A team of scientists from the US and Canada has discovered direct evidence that prehistoric Clovis people consumed large animals like mammoths for food. The researchers analyzed isotopic data from a 13,000-year-old infant’s remains found in Montana and reconstructed its mother’s diet. The study suggests that 40% of the woman’s food came from mammoths, with most of the remainder coming from other large animals like elk and bison.
This finding confirms the “megafaunal specialist” theory, which states that Clovis people were big-game hunters. The researchers compared their findings to diets of other omnivores and carnivores from the same period, and found that the woman’s diet was most similar to that of a scimitar cat, which preyed on mammoths.
The study suggests that the Clovis people’s preference for large game could have helped explain their rapid expansion throughout North America and into South America. It also sheds light on their possible role in the extinction of large mammals at the end of the last ice age.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/mammoth-meat-powered-ice-age-humans-study-finds-2000533650