A 'Mammoth' Reveal of Montana Meals Thousands of Years Ago

Mammoth: It's what's for dinner. And lunch. And breakfast. Because, you know, mammoths were large.

The journal Science Advances tells us about a fascinating find in which scientists uncovered the first direct evidence that ancient Americans relied primarily on mammoth and other large animals for food. And, there is a possible correlation between that finding and the rapid expansion of humans throughout America and the extinction of large ice age mammals.

MONTANA CLOVIS BURIAL SITE

The Clovis were a prehistoric culture of Native Americans who lived in North America 12,500 to 13,500 years ago. They are revered as an amazing civilization of hunters and gatherers who were also extremely mobile in their travels.

Science Advances says scientists were able to model the diet of a mother of an infant discovered at a 13,000-year-old Clovis burial site in Montana. Before this study, prehistoric diet was more speculative by analyzing stone tools or the preserved remains of prey animals.

But these findings support the notion that the Clovis people specialized in hunting large animals rather than primarily foraging for smaller animals and plants. During that time period, animals like mammoths lived across both northern Asia and the Americas. They migrated long distances, which made them a reliable source for fat and protein for the highly mobile Clovis.

According to a co-author of the study, the focus on mammoths helps explain how Clovis people could spread throughout North America and into South America in just a few hundred years.

Kind of a cool way to think about the resourcefulness of some of Montana's Native Americans all those thousands of years ago. If you'd like to learn more about the study and its findings, you can explore those here.