Blame comet, not Indians

New Theory on Old Debate:  Comet Killed the MammothThere are intriguing new clues in the mystery of how the woolly mammoth met its demise in North America more than 10,000 years ago.

For decades, scientists have debated whether the giant, elephant-like beasts were driven to extinction by the arrival of overzealous human hunters or by global warming at the end of the Pleistocene era, the last great Ice Age. Some say it was a combination of the two.

Recently, a group of more than two dozen scientists offered a new explanation. They have found signs that a comet--or multiple fragments of one--exploded over Canada about 12,900 years ago with the force equivalent to millions of nuclear weapons. That unleashed, they said, a tremendous shock wave that destroyed much of what was in its path and ignited wildfires across North America.Comment:  This is relevant because people have used the megafauna extinction to claim proto-Indians were greedy and rapacious rather than frugal and ecologically minded. In other words, it's the first evidence, chronologically speaking, that Natives were savage and barbaric.