How ancient people killed mammoths. Secrets of hunting mammoths

Do you want to become the greatest hunter of the Stone Age? We will reveal all the secrets of the game and show you how to complete the quests. Little tricks will save you time and nerves.

Far Cry Primal – completing the quest hunting for a mammoth

In the game Far Cry Primal, the mammoth is the largest and strong beast. It is very important to keep your distance from such animals. You definitely need to use traps; they will delay the beast and give you the opportunity to regroup or run away. You can remove many useful things from the body of a mammoth.
In Far Cry Primal, hunting a mammoth is an exciting and dangerous activity. This is where the passage of this game begins, where a group of hunters and I will try to kill a baby mammoth that has strayed from the herd. When hunting a large animal such as a mammoth, it is important to separate it from the pack.
Advice: It is easier to kill an animal that no one is helping.

The developers have diversified the hunting of large animals. In Far Cry Primal, mammoth hunters can set traps on them or attack them en masse and beat them to death. If you are a lone hunter, then in Far Cry Primal how to kill a mammoth yourself? To do this, you will need at least 10 arrows, which it is advisable to launch from afar so that you can quickly hide. It is safer to use a trap and while the animal is stuck in it, hit it with a club or stab it with a spear.

Hand mammoth

The question arises in Far Cry Primal: how to tame a mammoth, when, not only to feed it, it’s creepy to approach it. To do this, you need to complete quests and tasks given by the villagers during the game, and unlock skills for the points you receive. You need to start small, gain experience and get to the group of insidious animals, where the mammoth will become available.

Feel like a mammoth

If you have the DLC installed, you will definitely come across the quest - The Legend of the Mammoth. Far Cry Primal Legend of the Mammoth, the passage of this quest will begin from the moment when the shaman in the village gives you a suspicious potion. Your spirit will be transported to the carcass of a huge mammoth and a task will appear - to find the killers of animals, your relatives. The torn remains of mammoths will lie around, and you must go in search of the killer, hot on their heels. Next, the spirit of the rhinoceros will be revealed, which became the cause of their death. After a short battle, he will begin to run away and when you catch up with him, the spirit will call upon assistants who will attack you. A couple of blows in response are usually enough for them, and they will crumble into pieces of ice. When you destroy all the rhinoceroses in the area, the spirit will try to hide again. Having caught up with him, you will again have to fight the rhinoceroses, which he will set against you. There will be more of them and they will attack more aggressively than the previous ones.

Tip: To make it easier to fight rhinoceroses in the second location, take a position on the top of the hill from where you came. When they respawn and attack in waves, it will be easier for you to fight them off in a narrow passage. You can also use them to roll down boulders that are lying around and thereby kill them.

After the victory, the spirit will again begin to fly away from you, it will lead you to a clearing with geysers and again a herd of rhinoceroses will attack you.
Advice: Never expose the side of a mammoth to a blow; a blow from the side of a rhinoceros is practically death. To make it easier to fight back, stand so that there is a tree in front of you, and a rock covers your back, and hit the enemies who will run up to you.

In the same way, you can easily deal with the boss - the spirit of the rhinoceros.

The mammoth is a mystery that has aroused the curiosity of researchers for more than two hundred years. What were they like, how did they live and why did they die out? All these questions still do not have exact answers. Some scientists blame famine for their mass death, others - glacial period, third - ancient hunters who destroyed herds for meat, skins and tusks. There is no official version.

Who are mammoths

The ancient mammoth was a mammal belonging to the elephant family. The main species had sizes comparable to those of their close relatives - elephants. Their weight often did not exceed 900 kg, and their height did not exceed 2 meters. However, there were more “representative” varieties, whose weight reached 13 tons and height - 6 meters.

Mammoths differed from elephants in having a more bulky body, short legs and long hair. Characteristic sign- large curved tusks that were used by prehistoric animals to dig out food from under snow debris. They also had molars with a large number dentinoenamel thin plates that served for processing fibrous roughage.

