25,000-Year-Old Mammoth Rib Found Pierced With Arrow From Human Hunters
P. WotjalA close-up of the mammoth rib embedded with a Paleolithic flint fragment.
Not only did researchers in southern Poland find a 25,000-year-old mammoth rib, but they found that it was still pierced with an arrow left there by early human hunters.
It has long been believed that paleolithic humans killed these massive creatures by chasing and herding them off of cliffs. Human hunters below would then finish the job if a mammoth didn’t die from the fall outright.
That has largely been our best guess based on available evidence, but that evidence has lacked a lot of the forensic detail needed to get a clear picture. An arrow in a mammoth rib gives us exactly that, a clear glimpse at how these creatures were hunted by our ancestors.
The site also yielded the remains of at least 110 mammoths. These animals were colossal, reaching nine feet high and weighing in at around six tons. According to Science in Poland, hundreds of fragments of flint blades and one flint arrowhead thoroughly rounded this extraordinary find out.
Researchers stumbled upon the site by chance in 1967, with experts flocking to it ever since. Some believe the area was perfect for mammoth hunting as they could easily be trapped and ambushed there. Of course, early hunters made sure to keep a safe distance, which helped spur technological innovation in projectile weaponry such as spears and arrows.
“The spear was certainly thrown at the mammoth from a distance, as evidenced by the force with which it stuck into an animal — the blade had to pierce two centimeters thick skin and an eight-centimeter layer of fat to finally reach the bone,” said Piotr Wojtal of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
For Wojtal, the find sets an enormous precedent.
“We finally have a ‘smoking gun,’ the first direct evidence of how these animals were hunted,” he said.
