The Human Era begins

"Genetic typing suggests that the Tsalal peoples are all descended from a very small group, perhaps even a single family unit, that somehow crossed over from Tasmania or Southern Australia roughly 35,000 years ago."

"The spread of humans in Antarctica was, for the first five to ten thousand years, appears to have been extremely slow, particularly in comparison to other populations. It is estimated that it took as little as two thousand years for humans to fill the whole of North and South America."

"But looking at Antarctica, we find numerous archeological sites reaching as far back as 35,000 years in the Storm Coast country, representing perhaps 20% of the continent. Yet elsewhere, no site has been discovered earlier than 30,000 years, and the oldest site in the Hill Country is a mere 18,000 years old. Cold Island was inhabited perhaps a mere 1000 years ago."

"The answer must be that Antarctica was, for humans, an alternately welcoming and savage land. Human techniques of hunting and gathering found it extremely hard to cope with vegetation that was at once delicate and appallingly resilient."

"Antarctic flora had adapted to the unique solar and seasonal regimes of the bottom of the world. With roughly one sixteenth of the solar energy arriving at the pole as compared to the equator, offset by long daylight hours, Antarctic plants evolved to be highly efficient at metabolizing sunlight. Whereas temperate plants metabolize roughly 3% of solar energy, Antarctic plants metabolized 6% to 8%. Only sugar cane in temperate climes is comparable. Antarctic plants must deal with crippling winters and extended nights unique on the planet, and hence much of their metabolic activity goes into storing nutrients or preparing seeds to survive the long night. Thus, Antarctic plants are often extremely high in starches and sugars, often to toxic levels."

"A number of Antarctica's wild and domesticated plants are literally inedible to non-antarctic life. The Tsalal have evolved particular mutations to digest some of their provenance. This is roughly comparable to the mutation in northern human populations allowing some groups to digest milk."

"The consequence was that early humans in Antarctica found that many plants were only partially edible or digestible, when they could be eaten at all. Of course, this put a lot of pressure on useable plant species, which were often used up."

"Techniques of controlled burns or fire management, an effective human tool in much of the world, proved useless. Much antarctic vegetation was extremely slow to recover once impacted by fire or overharvesting. Opportunistic species of flora were often much less attractive for game than the previous biota."

"Hunting also posed numerous difficulties. The riverine areas, the most productive regions, swarmed with Cavras predators, highly mobile, highly territorial, with juveniles always on the lookout for vacant territory. The Great Shaghuts, elephant sized, armoured and vicious tempered, were literally off limits, as to a lesser extent, were other megafauna. Meanwhile, for intermediate game, humans found themselves competing with a robust selection of marsupial predators able to tolerate much harsher privations than humans. The game itself, enured to predation, soon grew used to humans."

"Ultimately, in those days, early humans would invariably exhaust the resources of plants and animals, and then be forced to either starve or move on."

"This should have been a recipe to quickly fill the continent, and for the inevitable extinction of whole lines of flora and fauna. But this reckoned without the deadly Antarctic winters. The winters inhibited human movement and imposed intolerable hardships. Infant mortality was significant, in many years it was estimated to reach 100%. Some winters, its believed that as much as 50% of the human population did not survive."

"Throughout the Storm Coast, ancient mounds stand as mute testimony to entire families, clans and even whole tribes who literally starved to death in their lodges."

"Many of these sites show evidence of cannibalism, a feature which persists aggressively even today in modern Tsalal culture.... Migration proceeded extremely slowly. Impoverished, starving groups, with no new territory to invade, simply invaded their neighbors equally destitute territories. The south pole has always been a land of war of all against all.... Another cultural feature which may date back to these times is a terror of the colour white, which is associated with death and torment."

"....the fitful and uneven spread of humanity through the continent was probably responsible for the lack of mass extinction, and the survival of much of the Antarctic flora and fauna, particularly the megafauna. Although human habitation slowly changed the face of Antarctica, as it had done for other continents, the mixture and interactions remained somewhat more complex. The result was that, ironically, the Tsalal over their history had access to a great deal more biodiversity than would be expected. This obviously came at a terrible price..."

Archological Investigations and the Origins of the Tsalal, R. Jawardene, Bhopal Press, 1998