25.10.2019

How did ancient people hunt? Why did ancient man need to hunt mammoths? How ancient people hunted mammoths

Where did mammoths come from? What kind of life did you lead? Why did they die out? People have been struggling with these mysteries for several centuries now. science community. And each new study refutes the previous one.

Yakut treasures

It all started with the Amsterdam burgomaster Witsen, when in 1692 he first described an intact mammoth carcass found in Yakutia. He didn't even know what he would give new life extinct animal species. Modern scientists increasingly call Yakutia the homeland of mammoths. This may not be the historical homeland, but at least it is the place with the highest concentration of mammoth populations in the past.

Behind last years This is where the largest number of animal remains were found (according to statistics, about 80%), including well-preserved ones. The scientific world was especially struck by the latest discovery - a 60-year-old female mammoth. But its uniqueness lies not so much in the preservation of the tissues, but in the liquid blood contained in them. This find could give scientists new knowledge about the genetic and molecular composition of primitive animals.

Mammoths began to die out due to warming

To this version in Lately More and more scientists are inclined. Dr. Dale Guthrie from the University of Alaska, who did radiocarbon dating of the remains of animals and people who lived more than 10 thousand years ago, agrees with her. According to Guthrie climate change transformed a dry and cold area into a more humid and warm one, which in turn led to a modification of vegetation - the mammoths simply did not have time to adapt to this.
Other scientific evidence confirms the decline of tundra forests, the main habitat of mammoths. Like reindeer mammoths, depending on the time of year, wandered in search of their usual food - in the summer they moved to the north, and in the winter to southern regions. And then one day they were faced with a lack of tundra vegetation.

In 1900, on the banks of the Berezovka River, a mammoth carcass, virtually untouched by time and predators, was discovered. Later, other similar remains were found. Some details, including unchewed grass, suggested that the animals died suddenly. The version of murder was dropped immediately - there were no signs of damage. Scientists puzzled over this mystery for a long time and finally came to an unexpected conclusion - the animals died after falling into the melted wormwood. Over time, researchers were able to discover more and more animals that ended up in the old riverbeds. The rise in temperature played a cruel joke on them.

Here is another fact in favor of the version of the extinction of animals due to global warming. Researchers have found that during the process of climate change, mammoths also changed their size. During the ice ages (Zyryansk and Sartan times) they became larger, and during periods of global warming (Kazantsev and Kargin times) they became smaller. It follows from this that cold was more preferable to mammoths than warmth.

People didn't hunt mammoths

According to one hypothesis, the mammoths were exterminated by hunters, at least, British naturalist Alfred Wallace was inclined to believe this version. Indeed, many items made from mammoth skin and tusks are found at ancient human sites. We also know about people hunting mammoths from school textbooks. However, modern researchers claim that man did not hunt mammoths, but only finished off sick and weak animals. The fact is that with warming, the groundwater that rose to the top washed out the minerals from the soil that were part of the plant food of the mammoths. The fragility of the bones, which appeared as a result of a poor diet, made the giants vulnerable to humans.

A.V. Bogdanov in his book “Secrets of the Lost Civilization” convincingly proves the impossibility of people hunting mammoths. U modern elephant the skin is about 7 centimeters, and in the mammoth, due to the layer of subcutaneous fat, it was even thicker. “Try yourself with a stick and a stone to pierce the skin, which does not burst even from the tusks of five-ton males,” says the writer.
But then Bogdanov is even more convincing. Among the reasons, he names the very tough and stringy mammoth meat, which was practically impossible to eat, as well as unbearable even for large group people actions necessary for a successful hunt. To catch even a medium-sized specimen, you need to dig a hole of at least 7 cubic meters, which is impossible to do with primitive tools. It is even more difficult to drive a mammoth into a hole. These are herd animals, and when trying to take even a baby from the herd, hunters risked being trampled by multi-ton carcasses.