Appearance

The skeletal structure of the ancient mammoth is in many ways similar to the structure of the Indian elephant living today. Of greatest interest are the giant tusks, the length of which could reach up to 4 meters and weight up to 100 kg. They were located in the upper jaw, grew forward and bent upward, “spreading” to the sides.

The tail and ears, pressed tightly to the skull, were small in size, there was a straight black bang on the head, and a hump stood out on the back. The large body with a slightly lowered rear was based on stable legs-pillars. The legs had an almost horn-like (very thick) sole, reaching a diameter of 50 cm.

The coat had a light brown or yellowish-brown tint, the tail, legs and withers were decorated with noticeable black spots. The fur “skirt” fell from the sides, almost reaching the ground. The “clothes” of prehistoric animals were very warm.

Tusk

A mammoth is an animal whose tusk was unique not only for its increased strength, but also for its unique range of colors. The bones lay underground for several thousand years and underwent mineralization. Their shades have acquired a wide range - from purple to snow-white. Darkening, which occurs as a result of the work of nature, increases the value of the tusk.

The tusks of prehistoric animals were not as perfect as the tools of elephants. They were easily worn down and developed cracks. It is believed that mammoths used them to obtain food for themselves - branches, tree bark. Sometimes animals formed 4 tusks, the second pair was thin and often fused with the main one.

Unique colors make mammoth tusks popular in the production of luxury boxes, snuff boxes, and chess sets. They are used to create gift figurines, ladies' jewelry, and expensive weapons. Artificial reproduction of special colors is not possible, which explains the high cost of products created from mammoth tusks. Real ones, of course, not fake ones.

Everyday life of mammoths

60 years - average duration the lives of giants who lived on earth several thousand years ago. Mammoth - it served mainly as food herbaceous plants, tree shoots, small shrubs, moss. Daily norm- about 250 kg of vegetation, which forced the animals to spend about 18 hours daily on feeding and constantly change their location in search of fresh pastures.

Researchers are convinced that mammoths practiced a herd lifestyle and gathered in small groups. The standard group consisted of 9-10 adult representatives of the species, and cubs were also present. As a rule, the role of leader of the herd was assigned to the oldest female.

By the age of 10, the animals reached sexual maturity. At this time, matured males left the maternal herd, moving to a solitary existence.

Habitat

Modern research has established that mammoths, which appeared on earth approximately 4.8 million years ago, disappeared only about 4 thousand years ago, and not 9-10, as previously thought. These animals lived on the lands North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Bones of mighty animals, drawings and sculptures depicting them are often discovered at the sites of ancient inhabitants

Mammoths in Russia were also common in large quantities, Siberia is especially famous for its interesting finds. A huge “cemetery” of these animals was discovered in Khanty-Mansiysk, even a monument was erected in their honor. By the way, it was in the lower reaches of the Lena that the remains of a mammoth were first (officially) found.

Mammoths, or rather their remains, are still being discovered in Russia.

Causes of extinction

Until now, the history of mammoths has large gaps. In particular, this concerns the reasons for their extinction. A wide variety of versions have been put forward. The original hypothesis was proposed by Jean Baptiste Lamarck. According to the scientist, absolute extinction biological species is not possible, he only turns into another. However, official descendants of mammoths have not yet been identified.

I disagree with my colleague, blaming the death of mammoths on a flood (or other global disasters that took place during the period of extinction of the population). He argues that the Earth has often experienced short-term catastrophes that completely exterminated a particular species.

Brocchi, a paleontologist originally from Italy, believes that every living creature on the planet has a certain period of existence. The scientist compares the disappearance of entire species with the aging and death of an organism, which is why, in his opinion, it ended mysterious story mammoths

The most popular theory, which has many adherents in the scientific community, is climate theory. About 15-10 thousand years ago due to northern zone the tundra-steppe became a swamp, the southern one was filled coniferous forests. The grasses that previously formed the basis of the animals’ diet were replaced by moss and branches, which, according to scientists, led to their extinction.

