Go to drinkag1.com/stefanmilo to get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 and 5 AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Thanks to AG1 for sponsoring today's video!
@stephanmilo I really enjoy your videos, and I admire your coverage of such interesting topics. I've learned a lot from you. I am disappointed you are shilling for the supplements industry. I find it irresponsible. Hopefully you won't continue endorsing an industry well-known to be deceptive and unregulated.
Hey everyone! Thanks for watching, I was reading all your comments on my end of year video and a lot of you mentioned how much you appreciate me covering topics that we don't fully understand yet and that I am happy to mention when we don't know something. Well I've decided to lean into that a little bit and create a series "unknown...at the moment". I do honestly feel like archaeology has shied away from mystery and intrigue as a knee jerk reaction to ancient aliens etc but it really is exciting to discuss things we don't know in an honest way considering the evidence. Anyway, hope you enjoy!
A brilliant idea, it will be great to come back one day, when we know the answer, to watch it again and be amazed at how much progress we have made in research.
Last week my family’s pet gecko died, and when we buried her we all found our favorite rocks to put with her. My daughter added a tumbled piece of amethyst we got at the Renaissance Fair, my son added a rock carved into the shape of a star that I got for him in New Mexico, and I added a beautiful stone from a nearby hiking spot. Maybe these people had a connection with the mammoths as deep as the one we had with our pet and wanted to show them reverence? At least, that was what was brought to mind when you mentioned the shells placed inside the bones.
I perceive people from the paleolithic to be more brutal, intelligent, and superstitious. A funeral pyre for their main source of resources makes sense, since a common diaspora would relate stories of the long generational cycle of Mammoths, and how to properly hunt and process them.
I spoke with a Ukrainian professor of anthropology who worked and researched one of these campsight. He said that these mammoth bones are probably mostly collected from long-dead individuals. They differ in age, often by hundreds and tens of hundreds of years, and show traces of mineralization in different types of soil. They were probably collected in river deltas, where they were stored for a long time and were carried away by the current, which is why we see such buildings mostly near the beds of large rivers in Ukraine and southern Russia. Therefore, we are most likely not talking about massive mammoth slaughters in these regions
So then why are there shells placed in between vertebrae and pendants placed within the bone and coral within the skull of a mammoth? Is that somehow natural too? I don’t think that’s adequate
@Harold2124 you did not get my point. I am not claiming that those structures aren't man-made, as they are. What am trying to say is most of the bones are likely scavenged from a long-dead animal (up to hundreds of years old)
I watched a documentary on that. The archaeologists saw that there was a distinct time that the cave art went from stick figures to highly detailed anatomically correct drawings (in French caves if I remember correctly) and their assessment is that this was the result of consuming Hallucinogenic mushrooms. And this may have been the beginning of advanced culture. I don't know either way but I thought it was interesting to think that some or much of the advanced thinking in our ancestors may have been from experiencing an altered sense of reality.
@@reuireuiop0 Soooooooo what is point you are trying to make here? There was sketchily done paintings in caves 25,000 years and there is sketchily done art now! So what??
Well, they knew how mammoths looked like. They saw them on a regular basis. All it takes is for someone to remember how it looks like. Perhaps with others shouting in mistakes.
Geologist here. Had the bones been covered by natural processes, the sediment would likely have stratification or grading, whereas had humans buried them, this would likely be absent.
Good insight! Hopefully the conflict over there can be resolved sooner rather than later, and if there are more of these sites, maybe they can perform some careful soil logging along with the archeology. Though I'd imagine it'd be kind of difficult to log the soil if you need to remove most of it to uncover each site... Maybe if they find an exposed bit, they could advance a borehole adjacent to the site prior to uncovering it. That would at least lend a clue imho. I love when archeology intersects with our field of study, and vice-versa. It's all just so fascinating. I'm 100% behind Stefan's goal of "reclaiming mystery and intrigue from pseudoscience". The truth, once uncovered and understood, is far more interesting than fiction.
I've read comments from other geologists that have said there is a lack of communication (not sure if that is the right way to say it) between archeologists and geologists in the scientific community. Meaning sometimes they propose unknowns that may have been better explained by a geologist. What is your take on that?
@@Bitchslapper316 Archaeologist here. Archaeologists are usually trained in sedimentology as part of the course work. We do hire soil scientists sometimes.
