Elephant and Mammoth Hunting during the Paleolithic: A Review of the Relevant Archaeological, Ethnographic and Ethno-Historical Records

Abstract

Proboscideans and humans have shared habitats across the Old and New Worlds for hundreds of thousands of years. Proboscideans were included in the human diet starting from the Lower Paleolithic period and until the final stages of the Pleistocene. However, the question of how prehistoric people acquired proboscideans remains unresolved. Moreover, the effect of proboscidean hunting on the eventual extinction of these mega-herbivores was never seriously evaluated, probably because of the lack of acquaintance with the plethora of information available regarding proboscidean hunting by humans. The aim of this paper is to bridge this gap and bring to light the data available in order to estimate the extent and procedures of elephant and mammoth hunting by humans during the Quaternary. This study examines the archaeological evidence of proboscidean hunting during Paleolithic times, and provides a review of ethnographic and ethno-historical accounts, demonstrating a wide range of traditional elephant-hunting strategies. We also discuss the rituals accompanying elephant hunting among contemporary hunter-gatherers, further stressing the importance of elephants among hunter-gatherers. Based on the gathered data, we suggest that early humans possessed the necessary abilities to actively and regularly hunt proboscideans; and performed this unique and challenging task at will.

Stable isotopes reveal patterns of diet and mobility in the last Neandertals and first modern humans in Europe

“…Changes in isotopic niche partitioning among herbivorous prey species have been attributed to a decline of the mammoth population and the spread of the horse in the under-occupied niche 43 . Based on the finding that both UPMHs and Neandertals had a preference for mammoth meat, as demonstrated in this study and elsewhere 61,62 , a more detailed investigation into human-ecosystem interactions should offer crucial knowledge about the ecological role Neandertals and UPMHs played. Consequently, we investigated the ecological setting on a chronological scale spanning from around 45,000 to 25,000 years ago in the broader region of Western Europe, representing sites contemporaneous with late Neandertals and UPMHs (Supplementary Fig.…”

The Late Gravettian Site of Kostënki 21 Layer III, Russia: a Chronocultural Reassessment Based on a New Interpretation of the Significance of Intra-site Spatial Patterning

“…It is not clear how the mammoth body parts were transported to the site. Body parts of mammoth calves would have been relatively easier to transport than body parts from adult mammoths (Agam and Barkai 2018).…”

An integrated study discloses chopping tools use from Late Acheulean Revadim (Israel)

“…We would like to stress that, while further delayed butchery experiments coupled with cutmark analysis in Layer C3 are required to shed light on the ongoing debate concerning hunting versus scavenging in the Acheulean, recent studies repeatedly support a scenario of active hunting performed by Paleolithic groups [109][110][111].…”