Ancient hunters

How the first people hunted mammoths has not yet been established exactly. It was the hunters of those times who are often accused of exterminating large animals. This version is supported by products made from tusks and skins, which are constantly discovered in the sites of the inhabitants of ancient times.

However, modern research makes this assumption increasingly questionable. According to a number of scientists, people only finished off weak and sick representatives of the species, without hunting healthy ones. Bogdanov, the creator of the work “Secrets of the Lost Civilization,” gives reasonable arguments in favor of the impossibility of hunting mammoths. He believes that the weapons that the residents possessed ancient earth, it is simply impossible to pierce the skin of these animals.

Another compelling argument is the stringy, tough meat, almost unsuitable for food.

Close relatives

Elefas primigenius - this is the name of mammoths in Latin. The name indicates their close relationship with elephants, since the translation sounds like “first-born elephant.” There are even hypotheses that the mammoth is the progenitor of modern elephants, which were the result of evolution, adaptation to a warm climate.

A study by German scientists who compared the DNA of mammoth and elephant suggests that the Indian elephant and mammoth are two branches, the genealogy of which is traced back to African elephant for about 6 million years now. The ancestor of this animal, as modern discoveries have shown, lived on Earth approximately 7 million years ago, which makes the version valid.

Known specimens

“The Last Mammoth” is a title that can be assigned to baby Dimka, a six-month-old mammoth whose remains were found by workers in 1977 near Magadan. About 40 thousand years ago, this baby fell through the ice, which caused his mummification. This is by far the best preserved specimen yet discovered by mankind. Dimka has become a source of valuable information for those researching the extinct species.

Equally famous is the Adams mammoth, which became the first full-fledged skeleton to be shown to the public. This happened back in 1808, since then the copy has been located in the Museum of the Academy of Sciences. The find belonged to the hunter Osip Shumakhov, who lived by collecting mammoth bones.

The Berezovsky mammoth has a similar story; it was also found by a tusk hunter on the banks of one of the rivers in Siberia. The conditions for excavating the remains could not be called favorable; the extraction was carried out in parts. The preserved mammoth bones became the basis for a giant skeleton, and soft tissues became the object of research. Death overtook the animal at the age of 55.

Matilda, female prehistoric appearance, and the schoolchildren discovered it. An event happened in 1939, the remains were discovered on the banks of the Oesh River.

Revival is possible

Modern researchers never cease to be interested in such a prehistoric animal as the mammoth. The significance of prehistoric finds for science is nothing other than the motivation underlying all attempts to resurrect it. So far, attempts to clone the extinct species have not yielded tangible results. This is due to the lack of material of the required quality. However, research in this area is not going to stop. Currently, scientists are relying on the remains of a female found not so long ago. The specimen is valuable because it has preserved liquid blood.

Despite the failure of cloning, it has been proven that the appearance of the ancient inhabitant of the Earth has been restored exactly, as well as his habits. Mammoths look exactly as they are presented on the pages of textbooks. The most interesting discovery is that the closer the period of residence of a discovered biological species to our time, the more fragile its skeleton is.

Where did mammoths come from? What kind of life did you lead? Why did they die out? The scientific community has been struggling with these mysteries for several centuries. And each new study refutes the previous one.

Yakut treasures

It all started with the Amsterdam burgomaster Witsen, when in 1692 he first described an intact mammoth carcass found in Yakutia. He didn't even know what he would give new life extinct animal species. Modern scientists increasingly call Yakutia the homeland of mammoths. This may not be the historical homeland, but at least it is the place with the highest concentration of mammoth populations in the past.

Behind last years This is where the largest number of animal remains were found (according to statistics, about 80%), including well-preserved ones. The scientific world was especially struck by the latest discovery - a 60-year-old female mammoth. But its uniqueness lies not so much in the preservation of the tissues, but in the liquid blood contained in them. This find could give scientists new knowledge about the genetic and molecular composition of primitive animals.

