No wonder mammoths are extinct! Caution satire!
Were our hunter ancestors that stupid? I have some doubts. Maybe these mammoth accumulations were something like holy sites (what age were the female mammoth when they died or were killed?)? If these females were of older age, then they were perhaps past prime gestation age.
The study below does not seem to address the age at death of the female mammoths!
What is wrong with the use of the term "anthropogenic" in the title of the research paper below? Anthropogenic is a fairly new term that has become fashionable in recent times (e.g. in the context of environmental pollution, global warming/climate change demagoguery). It is also very much a lefty predilection! It also implies modern knowledge and science, which our hunter ancestors did not have!
"The term anthropogenic became popular during the 1950s to 1980s, shifting from a niche academic word into widespread use as public concern over global environmental changes and pollution grew." (Google Search)
"... Why ice age hunters preferred to take down female mammoths remains unclear. “While it is tempting to assume that hunters would have targeted females because they were smaller than adult males, the reality may have been more complex,” ... For instance, herds of females may have moved across the landscape more predictably than the wandering males, making them more reliable meals. The ancient humans “ ..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
• Genetic sex determination of 521 woolly mammoths based on genome-wide data
• Naturally deposited mammoth remains are consistently biased toward males
• In contrast, 70% of remains in Upper Paleolithic mammoth accumulations are female
• This female bias suggests mammoth bone accumulations resulted from human exploitation
Summary
Whether large accumulations of woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) bones reflect natural mortality or deliberate human resource exploitation has long been debated, with major implications for understanding Late Pleistocene human-megafaunal interactions.
Here, we use ancient DNA to investigate site-formation hypotheses by comparing genetic sex ratios from mammoth remains recovered in putative anthropogenic bone accumulations and from geographically dispersed, non-anthropogenic contexts.
We studied genome-wide data from 521 woolly mammoths—including 100 mammoths from bone accumulation sites and 421 mammoths from natural depositional settings across Eurasia and North America—of which 448 are newly generated.
Genetic sex determination reveals a striking contrast between contexts: mammoths from dispersed sites show a male bias (∼66.5%), which is consistent with the heightened vulnerability of solitary males to hazards such as natural traps, where bones are more likely to be preserved,
whereas mammoths from anthropogenic bone accumulations are predominantly female (∼70%). This female bias is pervasive across multiple sites, indicating an anthropogenic origin for these accumulations as a result of Upper Paleolithic hunters preferentially exploiting female mammoths, possibly derived from herd contexts.
Together, these results provide population-scale genetic evidence that highlights the central role of mammoths in the subsistence and material economies of some Paleolithic communities."
ScienceAdviser
Figure 1 Excavation documentation for four bone accumulation sites and the geographical locations of the woolly mammoths analyzed in this study
Figure 3 Genetic sex ratios for the different woolly mammoth contexts analyzed in this study
