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DNA shows ancient humans killed more female mammoths

After analyzing the DNA in over 500 ancient mammoth bones, an international research team has determined that ice age humans disproportionately killed female woolly mammoths.

The sampled mammoth bone accumulations associated with ancient human activity and found they were dominated by females. In those sites, 70% of specimens were determined to be from females. Where mammoth remains were found in natural settings, just 34% were females.

Those findings raise questions about how ice age hunter-gatherers pursued and interacted with mammoths.

“While it is tempting to assume that hunters would have targeted females because they were smaller than adult males, the reality may have been more complex,” said Hannah M. Moots, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden, and lead author of the study.

Female-led herds may have moved across the landscape more predictably than males, Moots said, or humans may have encountered them more frequently while hunting and gathering. Solitary males may have been more vulnerable to natural traps like sinkholes or landslides, explaining the higher prevalence of their remains in natural settings.

Mammoths were a vital resource for ice age human populations, providing meat, fat, hide and bones for building structures, and ivory for tools, art and ornaments. The mammoth bone accumulations included in the study span 11 key ice age archaeological sites dating from about 30,000 to 20,000 years ago.

By combining 100 individuals from these human-associated site accumulations with 421 mammoths from natural depositional settings, the team analyzed a large dataset of woolly mammoths across Eurasia and North America. This unprecedented scale provides a rare look at how ancient humans and woolly mammoths interacted across the Late Pleistocene.

“By scaling up sample sizes, ancient DNA can go beyond evolutionary history to teach us about animal behavior and human culture tens of thousands of years ago,” said Love Dalén, a professor in evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University and a co-author of the study.

Matthew Wooller, a co-author of the paper and a paleoecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, helped access mammoth specimens from the University of Alaska Museum of the North as part of the . 

“These findings add to a building case, along with some of our other recent data, that shows the importance of mammoths and other megafauna as to hunter-gatherers that shared the landscape,” Wooller said.

UAF archaeologist Ben Potter, who was not involved in the study, agreed. "The selective focus on females also has profound implications for potential hunting pressure and ultimate extinction of the species," he said.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Matthew Wooller, mjwooller@alaska.edu; Hannah M. Moots, hannah.moots@su.se; Love Dalén, love.dalen@zoologi.su.se

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