Woolly mammoths turned out to be a staple diet for prehistoric North Americans

A new scientific study has revealed evidence of the diet of prehistoric people living in North America during the last Ice Age, with an interesting finding: mammoths were a staple of their diet.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances on December 4, was based on chemical analysis of the skeleton of an 18-month-old child found in southern Montana. Because the child was still breastfeeding at the time of his death, the chemicals in his bones reflected his mother's diet through milk.

The study results showed that the mother's diet consisted mainly of meat from giant animals, with mammoths being the main food source.

Mammoths were a staple food in the diet of prehistoric North Americans - (Illustration: AFP).

According to the study, meat from giant animals made up 96% of the mother's diet, with mammoths accounting for about 40%. Other animals included deer, bison, camels and horses, while plants and small animals contributed only a small portion.

"Megafauna, especially Columbian mammoths , provided a huge source of food and energy-rich fats, " said archaeologist James Chatters of Applied Paleoscience (Washington). " A single elephant could provide enough food to feed a community of women, children and the elderly for days, even weeks, while hunters searched for their next prey."

The Columbian mammoth, a relative of the modern elephant, stood up to 4 meters tall and weighed up to 11 tons. The mother and child in the study belonged to the Clovis culture, a nomadic hunter-gatherer community that lived about 13,000 years ago. This community was notable for its hunting tools, especially large stone spears, which helped them hunt giant animals.

The study not only supports the theory that the Clovis people primarily hunted large animals and did not focus on gathering plants or hunting small animals, but also explains why they were able to expand rapidly across North and South America in a matter of centuries. It was this hunting strategy that allowed them to move with the herds, expanding their range.

"This study helps us better understand the extinction of megafauna at the end of the Ice Age , and suggests that humans may have played a more important role than previously thought," said Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and co- author of the study.

At the end of the Ice Age, as a warming climate caused the habitat of mammoths and other giant animals to shrink, the Clovis people encountered prey that was not accustomed to the presence of humans, making hunting easier.

"The Clovis people were highly sophisticated hunters, their skills honed over thousands of years of hunting giant animals in the grasslands from Eastern Europe to the Yukon Territory (Canada). When they arrived in North America, the animals were not accustomed to humans, making hunting easier and contributing to ecological stress, leading to a higher probability of extinction," Chatters explained.

All of these findings are consistent with previous archaeological evidence, where Clovis tools were found to be frequently associated with the bones of giant animals, especially those they hunted.