Elephant and Mammoth Hunting during the Paleolithic: A Review of the Relevant Archaeological, Ethnographic and Ethno-Historical Records

Aviad Agam,Ran Barkai

doi:10.3390/quat1010003

Abstract

Proboscideans and humans have shared habitats across the Old and New Worlds for hundreds of thousands of years. Proboscideans were included in the human diet starting from the Lower Paleolithic period and until the final stages of the Pleistocene. However, the question of how prehistoric people acquired proboscideans remains unresolved. Moreover, the effect of proboscidean hunting on the eventual extinction of these mega-herbivores was never seriously evaluated, probably because of the lack of acquaintance with the plethora of information available regarding proboscidean hunting by humans. The aim of this paper is to bridge this gap and bring to light the data available in order to estimate the extent and procedures of elephant and mammoth hunting by humans during the Quaternary. This study examines the archaeological evidence of proboscidean hunting during Paleolithic times, and provides a review of ethnographic and ethno-historical accounts, demonstrating a wide range of traditional elephant-hunting strategies. We also discuss the rituals accompanying elephant hunting among contemporary hunter-gatherers, further stressing the importance of elephants among hunter-gatherers. Based on the gathered data, we suggest that early humans possessed the necessary abilities to actively and regularly hunt proboscideans; and performed this unique and challenging task at will.

Highlights

For over one million years humans and proboscideans have shared habitats across the Old andNew Worlds
Given the presence of elephant/mammoth remains at many Paleolithic sites worldwide [37,38,39,40,41,42], and as elephants were by far the largest terrestrial animal available for Paleolithic humans, presenting a unique combination of large quantities of both fat and meat [2], we suggest that elephants played a major role in early humans’ diet and adaptation [5,43,44]
It explores the possibility that proboscidean hunting was executed by Paleolithic groups

Summary

Introduction

For over one million years humans and proboscideans have shared habitats across the Old andNew Worlds. For over one million years humans and proboscideans have shared habitats across the Old and. The consumption of elephant fat and meat began with the emergence of Homo erectus in Africa some 2 million years ago, spread across the Old and New worlds by different human groups, and persisted up until the final stages of the Pleistocene with the extinction of proboscideans in Europe, America and most parts of Asia [2,3,4,5]. The debate regarding hunting versus scavenging as the two leading strategies of Paleolithic meat and fat procurement has subsided, as evidence of hunting accumulates [6,7]. While human hunting of medium-sized ungulates is commonly accepted in the archaeological research, the procurement of mega-herbivores by hunting is still under debate. It was recently suggested that “it is possible that expanding group sizes prompted Acheulean hominins to become big game hunters

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