They were separated by individual bone types it looks like. My guess, I'm just a museum accessionist, they built these structures and had them as a nomadic base camp. Roll up the coverings and move on until next year.
Loved this video. As someone living in South Africa, elephants have always been a part of my culture. As far as I know they have a very noticeable reaction when they come across the remains of their dead relatives. Of course this is a stretch, but I wonder if those hunters didn’t notice that. Perhaps they felt compelled to treat the bones in some ritualistic manner, because they recognized a similar behavior in mammoths. Big hypothetical by the way, I have no idea what I’m talking about
Very interesting point. Makes complete sense that they may have been making a mammoth graveyard out of respect. Especially considering the additional trinkets (shells and coral ) that was carefully placed in the bones.
That was my thought at the start of the video. Did mammoths like elephant have graveyards? And if so when the hunters came across one did they then organize, enshrine the bones since they were so necessary to their lives, and then continue to add the bones of their hunts to help appease the spirits of the mammoths.
I agree with pulepebane5679's observation, but suggest that hunters' assemblage of these mammoth bones may be not about spiritualism, ritual, or to honor the mammoths, but instead as a means to hopefully kill even more of them. Elephants linger with and grieve the bones of their dead, and sometimes revisit their relatives' bones years later. If mammoths did this, too, then mammoth hunters would surely have observed it, and thought about how they could turn it to their advantage. I suggest that assembling masses of mammoth bones was done as a lure, an attractant, for other mammoths... and those visiting mammoths would be ambushed. Say that's how these assemblages began. It would be natural for specific practices for how to do it, based on what legend says has worked best, to develop into something approaching doctrine or ritual over hundreds or thousands of years.
@@bartlebyscrivener2980 Oh yeah that’s a really cool hypothesis! It would make sense, because then they could more reliably predict where the mammoth would be in case natural features like watering holes are disrupted.
I'm glad you decided to stick with the personal approach in your videos. I get the temptation to be detached and objective, but you're amazing at being yourself and carrying that tidal wave of enthusiasm right onto the screen.
I remember hearing that elephants are smart and social enough to visit and mourn the bones of dead members. Makes even more sense that hunters would want to honor and respect the mammoth by creating some meaningful tomb. Much like we do for our own. Perhaps owing the success of the following years hunt to the respect offered from the previous year.
I really like this interpretation, Paleolithic humans hunting these animals definitely would've noticed that behaviour as well and it makes a lot of sense that they'd feel some sort of empathy. After all, they themselves frequently had run ins with death in the family and we haven't changed much in the las 70 thousand years.
In defense of many objects being labeled as religous or ritualistic, the things most likely to survive the pressures of time are sacred objects because people go out of their way to preserve and protect ritualistic objects and places compared to ordinary objects. Ordinary objects are also in daily use which degrades them and they are usually used until they're disposed of or repurposed, whereas ritualistic objects are normally only used in special occasions.
There are way more medieval churches in Europe than medieval houses. EDIT: Just because people don't seem to understand what I'm implying, my point specifically is that things meant for ritualistic worship tend to survive for longer because they're made to a higher standard and people take more care of them.
@@hedgehog3180that's only because houses regularly get torn down and rebuilt in more modern materials. Those ancient monuments are too much of everything to do that with. If rebuilding Notre Dame for the current era were feasible it would've been torn down and rebuilt ages ago
I'd also say most people making that point have an overly discrete definition of what "ritual" is. Like a kazoo is literally a ritual object, musical performance is a ritualistic activity.
I get so emotional every time I see prehistoric art like the little mammoth carving you showed 😭 I just find it beautiful that the artistic spirit of creativity is something so innate to humans
I love the cave paintings, they have little marks to show where to throw a spear to kill it. Heart and gut for the kill kids! I can imagine other random lines being a plan of attack...
I think to cope with horrors of history we dehumanize people of the past. It can be quite humbling to think someone whose brain processes information the same as wedo made that art. Hopefully they found some comfort in those moments surrounding the arts creation.
I think its pretty clear that these people were incredibly empathetic to life and were simply respecting what they killed. They decorated some of the skeletons with things that were precious and delicate to thank them for the life they gave. What an incredible culture!
There is video evidence of modern Elephant examining and "visiting" sights of bones of past members of their herd. The hunters could drag all the bones together as a way to draw future herds to the same place instead of leaving the bones spread all over. Maybe? I also like the ritual side too.
