What would the earth be like if humanity had never existed?
Have you ever stopped to think about what the earth would be like if humans had never existed? For Luis André Costa, one of our readers, recently wrote to us that some time ago he watched a video about what would happen to our planet if humanity suddenly disappeared - and this led him to inquire as to how our world would be if we had never emerged here.
Before we explain what the Earth would look like without our species, take a look at the following maps created by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark. The map you can see below shows the current distribution of large mammals that inhabit the planet, and from this representation we can see that Africa today is home to the largest number of species in the world. Check out:
Now the second map - which you can see next - is similar to the previous one, except that it was created after modern humans were properly “deleted” from Earth's history. Notice the difference:
Human influence
It is undeniable that we humans have had a tremendous influence on the planet, shaping the landscape and changing its features to adapt the environment to our needs. As a result, we end up affecting the existence of other species that share the Earth with us - not only because of the environmental and climatic changes we have made throughout our existence, but also because of our practices of domination, hunting and domestication.
According to the researchers, the only place that has maintained a high diversity of large mammals throughout history is Africa, as you saw on the map above. But according to the study, these animals did not resist because the weather conditions on the African continent are particularly favorable. This happened because, somehow, they have managed to survive until now the impact that our presence has on the environment.
Comparing the two maps, it is evident that the European continent, especially the northern region, was not the only place that lost much of its animal diversity due to human actions. Pay attention to the Americas! The difference between the current situation and what we probably would have if humans had never existed is huge.
The study
To develop the representation of what the animal world without us would be like here, the researchers predicted what the distribution of extinct species would be like during the last Ice Age and subsequent millennia. They took into account that the disappearance of animals is directly linked to the displacement of modern humans around the world, not to climate change.
Diversity was found to be dramatically greater, and there were probably still giant sloths, mastodons, and herds of wild horses running freely throughout the Americas. These animals, in turn, could possibly be hunted by saber-toothed tigers or flat-faced bears, and it would be quite plausible to imagine that we would find elephants and rhinos roaming around Europe and our continent.
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What do you think our planet would be like if humans had never existed? Comment on the Mega Curious Forum
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