Some very unsettled science... Our understanding of human history has been constantly changing throughout my entire life (and of course, before that as well). This, despite the very confident and (dare I say?) settled tone of all the texts and science books on the subject I've read, up until about 20 years ago. At that point the relevant science communities seemed to collectively decide they were better off not claiming that they actually knew anything – instead, they've been concentrating on finding actual evidence (like the mammoth in this story).
Why did that science community take the humbler approach, and the climatologists their fervently preachy approach? The answer seems obvious: money. There's no grant money riding on any particular answer from archaeology and anthropology. Climatologists, on the other hand, know their grant money derives from fear of global warming. It's conspicuously true that the (relatively few) dissenting voices in that community are almost entirely immune to this grant money influence, because of tenure, impending retirement, independent resources, etc.
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