Contemporaries of the Egyptian pyramids

Until recently, it was believed that mammoths disappeared from the face of the earth 10,000 years ago. But at the end of the 20th century, the remains found on Wrangel Island significantly corrected the dating. Based on the data obtained, scientists have determined that these individuals died approximately 3,700 years ago. “Mammoths inhabited this island when they already stood Egyptian pyramids and the Mycenaean civilization flourished,” states Frederik Paulsen. The Wrangel Island mammoths lived when most of these animals on the planet had long since disappeared. What made them move to the island? This remains a mystery for now.

Holy tooth

In the Middle Ages, people who unearthed the bones of mammoths had no idea who they belonged to and often mistook them for the remains of cynocephali, huge creatures with a dog’s head and a human body, who lived in legendary times. For example, in Valencia, a mammoth molar tooth was a sacred relic, which according to legend belonged to the “dog-headed” Christopher, a holy martyr revered by the Catholic and Orthodox Church. It was recorded that during processions back in 1789, canons also carried a mammoth femur along with a tooth, passing it off as a fragment of the saint’s hand.

Relatives

Mammoths are close relatives of elephants. This is evidenced by their scientific name Elefas primigenius (translated from Latin as “first-born elephant”). According to one version, the elephant is the result of the evolution of the mammoth, which adapted to more warm climate. Perhaps this is not so far from reality, because mammoths of late times corresponded in their parameters to the Asian elephant.

But German scientists compared the DNA of an elephant and a mammoth, and came to a paradoxical conclusion: mammoth and Indian elephant these are two branches that originated from African elephant approximately 6 million years ago. Indeed, recent studies have shown that the ancestor of the African elephant lived on earth more than 7 million years ago, and therefore this version does not seem fantastic.

"Resurrect" the giant!

Scientists are already quite for a long time do not give up attempts to “resurrect” the mammoth. So far to no avail. The main obstacle to the successful cloning of an extinct animal, according to Semyon Grigoriev (head of the P. A. Lazarev Mammoth Museum), is the lack of source material of adequate quality. But, nevertheless, he is convinced of good prospects this undertaking. He places his main hopes on a recently extracted female mammoth with preserved liquid blood.
While Russian scientists are trying to recreate the DNA of an ancient animal, Japanese experts have abandoned ambitious plans to populate the Russian Far East mammoths due to the futility of the idea of their “resurrection”. Time will tell who was right.

The Upper Paleolithic era covers the period from 40 to 12 thousand years ago. This is the time when a sharp change in the appearance of material culture took place on the territory of Europe, which found its expression in a set of forms of stone tools and high level development of bone processing technology. It is at the Upper Paleolithic sites of ancient hunter-gatherers that archaeologists discover evidence of the active use of bone, horn and tusk raw materials, from which a variety of household items, jewelry, figurines of people and animals, and weapons were made.

About 25-12 thousand years ago, a unique vibrant culture of mammoth hunters formed in the periglacial zone of the Russian Plain. One of its centers was located in the Desna River basin, a large right tributary of the Dnieper River. For more than 15 years, Kunstkamera archaeologists have been conducting excavations in this region of Upper Paleolithic sites dating from 16 to 12 thousand years ago. The most important among the studied monuments is the Yudinovo site in the Bryansk region of Russia.

Gennady Khlopachev:

Currently, the question of whether ancient people hunted mammoths is debatable. Some researchers are confident that numerous finds of mammoth bones at sites are the result of hunting these animals. Others believe that ancient people brought bones and tusks from “mammoth cemeteries” - places where the carcasses of fallen mammoths accumulated. Among the exhibits of the Kunstkamera there is a unique find of a mammoth rib with a fragment of a flint tip stuck in it from the Kostenki 1 site. This is important evidence in favor of the hypothesis of the existence of mammoth hunting in the Upper Paleolithic. However, this does not mean that people could not use ornamental material tusks of dead animals.

Where did the mammoth hunters live?

The camps of mammoth hunters differed in their purpose and duration of operation. Some were long-term, some involved only a short stay or even a visit. People came to some places to hunt or gather, and to others to extract the necessary stone raw materials.

The Yudinovskaya Upper Paleolithic site was discovered in 1934 by the Soviet, Belarusian archaeologist Konstantin Mikhailovich Polikarpovich. Research at the site has a long history; excavations were carried out by several generations of Soviet and Russian archaeologists. In 1984, two dwellings made from mammoth bones discovered here were museumized, and a special pavilion was erected above them. An expedition of the MAE RAS has been excavating the monument since 2001.

