Mammoths were staple diet for first humans in North America during Ice Age, finds study

The world’s last woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island. (Representative Image: Canva)

Scientists have unearthed direct evidence suggesting that the first humans in North America hunted mammoths as a dietary staple, reshaping our understanding of ancient survival strategies. The findings, based on chemical analysis of a child's remains from southern Montana, highlight how the Clovis people, who lived around 13,000 years ago, thrived by targeting the largest prey during the last Ice Age.

The study, published in Science Advances, analysed the bones of an 18-month-old child, known as Anzick Boy, to reconstruct his mother’s diet. Archeologist James Chatters, co-lead author of the study, explained in in the journal Science Advances, "Megafauna, particularly the immense Columbian mammoths, provided huge packages of meat and energy-rich fat. One animal could sustain a dependent community of children, care-giving women, and the less mobile elders for days or even weeks while the hunters sought their next kill."

The analysis revealed that megafauna accounted for an overwhelming 96% of the mother’s diet, with mammoths comprising 40%. Other large animals, including elk, bison, camels, and horses, contributed to the remainder, leaving little room for smaller animals or plant-based foods.

The Clovis people, highly skilled nomadic hunters, used advanced tools like stone spear points to take down massive prey. This strategic focus allowed them to spread rapidly across North and South America, following the migration of these megafauna over vast distances.

"These results also help us understand megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last Ice Age, indicating humans may have played a more important role than is sometimes thought," said Ben Potter, an archeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and co-author of the study.

The Clovis people arrived in North America during a period of dramatic climate change. As warming temperatures shrank habitats for mammoths and other large plant-eaters, human hunting pressure exacerbated the stress on these animals, potentially hastening their extinction.

"Clovis people were highly sophisticated hunters, with skills refined over more than 10,000 years hunting megafauna in the steppes that stretched from eastern Europe to the Yukon," Chatters noted. Encountering prey that was ecologically stressed and unfamiliar with human predators gave these ancient hunters an advantage.

The study revealed that the mother’s diet closely resembled that of apex predators like Homotherium, a now-extinct scimitar-toothed cat that also preyed on mammoths.