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Introduction

History is my favorite subject at school. Back in the fifth grade, studying the "History of the Ancient World", the lessons of history became a real discovery for me - the facts from the life of people of this period amazed me! I was especially impressed by the most ancient people who, living in such harsh conditions, having a minimum number of any adaptations for life, learned the world, made discoveries, developed!

The more I learned about ancient period humanity, the more questions I had. Particular interest arose in the study of the life of people in glacial period. Listening to the teacher’s story about how ancient people hunted mammoths, I had a question: “Could people of the Ice Age really hunt mammoths?” After all, the mammoth is a huge and strong animal, its body is protected by a thick layer of fat and thick wool. Could the weapons of ancient man hit this giant. And I also thought that in the conditions of the ice age, digging a huge trap for a mammoth is almost impossible.

I decided to find out what real scientists think about this. And my history teacher, Tatyana Vladimirovna Kurochkina, suggested doing a whole study.

Target - the solution of the historical problem - "hunting for mammoths: truth or fiction?"

An object- the life of the most ancient people in the ice age.

Item - mammoth hunting.

Hypothesis - ancient people rarely or did not hunt mammoths at all.

Tasks:

To get acquainted with the origin of mammoths, their structure, peculiarities of living.

Analyze various literature on this issue (educational, encyclopedias, Internet information).

Explore information about the data archaeological sites sites of ancient people.

Research methods:

In the course of the work, search, research, analytical, comparative methods research.

The history of antiquity keeps many mysteries that mankind has yet to unravel. For many decades, people believed that the earliest people hunted mammoths, which is why they died out. But whether this was actually the case remains to be seen.

Chapter 1. Mammoth - "prehistoric giant"

Among the animals that have disappeared before the eyes of man, the mammoth occupies a special place.

According to scientists, mammoths appeared in the period about 5 - 1.5 million years ago and lived on a vast territory: Europe, Asia, Africa and North America[App. 1]. It is believed that the very first mammoths lived in Africa 5 million years ago. Over the next three million years, they spread to all continents of the Earth.

The time of extinction of these animals is not exactly known. The generally accepted date of extinction of this genus is the period of 10-12 thousand years ago. Although there are other data. For example, some scientists believe that the woolly mammoth (one of the species) died out about 4-6 thousand years ago.

Most mammoths lived in a historical period that began almost 3 million years ago, and scientists call it " Quaternary"- which means the modern stage of the history of the Earth. It was in it that many important events in the history of the Earth took place, the most important of which - ice age and the appearance of man [App. 2].

Mammoths were perfectly adapted to life in the harsh conditions of a cold climate. Mammoths roamed in small herds, adhering to river valleys and feeding on grass, branches of trees and shrubs. Such herds were very mobile - it was not easy to collect the required amount of food in the tundra steppe.

The size of the mammoths was quite impressive: an adult male of the largest steppe mammoth reached 4.5 m at the withers, weighed up to 18 tons and had tusks with a total length of up to 5 m. Large male woolly mammoths could reach a height of 3.5 meters, and their tusks were up to 4 meters long and weighed about 100 kilograms. A dwarf species mammoths did not exceed 2 meters in height and weighed up to 900 kg. Average life expectancy was 45-50, maximum 80 years.

One of the most common types of mammoths was the woolly mammoth, which lived in northern latitudes and on the territory of modern Siberia [App. 3]. The body was covered with thick, long hair. IN winter time, its length on the back and sides, reached 90 sentiments, and under the main hairline a thick undercoat was formed. In the warm season, most of the wool was wiped off, becoming shorter and lighter. Additional protection the fat layer, which was almost ten centimeters, served from the cold. Wool, which is found during excavations, is predominantly red or yellowish in color. However, scientists are sure that the light shade is the result of the influence of climate, but in reality, large herbivores were black and dark brown.

The woolly mammoth had small, tightly pressed ears to the skull, which made its head somewhat out of proportion. In addition to the shape of the ears, ancient animals were distinguished by the trunk, which was used to collect grass and leaves. The trunk at the end had a transverse extension, which, presumably, served to rake snow, prevent frostbite of the trunk, and also to use snow to quench thirst. The tip of the trunk of mammoths was hairless, which indicates its use in the extraction of food.

Mammoths did not use the trunk as a means of protection. But an excellent means of defense were tusks, the length of which reached 4.5 meters. It is noteworthy that the mammoth tusk was an invariable attribute of both males and females.