Mammoths began to die out due to warming

To this version in Lately More and more scientists are inclined. Dr. Dale Guthrie from the University of Alaska, who did radiocarbon dating of the remains of animals and people who lived more than 10 thousand years ago, agrees with her. According to Guthrie, climate change transformed a dry and cold area into a wetter and warmer one, which in turn led to a modification of vegetation - something the mammoths simply did not have time to adapt to.
Other scientific evidence confirms the decline of tundra forests, the main habitat of mammoths. Like reindeer Mammoths, depending on the time of year, wandered in search of their usual food - in the summer they moved to the north, and in the winter to the southern regions. And then one day they were faced with a lack of tundra vegetation.

In 1900, on the banks of the Berezovka River, almost no touched by time and predators of a mammoth carcass. Later, other similar remains were found. Some details, including unchewed grass, suggested that the animals died suddenly. The version of murder was dropped immediately - there were no signs of damage. Scientists puzzled over this mystery for a long time and finally came to an unexpected conclusion - the animals died after falling into the melted wormwood. Over time, researchers were able to discover more and more animals that ended up in the old riverbeds. The rise in temperature played a cruel joke on them.

Here is another fact in favor of the version of the extinction of animals due to global warming. Researchers have found that during the process of climate change, mammoths also changed their size. During the ice ages (Zyryansk and Sartan times) they became larger, and during periods of global warming (Kazantsev and Kargin times) they became smaller. It follows from this that cold was more preferable to mammoths than warmth.

People didn't hunt mammoths

According to one hypothesis, the mammoths were exterminated by hunters, at least, British naturalist Alfred Wallace was inclined to believe this version. Indeed, many items made from mammoth skin and tusks are found at ancient human sites. We also know about people hunting mammoths from school textbooks. However modern researchers claim that man did not hunt mammoths, but only finished off sick and weak animals. The fact is that with warming, those who rose to the top groundwater washed away minerals from the soil that were part of the mammoths' plant food. The fragility of the bones, which appeared as a result of a poor diet, made the giants vulnerable to humans.

A.V. Bogdanov in his book “Secrets of the Lost Civilization” convincingly proves the impossibility of people hunting mammoths. A modern elephant has a skin of about 7 centimeters, and a mammoth, due to the layer subcutaneous fat, she was even thicker. “Try yourself with a stick and a stone to pierce the skin, which does not burst even from the tusks of five-ton males,” says the writer.
But then Bogdanov is even more convincing. Among the reasons, he cites the very tough and stringy mammoth meat, which was practically impossible to eat, as well as the actions necessary for successful hunting that were beyond the strength of even a large group of people. To catch even a medium-sized specimen, you need to dig a hole of at least 7 cubic meters, which is impossible to do with primitive tools. It is even more difficult to drive a mammoth into a hole. These are herd animals, and when trying to take even a baby from the herd, hunters risked being trampled by multi-ton carcasses.

Contemporaries of the Egyptian pyramids

Until recently, it was believed that mammoths disappeared from the face of the earth 10,000 years ago. But at the end of the 20th century, the remains found on Wrangel Island significantly corrected the dating. Based on the data obtained, scientists have determined that these individuals died approximately 3,700 years ago. “Mammoths inhabited this island when they already stood Egyptian pyramids and the Mycenaean civilization flourished,” states Frederik Paulsen. The Wrangel Island mammoths lived when most of these animals on the planet had long since disappeared. What made them move to the island? This remains a mystery for now.

Holy tooth

In the Middle Ages, people who unearthed the bones of mammoths had no idea who they belonged to and often mistook them for the remains of cynocephali who lived in legendary times - huge creatures with a dog's head and human body. For example, in Valencia, a mammoth molar tooth was a sacred relic, which, according to legend, belonged to the “dog-headed” Christopher, a holy martyr revered by the Catholic and Orthodox Church. It was recorded that during processions back in 1789, canons also carried a mammoth femur along with a tooth, passing it off as a fragment of the saint’s hand.

Relatives

Mammoths are close relatives of elephants. This is evidenced by their scientific name Elefas primigenius (translated from Latin as “first-born elephant”). According to one version, the elephant is the result of the evolution of a mammoth, which adapted to a warmer climate. Perhaps this is not so far from reality, because mammoths of late times corresponded in their parameters to the Asian elephant.

