25,000 Years Later, Javelin Is Still Embedded in Mammoth's Rib

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | January 18, 2019 01:07pm ET

About 25,000 years ago, ice age hunters in what is now Poland threw a light spear known as a javelin at a mammoth. Now, the discovery of that javelin, still embedded in the mammoth's rib, has revealed a major surprise: the first evidence that ice age people in Europe used weapons to hunt the giant beasts.

Previously, researchers wondered whether our ancestors had killed mammoths by trickery, for instance, by chasing them into pits or off cliffs. Or, perhaps ice age hunters targeted weak or sick mammoths that were easy to finish off.

But now, "we finally have a smoking gun, the first direct evidence of how these animals were hunted," Piotr Wojtal, an archaeozoologist at the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals at the Poland Academy of Sciences in Kraków, told Science in Poland, a site run by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. [Photos: A 40,000-Year-Old Mammoth Autopsy]

Deadly weapon
Researchers initially found the mammoth rib in 2002, at a mammoth hotspot in Kraków, where scientists, over the years, have discovered the remains of at least 110 mammoths that lived between 30,000 and 25,000 years ago, the researchers said.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/64540-ice-age-hunters-spear-mammoth.html?utm_source=notification