25,000 year old Mammoth bone structures

[Hoss]

Check out this article from the Smithsonian about some mammoth bone structures in Russia.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/60-mammoths-house-russia-180974426/

[cgode]

Very interesting Matt! I hadn’t heard of actual structures being built with bones no less....very cool. Thanks for posting the article

[Lindenmeier-Man]

Maybe I missed it in the read, I don’t think they mentioned tools ...... Holliday found a mammoth grave yard in NM, I have the gps location, private ranch. I’ve always wondered if the elephant legends are true that they went to a specific area to die. Perhaps, if true modern elephants carried out the practice of their ancestors....

[painshill]

Thanks for the link, Hoss

No tools were found, but there was a small amount of lithic debitage from tool manufacture. Mammoth bone structures generally interpreted as 'huts' are not uncommon in this region, but this is one of the largest found and also one of the oldest, at 25,000 years.

The others are generally smaller and more recent. In 1965, a group of 4 huts were found at Mezhyrich in central Ukraine, made from a total of 149 mammoth bones and dating to about 15,000 years ago. If correctly interpreted as dwellings, it would make them among the oldest-known purpose-built accommodation shelters, which is a key reason why there is scepticism that this larger and older construction was used for habitation.

The Mezhyrich huts are believed to relate to ‘Cro-Magnon’, which is the generic term for the earliest populations of anatomically modern humans in Europe… now superceded by the preferred term: European Early Modern Humans (EEMH). On the site of the huts, among the artefacts found were a map inscribed onto bone, presumed to show the area around the ‘settlement’, the remains of what appears to be a ‘drum’ made from a mammoth skull and painted with a pattern of dots and lines in red ochre, plus some amber ornaments and fossil shells collected from elsewhere.

[south fork]

Interesting reminds me of a surround / trap drive the animal in for the kill lack of trees or loose rock use what's handy ?