The Yudinovskaya site was located far from sources of flint raw materials - the most important material for the manufacture of a wide variety of tools: points, scrapers, burins, and piercing tools. Archaeologists discovered the flint outcrops closest to the site thanks to aerial photography taken from a small single-engine aircraft. Scientists associate the site of the Yudinovsky settlement with a nearby ancient ford, which served as a crossing for animals. The ford was discovered by archaeologists as a result of underwater research in a place where local residents often lifted mammoth bones. It turned out that here the river bottom was formed by a layer of very dense clay. Ancient man knew about this and came here to hunt.

The Yudinovskoe settlement is often defined as a long-term stop for one local group of primitive mammoth hunters. However, this does not mean that people lived there continuously.

Gennady Khlopachev, Head of the Department of Archeology, MAE RAS:

Ancient hunters migrated and this site was visited many times. In some seasons of the year people lived here for a long time, in others they could stay for a short time. Two cultural layers have been discovered at the Yudinovskaya site, which contain evidence of numerous visits at different times. The lower cultural layer dates back to about 14.5 thousand years ago, the upper - 12.5–12 thousand years ago.

The cultural layer is the horizon of occurrence of cultural finds with various anthropogenic remains. The lower cultural layer of the Yudinovskaya site lies at a depth of 2 to 3 meters from the modern day surface.

How ancient people built houses from mammoth bones

On the territory of Yudinov, five dwellings of the Anosovsko-Mezinsky type were found - these are round-shaped structures made of mammoth bones. Similar objects were previously discovered at the Mezin and Anosovka 2 sites. However, they are called dwellings to a certain extent arbitrarily, because it is not entirely clear how people used them.

These designs have special features. During their construction, a small depression was made, around which mammoth skulls were dug in a certain way, placing them with the alveoli down and the frontal parts in the center of the circle. The space between the skulls was filled with other bones - large tubular bones, ribs, shoulder blades, jaws, vertebrae. Most likely, the bones were held together by sandy loam. In diameter, such a structure could have from 2 to 5 meters.

In the “dwellings” they often find various kinds of crafts and decorations made from mammoth ivory, numerous shells with holes for hanging, some of which come from the Black Sea coast. Often objects are found inside the structure itself. For example, in the alveolus of one of the mammoth skulls, archaeologists found ocher, between the teeth of another vertically mounted skull - a large ornamented pierce from a small milk tusk of a baby mammoth.

Gennady Khlopachev, Head of the Department of Archeology, MAE RAS:

The position of the find excludes the possibility that it could have ended up between the teeth of a mammoth skull by accident. It was placed there on purpose. A significant part of the art objects and richly ornamented tools found at the Yudinovskaya site come from excavations of such structures. Perhaps people used these structures as dwellings, or perhaps they were of a ritual nature, where they brought “gifts”.

What do we know about the economy of mammoth hunters?

In addition to dwellings, there were utility pits on the territory of the Yudinovsky settlement. Some of them were used for storing meat, others for waste disposal. Meat pits were dug down to the permafrost, animal meat was placed inside, and pressed down on top with shoulder blades and mammoth tusks. Archaeologists distinguish such vaults and pits by the special set of bones found in them. These are the remains of many species of animals: mammoths, wolves, musk oxen, arctic foxes and various birds.

Gennady Khlopachev, Head of the Department of Archeology, MAE RAS:

There is a scientific concept “faunal mammoth complex”: these are the bone remains of a mammoth and other animals of the late Pleistocene that coexisted with it. About 12-10 thousand years ago the climate in Eastern Europe changed, glacial period ended, warming came, mammoths became extinct. The culture of mammoth hunters disappeared along with them. Other animals became the objects of hunting, and, as a result, the type of farming changed.

The animal remains found at the Yudinovsky settlement not only tell us what animals the ancient man hunted, but make it possible to determine with high accuracy in what seasons people lived at this site. The study of the bone remains of young animals, as well as the bones of migratory birds, makes it possible to determine with an accuracy of up to a month, and sometimes up to a week, when they were taken by hunters.

