Niramin - Jun 6th, 2016
Main occupation primitive people was getting food for themselves. 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 storehouses. They made warm clothes from the skin 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 art 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.
Video: 10,000 BC (1/10) Movie CLIP — The Mammoth Hunt (2008) HD
Video: 10,000 BC (2/10) Movie CLIP – Killing the Mammoth (2008) HD
Some experts, such as paleoecologist Felisa Smith from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, do not rule out that humans also changed the climate... by destroying mammoths and other northern giants. "With the disappearance large mammals producing large volumes of methane, the level of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere should have decreased by about 200 units, explains Smith. “This led to a cooling of 9–12°C about 14 thousand years ago.” The relationship between climate and mammoths is not denied by geophysicist Sergei Zimov, head of the North-Eastern scientific station located in the lower reaches of the Kolyma. “Do you think a man couldn’t kill a mammoth? Nothing? – he asks and then he himself, not without irony, answers: “I rolled up the mammoth’s wool with a long roller, urinated; There is frost all around - here comes the spear. I used the same wool to fasten the stone to the shaft, and did the same with the ax.”
In 2008, an unusual accumulation of mammoth and other animal bones was discovered that could not possibly have come from natural processes.Many here will probably remember the pygmies from the Congo who go at elephants with one spear, with which they pierce the giant’s stomach, crawling up from below. The pygmies' spear tips, however, are iron. And no one has yet found woolen copies in the northeast of Russia. And all over the world, in fact, only a couple of mammoth bones with tips stuck in them were discovered throwing weapons, and there is almost no direct evidence of human hunting for mammoth. And yet, through the efforts of paleontologists and archaeologists in Lately The contours of the complex relationship between people and mammoths began to emerge. So, in 2008, an unusual accumulation of bones was found in the lower reaches of the Yana River, in the north of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Unfortunately, it also turned out to be very rich in mammoth tusks, which were in great demand on the market. Its unknown discoverers, at great risk to their lives, dug a tunnel 46 meters long and up to 4.5 meters wide in the permafrost, trying to extract fossil treasures. Scientists from the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences also got something, Research Institute Arctic and Antarctic and Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They climbed to the very end of this gallery and found thousands of mammoth bones, as well as some remains of Pleistocene horses, bison, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer and bears, which are about 28 thousand years old. The most surprising thing is that this accumulation could not have appeared as a result of natural processes, for example, river transport, hunting by predators or the death of animals on salt licks. And the sorting of material was probably not natural, but the work of human hands: jaws, for example, were folded with jaws. Apparently, people for a long time they kept the bones that were most interesting to them, some of which bear traces of tools (the tools themselves - scrapers, knives, axes, points made from bone and local pebbles are also found) in a small river near the site - so that these bones would be cleared of remains fat and meat and soaked in water for further processing. Previously, such procurement pits were known only in Europe: in Russian and Ukrainian mammoth “villages”. The study of one of these “villages” - Yudinovo in the Bryansk region - allowed Mathieu Germonpre from the Royal Belgian Institute natural sciences in Brussels and Mikhail Sablin from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences to suggest that people ate fresh mammoth meat. The uniformly opened craniums of young mammoths are especially impressive: the brain is three kilograms of healthy and nutritious fats and proteins. How were carcass parts delivered to the sites? And to this the Belgian archaeozoologist has an answer: “They could transport meat and tusks from the butchering site on dogs.” Their remains, 25–28 thousand years old, were discovered at a site in the Czech Predmostje. A bone has been carefully placed in the jaws of one of the dogs, and the parietal bone has been perforated. “The people of the North believe that the soul is trapped in the skull, and they make a hole to release it,” she continues. IN hunting weapons the people of the end of the ice age had no shortage. And on the Yana River, not far from the “mammoth gallery,” spear extensions made from the horns of a woolly rhinoceros and straightened mammoth tusks were found.
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 shouted and drove it from all sides into this pit, 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.
“By its nature, the mammoth is a meek and peace-loving animal, and affectionate towards people. When meeting a person, the mammoth not only does not attack him, but even clings and fawns over the person” (from the notes of Tobolsk local historian P. Gorodtsov, 19th century).
