Some of the earliest people to inhabit North America may have eaten mammoth meat as a major part of their diet. These people were members of the Clovis culture that lived about thirteen thousand years ago. Their ancestors arrived on the continent from Siberia, either crossing a land bridge or following its coast. They found a continent that was home to an abundance of large mammals. Among them was the mammoth, an extinct relative of modern elephants.
Archeologists have long debated whether the Clovis people had the technology and know-how to hunt these large mammals. In this debate, the researchers have relied on the study of artifacts, like spearheads, found with mammoth bones. In 2024 a team of researchers published new results based on a different kind of evidence that may settle the debate.
The Clovis people are known to archeologists mostly from artifacts. The only confirmed Clovis human remains are those of an eighteen-month-old infant boy found in Montana, buried ceremonially amidst tools and artifacts. To learn about Clovis people’s diet, researchers performed a sophisticated chemical analysis of the infant’s bones. Because an infant of this age would still be nursing, the analysis provided evidence of the mother’s diet.
The researchers found that almost forty percent of her diet consisted of mammoth meat, with other large mammals such as elk, bison, and camel contributing to the remainder, and small mammals making up less than four percent.
The findings provide powerful new evidence that the Clovis people were skilled hunters of large game, and that hunting may have contributed to the extinction of mammoths in North America.
Further Reading
- Dietary evidence bolsters Clovis hunters’ reputation as mammoth killers
- An ice age infant’s bones reveal that early Americans ate woolly mammoths as a protein staple
- Early Americans ate tons of mammoth, 13,000 year old bones of Clovis culture baby reveal
- The first Americans hunted and ate mammoths: New evidence reveals ancient diet
- C. Chatters et al. 2024. Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet, Science Advances