Hopefully he sees your comment as I saw a study where even skulls from poached elephants that had been taken to a reserves camp would have elephants from their herd visit. The elephants hadnt been told they were there and smelt them out to visit.
Living in the Interior of Alaska, USA, many bones are found. My step kids’ ancestors used the bones as the base of their homes. They used animal hides to cover the bones. Eskimo people more often used whale bones. Evidence can be seen in many villages. Also Univ of Alaska Fairbanks has a fantastic Museum of the North!! Come visit!
@@rebexyyEs·ki·mo /ˈeskəˌmō/ noun noun: Eskimo; plural noun: Eskimos; plural noun: Eskimo 1. a member of an indigenous people inhabiting northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and eastern Siberia, traditionally living by hunting (especially of seals) and by fishing. 2. either of the two main languages spoken by indigenous peoples of the Arctic (Inuit and Yupik), forming a major division of the Eskimo-Aleut family.
i feel so so lucky that youtube suggested your channel to me! i started yesterday with your video about population y and i’m making my way through your others now. these videos are a joy to watch because they are so well researched and presented, but i have to say that my favorite thing about them is your genuine enthusiasm for the subject!! i love your consistent sincerity and awe, it makes watching these videos an absolute delight ❤
Mammoths were absolutely essential to the people back then but also must have been an awesome sight. Almost divine. It wouldnt surprise me that these magnificent beasts were worshipped. Great Video as always! "Like"
These structures first came to my attention after reading Jean Auel's "The Mammoth Hunters" as a teenager, and they've occupied a corner of my imagination for the last thirty years. Thanks for this.
I have often been asked what I was doing reading those books at that age (12), lol. I read them obsessively as a teenager and about once every year or two for the past twenty years. My favorite series.
@@jlzombiecat For me the series kinda runs out of steam after The Mammoth Hunters, but I revisit them every few years anyway because I love the first two so much.
I just stumbled on your channel and subscribed because of the way you explore some of the more obvious possibilities for this 'pile' of mammoth bones and in the end you say 'we just don't know'. I find that to be the most intellectually refreshing experience I have had watching an archaeological channel. You come across as just another average Joe that has different interests and a different job than I did and that increases your credibility to me exponentially. I am so tired of watching the science snobs who extrapolate a whole novel of information out of one small fragment of bone. Your doing that makes me think you respect my intellect and my ability to come to my own assumption based on the evidence you showcased in your video. I cannot tell you enough how refreshing that is.
Rituals similar to what you described have survived very long at least here in Finland, mostly as the tradition of "peijaiset" which is a celebration for the hunted animal. When our ancestors honored bears, which they considered their close animal relative, people would climb a pine tree and place the skull on the top, so the spirit of the bear could ascend back to heaven. By doing this they also hoped, that the spirit descends back upon earth and bears would be around for the future hunters too. I could easily see people of the stone ages having similar rituals, praying for continuity of the animal their livelihoods depended on.
The structures are spirit "houses" for the mammoth's spirit. You don't need a roof for a spirit house. They honoured these animals, and were grateful to them for the food they provided, much like my ancestors felt about bison and elk. Even recently, when my father would shoot an elk or a deer, he would thank the animal, then give thanks to the grandfathers and to father sun and mother earth, to the four directions, and to the nadir both of self, and of the animal he killed. He prepared the animal for butchering carefully in such a way that it's spirit could leave and be free. He did this with fish he caught too. He didn't just catch them and let them flop around. He caught them, killed them immediately, then put them with their heads in the water so that their spirit could go back to where it was most at home, and of course thanks was given for the fish, just as it would have been for a deer or an elk. When you must take a life, it is important to give the spirit of the animal whose life you took thanks for giving itself up to nourish you. My people don't believe in putting horrible chemicals in a body of our loved ones, then putting them in a box that gets put in the ground. Maybe we wrap our people in a blanket and take them to a sacred site where we will put them in the ground. We don't try to stop the process of decomposition, because to us, in our death, we are feeding the flora and fauna of this world as the flora and fauna of this world fed us. It is a circle which has been going on forever. I always wonder what it will be like thousands of years from now when they go to dig up one of our cemeteries, expecting it to be like all t he other cemeteries on this continent, but all they find is empty boxes. We bury the coffins to placate the government which have ridiculous laws about the proper disposal of a body which are there only to serve undertakers and morticians and to make them rich. We dutifully put a wooden box in the ground, then dispose of the bodies of our loved ones in the way we always have. As we consume food, we are also food, and as such our ancestors are always with us, and with the grandfathers and grandmothers and everything else which has ever lived. I cannot speak for people from other tribes. Most, I think, stick with modern ways of doing things. I wonder though, if maybe this might not be part of the reason there is so much trouble these days.
