[HN Gopher] Study reveals mammoth as key food source for ancient...
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Study reveals mammoth as key food source for ancient Americans
Author : stevenwoo
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-12-12 19:52 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uaf.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uaf.edu)
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Specifically one Clovis infant, this has some responses
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/an-ice-age-infants...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Something tells me that
|
| (a) zero infants killed and butchered their own mammoth;
|
| (b) the meat from a dead mammoth was not held in reserve for
| infants.
| votepaunchy wrote:
| If only there was a distinctive feature of mammals by which
| mothers feed their infants and through which the diet of the
| mother could be inferred, as noted in the article.
| tohnjitor wrote:
| maybe they did save specific foods for infants.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Probably not entire mammoths, though.
| pests wrote:
| Infants usually drink milk no?
| gweinberg wrote:
| well, there is one food that is primarily consumed by
| infants. Maybe you meant they saved special food for
| nursing mothers?
| tohnjitor wrote:
| Indeed. Good point
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Where's your evidence that infants didn't hunt and butcher
| mammoths? I need you to write me a dissertation before I
| believe this claim.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| And it has to be peer-reviewed.
| perrygeo wrote:
| Double-blind clinical trial. We can use elephants as a
| proxy.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Honestly I think my ERB would have a bigger problem with
| killing elephants for food than putting infants in
| danger.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Understandable: The human subjects will be protected from
| trauma by infantile amnesia--but elephants never forget.
| abecedarius wrote:
| "Protein staple". Search the article for 'fat': zero hits. I
| know there's prejudice for protein over fats, but when we're
| talking about mammoth meat I'm still amazed at the extent of
| it. Like calling seal meat a protein.
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3885556/
| samatman wrote:
| You can't measure nitrogen isotopes from fat, because it
| doesn't have any nitrogen. That comes from protein, so that's
| what they're measuring.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Interesting complementary view at the end:
|
| > The most problematic aspect of the paper is the speed with
| which it races from a single data point in Montana to humans
| playing a role in megafaunal extinctions hemisphere-wide,"
| David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist
| University who was not involved in the work, tells the New York
| Times.
|
| And while the findings are a "big deal," as anthropologist
| Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona, who did not
| participate in the research, tells Science News, "I don't know
| how you could ever test them unless you found more human
| remains."
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This is one of the main problems with the "paleo" diet, which
| pretends that humans all ate exclusively red meat and...nuts,
| I think, they claim?
|
| The reality: they ate whatever was plentiful in the
| particular area they were living in.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I've never been on the paleo diet but from Wikipedia: "The
| diet avoids food processing and typically includes
| vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots, and meat and excludes
| dairy products, grains, sugar, legumes, processed oils,
| salt, alcohol, and coffee.[2] "
|
| That seems about right to me, apart from avoiding salt.
| Wikipedia says humans of that time period did eat some
| grains too.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The NYT article covers the context of the responses, the
| climate change vs. overkill debate w.r.t megafauna extinctions
| better: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/science/mammoth-
| extinctio...
|
| It always seemed like a false choice to me. It's not like
| humans need to literally hunt a species to extinction to wipe
| it out. We can (and have) done it by disrupting the food chain,
| altering environments and introducing invasive species as well.
|
| The push back against ancient humans causing or at least,
| significantly contributing to extinctions feels odd. Few would
| argue that human activity, even absent hunting or advanced
| technology, can threaten species today, but for some reason
| it's considered impossible for ancient peoples.
| zizee wrote:
| Ancient humans causing extinctions and environmental change
| is at odds with the image of "indigenous societies are
| perfect environmental stewards", which has been popularized
| for various reasons.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Human predation of mammoths probably contributed to their
| eventual extinction, but the changing climate almost
| certainly played a large role as well. If humans hadn't
| been around to hunt them they'd probably be extinct anyway.
| When they finally did go extinct about 4,000 years ago,
| they were only present on one island way up in the Arctic
| circle.
|
| Additionally, during the same time period megafauna in
| Africa have (well, until recently) continued to thrive
| despite the presence of humans and earlier hominids for
| millions of years.
|
| The difference is that humans were not native to the
| Americas, and arrived rather suddenly some tens of
| thousands of years ago. Meanwhile animals in Africa (and
| Asia and Europe which were populated much earlier than the
| Americas) spent much more time co-evolving with humans as
| predators.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| So I find this unsurprising because it was what I was always
| taught growing up.
|
| After a bit of digging it appears that this study is important
| because:
|
| 1. It's direct evidence of mammoth consumption vs the existing
| evidence of arrow heads and other tools being found alongside of
| mammoth remains.
|
| 2. There's apparently been a growing movement to paint Clovis
| culture as primarily relying on plants and smaller animals in
| spite of the existing evidence so this confirms the traditional
| view.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This supports my primary claim that the crash of megafauna caused
| the creation of property, induced the neolithic societal
| transition, and set the stage for the unsustainable society we
| have now - based on fear of scarcity.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39569747
| mlekoszek wrote:
| How does this fit into a North American context, where many
| cultures at the point of European contact (i.e. Haudenosaunee,
| Algonquin, Inuit) practiced communal property? It seems they
| stayed egalitarian long after the extinction of local
| megafauna, and in the case of the Haudenosaunee, long after the
| adoption of agriculture (the Three Sisters).
| wslh wrote:
| Another good divulgation article is available at [1].
|
| I think that HN should split karma between previous mentions [2].
| This could help better attribute value to contributors whose
| comments or posts spark further discussion, spreading recognition
| more evenly. What do others think?
|
| [1] https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2024-12-10/ty-article-
| ma...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42392286
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I've discussed karma sharing on HN before, and it's basically
| not really a bad idea per se but if it's not broke don't fix
| it. The second chance pool is there for things that fall
| through the cracks. And your post can still get some upvotes.
| But the real issue to my mind is that HN isn't really about
| karma points, so if your post doesn't do well it's fine in the
| grand scheme of things, even in the context of HN. At least
| other people were able to see the link, even if they didn't see
| your post. All roads lead to Rome, anyway.
|
| So your karma number didn't go up when you did the thing but it
| did when someone else did the thing. It seems unfair, but it's
| almost an anti-feature in that it can disincentivize karma
| motivated posting behavior. Find something else to post and try
| again? It's not worth getting too attached to post traction.
| The time of posting seems to have more to do with how well a
| post does than the particular link or who posted it first imo.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/all_roads_lead_to_Rome
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| They just ate whatever was available, in warmer climates and
| period they would be fine eating more vegetable, nuts, or small
| mammals/fish
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I wonder how they could fell a mammoth with a large fixed dart.
| With atlatls?
| asdff wrote:
| When you look at native american bison hunting, it sometimes
| involved routing a herd to charge itself off a cliff vs
| actually making the kill by hand which carries a lot of risk.
| debo_ wrote:
| The next time someone complains about how large the portion sizes
| are in the US, remind them that Americans were opting for
| supersize meals 13,000 years ago.
| handfuloflight wrote:
| Sure but the mammoth wasn't being delivered via DoorDash.
| tomcam wrote:
| That's what they want you to think
| ntaylor wrote:
| BoulderDash, maybe?
| handfuloflight wrote:
| CliffDrop Express: the original free-falling prices.
| metalman wrote:
| I have wanted to do an ivestigative journalism project to try and
| understand the disapearance of almost all of the atlantic salmon,
| and have all of it filmed in varios canned fish sections in
| supermarkets,everywhere. Its almost like there is an invisible
| apex techno preditor running around or something
| dataflow wrote:
| How long (and how) did they preserve the meat back then?
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