Ancient North Americans are looking more and more like experienced mammoth killers.
Archaeologists have long debated whether the Clovis people, who lived around 13,000 years ago, had the know-how and technology to regularly hunt the megafauna (SN: 1/11/22). A new chemical analysis suggests that the Clovis diet was indeed dominated by mammoth, scientists report December 4 in Science Advances.
Arguments for whether Clovis people were primarily hunters or foragers have relied on the location of spearheads, tests of reconstructed spears and knowledge of modern foraging behavior. The new dietary analysis provides direct evidence that these ancient people may have relied on mammoths as a food source, supporting claims that
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