A woolly mammoth unearthed in Bavaria bears signs that Ice Age humans butchered its carcass more than 25,000 years ago, offering an insight into life in one of the coldest periods of the last Ice Age.
The remains were found in 2020 during construction work near Regensburg. A spiralled tusk of about 2.5m long, along with more than 70 bones and bone fragments were among the discoveries. The waterlogged conditions in which they were laid preserved them in such a good way that they were very well preserved.
Scientists later found all the bones belonged to a single woolly mammoth (*Mammuthus primigenius*), a young adult that would have stood around three metres tall at the shoulder.
The animal appears to have died close to where it was eventually buried. The bones show little sign of being transported by water or scavenged by predators, leading scientists to conclude that the carcass came to rest in a shallow pool or sluggish channel connected to the ancient Danube.
Radiocarbon dating puts the mammoth at 27,000 to 25,000 years ago during the coldest stage of the Würm glaciation.
What makes the discovery such a significant is a series of cut marks cut into several ribs. Such marks are made by stone tools and show that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers ate the carcass after it had died. One rib even seems to have been used as a surface for cutting meat.
Whether the mammoth was hunted or scavenged remains an open question. The evidence shows people butchered the animal, but not how it died.
Pollen preserved in the surrounding sediments has also helped reconstruct the landscape in which the mammoth lived. At the time the region was not covered by forests but by a vast, treeless expanse of grasses, herbs and dwarf shrubs. This is a part of the mammoth steppe -- a cold, but productive ecosystem that dominated much of Eurasia (and which housed mammoths, bison, horses and other large grazing animals).
The discovery is unusual on several fronts. Mammoth remains are rarely found in southern Germany, and traces of human activity from this stage of the Ice Age are even scarcer. Archaeologists have long argued that many hunter-gatherer groups retreated south and east as temperatures fell and glaciers expanded across Europe.
The Taimering mammoth indicates that at least some people remained in parts of Central Europe despite the harsh conditions, taking advantage of whatever resources the frozen landscape could provide.
The study, published in the *Journal of Archaeological Science*, involved researchers from institutions in Germany, including the Bavarian State Natural History Collections, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation, and a number of universities and museums.
Header Image Credit : BLfD
Sources : Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege