https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/early-americans-ate-tons-of-mammoth-13-000-year-old-bones-from-clovis-culture-baby-revealEarly Indigenous Americans relied heavily on
meat from mammoths to survive, according to
a new study, which suggests they were
top-notch experts at hunting the massive
beasts.
The findings, reported in a study published
Wednesday (Dec. 4) in the journal Science
Advances, are based on chemical analyses of
the bones of an 18-month-old boy — dubbed
Anzick-1 — who lived almost 13,000 years ago
in what is now Montana.
The boy was probably still breast-feeding,
and the results reveal that the diet of his
mother was "closest to that of [the
now-extinct] scimitar cat, a mammoth
specialist," the researchers wrote in the
study.
To investigate the diet of the boy's mother,
the team looked at stable radioisotopes —
atoms of an element that have a different
number of neutrons in their nuclei — in the
boy's bones. The technique measures the
distinctive abundance of specific
radioisotopes, which can be used to
reconstruct the diet of an ancient person.
The boy's "isotopic fingerprint" was
probably inherited directly from his mother
and showed that mammoths were an important
source of food for his entire family group,
the authors wrote in the study.
That, in turn, suggests that people from
the Western Clovis culture, to which the
boy belonged, were regularly hunting
mammoths — and to a lesser extent elk
(Cervus canadensis), bison (Bison bison
and B. antiquus) and a now-extinct genus
of camel (Camelops).
...
https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.adr3814Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet
Ancient Native American ancestors (Clovis) have
been interpreted as either specialized megafauna
hunters orgeneralist foragers. Supporting data
are typically indirect (toolkits, associated
fauna) or speculative (models,actualistic
experiments). Here, we present stable isotope
analyses of the only known Clovis individual,
the 18-month-old Anzick child, to directly infer
maternal protein diet. Using comparative fauna
from this region andperiod, we find that mammoth
was the largest contributor to Clovis diet,
followed by elk and bison/camel, whilethe
contribution of small mammals was negligible,
broadly consistent with the Clovis
zooarchaeological record. When compared with
second-order consumers, the Anzick-1 maternal
diet is closest to that of scimitar cat, a
mammoth specialist. Our findings are
consistent with the Clovis megafaunal
specialist model, using sophisticated
technology and high residential mobility to
subsist on the highest ranked prey, an
adaptation allowing them torapidly expand
across the Americas south of the Pleistocene
ice sheets.
Clovis peoples of 12 kya western Canada were excellent mammoth hunters