Tastes change with time! 😊
Obviously, one of the study authors is tainted by ideology and serious myopia!
"In 1968, construction workers in Montana stumbled upon the ochre-covered skull of an 18-month-old boy surrounded by stone, bone, and antler artifacts. The child, who lived roughly 12,800 years ago, is the only known representative of the prehistoric Clovis people. Genomic sequencing has since revealed that these highly mobile hunter-gatherers, famous for their distinctive spearheads, are the ancestors of modern Native Americans.
Now, by analyzing carbon and nitrogen isotopes present in the boy’s bone collagen, scientists have determined that his mother derived about 40% of her diet from mammoth meat. Other common meals included elk, bison, and a now-extinct genus of camel, while smaller animals and plants rarely appeared on the menu. Mammoth featured so heavily, in fact, that the boy’s so-called isotopic “fingerprint” closely resembled that of a carnivorous saber-toothed cat.
The findings support the idea that the Clovis people were specialized big-mammal hunters, not generalist foragers, and could help explain how they spread so rapidly across the Americas. Because mammoths were rich in protein and fat and migrated long distances, they would have been a reliable food source for ancient humans on the move. The new analysis also lends some credence to the theory that humans eventually hunted mammoths and other North American megafauna to extinction. As lead study author James Chatters tells New Scientist, “We’re the ultimate invasive species.” [Really!!!]"
From the abstract:
"Ancient Native American ancestors (Clovis) have been interpreted as either specialized megafauna hunters or generalist foragers. Supporting data are typically indirect (toolkits, associated fauna) or speculative (models, actualistic experiments). Here, we present stable isotope analyses of the only known Clovis individual, the 18-month-old Anzick child, to directly infer maternal protein diet. Using comparative fauna from this region and period, we find that mammoth was the largest contributor to Clovis diet, followed by elk and bison/camel, while the contribution of small mammals was negligible, broadly consistent with the Clovis zooarchaeological record. When compared with second-order consumers, the Anzick-1 maternal diet is closest to that of scimitar cat, a mammoth specialist. Our findings are consistent with the Clovis megafaunal specialist model, using sophisticated technology and high residential mobility to subsist on the highest ranked prey, an adaptation allowing them to rapidly expand across the Americas south of the Pleistocene ice sheets."
"Ancient Native American ancestors (Clovis) have been interpreted as either specialized megafauna hunters or generalist foragers. Supporting data are typically indirect (toolkits, associated fauna) or speculative (models, actualistic experiments). Here, we present stable isotope analyses of the only known Clovis individual, the 18-month-old Anzick child, to directly infer maternal protein diet. Using comparative fauna from this region and period, we find that mammoth was the largest contributor to Clovis diet, followed by elk and bison/camel, while the contribution of small mammals was negligible, broadly consistent with the Clovis zooarchaeological record. When compared with second-order consumers, the Anzick-1 maternal diet is closest to that of scimitar cat, a mammoth specialist. Our findings are consistent with the Clovis megafaunal specialist model, using sophisticated technology and high residential mobility to subsist on the highest ranked prey, an adaptation allowing them to rapidly expand across the Americas south of the Pleistocene ice sheets."
Fig. 1. Location of Anzick site, faunal samples (circles) used in this study, and major Clovis sites (triangles).
Fig. 2. Isospace plot showing mean faunal collagen δ13C and δ15N values for Anzick-1 and regional fauna. [The clovis mother is the black square almost at the top]
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