Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
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Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#2> Sadly, now that human-mammoth relationship has continued as ivory hunters have looted the site beyond further study.
Radio free europe had a really good photo essay on these new mammoth pirates: https://www.rferl.org/a/the-mammoth-pirates/27939865.html
Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#3'Piracy' in this region began in the early 1700s - a quarter-millenium ago. 'Twas easier then though.
Here's another long, well-illustrated, little-known tale of exploration of the islands off N. Siberia. Fossil tusks were often found in huge quantities ... some islands covered in them.
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/alaskan-muck-ivor...
"One of the most active and successful of the fur-hunters of that time was named Liakoff, and he from time to time obtained great quantities not only of valuable furs, but also of fossil ivory from the tusks and teeth of the mammoths, which he himself collected or received from the native Siberians.... Every year great quantities of ivorv were taken from the islands and sold in the markets at Yakutsk.
Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#4If they only killed a mammoth every 6 months, I wonder how they preserved the meat. That area is too far from the ocean to harvest salt. Maybe store it in the snow? What about summer? Smoking the meat would do it. They did find evidence of fire.
Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#5If they only killed a mammoth every 6 months, I wonder how they preserved the meat. That area is too far from the ocean to harvest salt. Maybe store it in the snow? What about summer? Smoking the meat would do it. They did find evidence of fire.
Maybe they made mammoth jerky.
Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#6If they only killed a mammoth every 6 months, I wonder how they preserved the meat. That area is too far from the ocean to harvest salt. Maybe store it in the snow? What about summer? Smoking the meat would do it. They did find evidence of fire.
yeah smoking it or drying it by lying it in strips in the sun. if the air is dry enough it won't rot and will just turn into jerkey which lasts for ages. Many still do it to this day
I also just looked this up, but apparently mammoths were still walking the earth as early as only 3000 years ago! I thought it was way farther. The idea to bring them back to northern areas of earth doesnt sound so far fetched
Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#7I’m from Yakutia and remember sharing a hospital room with a former mammoth hunter. He had many stories to tell.
Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#8If they only killed a mammoth every 6 months, I wonder how they preserved the meat. That area is too far from the ocean to harvest salt. Maybe store it in the snow? What about summer? Smoking the meat would do it. They did find evidence of fire.
yeah smoking it or drying it by lying it in strips in the sun. if the air is dry enough it won't rot and will just turn into jerkey which lasts for ages. Many still do it to this day I also just looked this up, but apparently mammoths were still walking the earth as early as only 3000 years ago! I thought it was way farther. The idea to bring them back to northern areas of earth doesnt sound so far fetched
It's a pretty fun party fact that by the time the last mammoths died out, the Great Pyramid was already 1500 years old :)
It gives me a lot of hope for revival projects that there's relatively 'young' dna to be found. Of course the reduced range towards the end probably means there's not many of these recent sources to source it from, but still!
Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#9If they only killed a mammoth every 6 months, I wonder how they preserved the meat. That area is too far from the ocean to harvest salt. Maybe store it in the snow? What about summer? Smoking the meat would do it. They did find evidence of fire.
You hunt it in the autumn and preserver it in the cold.
From spring you can forage and hunt small prey all summer.
Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths
#10I’m from Yakutia and remember sharing a hospital room with a former mammoth hunter. He had many stories to tell.
Was it a mental hospital, or was he hunting only bones?