But German scientists compared the DNA of an elephant and a mammoth, and came to a paradoxical conclusion: the mammoth and the Indian elephant are two branches that descended from the African elephant about 6 million years ago. Indeed, recent studies have shown that the ancestor of the African elephant lived on earth more than 7 million years ago, and therefore this version does not seem fantastic.

"Resurrect" the giant!

Scientists are already quite for a long time do not give up attempts to “resurrect” the mammoth. So far to no avail. The main obstacle to the successful cloning of an extinct animal, according to Semyon Grigoriev (head of the P. A. Lazarev Mammoth Museum), is the lack of source material of proper quality. But, nevertheless, he is convinced of the good prospects of this endeavor. He places his main hopes on a recently extracted female mammoth with preserved liquid blood.
While Russian scientists are trying to recreate the DNA of an ancient animal, Japanese experts have abandoned ambitious plans to populate the Russian Far East mammoths due to the futility of the idea of ​​their “resurrection”. Time will tell who was right.

What if, as in science fiction films, mutants take over the planet? Many people will die, but you won't, you will know how to hunt dinosaurs!

...mutants or dinosaurs will fill the planet again!

According to the latest, very scientific information, the last living mammoths on planet Earth became extinct approximately 6-10 thousand years ago. But elephants, hippos, and rhinoceroses are still found. In the middle (climatic) zone, smaller animals still live: elk, bear, wild boar, deer, but a real survival specialist simply must know, just in case, how to hunt any animal of any size, including elephants and hippos.

Let's return to mammoths. How do you think ancient people hunted mammoths for meat? There are many clear answers to this question in films, history books and paintings in museums. The whole tribe first drove the poor animal into a pit, and then threw stones at the mammoth in the pit to death.

Catching large ungulates using trapping pits is still practiced in some places, but I personally have not heard of hunters slaughtering the caught animal in a pit with stones. Do you know why? Because giant hematomas form at the impact sites. In other words, bruises. Or more precisely, an unappetizing, jelly-like mass of black-blue-violet color. It is unlikely that ancient hunters deliberately spoiled the meat of hunted animals in this way. In order to kill a mammoth in a pit, it was enough to poke it in the neck with a spear and wait for the mammoth to die from loss of blood.

It is also known that ancient people covered the floors of their homes with mammoth skin. But in the cramped pit it was impossible to remove the skin from the mammoth. And digging a hole in permafrost is quite difficult. During the Ice Age, in the habitats of mammoths, the ground was frozen for sure. It turns out that there were no holes either. How were mammoths killed? Yes, just like modern elephants or moose with the help of primitive weapons. For example, African pygmies They hunt with their toy weapons, hit them in the stomach with a spear, and after waiting two or three hours for the elephant’s peritoneum to become inflamed, they came up and finished off the animal with a spear in the neck. The main thing in such a hunt was not to chase a wounded animal in vain. The beast walked away and, not noticing the pursuit behind it, stopped and lay down, feeling the pain from the wound. Having rested, the animal could no longer get up and it was not difficult to find it by following its tracks.

As you can see, killing any large animal for meat does not require the presence of all the warriors of the tribe, including their angry wives and starving children. One experienced hunter was quite enough.

The same applies to the use of elephant traps. They don't dig holes for elephants. Trap holes are dug for smaller animals, where tiny baby elephants can actually end up. Other traps are used for adult elephants (and hippos). They hang a spear coated with a thick layer of clay over the elephant path. So that the total weight of the spear with a lump of clay would be over a hundred kilograms. Such a modernized spear can be hung by two adult men on a tree branch and, using a simple trigger device, secure the spear above the path. The pygmies spread clay on the elephant spear already on the tree. An elephant (hippopotamus, antelope, zebra...) passing under a tree touched the guard and the spear falling down pierced the elephant (or hippopotamus) right through. Which led to the rapid death of the animal.