Among the animals that have disappeared before human eyes, the mammoth occupies a special place. And the point here is not that this is the largest land mammal that people have encountered. It is still not completely clear why this Siberian giant died so unexpectedly. Scientists do not hesitate to classify the mammoth as a long-extinct animal. And they are easy to understand. None of the biologists have yet managed to bring back the skin of a “freshly slaughtered” animal from northern expeditions. Therefore, it does not exist. For scientists, the only question is: as a result of what cataclysms did this huge northern elephant, which roamed the vast expanses of Siberia 10-15 thousand years ago, disappear from the face of the earth?
If you look through old history textbooks, you will find out that it turns out that Stone Age people were the culprits behind the extinction of this giant. At one time, there was a widespread hypothesis about the amazing dexterity of primitive hunters who specialized exclusively in eating mammoths. They drove this powerful beast into traps and mercilessly destroyed it.
Proof of this assumption was the fact that mammoth bones were found at almost all ancient sites. Sometimes they even dug up the huts of ancient people, made from the skulls and tusks of the poor fellow. True, even looking at the magnificent fresco on the wall Historical Museum, depicting the ease with which northern elephants are killed with large stones, it’s hard to believe in the success of such a hunt. But at the end of the twentieth century, the ancient hunters were rehabilitated. Academician Nikolai Shilo did this. He put forward a theory that explains the death of not only mammoths, but also other inhabitants of the North: the Arctic yak, saiga antelope and woolly rhinoceros. 10,000 years ago North America and most of Eurasia was a single continent, welded together by a thickness of floating ice, covered with so-called loess - dust particles. Under a cloudless sky and a never-setting sun, the loess was completely covered with thick grass. Little snow harsh winters did not prevent mammoths from getting large quantities frozen grass, and long thick hair, thick undercoat and fat reserves helped them cope even with severe frosts.
But the climate changed - it became more humid. The continent on the floating ice disappeared. The thin crust of loess was washed away by summer rains, and the outskirts of Siberia turned from northern steppes into the swampy tundra. Mammoths were not adapted to humid climate: they fell into swamps, their warm undercoat got wet from the rains, a thick layer of snow that fell in winter did not allow them to reach the sparse tundra vegetation. Therefore, mammoths simply physically could not survive to our time.
But here's what's strange. As if to spite scientists, fresh remains of mammoths continue to be found in Siberia.
In 1977, a perfectly preserved seven-month-old mammoth calf was discovered on the Krigilyakh River. A little later, in the Magadan region, they found the Enmynville mammoth, or more precisely, its one hind leg. But what a leg it was! It was amazingly fresh and did not retain a trace of rotting. These remains allowed scientists L. Gorbachev and S. Zadalsky from the Institute of Biological Problems of the North to study in detail not only hairline mammoth, but also the structural features of the skin, even the content of sweat and sebaceous glands. And it turned out that mammoths had powerful hair, abundantly lubricated with fat, so climate change could not lead to the complete destruction of these animals.
A change in diet also could not be fatal for the “northern elephant”. Back in 1901, on the Berezovka River, a tributary of the Kolyma, the corpse of a mammoth was found and studied in detail by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In the stomach of the animal, scientists discovered plant remains characteristic of modern floodplain meadows lower reaches of the Lena River.
New information allows us to take cases of encounters between people and mammoths more seriously. These meetings began a long time ago. Travelers from many countries who visited Muscovy and Siberia, who were not even aware of the theories of modern biologists, stubbornly wrote about the existence of mammoths. For example, the Chinese geographer Sima Qian in his historical notes (188-155 BC) writes: “... among the animals there are... huge wild boars, northern elephants in bristles and northern rhinoceroses.” Herberstein, ambassador of the Austrian Emperor Sigismund, who visited mid-16th century century Rus', wrote in his “Notes on Muscovy”: “In Siberia... there is a great variety of birds and various animals, such as, for example, sables, martens, beavers, stoats, squirrels... In addition, weight. In the same way, polar bears and hares..."
