Scientists have traced the life, travels and death of a female woolly mammoth who died at the hands of early humans 14,000 years ago
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Picture the scene: A grey sky hangs leaden and cold over a landscape streaked in ice and with snow drifts piling up against rocks and ridges. Atop a low rise, a group of people, wrapped in warm furs and with primitive spears in hand, wait and watch, out of sight behind a boulder. Just below them, a group of three shaggy-haired woolly mammoths – a mother and two youngsters – pass by.
As they near the attack begins. Spears fly and the screech of terrified mammoths reverberates over the ice. Within moments the mammoths have been slaughtered and these early human arrivals to what is today Alaska have food days to come.
Chances are we will probably never know if this scene actually took place, but thanks to recent research using DNA samples and isotopic analysis of the bones and tusk of mammoth found at Swan Point in western Alaska we have, for the first time, got a fairly good idea of the life and movements of a female mammoth that has been named Élmayuujey’eh.
According to the study, which was published in the journal Science Advances, Élmayuujey’eh was found to have lived some 14,000 years ago, but she died in the prime of her life, at a mere twenty years of age (mammoths could live for sixty years). During her short life, she marched many hundreds of kilometres across the frozen tundra of what is today Alaska and Canada. However, in just the last three years of her life, the researchers from the universities of Alaska Fairbanks, McMaster and Ottawa discovered that she walked a thousand kilometres before her untimely end. And how did that untimely end come about? Well, we can’t be sure. But, it seems that some of the earliest human arrivals in Alaska may have hunted her down.
Humans first reached these coldest corners of North America by crossing the Bering Land Bridge from Asia (today this is the Bering Sea). It’s thought that these first humans lived alongside – and hunted – mammoths for around a thousand years before the gradual extinction of mammoths in North America around 14,000 years ago. It’s long been thought that other mammoth populations in remote parts of Siberia might have survived until 10,000 years ago, but new evidence indicates that mammoths may in fact have still been plodding across the ice a mere four thousand years ago in some places.
Alongside Élmayuujey’eh, the researchers also found the remains of two other, younger mammoths. The assumption is that mammoths lived in a similar social circle to present-day elephants, with matriarch females leading a herd of other females and young. Males, just as with elephants, would likely have left the safety of the herd in their teenage years to either join wide-ranging bachelor groups or lived a solitary existence. By using DNA samples extracted from the tusks, the researchers discovered that the two youngsters found alongside Élmayuujey’eh were closely related to her. Perhaps even her own offspring. The researchers also found the remains of other mammoths at another nearby site and, by using the same technique, were able to deduce that the mammoths at this second site were more distantly related to Élmayuujey’eh.
We know that the first humans to live in this region hunted mammoths and set up seasonal mammoth hunting camps. One of those was found close to where Élmayuujey’eh and her relations were found, and what’s more, the researchers were also able to work out that Élmayuujey’eh was healthy and well-fed when she died but that her death coincided with the seasonal hunting camp being in the area. And so, even though we cannot be a hundred per cent sure of how Élmayuujey’eh met her fate all the clues do point to her being hunted by man.
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