Scientists Debunk themselves into a corner

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So, what you're saying is the argument you made previous really is terribly weak and now that you're sober you're going to adopt a less extreme position than that the horse nomads were able to utterly exterminate all the men who weren't of their people?

No it's quite plausible. the Mongols demonstrated how quickly a horse led army could overrun much of Europe and Asia in a relatively short time and completely wipe out populations.

the difference is the Nazis and Mongols were centralised, organised and trained military units. In contrast the nomadic Yamnaya were tribal units and fought among themselves > than other people whose land they encroached into. they made good use of mobility through horses to raid neighbours. Raiding was probably how it started. this model has its basis in explaining how the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings took 50-100 years raiding the British isles, slowly weakening their adversaries until they could get a foothold and displace the locals.

Mongols wiped out cities, but not every single individual in their path. Even in places where Temujin's descendents are overwhelmingly represented in the population, they never wiped out every single man. It's funny that you invoke this example when it's a strong example of the same thing happening even without evidence of all of the men being eliminated.

The native males don't need to wiped out to the man, all that needs to happen is that they're forced into a severe enough population bottleneck for a long enough period (like say the few hundred years that evidence suggests this process took).

While mass slaughters almost certainly occurred, it's unlikely to be on the scale that you claimed:

So, no, that specific claim is far beyond what the evidence that you yourself have presented. Your source presents a similar time scale to what I've suggested, and not the one you claimed.



No, population collapse is used because they don't have evidence that violence is the primary cause. You insisting he means violence doesn't make it so.

Yeah. The idea that population collapse requires violence in order to occur is pretty nutty.

From the earlier quote from the BBC article, this is important to note:

when Europeans entered America they shot all the bison, chopped down much of the forest, diverted and polluted rivers and introduced diseases which indigenous people weren't immune to. Violence comes in many forms.

As I said, it's convenient when nobody was there to keep written records.