Also, with the help of tusks, the animals dug out food from under the snow, tore off the bark of trees, mined vein ice, which was used instead of water in winter. For grinding food, the mammoth had on each side an upper and mandible only one, very large tooth at a time. The chewing surface of these teeth was a wide, long plate covered with transverse enamel ridges. Apparently, in the warm season, the animals fed mainly on grassy vegetation. in the intestines and oral cavity dead in the summer mammoths were dominated by grasses and sedges, in small quantities there were lingonberry bushes, green mosses and thin shoots of willow, birch, and alder. The weight of an adult mammoth's stomach filled with food could reach 240 kg. In winter, especially in snowy seasons, the shoots of trees and shrubs acquired the main importance in the nutrition of animals. The huge amount of food consumed forced the mammoths to lead a mobile lifestyle and often change their feeding areas.

It is believed that these animals led a predominantly herd lifestyle. Eight to ten adults with cubs gathered in a group, the oldest and most experienced female (matriarchy) became the leader. When the males were 8-10 years old (reached maturity), they were expelled from the maternal herd and began to lead a solitary lifestyle.

Perhaps this way of life of mammoths influenced the very name of this species. The Russian word "mammoth" is close to the Christian name Mamant, which in Greek means "maternal", "sucking the mother's breast", later "mamma" - "mother".

Chapter 2

For many years it was believed that main reason the extinction of mammoths was the hunt for them by primitive people. And there was no doubt that the most ancient man hunted the mammoth. But recently there are more and more supporters of a different point of view - mammoths died out due to a sharp warming of the climate, and hunting for mammoths was rare and was considered a great success for people. To understand this and confirm or refute our hypothesis, it is necessary to analyze the views of historians.

First of all, we decided to analyze the educational literature for fifth grade students. Has been studied necessary material five textbooks on the history of the ancient world by different authors, which are used by modern children.

All textbooks contain very brief information about the hunt of ancient people for mammoths. And only in one the author describes in detail and vividly a fragment of the hunt for a mammoth.

"The men are going to big hunt: stronger stone tips are tied to wooden spears, torches are tarred; two old men are hammering stone blanks, making spare spears for everyone. One of the men recounts how a herd of mammoths crossed the river last night and ended up in the hunting grounds of their community. Everyone has smiles on their faces - the hungry days are over ... by evening, the united herd of hunters took a herd of mammoths into a half ring, leaving only the path to the river cliff free ... ".

The next step was the analysis of Children's encyclopedias on history. In the encyclopedia The World History” published by Avanta +, written by professional historians, it is argued that during the Ice Age, mammoths and other large animals constantly moved in search of food. They were followed by communities of families who hunted them, as meat, skin and tusks were necessary for them to survive in harsh conditions.

IN Big Encyclopedia preschool publishing house "Olma-press" there is a section "Hunters of the ice age", which says that ancient people in the ice age hunted animals such as woolly rhinoceros, Saber-toothed tiger, mammoth, from the bones and skins of which people built and insulated their homes.

The electronic children's encyclopedia "Man - origin and device" contains the following information: primitive people hunted herbivores: mammoths, bison, deer, horses. Since these animals often migrated in search of food or fleeing the cold, people had to follow them so as not to be left without food.

In the Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Big Russian Encyclopedia publishing house, the article "Mammoth" states that this animal species has become extinct as a result of climate change and human extermination.

The Reader's Digest World History Atlas also says that Ice Age man hunted mammoths. Since he lived in the habitats of these animals.

The Internet contains a large number of articles on mammoths. The analysis of these articles showed that there is no single approach to the consecration of the problem of people hunting for mammoths.

In the article "Hunting for mammoths: heroism, legend or massacre?" journalist Alexander Babintsev claims that mammoth hunting was a very dangerous and difficult business: “In addition to the fact that it was necessary to drive the mammoth, it was also necessary to kill it. In itself, the task of killing an animal, whose average height was four meters, weight about eight tons, and tusks reached several meters in length, is a difficult task. Especially if you remember that a person of that time had no other tool than spears and arrows with stone tips, which were not easy to get to the skin of a mammoth, since the length of its coarse wool was half a meter, often more. Therefore, it is unlikely that in primitive times there could be tribes of people who specialized in hunting mammoths. Most likely, these were isolated cases that occurred during those periods when the seasonal migration routes of mammoths passed near human habitats.

The author of the article assumes that hunting for mammoths was a process extended over time. So, several hunters got as close as possible to the animals and, throwing spears from a distance, inflicted several wounds on the mammoth. Then, for several days, people followed the herd of mammoths, waiting for the moment when the animal, weakened by the loss of blood, would lag behind its relatives. And then already the mammoth achieved from a closer distance.

In the article “Primitive hunting”, the author believes that the ancient man, a contemporary of the mammoth, did not hunt him very often. The author argues that for people who lived 23-14 thousand years ago, it was the specialized hunting for mammoths that was the main source of subsistence.