Similar trap spears were used almost all over the world. In Vietnam, similar traps, lumps of clay with many bamboo stakes, were used to successfully “hunt” even American intervention soldiers. Additionally, traps like these are much simpler than piling up logs in bear traps. By the way, maw-type traps are also known all over the world. For example, in Africa, even hippopotamuses were caught with mouth-type traps. Hippos outside the water are quite shy and cautious, and the fear of human traps was apparently passed on to them (the hippos) at the genetic level. Local residents, in order to scare away hippos, placed on their path a kind of trap made of a pumpkin or a small stump of a tree resting one end (of the pumpkin) on a stick. This layout was quite enough for hippos to stop using this path for a long time.

On Siberian bears and moose, if necessary, you can use a powerful crossbow (crossbow) with a spear instead of an arrow. Hunters used crossbows (crossbows) with bows that could be pulled by two or three adult men at once until the mid-twentieth century. Then the crossbow bow began to be replaced firearms or loops of steel cable.

You yourself have already guessed that all the traps described above are considered poaching and are prohibited for use everywhere. Knowing and applying are not the same thing. But you need to know just in case.

What do you say: “A tyrannosaurus appeared from somewhere and needs to be killed off? I hope you didn't scare him? Then we’ll get together now and do as you ask.”

Different humanity Burovsky Andrey Mikhailovich

How did you hunt a mammoth?

How did you hunt a mammoth?

About trapping pits for mammoth as the only one possible way their extraction was written in the 19th century by such a great scientist, without exaggeration, as V.V. Dokuchaev.

This corresponded to the ideological ideas of society. One part of educated society refused to even discuss the possibility that mammoths and humans could coexist. This is against God! The other part of educated society consisted of evolutionists, but the evolutionists knew everything in advance: he couldn’t wild man to hunt such a large animal with stone tools!

Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, on the instructions of the Historical Museum in Moscow, painted the painting “The Hunt for the Mammoth.” It was written in 1885, but is still reproduced in textbooks and popular books. This is a wonderful picture. It is very well made, and, of course, everything is depicted “as it should be.” Here is a mammoth in a huge pit, and a hunter struck by its tusks, whom his friend is holding by the hand. And a crowd of wild “Paleolithics” who throw stones at the mammoth.

Here an elderly warrior with a wild cry throws a huge stone at a mammoth. The skins in which people are wrapped flutter, stones fly, a mammoth roars, a wounded man lies with his face distorted from pain and fear... Very artistic. Everything was as we imagined in late XIX century.

There's just one problem: the mammoth lived in different climatic zones, but was also found in those places where it was common permafrost... Including in modern Yakutia ... but even in Kostenki, near modern Voronezh, during the era of mammoth hunting, the climate was close to subarctic. And there they also hunted him.

It would probably be cruel to take Vasnetsov to modern Yakutia and ask him to dig a hole for a mammoth, even with an iron shovel. It would be wrong to mock this worthy man. But this sinful desire appears in me every time I look at his wonderful picture.

Or maybe this is how they hunted mammoths?

This same idea of ​​a mammoth trap is reproduced in many books for teenagers. One of them, very popular, describes in detail how ancient man digs a trap like catching a mammoth and killing it, and one of the hunters falls into a hole, and the mammoth tramples him.

So picturesque and literary works recorded the outdated point of view of vulgar materialism and its brainchild - unilinear evolutionism.

Nowadays, along with the leading theory of driven hunts and ideas about the role of hunting with a spear, there are simply defiantly bold assumptions that the coexistence of mammoth and man is not a struggle, but a symbiosis.

Not to mention the fact that many African tribes are known to go after an elephant with a spear alone. They kill the elephant both from the approach, sneaking up on it, and from ambush, but the heavy losses of people during these hunts are unknown.

Was this known in the 19th century? Was. In 1857–1876 Africans killed about 51 thousand elephants with the simplest weapons. True, the Africans did not act for food, but to sell ivory to Europeans. The most important thing is that technically the “overkill” was at least theoretically possible. But scientists preferred to believe in pitiful paleolithics, incapable of active hunting.