Tobolsk local historian P. Gorodtsov talks about the mysterious beast “weight” in his essay “A Trip to the Salym Territory,” published in 1911. It turns out that the Kolyma Khanty were familiar with the strange beast “all”. This "monster" was covered with thick, long hair and had horns. Sometimes the “vesi” started such a fuss among themselves that the ice on the lake broke with a terrible roar.
Here is another very interesting evidence. During famous campaign Ermak to Siberia, in the dense taiga, his warriors saw huge hairy elephants. Experts are still at a loss: who did the vigilantes meet? After all, real elephants were already known in Rus' at that time. They were kept not only in the royal menagerie, but also in the courts of some governors.
Now let's turn to another layer of information - to the legends preserved by local residents. The Ob Ugrians and Siberian Tatars were confident in the existence of the northern giant and described it in detail to P. Gorodtsov exactly as stated in the quote placed at the beginning of the article.
This “extinct” giant was also seen in the 20th century. Western Siberia. Small lake Leusha. After the celebration of Trinity Day, boys and girls returned in wooden boats, the accordion played. And suddenly, 300 meters from them, a huge hairy carcass rises from the water. One of the men shouted: “Mammoth!” The boats huddled together, and people watched in fear as a three-meter carcass appeared above the water and swayed on the waves for several moments. Then the hairy body dived and disappeared into the abyss.
There is a lot of such evidence. For example, the famous researcher of extinct animals, Maya Bykova, talked about a pilot who saw a mammoth in Yakutia in the 40s. Moreover, the latter also plunged into the water and swam away across the surface of the lake.
It’s not only in Siberia that you can find a mammoth. In 1899, the American magazine McClure's Magazine published a note about a meeting with a mammoth in Alaska. When its author H. Tukeman traveled in 1890 along the St. Michael and Yukon rivers, he lived for a long time in one small Indian tribe and heard a lot there interesting stories from Old Injun Joe. One day Joe saw a picture of an elephant in a book. He became excited and said that he had met this animal on the Porcupine River. Here in the mountains there was a country that the Indians called Ti-Kai-Koya (trace of the devil). Joe and his son went to shoot beavers. After long journey through the mountains they came out into a vast, tree-covered valley with big lake in the middle. In two days the Indians made a raft and crossed a lake as long as a river. It was there that Joe saw a huge animal that resembled an elephant: “He was pouring water on himself from his long nose, and in front of his head protruded two teeth, each ten guns long, curved and sparkling white in the sun. Its fur was black and sparkling and hung on its sides like tufts of weeds on the branches after a flood... But then it lay in the water, and the waves running through the reeds reached our armpits, such was the splash.”
And yet where could such huge animals hide? Let's try to figure it out. The climate in Siberia has changed. IN coniferous taiga you won't find food. Another thing is along river valleys or near lakes. True, rich water meadows give way here to impassable swamps, and the most convenient way to get to them is by water. What prevents a mammoth from doing this? Why shouldn't he switch to an amphibian lifestyle? He should be able to swim, and not bad. Here we can rely not only on legends, but also on scientific facts. As you know, the closest relatives of mammoths are elephants. And just recently it turned out that these giants are excellent swimmers. They not only love to swim in shallow water, but also swim several tens of kilometers into the sea!
But if elephants not only love to swim, but also swim for many kilometers in the sea, then why shouldn’t mammoths be able to do this too? After all, they are the closest relatives of elephants. Who are their distant relatives? How do you think? The famous sea sirens are animals transformed in myths into sweet-voiced female mermaids. They descended from terrestrial proboscis animals and retained characteristics common to elephants: mammary glands, replacement of molars throughout life, and tusk-like incisors.
It turns out that sirens aren't the only ones with elephant characteristics. Elephants also retained some properties characteristic of marine animals. More recently, biologists have discovered that they are capable of emitting infrasounds at frequencies below the sensitivity threshold of the human ear and perceiving these sounds. Moreover, the organ of hearing in elephants is the vibrating frontal bones. Only sea animals, such as whales, have such abilities. For land animals this is unique property. Probably, in addition to this property, elephants and their relatives, mammoths, retained other qualities that facilitate their transition to an aquatic existence.
