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The ice age that never was

Modern humans may have started eliminating other species right from the start: our ancestors stand accused of wiping out megafauna - from giant flightless birds in Australia to mammoths in Asia and the ground sloth of North America - as they spread across the planet. Even so, by around 6000 years ago there were only about 12 million people on Earth - less than a quarter of the current population of Great Britain. That's a far cry from today's 6.6 billion, many of us guzzling fossil fuels, churning out greenhouse gases and messing with our planet's climate like there's no tomorrow.

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