Thank you for your careful input! I tried to write about this way of approach to animals in discussions which blame men for extinction of megafauna. They blam us in a strange masochistic way, without 1) trying to calculate how many men would there had to be in order to consume all the megafauna and 2) without acknowledging the customs you described (they might read it but their eyes are blind to comprehend) and 3) without comprehending how difficult it would be to hunt to exctinction some elusive species. I consider your way as better than the biblical one: there is this special sentence in Bible where God gives all animals to men. I think this sentence is there to exonerate us, to not feel guilty when we kill a domestic animal or hunt.
All the people in my family always got cremated. I think they still got pumped with chemicals beforehand so people could visit the body at an open casket funeral.
@@Alarix246that last point is one of the main reasons I walked away from my family's religion. All I've seen that attitude do is excuse people for doing the most awful things to animals
Hmm, perhaps ancient people were making offerings to the dead mammoth spirits to make sure that the mammoth spirit doesn't ruin later hunts for not being appropriately respected? Something like a Finnish peijaiset for a bear where the point is to appease the bear spirit and semi-apologise for it for its killing. EDIT: Oop, Stefan got a similar thing for the Evenki.
Yea, I could imagine an expression of gratitude too. Such a HUGE animal giving an enormous amount of food, as well as materials for tools and clothing in such an inhospitable environment. Not starving, freezing, or having vital/beloved people mamed or killed, that's quite a big deal.
@@seabhactheshifty Considering without the Mammoth their ancestors wouldn't have survived and humanity likes to 'make sense' of its existence, It seems extremely probable that rituals to celebrate and 'spiritually' perpetuate the practice would exist.
The Hindi revere cattle, "The cow is our mother". Indeed it is -- providing milk, cream, butter, cheese, and manure for the fields ... as well as bull calves to pull plows and new cow calves as well. Perhaps the mammoth similarly provided sustainance sufficient to confer them worthy of appreciation and reverence.
The fact that there are no hearths is very telling, and true. No fire = people cannot live there. A ritual is good explanation, but I propose a simpler one: They are storage places. They are made of bone and will last a long time and not be swept away by heavy weather. They are too small for a family, but with some strings or branches strung across the open space inside, you could hang all kinds of things like hides or jewelry. A single small storage place is built when all you have is a few bones and need immediate storage. More storage places are built as needed, but they are small because there are limited bones. Different storage places could hold different things- any gamer knows you organize your loot so it is quick and easy to find. A fire outside the structure means you can see inside, but no need to waste fuel when you are just ducking in to grab something.
My first thought was definitely storage. Live in the skins and stack all the meat in a dark cold structure made out of the bones. Keep the meat storage a distance away from your living area so you don't have visits from predators in the night looking for an easy meal. Cover the whole thing in soil for added security and better temp control during the warmer season. You could even dig down to the permafrost before the bones get laid for even cooler storage options. During the colder season they could serve as freezers so you can draw your meat ration when needed. You would assume that the hunter gatherers followed herds during the hunting season and that they killed more than they could consume on the move. So the storage structures could serve as meat caches for the lean periods. You could survive the winter moving from cache to cache consuming the contents. As for the ritual aspect. It doesn't take humans very long to add ritualistic aspects to any practical endeavour.
For reasons other than hearths, I'm tending to agree that these are not houses. But as for hearths, they are not essential to be inside dwelling structures, and in fact smoke can outweigh the heat created. It's still possible that cooking was conducted in adjoining structures, or that food processing entirely took place during summer and dried food was consumed in winter, heat being created by communal sleeping with heavy fur blankets.
