Humans in Siberia 45,000 Years Ago?

[painshill]

Humans in Siberia much earlier than previously thought (evidenced from cut marks on a mammoth carcass) and well before the Late Glacial Maxim (?) although the dating really needs independent confirmation:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3399806/Did-humans-hunt-mammoths-Arctic-45-000-years-ago-Spear-marks-frozen-carcass-suggests-ancestors-Siberia-10-000-years-earlier-believed.html

The link provided to the article in “Science” is dud. The article is here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/grisly-find-suggests-humans-inhabited-arctic-45000-years-ago

[Kyflintguy]

Very interesting article, I read it in my news feed from the Smithsonian. The part that caught my attention was the fact that the Early hunters attempted to remove part of the tusks, which they didn't completely accomplish, makes me wonder why they wanted it for? Trophy to commemorate the harvest of the such a mighty beast maybe? Or just use for tools? Cool read!

[2ndoldman]

I find it odd that it is so intact . Would not the people who are credited with killing the mammoth have tried to remove more of the animals meat and not also give up on trying to harvest the tusks?
From what I see the mammoth was not dismembered. Even the ribs are still attached.

[painshill]

Yes, it is odd isn't it, and not everyone is completely convinced. Robert Park, an archaeologist at the University of Waterloo in Canada (not part of the study team) while not ruling out that the mammoth was hunted, commented that the evidence was “pretty marginal”. Although there was apparent evidence of the tongue being cut out, the animal showed far less butchering than one would expect and still had the remains of its fat hump, which would habitually be removed for both food and fuel.

It is however only part of the accumulating evidence that anatomically modern humans pushed much further north and east into Siberia far earlier than we had previously imagined; and the consequent possibility that small groups of them may have been well-placed and suitably resourced to cross from Beringia into the North American continent via the corridor that existed before the LGM (ie much earlier than Clovis times). As the Science article mentions, we now have beads and stone and bone tools dated to at least 35,000 years ago from several sites in the Ural Mountains, plus butchered carcasses of woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer etc. Also, the 45,000 year-old human thigh bone from Ust-Ishim, just south of the Arctic Circle.

There are also previous finds reported by Pavlov et al. in 2001 from Mamontovaya Kurya in the European Arctic with dates at least 35,000 years ago. The site has yielded almost 300 artefacts and 4,000 animal bones (mostly mammoth). Since the site is on a Palaeo river channel, that creates the usual uncertainty about associations between tools and bones and the artefacts found are largely not diagnostic beyond being consistent with Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian or early Upper Palaeolithic. Notably, there was a 1.3 meter section of mammoth tusk dated to around 36,630 Radiocarbon years BP, together with three bones of similar age.

That tusk exhibits a series of distinct grooves which are 1-2mm deep, as densely spaced rows of lines. Microscopic analysis suggests that the grooves were made by chopping with a sharp stone edge, but it is uncertain whether the marks were formed during processing while using the tusk as an "anvil", or were intentional artistic/symbolic marks. Seven artefacts were found “in association” with the tusk: five unmodified stone flakes, a straight side-scraper made on a massive cortical blade and a small biface.




[Pictures from “Human presence in the European Arctic nearly 40,000 years ago” – Pavlov, Svendsen & Indrelid; Letters to Nature, Nature Vol 413, 6 September 2001]

[Kyflintguy]

Maybe a small group of hunters (2-3) happened upon an animal that was sick or injured? Just didn't have the manpower to completely dismember the animal... filled there bellies for a day or two and moved on? Very strange indeed. You figure scavengers would have also played some part in scattering remains also...

[sailorjoe]

Regarding the incomplete harvest of the carcass: There are a variety of plausible explanations why a carcass was not completely utilized. The tongue and other organs are among the first parts harvested by subsistence hunters down to this very day. Usually these are taken and used first. When really large animals are killed by small bands of hunters, usually the camp would be moved to the carcass and they would have lived nearby till the carcass was disposed of. This was done because in most cases the animal was of greater mass than all the possessions of the group. Too much work to move the elephant back to camp. Much easier to move the camp to the elephant. Also, they had to protect the carcass from other predators and scavengers that would be drawn to the kill site. Something happened that prevented the guys from getting back. At least that is the scenario I think happened.