I'm not quite sure how far back the reach of History SE travels, but I thought I'd push my luck!

As the question asks really. Do we have any evidence that suggests homo sapiens or any of our close relatives were outcompeted in any local environment by any other animal (non-hominid species)?

From my initial thoughts, I'd guess that if this were to happen it would be unlikely to happen after the advent of agriculture so we'd be looking at the paleolithic. Unfortunately, my research thus far has turned up a dizzying array of examples of humans extirpating other animals and none the other way around (which I suppose is a finding of itself).

Appreciating the difficulty in finding evidence, does anyone know of any that exists?

closed as off-topic by Samuel Russell, KorvinStarmast, José Carlos Santos, Pieter Geerkens, sempaiscuba Feb 13 at 11:28


  • "Questions on social sciences other than History are off-topic here, unless they also involve history in some fashion. While ethics, archaeology, etc. are all connected to history, each field has their own experts who are better equipped to answer such questions." – Samuel Russell, KorvinStarmast, José Carlos Santos, Pieter Geerkens, sempaiscuba

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    I'm not sure what "your research" consists of but Tim Flannery's got a book on the subject, "A Gap in Nature", and it's quite easy to think of some of the more obvious contrary options. However, similar problems abound as in much else of prehistory -- with the wrong climatological conditions, we would never know people had been in that place to begin with. Let's say we have a mesa or somewhere to which people climbed, and then perhaps some snake (or other) species managed to eat all the locals. Very little evidence left. As such though, the Brazilian Snake Island might actually count? – gktscrk Feb 12 at 16:21
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    @gktscrk Evidently my research wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped! Thanks for the book suggestion :). I also understand the difficulty in assessing something like this. Even with the perfect climatological conditions, it would still be exceedingly difficult to determine whether we were outcompeted or fell foul of another cause of extirpation. – Ynneadwraith Feb 12 at 16:31
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    Sometimes people have to leave their house because it gets infested by ants or termites – Clint Eastwood Feb 12 at 16:34
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    Regarding being outcompeted: local.theonion.com/… – Clint Eastwood Feb 12 at 16:49
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    Parasites, sickness and their vectors count as animals? – Santiago Feb 12 at 17:25

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