The author also claims that people did not use pit traps when hunting mammoths: “could people, who had only wooden or bone shovels at their disposal, build a trapping pit for a mammoth with them? Yes, of course, they knew how to dig small dugouts and storage pits up to a meter deep. But the trap for such an animal as a mammoth must be huge! Is it easy to dig such a hole, and not even in soft soil, but in permafrost? The efforts expended at the same time clearly did not correspond to the results: after all, only one animal could fall into the pit, at best. According to the author, the collective corral was the main way of hunting large game.

The author of the article “Secrets of hunting for mammoths” believes that hunting for ancient people was something like a military operation that had to be carefully prepared. It was necessary, for example, to find a place in the forest or steppe where it would be possible to strike at the enemy with the least losses for themselves. The steep banks of the rivers were such places. Here the earth suddenly left from under the feet of the intended victim. People could hide near the watering place and, having jumped out of the ambush, finish off the gaping animals. Or wait near the ford. Here, stretching out in a chain, the animals one by one, carefully probing the bottom, move to the other side. Move slowly, cautiously. At these moments they are very vulnerable, which was well known to the ancient hunters, who collected their bloody catch.

So, most authors of Internet articles tend to believe that the ancient man hunted the mammoth, but hunting was rare and dangerous phenomenon. In addition, she wore a specialized - corral character. Some authors argue that the question of hunting mammoths remains open, since ancient man, for example, never depicted scenes of hunting mammoths, and there is no direct evidence of hunting for these large animals.

Chapter 3

Archeology is a science assistant to history. Archaeological excavations have helped scientists make great historical discoveries. Perhaps the analysis of archaeological data will also help us answer the question - hunting for mammoths: truth or fiction?

On the Internet, I found a lot of information that archaeologists in different time, at different sites of ancient people, bones and tusks of mammoths were found in large quantities, which were used in human life: “Our distant ancestors destroyed mammoths in such numbers that they could build their own dwellings from their tusks and skulls, each of which took several dozens of individuals.

For example, mammoth bones found during excavations of a Paleolithic dwelling in Gontsy in Ukraine were not scattered in disorder, but were arranged in a certain form in the form of an oval 4.5 m long and about 4 m wide, bordered by 27 mammoth skulls. In addition, 30 mammoth blades were dug vertically along the edge of this oval platform, 30 mammoth tusks lay in the middle. The skulls and shoulder blades of the mammoth were the foundation of the walls ancient dwelling, the tusks most likely served as the structural basis for its low domed roof.

During the excavations of the Yurovitskaya site in the Kalinkovichi district, the remains of 15-20 mammoths, mostly young, were found, as well as primeval bull, a wild horse, an arctic fox and 60 processed flints. Coal stains, a certain system in the placement of stones and large mammoth bones indicate that there was a dwelling of ancient people.

In the village of Kostenki, on the Don, not far from Voronezh, numerous sites were discovered, which were famous for a large number of fossil bones of animals, including mammoths. The remains of mammoths were found in more than 200 places on the territory of modern Belarus. Most of the time they were near the coast. big rivers.

Scientists, analyzing the ancient settlements, came to the conclusion that in search of prey, the ancient people inhabiting these places carried out long-distance travels, made raids with subsequent pursuit. They drove animals into deep ravines, cliffs or swamps, made ambushes along the paths that led to watering places, and also dug deep holes. As a rule, parking lots were built near such places.

But still, there was no convincing evidence that people hunted mammoths until recently, since the presence of a large number of mammoth bones in paleohuman sites does not yet indicate that this is precisely the result of hunting them. They could also accumulate for a variety of reasons not related to hunting. Indirectly, this may be evidenced by the fact that at some sites numerous bones were found, whose age significantly exceeds the age of the sites themselves.

All this could mean that the bones accumulated here naturally, or people simply picked up the bones of long-dead animals for their needs. On the other hand, so far there have been almost no finds of tools or their fragments stuck in the bones of prey - direct traces of hunting.

The first important discovery was made in the early 1990s at the famous Kostenki site. A rib was found there, in which the tip of a throwing weapon was stuck. However, this fact was not properly and timely made public, and almost no one knew anything about it, and almost no one returned to it. Then, already in 2002, in Western Siberia(in the Khanty-Mansiysk district, on the Ob) a mammoth vertebra was found about 13 thousand years old, in which the tip of the tool was also stuck.

But all these, of course, were single finds that did not constitute conclusive evidence.

But in 2001, geologist Mikhail Dashtserene discovered the northernmost human site - Yanskaya (near the mouth of the Yana River). Later group archaeologists explored the site and found amazing finds here.

A stuck tip was found in one mammoth shoulder blade. A fragment of another shoulder blade contained two split pieces of the tip and a piece of shaft (a piece of tusk was stuck between the stones). Finally, a hole left by the tip of a throwing weapon was found in the third blade [App. 6].