Weapons, tools and products of ancient man

Found at the Yudinovskaya site a large number of tools and weapons. Hoes, tusk scrapers, bone knives, and hammers were often decorated with complex geometric patterns. At the Yudinovskaya site, an ornament imitating the skin of a snake was widespread.

It is believed that the onion was invented already in the Upper Paleolithic. Tips and darts made from mammoth ivory were used for hunting. They were often equipped with flint inserts: flint plates with a blunt edge. The inserts, sequentially placed on the surface of the tip, significantly enhanced its damaging capabilities.

Gennady Khlopachev, Head of the Department of Archeology, MAE RAS:

The use of inserts for making hunting tools has become revolutionary invention Upper Paleolithic man. This made it possible to hunt such large animals as mammoths. In 2010, at the Yudinovsky settlement, a unique find of a tusk tip was made, in which several flint inserts were preserved. To date, only four similar finds have come from Europe.

In addition to weapons and household items, items that had no utilitarian purpose are often found at sites. These are various jewelry: brooches, pendants, tiaras, bracelets, necklaces.

For the region of the Desna River basin, Upper Paleolithic burials are unknown. During the entire study of the Yudinovskaya site, only one fragment of the tibia of an adult and three baby teeth of children were found. It is planned that these remains can be used to isolate the DNA of an ancient person, which will allow us to imagine what the ancient inhabitants of this settlement looked like.

What if, as in science fiction films, mutants take over the planet? Many people will die, but you won't, you will know how to hunt dinosaurs!

...mutants or dinosaurs will fill the planet again!

According to the latest, very scientific information, the last living mammoths on planet Earth became extinct approximately 6-10 thousand years ago. But elephants, hippos, and rhinoceroses are still found. In the middle (climatic) zone, smaller animals still live: elk, bear, wild boar, deer, but a real survival specialist simply must know, just in case, how to hunt any animal of any size, including elephants and hippos.

Let's return to mammoths. How do you think ancient people hunted mammoths for meat? There are many clear answers to this question in films, history books and paintings in museums. The whole tribe first drove the poor animal into a pit, and then threw stones at the mammoth in the pit to death.

Catching large ungulates using trapping pits is still practiced in some places, but I personally have not heard of hunters slaughtering the caught animal in a pit with stones. Do you know why? Because giant hematomas form at the impact sites. In other words, bruises. Or more precisely, an unappetizing, jelly-like mass of black-blue-violet color. It is unlikely that ancient hunters deliberately spoiled the meat of hunted animals in this way. In order to kill a mammoth in a pit, it was enough to poke it in the neck with a spear and wait for the mammoth to die from loss of blood.

It is also known that ancient people covered the floors of their homes with mammoth skin. But in the cramped pit it was impossible to remove the skin from the mammoth. And digging a hole in permafrost is quite difficult. During the Ice Age, in the habitats of mammoths, the ground was frozen for sure. It turns out that there were no holes either. How were mammoths killed? Yes, just like modern elephants or moose with the help of primitive weapons. For example, African pygmies They hunt with their toy weapons, hit them in the stomach with a spear, and after waiting two or three hours for the elephant’s peritoneum to become inflamed, they came up and finished off the animal with a spear in the neck. The main thing in such a hunt was not to chase a wounded animal in vain. The beast walked away and, not noticing the pursuit behind it, stopped and lay down, feeling the pain from the wound. Having rested, the animal could no longer get up and it was not difficult to find it by following its tracks.

As you can see, killing any large animal for meat does not require the presence of all the warriors of the tribe, including their angry wives and starving children. One experienced hunter was quite enough.

The same applies to the use of elephant traps. They don't dig holes for elephants. Trap holes are dug for smaller animals, where tiny baby elephants can actually end up. Other traps are used for adult elephants (and hippos). They hang a spear coated with a thick layer of clay over the elephant path. So that the total weight of the spear with a lump of clay would be over a hundred kilograms. Such a modernized spear can be hung by two adult men on a tree branch and, using a simple trigger device, secure the spear above the path. The pygmies spread clay on the elephant spear already on the tree. An elephant (hippopotamus, antelope, zebra...) passing under a tree touched the guard and the spear falling down pierced the elephant (or hippopotamus) right through. Which led to the rapid death of the animal.