@Jessicap4998, you and jadehamilton1878 both make insightful points, but the no fire, no heat, no people thing has one glaring oversight and the communal sleeping under heavy fur blankets ( which would be a necessity)still possibly needed some form of additional warmth during sudden cold snaps. The fattest part of the mammoth is its hump, so they had the fuel. Each group and possibly each family had the stones to create the spark. And any absorbent and slowly combustible fiber could be a wick. Then all you need is small place for a shallow stone basin and someone to look after the oil lamp. Like the northen peoples used to keep their ice houses warm enough to live. Would it have been needed all the time? Probably not needed, but if you had an abundant supply, let's say over six months of constant cold snaps worth and the winter is nearing the end it would raise people's spirits to be a little warmer. What about places that were used for rituals, there had to have been some. Because of their nature they wouldn't be in constant use and therefore, especially during the winter months , would need to be warmed before conducting the ritual and definitely before the entire community attended or they would risk everyone freezing to death .
@@pattheplanter you and MultiCappie should have been added too but I had to go take care of something, I'm sorry for that. I agree that some buildings might have had a spiritual meaning, and storage would be neccessary even for a short stay like in a hunting camp. And it makes sense to process as much meat as possible in the hunting camp because dried/smoked meat weighs less and in its various states less room needed for transport and storage, like dried meat pounded into a powder. Where I'm from we had two type of mammoth and both had thick skin, so some structures used to dry and tan the hides into the shapes needed seems necessary too. If you ignore the hair, imagine that you are anywhere from a few hundred meters to a couple of hundred miles from the ice shelf and you have to skin an elephant and make whatever kind of building covering that your group decides is going to built next. Are you going to use that building with fresh, wet skin or do you dry and tann it first. Scaffolding and frames have been used for millenia to get hides into the desired shape when dried. Everyone here has a valid point or two. Mammoths needed grassland, or steppe, to survive, and in that type of biome there is minimal rainfall so usually things don't grow larger than a Bush unless the water table, underground aquifer, is high enough like a natural spring allowing for larger plants like trees to survive. So we know that trees were a rarely seen thing on the steppe. This group of people has many different ways of looking at things and I find you all interesting, so I propose a question for you. With given the rarity of trees in a steppe environment would wood be better used in a structure or as a source of fuel?
The bones were the structure with a mammoth skin roof, the keepsakes were tucked away for safe keeping just as we would place something on a shelf or cubby.
Living in Tundra, I would build a house out of bones using earth or mud between the bones covering all with sods of grass,it would insulate the inside, if the door is closed with leather.
Not having a fire inside but having them nearby would indicate to me that they were used for food storage. The bones protect the food from scavengers and you would want it to stay cold inside, that explains the lack of a fire inside.
Cold storage huts, smoke huts with central fire pit, and heat fires against the wall in huts providing the maximum open work area. Processing meat and cleaning hides requires an open heated space. Eventually, scientists count each type of bone, discover a select few types of bones are missing, and never figure out those bones assemble neatly to form a sled suitable for hauling large packs. Scifi authors had this all figured out long ago.
Totally what I thought too..the spiral structure which I see in a few of them indicate a door and what a perfect thing to cover a mammoth with than the bones of a larger mammoth. I wonder if the bones inside are younger. Somone else said they looked at those bones ..some Prof in Ukraine and found they're many different ages and locations not all killed but old bones being used. And then maybe whene the meat was gone they sat inside and built a fire for warmth. Or to melt ice around the structure to create the fridge. If it was cold you wouldn't want to waste wood on a structure if you had big bones. And the fact there no gnawing would indicate the covering of mud and grass over as you say. Perfect use for them, the shells and whatnot in the ribs would not fit but maybe somone just wanted to hide their jewelry and put it in the fridge to hide them from their husband ...so many possibilities but I think your idea seems very logical and practical and likely.
i saw a display similar to this in Kyiv's natural history museum! it's great you did a video about it, it's a really interesting but not very well known part of history. i'm British but lived in Ukraine for 20 years until a few years ago. all the videos about Ukraine i've been watching the last 2 years are about the war, so it was unexpectedly therapeutic to relax and watch this. thank you for a well balanced and fascinating presentation as usual, and cool you donated man. good luck for 2024 :)
so glad that museum is intact.. i am reminded that the original trojan artifacts were lost in the bombing of a German art history museum I hope they can be Safe
When our children were about 6 and nine(Rosie,eldest,Cameron,son,youngest) our 21 year old cat passed away.I felt the whole family’s sadness and felt a small ceremony could help us with closure.So we built a fire,wrapped the cat in silk.Placed him between two ceramic planter trays and lit the fire.I suggested we might like a tooth each for keepsake and with sad yet gratifying humming we waited by the fire until late….all without religious connotations or pre planned notions.We humans seem to know love,sadness’s,and deep gratitude.If we ate such huge creatures as mammoths we would certainly have learned a lot about them,perhaps even individually .So respect and heart felt actions would almost certainly follow 😊.Thanks for your heartfelt studies and presentations.❤
Great post. One of my best friends had a little heart made of her little dog's ashes when the little dog died. She still cries, but also says that touching the heart immediately conjures pics of Finja and makes her feel better. And she has another (rescue too) dog now.
