Frozen, Wounded Mammoth Gives a New Timeline for the Arrival of Humans in the Arctic

A frozen mammoth carcass reveals that humans were in the Arctic far earlier than expected. The findings, which shows that the animal had wounds caused by humans, means that humans were in the area about ten millennia earlier than first thought.

In 2012, a team excavated a partial carcass of a male woolly mammoth from frozen sediments in a coastal bluff on the eastern shore of Yenisei Bay in the central Siberian Arctic. Through radiocarbon dating of the animal's tibia bone and surrounding materials, the researchers dated it at 45,000 years old.

The mammoth's bones, though, were what truly interested researchers. They exhibited a number of unusual injuries on the ribs, right tusk and mandible. In fact, it's likely the injuries were from sharp weapon tips such as thrusting spears. Damage to the tusk is indicative of human attempts to separate the outside of the tusk by chopping.

The findings leave no doubt that people were present in the central Siberian Arctic by 45,000 years ago. Advancements in mammoth hunting probably allowed our ancient ancestors to survive and spread widely across northernmost Arctic Siberia at this time. This, in turn, represents an important cultural shift that likely facilitated the arrival of humans in the area close to the Bering land bridge, providing them an opportunity to enter the New World before the Last Glacial Maximum.

The findings are published in the journal Science.

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