Evidence of northernmost Stone Age hunters found above the Arctic Circle
Ancient cut marks on mammoth bones unearthed on a remote island in the frozen extremes of Siberia are the northernmost evidence of Paleolithic humans ever found, according to archaeologists.
The bones from the woolly mammoth skeleton, dated to about 26,000 years ago, were excavated this summer by a Russian expedition to Kotelny Island, in the far northeast of Siberia — 615 miles (990 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle.
The team pieced together more than two-thirds of the skeleton — and they found cut marks and notches, made by stone or bone tools, on almost every bone. That indicates the animal was deliberately butchered, probably after it was hunted down by a nomadic band of Stone Age hunters, the archaeologists said.
It’s the northernmost evidence of Paleolithic humans ever found, said expedition leader Alexander Kandyba, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian branch. [https://www.livescience.com/northernmost-stone-age-hunters-found]