Every video on this channel just shows me more of what we don’t know. If one wants to go into the sciences to make discoveries, archaeology is kinda the final frontier
I love this series already! (Although i'm a little late hehe) In my msc thesis i wrote about Eurasian Steppe pastoralists and i stumbled upon so called "meeting-sites" or "meeting-points". Remains of seemingly abandoned structures that possibly groups of people from a larger area visited on a seasonal or otherwise regular basis! I think this would be a possibility to think about when it comes to these mammoth bone structures 👀
Untanned hides that were dry or frozen could easily be used in combination with bones to build a structure. I wouldn't be surprised if the leather from a full grown mammoth was about an inch thick. Just build the structure gradually with wet hides then let them dry or freeze. They probably also packed mud between the bones to support the structure. Such a structure would have been insulated very well and probably didn't require a large fire to keep warm. Providing an escape for the smoke may have been considered counterproductive. The structures may also have been used primarily to store food. Meat placed in such a structure would have been preserved much better over the summer months. Very much like a root cellar. And a secure structure would have deterred predators from raiding the cache.
I was also going to suggest food storage. Dehydrated meat (smoked and/or jerky) would smell great to other predators, and as any backpacker in bear country could tell you you don't want to sleep with the food...
That was my first thought ´it wouldn’t have made any sense building a dwelling full of holes , so the mammoth hide makes most sense , also they could have moved from a place they had lived and dismantled the bone houses in a particular way
Look, I'm not a specialist in archeology, but I have an idea that might satisfy both views... Given the size, weight and amount of work, I think it would make sense for a tribe to go live where the mammoths were killed, at least for the time it took to process the carcasses. It would also make sense that they would use whatever came from those carcasses to support their activity. Such a village would need housing, but also altars or spiritual middens. So both could be possible. About the lack of hearths: as you mentioned, there is little to no cover in the steppes. The very best way to cope with wind in the steppe is to stay low. Very low structures, covered with skin from the mammoth, hairs on the inside. During the day they need fire for the processing, and at night they could take hot rocks that lined the fires and take them into the low tents. It would be most efficient if it was just a crawl space, perhaps half a meter high on the sides, one meter in the middle. That's how I would do it in a survival situation. Such a structure would be very quickly constructed, and perhaps they would bring the most handy bones from previous sites to start the settlement. However they did it, with such a construction, the bones would now be in the position they were placed, and they would function both as dwelling as well as for rituals...
I wonder if they were used to smoke the mammoth meat. No fire needed, only embers to smoke for a long period. Preserves the meat for long trips. Surely they understood how tasty the smoke meat was. Hawaiians smoke meat by burying the embers and then meat and then leaves on top. Love the videos, especially of you walking outdoors!
Watching this I couldn't stop thinking about Kutne Hora, the bone church in Czechia. It's fantastic and very eerie to see the remains of hundreds of people arranged in so many intricate ways. There are huge structures made only by interlocking the bones and careful stacking. The fact is that people have always loved creating things, structures, patterns. I think it's an inherent part of who we are. We may not ever know what they were created for, perhaps they were just created because they could.
I appreciate the shot of Grotte Niaux at 8:58--I recognized it instantly because I've been there; the public can tour the cave, and the art is fantastic (11-13,000 BPE). GREAT video Stefan!
So as a Hunter, I have a guy in my party who has been leaving a deer antler from his harvest every year, for about 13 years now, at the base of the same tree, Its just HIS Ritual, and we all respect it.
I think it's pretty clear they didn't fulfill a practical purpose, but rather a status-based, ritualistic one. Aka if they built structures out of the bones it's doubtful people actually lived in them. Based on burials, and the probable difficulty in taking down a mammoth- it stands to reason a tribe would want to display evidence of their successes.
Bro I’ve been watching your videos everyday on my way to work on the train since I discovered your channel in January. Ancient human history and pre history is so so fascinating and incredible, that it’s even more fantastic than we could ever imagine. Love your channel and presentation and joy that you display man. Keep it up and can’t wait to see all the new videos and ideas/topics!