Similar trap spears were used almost all over the world. In Vietnam, similar traps, lumps of clay with many bamboo stakes, were used to successfully “hunt” even American intervention soldiers. Additionally, traps like these are much simpler than piling up logs in bear traps. By the way, maw-type traps are also known all over the world. For example, in Africa, even hippopotamuses were caught with mouth-type traps. Hippos outside the water are quite shy and cautious, and the fear of human traps was apparently passed on to them (the hippos) at the genetic level. Locals in order to scare away hippos, they placed on their path a kind of trap made of a pumpkin or a small stump of a tree, resting one end (of the pumpkin) on a stick. This layout was quite enough for hippos to stop using this path for a long time.

On Siberian bears and moose, if necessary, you can use a powerful crossbow (crossbow) with a spear instead of an arrow. Hunters used crossbows (crossbows) with bows that could be pulled by two or three adult men at once until the mid-twentieth century. Then the crossbow bow began to be replaced firearms or loops of steel cable.

You yourself have already guessed that all the traps described above are considered poaching and are prohibited for use everywhere. Knowing and applying are not the same thing. But you need to know just in case.

What do you say: “A tyrannosaurus appeared from somewhere and needs to be killed off? I hope you didn't scare him? Then we’ll get together now and do as you ask.”

The life of ancient man was very difficult and dangerous. Primitive tools, constant struggle for survival in a world of predators, and even ignorance of the laws of nature, inability to explain natural phenomena- all this made their existence difficult, full of fear.

First of all, a person needed to survive, and, therefore, get food for himself. They hunted mainly large animals, most often mammoths. How did ancient people hunt with simple tools?

How the hunt took place:

Ancient people hunted only together, in large groups.
First, they prepared so-called pit traps, at the bottom of which they placed stakes and poles so that the animal that fell there could not get out, and people could finish it off to the end. People studied well the habits of mammoths, who went approximately the same way to a watering hole to a river or lake. Therefore, holes were dug at the places where mammoths moved.
Having discovered the beast, people screamed and drove it from all sides into this hole, once in which the beast could no longer escape.
A captured animal became food for a long time for a group of people, a means of survival in these terrible conditions.

Imagining the picture of how primitive people hunted, one can understand how dangerous hunting was for them; many died in fights with animals. After all, the animals were huge and strong. Thus, a mammoth could only kill a person with a blow from its trunk and trample him with its massive feet if it caught up with him. Therefore, one can only wonder how they hunted mammoths with only sharpened sticks and stones in their hands.

Niramin - Jun 6th, 2016

The main occupation of primitive people was getting their own food. They wandered after large animals, collecting nuts, berries and various roots. And when they succeeded, they went hunting.

Prehistoric people were very good hunters. They learned to drive animals into traps. Watery swamps or deep ditches served as traps. A group of hunters, with noise, shouts and fire, drove the animal straight into the pit. When an animal fell into a ditch, the hunters could only finish it off and celebrate their catch.

Mammoths are huge animals; they were larger and heavier than modern elephants. Mammoth tusks could reach a length of 4 m and a weight of 100 kg. Scientists believe that mammoths used their tusks as snow plows to dig grass out from under the snow for food.

Killing one mammoth could feed hunters for two months. Moreover, not a single part of the animal carcass was wasted. The meat was used for food, and what people could not eat right away was dried and stored in storerooms. They made their own from the skin warm clothes and built huts. Bones were used as tools and weapons, as well as in the construction of huts.

The process of hunting a mammoth was often depicted in primitive rock paintings of tribes of that time. There is an opinion that people depicted in the drawings those animals that they worshiped or hunted. So painting served some magical ritual, as if the image will attract a real animal during the hunt.

The hunt of primitive people for mammoths - in the pictures and photos below:

Photo: Rock painting of a mammoth.

Photo: Hut made of mammoth bones in the Paleontological Museum of Kyiv.