And one more argument in favor of the existence of mammoths in the North. This is a description of mysterious animals that live in the cold lakes of Siberia. The first to see a strange animal living in the Yakut Lake Labynkyr was geologist Viktor Tverdokhlebov. On July 30, 1953, he was lucky in a way that no other explorer of the unknown had been lucky for almost half a century. Being on a plateau rising on the surface of the lake, Victor observed “something” that barely rose above the surface of the water. From the dark gray carcass of the animal, swimming with heavy throws towards the shore, large waves spread out in a triangle.
The only question is, what did the geologist see? Most researchers of the unknown are sure that it was one of the varieties of waterfowl lizards that in some incomprehensible way survived to our time and for some reason chose the icy waters of the lake, where reptiles, as they say, were physiologically unable to live. Recently the MAI Kosmopoisk group visited the lake. The group members saw muddy, rippling footprints on the water. Ice stalactites, one and a half meters wide and five meters long, were discovered on the shore, formed as a result of water flowing from a drying animal. Imagine, at least for a moment, a crocodile from which icicles are falling! Yes, he, poor fellow, got into such climatic conditions, would have turned into an ice log in about twenty minutes. But here's what's remarkable. In stories about extraordinary inhabitants lakes often have a similar description: a long flexible neck, a body rising above the water. But maybe they weren't really Long neck and the body of a reptile plesiosaur, and a highly raised trunk and the head of a mammoth located behind it?
So, the mammoth, which disappeared ten thousand years ago after another sharp climate change, may not have disappeared at all, but, as Vladimir Vysotsky sings in one of his songs: “... dove and lay down on the ground.” He just wanted to survive. And, of course, he does not at all strive to be “located” and turned into meat.
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Mammoths and bipeds
Winter. For a long time bygone times glaciations in the highlands of North-East Yakutia. The flat, sometimes slightly hilly plain is covered with white snow. The dazzlingly bright rays of the sun play with multi-colored sparkles on this snowy white silence. In the weak wind, the yellow heads of rare cereals, protruding from under the snow, quietly sway. In the distance you can see the arched outline of a long lake - an oxbow lake. A herd of mammoths calmly grazes on its bend. Each of them resembles in size a huge cart or haystack, placed on four thick logs. But among them there are also very playful, active young animals of much smaller size. Not inferior in dimensions to modern ones big bulls, the “kids” start funny offensive-retreat games and run around their majestic relatives.
It's quiet and peaceful around. The giants of these expanses, deftly wielding their huge tusks, rake away the snow, powerful jaws They chew the withered grass and coarse shrubby vegetation extracted from under the snow.
But the silence on the snowy plain and the undisturbed peace of the mighty mammoths turned out to be deceptive. Patiently and quietly behind them 
Wise and treacherous two-legged creatures - people - closely watched. Hunters dressed in animal skins suddenly jumped out from behind the hills with deafening screams. The leader of the mammoths let out an alarming roar and led his herd away from the people - to the lake. The hunters' cunning trick worked: the animals ran towards their certain death. As soon as they began to cross the lake covered with ice and snow, terrible cracks appeared under their feet. The maddened animals instinctively gathered into a dense crowd. The half-meter ice could not withstand the weight of the animals accumulated in one place, and the entire herd of mammoths ended up in deep water. ice water. The mighty animals, in mortal horror, began to crush each other, floundering in the water, turning over multi-ton blocks of ice like light toys. The weak animals found themselves under water, while the strong ones furiously beat the edge of the ice with flexible trunks and strong tusks. But soon their strength ran out. An entire herd of mammoths perished and became the prey of savvy Stone Age hunters. The latter began to perform an unimaginably energetic ritual dance of good luck...
According to competent experts, the life of Stone Age tribes largely depended on the production of large animals. By hunting only small game they could not provide all the needs of their existence. People of the Stone Age, without having tools for hunting large animals, still knew the “Achilles heel” of such gregarious and heavy animals as mammoths. They were excellent at hunting mammoths and their companions (woolly rhinoceroses, bison, wild horses) by driving them through the ice.
