Ancient ancestors of Native Americans, known as the Clovis people, ate mainly mammoths and other large animals during the last ice age, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
Scientists have examined the chemical signatures left by food in the remains of an 18-month-old child who was buried about 13,000 years ago, before being discovered in 1968 near Wilsall, a small town in southwestern Montana in the United States.
As the boy was still being breastfed, the team of scientists from American and Canadian universities were able to infer his mother’s diet.
They concluded that it fed mainly on mammoths, which made up about 35% of its diet, as well as elk, bison and camels, while its consumption of small mammals and plants was negligible.
“Such a discovery made the Clovis people more real to me, as people I could almost interact with directly,” says James Chatters, co-author of the study and researcher at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, during a press conference. “It went from artifacts in the land and animal bones and patterns in the landscape to a group of people that I can imagine.”
The Clovis people likely traveled long distances following the migration routes of mammoths, helping to explain how they “could spread throughout North and South America in just a few hundred years,” Chatters adds in a statement.
Experts have long known that the Clovis people used weapons with sharp, spear-shaped points, called “Clovis points,” to kill mammoths and other large animals. But until now, only secondary evidence such as animal remains or specific weapons found at archaeological sites was available to suggest their diet, according to the study.
This has led to much debate about the diet of the Clovis people, with some scientists arguing that they hunted large animals and others suggesting that they had a more varied diet, including small animals, plants and fish, given the difficulties of hunting such large animals.
According to Gary Haynes, professor emeritus at the University of Nevada who was not involved in the study, “this new paper refutes that (second) line of reasoning.”
“The importance of this paper is that it provides direct rather than circumstantial evidence that mammoths were part of the Pleistocene diet,” Haynes, who has long studied ice age animals and the Clovis people, told CNN on Thursday (5).
To provide direct evidence, this paper used stable isotope analysis which, after adjusting for the effects of breastfeeding, allowed scientists to identify the specific foods the baby’s mother ate by studying different variants, called isotopes, of carbon and nitrogen.
The scientists compared the mother’s isotopic signatures to other food items to reach their conclusions. They also compared it to other omnivores and carnivores, finding that its diet was most similar to that of a saber-toothed tiger that primarily hunted mammoths.
For Shane Doyle, executive director of Yellowstone Peoples, who liaised with Native American tribes during the study, the findings illustrate “just how incredible (the Clovis people) really were.”
“They were skilled, but they were determined, and they were some of the most resilient people to ever walk this planet,” Doyle said at a press conference.
By hunting mammoths, it is possible that humans helped accelerate the animal’s extinction. “The largest mammoth sites in the US and Central Europe contain mostly the remains of younger animals… Possibly the easiest to kill,” Haynes said.
“The removal of this generation of animals from North America during a period of critical climate change may have been the main factor that led to the extinction of mammoths.”
Scientists analyze mammoths and find chromosome fossils for the first time
This content was originally published in American ancestors ate mammoth steak, says study on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.