Finds at the Yanskaya site of ancient people in Siberia materially confirmed that people of the Stone Age still hunted the mammoth. According to scientists, there are no such finds anywhere in the world.

Based on these data, we can conclude that ancient people actively used bones, tusks, wool, and most likely meat for their own needs, but archaeologists rarely find direct evidence of ancient man's hunting.

Conclusion

In historical science, disputes about whether ancient people hunted mammoths have been going on for more than a hundred years. For a long time archaeologists who found the bones and tusks of mammoths almost unconditionally recognized them as the remains of human hunting prey. However, scientists did not come across real evidence of this.

As a result of the analysis of the literature, I concluded that most authors believe that hunting for mammoths is not fiction, but reality. Hunting for mammoths and other large animals during the Ice Age was an important necessity for the people of that time, as it provided them with almost everything they needed to survive in harsh conditions. But in the analyzed literature, there is practically no description of the methods of hunting mammoths.

An analysis of Internet sources showed that there are different views on this problem, there are both opponents and supporters of the mammoth hunting theory. But still, most of the authors of articles adhere to this theory.

Data from individual archaeological excavations also testify to this.

Thus, I was not able to confirm the hypothesis that ancient people did not hunt mammoths. As it turned out, the mammoth was the object of hunting. But it was a rare or frequent occurrence - I practically did not find information about this, only one author says that hunting was rare.

While working on this study, I had even more questions: why did mammoths die out, and what role did man play in this.

My work is of practical importance, as it can be used in history lessons as additional material. It would be interesting to meet this unusual animal today!

Bibliography

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Annex 1

Mammoth habitat in Eurasia

Annex 2

Quaternary period - the modern stage of the history of the Earth

Annex 3

woolly mammoth

Appendix 4

Mammoth hunting

Annex 5

Mammoth bones at the sites of ancient people

Appendix 6

Mammoth bones with fragments of ancient man's weapons on

Yanskoy parking

Different humanity Burovsky Andrey Mikhailovich

How was the mammoth hunted?

How was the mammoth hunted?

In the 19th century, without exaggeration, such a great scientist as V. V. Dokuchaev wrote about trapping pits for mammoths as the only possible way to get them.

This was in line with the ideological ideas of the society. One part of the educated society refused to even discuss that mammoth and man could coexist. This is against God! The other part of the educated society consisted of evolutionists, but the evolutionists knew everything in advance: they couldn’t wild man to hunt such a large beast with stone tools!

Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov on assignment Historical Museum in Moscow, he painted the painting “Hunting for a mammoth”. It was written in 1885, but is still reproduced in textbooks and popular books. This is a beautiful picture. It is very well made, and, of course, everything is depicted “as it should be” on it. Here is a mammoth in a huge pit, and a hunter struck by his tusks, whom his girlfriend is holding by the hand. And a crowd of wild "paleoliths" who throw stones at the mammoth.

Here is an elderly warrior with a wild cry throws a huge stone at a mammoth. The skins in which people are wrapped flutter, stones fly, the mammoth roars, the wounded lies with a face distorted from pain and fear ... Very artistic. Everything, as imagined at the end of the 19th century.

There is only one problem: the mammoth lived in different climatic zones, but it was also found in those places where permafrost was common ... Including in modern Yakutia ... but in Kostenki, near modern Voronezh, in the era of mammoth hunting, the climate approached subarctic. And they hunted him there too.

It would probably be cruel to take Vasnetsov to modern Yakutia and ask him to dig a hole for a mammoth, even with an iron shovel. It would be wrong to mock this worthy man. But this sinful desire appears in me every time I look at his wonderful picture.

Or maybe the mammoth was hunted that way?

This same idea of ​​a mammoth trap is reproduced in many books for teenagers. In one of them, very popular, it is described in detail how an ancient man digs such a trap, how he catches a mammoth and kills him, and one of the hunters falls into a hole, and the mammoth trampled him.

Such pictorial and literary works fixed the outdated point of view of vulgar materialism and its offspring - unilinear evolutionism.

In our time, along with the leading theory of driven hunts and ideas about the role of hunting with a spear, there are simply defiantly bold assumptions that the coexistence of a mammoth and a person is not a struggle, but a symbiosis.

I'm not talking about the fact that many tribes of Africans are known to go out on an elephant with a spear alone. They beat the elephant both from the approach, sneaking up on him, and from an ambush, but the heavy losses of people during these hunts are unknown.

Was it known in the 19th century? Was. In 1857–1876 Africans killed about 51 thousand elephants with the simplest weapon. True, the Africans acted not for food, but to sell ivory to Europeans. Most importantly, technically, "overkill" was at least theoretically possible. But scientists preferred to believe in pitiful Paleolithic people incapable of active hunting.