Modern people The huge accumulations of bones are surprising - cemeteries of mammoths of different ages. Scientists put forward different versions the solution to this mystery. Very valuable finds often appear on the table of specialists - scraps of red, dark gray or black wool, bones with dried tendons. Occasionally, scientists get entire skeletons and remains of the corpses of mammoths, rhinoceroses, fossil bison and horses. Researchers study stone or bone arrowheads and spears of Stone Age hunters, argue about the methods and techniques of hunting, and are surprised at the ability of primitive people to survive in extreme conditions icing.
Starting from the Stone Age, humanity passed through the Bronze and Iron Ages.
In the history of mankind Stone Age is estimated at approximately two million years or a little more. Then people coexisted first with ancient elephants, then with mammoths and other giants who lived during the Quaternary glaciation.
According to research by P. Wood, L. Vachek et al. (1972), 400-500 thousand years ago in the European part of the world people hunted ancient elephants. On the territory of Yakutia (including the primitive people of Diring-Yuryakh), hunting tribes appeared about 35 thousand years ago. Before the complete disappearance of mammoths from the face of the earth, they at least hunted them for at least 250 centuries. IN glacial period in search of prey, these tribes spread to North America.
Did people kill mammoths?
Scientists have long ago somehow agreed by default that modern man – main enemy of all life on Earth. As it turned out, this is hereditary for him. According to American archaeologist Todd Sorovil, it was people who made a decisive contribution to the disappearance of mammoths from our planet.
Until now, it was believed that ancient mammals became extinct as a result of sudden climate change that occurred between 50 and 100 thousand years ago. Then two thirds of the animals died. Meanwhile, according to Sorovil, natural disasters played only a minor role in this. The scientist made his shocking conclusions based on a study of 41 areas in which the bones of elephant ancestors were found. Having compared these places, he discovered an interesting pattern: mammoths died out much faster where there were sites of ancient people nearby. In those areas where people did not have time to settle, the natural death of mammoths occurred much later.
Despite the absence in those time immemorial greenhouse effect And ozone holes, people, it turns out, coped well without the costs of the national economy. Although there was no global fur market then, mammoth skins were used in great demand- apparently, this was the main attire of our prehistoric ancestors. And mammoth meat was perhaps the main delicacy. Moreover, they had to get it all on their own - active hunting ultimately led to the complete destruction of the “hairy elephants.”
http://www.utro.ru/articles/2005/04/12/427979.shtml
American scientists have dealt a crushing defeat to scientific opponents studying the reasons for the disappearance of mammoths from the face of the Earth, pointing out the absurdity of the assumption that they fell victim to the gastronomic intemperance of our ancestors. IN last years the unfortunate fact of the discovery of an extremely small number of complete skeletons of these fossil animals was explained by the fact that most of them fell under the primitive cutting knife. Other hypotheses, such as: ecological catastrophy or a deadly epidemic - were rejected as untenable.
But the Americans rehabilitated their ancestors. At an international conference in Hot Springs, a researcher with the strikingly appropriate surname Firestone said that it was not animal disease or human gluttony that killed the mammoths. They ceased to exist as a result of the activity of a supernova, which brought down a hail of radioactive meteorites on the Earth.
Until now, speaking about the disappearance of mammoths, scientists agreed on one thing - they completely died out 11-13 thousand years ago; everything else was just speculation. Richard Firestone voiced his. About 41 thousand years ago, a supernova appeared at a distance of 250 light years from Earth. First, cosmic radiation reached our planet, followed by a stream of ice particles, which began to bombard the mammoth habitats.
The Americans even found traces of this radiation, for which they had to go to Iceland and delve into marine sediments. Having dug to the right layers, they discovered an unusual high concentration carbon C-14, which was explained by the influence of radiation from that same ill-fated supernova. And in the layers corresponding to the period of the untimely death of mammoths, radioactive pieces of ice were discovered.
It should be noted that Mr. Firestone was so kind that he did not completely destroy all other hypotheses about the causes of the death of mammoths. With full confidence, he stated that only the inhabitants of North America fell from cosmic influence. However geographical position Iceland, namely: its equidistance from the North American continent and Eurasia, still leaves no reason to blame excessively voracious primitive people for the death of mammoths.
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