By the time the mesolithic was in gear ostriches were mostly the only big flightless birds around for people to encounter. The southern tip of South America had a special treat though. The last of the terror birds (phorusrhacid) lived there until a little under 12,000 years ago. 10 feet tall and instant death to any human who might have made it to the end of the world that is Patagonia at the time.
Australia also had giant ducks until 30,000 years ago, so highly likely that humans encountered them
I didn’t know that. Did they eat grapes?
I’m sure if you gave them the opportunity, they would be open to the experience
Oh. Huh.
I’d gone on a bit of a wiki dive thinking about emus, cassowaries, and (extinct) moa, but New Zealand (where the moa were from) wasn’t settled by humans until late 1200s, so I just kinda figured Australia wasn’t settled until later, either. Turns out, I was off by many dozens of thousands of years!
Just tens of thousands. A rounding error really.
“The universe is infinite. However, only a finite amount of planets are inhabited. Any number divided by infinity is as close to zero as having no odds. Therefore, any person you encounter can only be a result of an overactive imagination.”
(Badly quoting a half-remembered H2G2 line because “rounding error” made me think of it lol)
It’s a great quote. That whole section is amazing. There is no sex because there are no people and there is no money.