in my knowledge concerning the history of North American wildlife and humanity's significant role in its profound alteration. This unexpected discovery launched me into an obsessive journey to unravel the chain of events that shaped our present-day fauna and to share the story through art.
Although Wild New World spans 66 million years, covering the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs all the way to present day, and while Flores devotes more than half the book to the post-Columbian era, my primary fascination was in the initial few chapters. These sections delve into the rise of mammals, the intricate migrations of nonhuman animals to and from the continent, and the pivotal 2,000-year period around the time when Homo sapiens first dispersed across North America some 13,000 years ago.*
Closing out the chapter describing the Clovis people, one of the first documented cultures in the Americas existing between 500 to 1000 years 13,000 years ago, Flores draws parallels to three different occurrences. 1) the memory of a fox getting into his family’s chicken pen and slaughtering sixty hens in one night 2) 19 spotted hyenas once killing 82 Thomson's gazelle while only eating 16% and 3) the Lehner Mammoth Site in Southeastern Arizona where a family of 13 mammoths are believed to have been slaughtered by a band of Clovis hunters 13,000 years ago. In this last example, evidence shows the hunters neither tracked nor butchered the mother and father mammoth they fatally wounded who fled after fiercely defending their young.
Flores offers the term surplus killing or the “henhouse syndrome” to describe this natural phenomenon: an occasional response by predators presented with ill-fated prey. In some instances, prey may have little or no defenses when faced with their predators. In the case of the 72% of megafauna species that went extinct in the late-Pleistocene, less than 2,000 years after the spread of humans, prey likely resigned to their ill-fate simply due to a lack of knowing.
*the earliest scientifically published evidence of Homo sapiens in North America dates somewhere between 21,000 to 23,000 years ago. However, 13,000 years ago is widely accepted as the period in which Homo sapiens spread largely across the continent.
A BRIEF TIMELINE OF NORTH AMERICA FOLLOWING THE MASS EXTINCTION OF NON-AVIAN DINOSAURS
66 million years ago
Chicxulub Impact
Start of the Cenozoic Era and the Paleocene Epoch
ANOMAL DIVINATIVE OCCASION
SHOOTING WISHES TO THE MOON AND BACK
BRUISING BATTERED TERRAIN
WITH SOLIDIFYING SEGMENTS OF SELF
FIVE PAGE STORY RIPPLES
IN ANCIENT SEA TEXT
CRAFTING AND SHAPING YOUR OWN
UNIQUE DISASTER TYPE
MILE TALL TSUNAMIS
MOLTEN RAIN / SCALDING GLASS
DRIZZLING SULFURIC ACID
COVERED UNDER DENSE FOG COVER
YOU SEEDED LIFE THROUGHOUT THE STARS
AND HERE ON EARTH, OUR STORY BEGAN
MORE coming soon...