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Ice Age people chose which mammoths to kill, DNA study reveals surprising preference

2026-08-12 17:10:08Histori SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Ice Age people chose which mammoths to kill, DNA study reveals surprising
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The woolly mammoth was one of the most valuable resources a human community could secure during the Ice Age.

A single animal could provide large quantities of meat and fat. The skin was used for clothing, the bones and ivory for tools, weapons and art, while the larger bones could also be used in residential structures.

But a study of ancient DNA shows that hunters did not choose their victims completely randomly.

About 70% of mammoths found at sites associated with human hunting were female. In sites where the animals had died of natural causes, only about 34% were female. The researchers analyzed 521 mammoths from a period spanning about 50,000 years and including samples from central and eastern Europe, Siberia and other areas of Eurasia.

The question was simple: why did prehistoric people hunt more women?

One explanation is related to the lifestyle of mammoths.

Like modern elephants, females are believed to have lived in female-led family herds, along with their young. Adult males, in contrast, often lived alone or in looser groups.

A family herd could have more predictable movements. People who knew the territory could learn where it passed, where it watered, and at what times it appeared.

Females were also smaller than adult males, making hunting potentially less dangerous.

Ice Age people chose which mammoths to kill, DNA study reveals surprising

That's not to say that killing a mammoth was easy. Researchers think that humans could have exploited terrain, swamps, natural obstacles, and organized strategies to paralyze the animals.

The remains of more than 100 mammoths and evidence of organized processing of the bodies have been found at the Kraków Spadzista site in Poland. The study does not resolve the great debate about what ultimately caused the mammoths to disappear. Climate change and human hunting pressure continue to be considered important factors.

But DNA is revealing something much more intimate: how Ice Age people recognized the animals they hunted and perhaps made deliberate decisions about their target.


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