
Mexican mammoth trap provides first evidence of prehistoric hunting pits - animalcule
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/07/mammoth-trap-mexico-prehistoric-hunting-pits
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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> Hunters may have used torches to scare the mammals into the area with the
> traps, which are about 6ft (1.70m) deep and 25 yards in diameter, but one of
> the skulls found also had marks of a spear wound on the front.

I find humans amazing. An adult mammoth is something even the more largest
predators would not attempt to hunt. And yet, here is a band of puny 2 legged
mammals armed with sticks with a flint at the end, hunting and killing masses
of these mighty beasts.

Our most amazing ancestors were not kings and emperors, but rather these pre-
historic hunters and gatherers who carved out a niche as alpha predators using
brains, language, and primitive tech.

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dsfyu404ed
>I find humans amazing. An adult mammoth is something even the more largest
predators would not attempt to hunt. And yet, here is a band of puny 2 legged
mammals armed with sticks with a flint at the end, hunting and killing masses
of these mighty beasts.

Humans are the only animal with the ability to communicate complex abstract
future plans (e.g. "today we all shore up the pit, tomorrow you guys wait over
there and we'll drive them into this pit"). And it's not like animals can
outrun us either. We're quite slow in a sprint but out cooling system is
optimized for a very high duty cycle so we can just keep on chasing. Imagine
being hunted by Terminator or Agent Smith. That's what the water buffalo or
mammoth feels like

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jeffdavis
How much of an advantage is our cooling system in colder climates?

~~~
gknoy
I first read about persistence hunting in an article about a family in Siberia
[0], so I'd assume that it's still feasible (if difficult).

0: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-
rus...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-
family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/?no-
ist)

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elmar
Related interesting info:

Eating bone marrow played a key role in the evolution of the human hand

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180711105725.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180711105725.htm)

Prehistoric humans ate bone marrow like canned soup 400,000 years ago

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191009142902.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191009142902.htm)

~~~
sachdevap
> Eating bone marrow played a key role

This conclusion is a big leap, even as per the article you shared. "The
strength required to access the high calorie content of bone marrow may have
played a key role in the evolution of the human hand and explain why primates
hands are not like ours, research has found."

It's just a possibility. They can't even make a strong claim about it.

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aazaa
> Both species later became extinct in the Americas.

It might sound odd to suggest that the extinction was caused by people. The
conventional view is that there weren't many of them in North America. So how
could anything have been hunted to extinction back then?

As documented in 1491 by Mann, this view of a sparsely-populated North America
prior to Columbus may not be correct. As many as 10x more people might have
lived there, wiped out by one European-borne plague after another. Before they
went, they had developed sophisticated technologies to change the landscape
and surrounding ecosystems to suit them.

Given all of this, it's much easier to imagine that the mammoths were indeed
hunted to extinction by the inhabitants of North America.

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ksaj
Blackfoot natives used to hunt buffalo in Alberta using a similar method,
dressed up as coyotes and wolves. One of the known sites has the awesome name
of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-Smashed-
In_Buffalo_Jump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-Smashed-In_Buffalo_Jump)

My favourite part of the given history:

> According to legend, a young Blackfoot wanted to watch the buffalo plunge
> off the cliff from below, but was buried underneath the falling buffalo. He
> was later found dead under the pile of carcasses, where he had his head
> smashed in.

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JoeAltmaier
Confused. What evidence was found, to indicate these mammoths didn't just
stumble into the pit? Was the pit man-made? Tool marks on the mammoth bones?
Evidence of hunting implements?

One spear mark is pretty slim evidence, but that's all they mentioned.

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solstice
Notably, the classic story of fur-clad prehistoric humans digging pits to trap
mammoths is quite unrealistic in colder climates (where wooly mammoths lived):
digging large pits in frozen soil with nothing but bones, sticks and maybe
shoulder blades (as spades) is extremely hard.

I wonder what the average temperature of Mexico was during that time...

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edgarvaldes
>Parts of a jawbone and spine of a camel, and the tooth of a horse were also
found at the site. Both species later became extinct in the Americas.

I didn't know that.

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hoorayimhelping
I just watched a PBS video about this yesterday [1]. Horses evolved in North
America, walked across the land bridge to Asia, died out in North America
during the ice age, were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppe, were transported
back to North America by Europeans, and then became feral on the plains that
they initially evolved on.

1)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZoTvXvV02A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZoTvXvV02A)

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chrischen
Didn’t Native Americans use horses? So they were using European horses?

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NeedMoreTea
Yes they were European horses, first brought by the Spanish. Once they arrived
Native Americans started using horses quite quickly.

~~~
huherto
As an interesting cultural bullet. The American Cowboy tradition is heavily
influenced by the Northern-Mexican Vaqueros.

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mc32
What about gauchos? Argentina used to supply a lot of beef to the word such
that they had been prosperous at one time.

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huherto
Vaqueros, Gauchos and Llaneros(Venezuela) probably have the same origin in
horse riding country side people on the Iberian Península. But I doubt the
Gauchos influenced the Cowboys since they are far, far away.

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burtonator
Regardless of the scientific or historical significant here; imagine how
amazing it would have been to be a prehistoric hunter and to kill one of
these.

It's like the modern version of winning the lottery.

One of these could feed your family for the entire winter.

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davidw
> One of these could feed your family for the entire winter.

Aaawwwwww, dad, mammoth meat agaaaaain?

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gefh
"The left shoulder blades are missing."

800+ bones from 14 mammoths, but only right shoulder blades. I'm not quite
sure what the chances of that being an accident are, unfortunately they didn't
say how many right shoulders they found which would make the math easier.

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andrewstuart
Presumably there would have been a giant feast afterwards because the meat
doesn't keep. Would have been fun to attend.

~~~
londons_explore
I'd be interested to see ancient solutions to this.

For example, if you were to tie the mammoth down, you might be able to cut off
a few legs and eat them, while bandaging up the mammoth to keep it alive for a
week or so till you kill it and eat the rest.

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thrower123
I can't imagine trying to deal with a mammoth. Especially with only stone
cutting tools.

The only thing I can think of would be luring one near a winter camp and
killing it nearby, when it would be cold enough to keep or freeze.

Even if you could butcher the several tons of meat and get it dried or smoked
in time, transport and storage would be huge problems.

It's enough of an ordeal to process a moose, with modern tools and machinery.

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burtonator
> Especially with only stone cutting tools.

If they were using obsidian other than the issue of constantly having to knap
new blades it should have been somewhat easy to work with.

The only reason we don't use this in modern times is that the blades break
apart over the long term.

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chopin
Nevertheless, there are ceramic blades for sale. I don't own them but I can
imagine that they are more difficult to sharpen.

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qwerty456127
Do people seriously believe ancient humans hunted mammoths? I thought it's
just a popular myth (some people even believe they rode dinosaurs, you know).
Weren't there other animals handier to hunt?

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grawprog
Ya, but a single mammoth could provide exponentially more meat for the same
efforts of hunting multiple smaller animals.

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red75prime
One mammoth - 2 boars, three mammoths - 8 boars, ten mammoths - 1024 boars?
That's what exponential means.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

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shawabawa3
He said exponential returns on effort.

i.e. Hunting a rabbit = 1 unit of effort and 1 unit of meat

A boar = 4 units of effort and 16 units of meat

A mammoth = 8 units of effort and 256 units of meat

So it actually kind of makes sense here

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red75prime
Then can we expect that if blue whale hunt requires 800 units of effort, we
can feed entire observable universe with its meat?

I understand what was said, I just don't like when people use "exponential" as
a synonym for "huge". There's nothing inherently exponential in meat to effort
ratio.

