Live data from Hacker News

Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

phys.org

11–20 of 59 posts

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#11
post #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

That was exellently presented. Clear, informative, compelling. I especially appreciated getting to the end without being bombarded with any ads, popups, or begging for email signups. Curious how I could support such media, I found https://pressroom.rferl.org/about-rfe-rl/ which says,

> RFE/RL, Inc. is a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation funded by the U.S. Congress through a grant from the United States Agency for Global Media...

Yay taxes!

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#12
post #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

> Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is an American government-funded international media organization

The purpose of RFERL is to produce news items that are covertly critical of the enemy. It adds up with other resources to paint a negative image of the enemy.

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#13
post #12
post #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

> Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is an American government-funded international media organization The purpose of RFERL is to produce news items that are covertly critical of the enemy. It adds up with other resources to paint a negative image of the enemy.

Which enemy?

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

That flashed me back to a vague memory that the film 10,000BC showed mammoths in use building the pyramids, which I thought was incredibly silly (well, it was...). But it's kind of satisfying to know that the building at least overlapped with the mammoths in real life.

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#15
post #13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is an American government-funded international media organization The purpose of RFERL is to produce news items that are covertly critical of the enemy. It adds up with other resources to paint a negative image of the enemy.

Which enemy?

Russia?

The west is in a war-like situation with Russia. Portraying them as stupid, drunk rednecks who ravage trough the environment certainly fits the narrative. Doesn't mean it's not true though.

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which enemy?

Russia? The west is in a war-like situation with Russia. Portraying them as stupid, drunk rednecks who ravage trough the environment certainly fits the narrative. Doesn't mean it's not true though.

There is no direct confrontation because that would be WWIII. Only proxy wars like the one happening now.

RFERL is US-government funded, and the audience is mainly eastern Europe. Even PBS in the US is not funded by the US government.

Why exclusively fund RFERL for a foreign audience if you do not fund your national public broadcaster?

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#17

If 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.

Apparently eating rotten meat could have been very common.

https://paleoanthro.org/media/journal/content/PA20170044.pdf

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#18
post #12
post #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

> Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is an American government-funded international media organization The purpose of RFERL is to produce news items that are covertly critical of the enemy. It adds up with other resources to paint a negative image of the enemy.

> covertly critical of the enemy

The radio is now based in Prague, it has a long history here and most people were quite happy to hear some real news during the communism. People tuning in risked prison time just to hear something else. I would not say you needed to be overtly critical, it was enough to just bring real news.

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#19
post #12
post #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

> Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is an American government-funded international media organization The purpose of RFERL is to produce news items that are covertly critical of the enemy. It adds up with other resources to paint a negative image of the enemy.

How do you even report stuff like that without being "critical"? That's a legitimate issue covered in Russian media as well. Here's one of the multiple official reports, for example. https://www.archeo.ru/press-relizy/nezakonnye-ohotniki-za-bi...

Re: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with mammoths

#20
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia? The west is in a war-like situation with Russia. Portraying them as stupid, drunk rednecks who ravage trough the environment certainly fits the narrative. Doesn't mean it's not true though.

There is no direct confrontation because that would be WWIII. Only proxy wars like the one happening now. RFERL is US-government funded, and the audience is mainly eastern Europe. Even PBS in the US is not funded by the US government. Why exclusively fund RFERL for a foreign audience if you do not fund your national public broadcaster?

> Why exclusively fund RFERL for a foreign audience if you do not fund your national public broadcaster?

Because the US media market is quite saturated and developed (or at least was when any of this was made into law) compared to countries where media is actively supressed.

Post reply on HN