U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-– When incidents of defense against bears occur in the United States, a common position of bear apologists is to claim “bears were here first”, as if, somehow, a bear has moral authority over humans.
A group that promotes the expansion of grizzly bear populations makes this claim, in a more sophisticated way. From conservationnw.org:
Grizzly bears have coexisted with people in the North Cascades Ecosystem from when the first people arrived in North America.
The most dangerous bear, the grizzly bear, was not in the lower 48 states before humans were. Humans were here first.
The grizzly bear is a relative newcomer to most of North America. The bears came from Asia to Alaska about 60,000 years ago. Because of the glaciers over most of Canada, they did not make it to the lower 48 states until about 10 – 15 thousand years ago. From nih.gov:
In North America, the brown bear has had a limited history, appearing in eastern Beringia only 50–70,000 years ago and spreading into the contiguous United States about 13,000 years ago (7, 8).
Humans, we have learned, have been in North America for at least 23,000 years, and likely up to 32,000 years. A convincing article was published on October 1, 2021. From nps.gov:
How long have humans been living in the Tularosa Basin? The latest research from White Sands confirms for the first time that humans have been living in North America for at least 23,000 years – many thousands of years older than previously thought. This research also confirms that people were living with the ice age megafauna much longer
