The extinction of the woolly mammoth has long been attributed to human overhunting. However, recent evidence suggests that climate change was the primary driver. First, the warming climate at the end of the last Ice Age reduced the open grassland habitats that mammoths depended on, replacing them with forests and tundra, which offered less edible vegetation. Second, the timing of mammoth extinctions on different continents correlates more closely with major climatic shifts than with human arrival. For example, on Wrangel Island, where mammoths survived until 4,000 years ago, humans arrived around the same time, yet the final extinction occurred during a period of rapid environmental change. Third, genetic studies show a severe population bottleneck in mammoths long before human contact, indicating that they were already vulnerable due to shrinking habitats and inbreeding, not because of hunting pressure.
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The reading's argument that climate change alone drove mammoth extinction is flawed. While it is true that warming reduced grasslands, this does not explain why mammoths survived previous interglacial warm periods with similarly reduced habitats. More importantly, human hunting was not a minor factor—archaeological sites show mass kill sites and butchery marks, and the arrival of skilled hunters on each landmass consistently coincides with rapid declines in mammoth populations, even during stable climates. On Wrangel Island, the claim that climate caused the final extinction is misleading: the island's dwarf mammoths faced not only habitat change but also intense hunting by humans, who used the island's resources heavily. Finally, the genetic bottleneck cited actually supports the hunting hypothesis—small, isolated populations would have been more easily wiped out by even modest hunting pressure, whereas a climate-only explanation fails to account for why the last populations died out at different times across regions, despite global climate trends being similar. Thus, the reading oversimplifies a complex interaction, and hunting likely played a decisive role.
📝 Инструкция по письму Summarize the points made in the lecture, being sure to explain how they cast doubt on the specific points made in the reading passage.
📊 TOEFL Integrated Writing Rubric
Content Accuracy: Accurately capture the relationship between lecture and reading
Information Completeness: Cover all key counter-arguments from the lecture
Structure & Coherence: Logical organization and progression
Language Use: Grammar, vocabulary, expression accuracy
Scored 0-30 based on holistic scoring (original 0-5, scaled to 30).
