Humans ate mammoths, elk, bison and camels in the Ice Age. No plants

Researchers reveal new details of human life in North America during the last Ice Age more than 10,000 years ago.

Through the remains of a child from Clovis peoplewe discovered both what our ancestors ate and new details of their migration through the coldest regions in the north of the continent.

The ancient tribe left its traces in what is now the state of Montana, in the United States, revealing that the group was specialized in hunting and consuming mammothswith this pachyderm being its main source of food — but it also hunted other large mammals of the time.

The remains are around 13,000 years old. The Clovis people, let us remember, are a paleoindigenous group famous for their characteristically shaped stone points. It occupied a territory that covered present-day Canada, the United States and Mexico and left us important archaeological marks. They are believed to be ancestors of today’s Native Americans in North America.

There is only one fossilized skeleton of a human proven to belong to this community: a child who died at the age of 18 months and was buried around 12,800 years ago near the current location of Wilsall, in the USA.

The little boy, known as Anzick-1was discovered in 1968 and reburied in 2014, but was only later subjected to genetic studies by some scientists.

In the most recent study, in Science Advances by researchers James Chatters, from McMaster University, and Ben Potter, from the University of Alaska, past human isotopes were analyzed.

Isotopes are atoms that contain specific information about their composition, that is, elements capable of revealing what the ancient baby’s mother would have consumed, since her nutrition was provided by breast milk.

The results showed that 40% of the diet was made up of mammoth meat, with the remainder coming from other large prey, such as elk, bison and camels of an already extinct species.

Small animals and plants were practically absent from the diet. The proteins analyzed came from bones, meaning the mammoth traces found could only result from a regular and prolonged consumption of this meat.

Since the Clovis culture descends from mammoth hunting groups in Eurasia, the focus on this great food source probably facilitated their adaptation to the new American territory and their spread across the continent. This activity may have contributed to the extinction of mammoths and megafauna from the beginning of the Holocene, 10,000 years ago.

Along with rising global temperatures, hunting pressure may have accelerated the extinction of these species — other animals found in the remains of young Clovis include, for example, the Homotherium hidingcousin of the famous saber-toothed tiger, also extinct and, for the first time, mummified in permafrost.

Mammoths, in particular, were very mobile, and moved long distances. With their habitat restricted by climate warming, their movement has become more limited, leaving them more vulnerable to hunting pressures exerted by humans. The Clovis people were sophisticated, skilled, and extremely efficient at hunting, perhaps too efficient—unfortunately for the mammoths.

A team of researchers recently recreated Ice Age hunting techniques and concluded that the spears used by this skilled group were probably thrown rather than thrown at huge mammoths, as many might think.