It definitely does say a lot about some aspects of society when the go to explanation is that we used their bones as objects and lived in them. Imagine if they revered mammoth and these were shrines, as you mentioned, the cultural leap from us to them is pretty huge.
I think it pairs well and is very telling how many people have a general negative response to the amount of objects and finds that are generally catalogued as religious in nature even tho the evidence is pretty good of them being that.
Just go and study actual hunter gatherer tribes right now. They perform rituals before every hunt, add ritual behaviors in common day activities and have supertitious thinking all the time. No wonder Archeology has to lean so much on the ritual argument.
I think the constant need to explain things we don't understand with religion and superstition is kind of lazy. Why are we assuming anyone built shrines that long ago? For all we know religion is a modern (-10,000 year old) construct. A cave man didn't wonder out into the open and start building shrines to "gods" out of nowhere.
@@Mark_GLtheir survival was much less predictable and more vulnerable to chance than ours is. I think that would definitely foster a very superstitious mindset and magical thinking could be considered rational.
@@Bitchslapper316 Ok, sure, we don't know 100%, but literally since we have records of human activity, religion is at the center of it in some way or another. Every piece of writing from 5000 years ago tells us religious and spiritual believes were deeply important in everyday life. Every isolated tribe we find in the Amazon jungle has some form of religion, as do the tribes deep in Africa, or every tiny village deep in the Eurasian plateau. For pretty much every society that we have records of, including many modern people, religious believes aren't a once every Sunday thing but an ever present everyday thing. Scientifically, you'd have to be deeply stubborn to not think paleolithic people had deeply ingrained spiritual/religious believes, and it's arrogant from people to think archeologists are lazy for assuming ritual looking objects to be ritualistic, because every group of humans we've ever met no matter how isolated or for how long they've been without meeting any other humans, has them. Are some objects other things? Sure, ancient humans had toys, tools, souvenirs,. random Knicks knacks, but people here on the internet seem to think that we should just assume paleolithic humans had a big luxury goods based economy with trading card games, daimakura pillows, and anime figurines or something, which is ridiculous. Ancient humans moved around, they couldn't afford to carry piles of commodities around, most of what they carried had to be deeply important, which means that most of it would be survival gear, and things with DEEP emotional importance, a lot of which was bound to carry some religious or spiritual significance as well. And for that matter, it also seems like modern people don't understand that religion for ancient people was very different, acts that carry no spiritual significance for us today did so back in the day. Since I'm on my phone I won't list a ton, but my favorite example is gambling games. Nowadays they're seen as dumb sleazy fun, but ancient people had GODS attached to them, for ancient people, even a game of dice would be a religious or spiritual act, because they believed a god was guiding the game, ancient people believed sickness was the result of demons and lemme tell ya sickness was definitely an everyday occurrence, the rising and setting of the sun, the moon, the tides. For hunter gatherers every animal they killed had a soul and was a sentient creature no different than us. Absolutely everything for ancient people was the result of divine action, and this is bound to be MORE truth the further back you go in time when humans understood even less about the physical mechanisms that drove things. As for how old religion itself is, true, we don't know for sure, but we have good evidence of it potentially being older than homo sapiens, potentially at least as old as the neanderthal (tho this is deeply debated). Certainly no mainstream archeologists or historian doubts that religion is AT LEAST as old as homo sapiens. So, in summary, no, I don't think it's even a little bit lazy to assume most strange things we find from ancient times had religious significance. Obviously the context of the dig is important, and there's always room for other theories like this video demonstrated, but I think people are far too high on their own farts if they think they're being oh so clever by telling professional archeologists who dedicate their lives to studying ancient humans that they're being lazy in their analysis.
When I was a left tenant in the milla tree, I would take a vittamin to supplement my diet of mostly chicken fillitz, pa-totto crisps and wooster sauce. I made certain to take it right on shedjool at hallf-eight each morning, and washed it down with a swig of wootah from my alloo-MIN-ee-um flask.
Mammoths were likely hunted to extinction, like most such creatures, and likely lived much more recently than is generally suggested, like most such creatures. 92% of what have been called fossils are actually just good old fashioned bones. This means virtually none of the dinosaurs or other pre-historic creatures are anywhere near the often millions of years old dating that are commonly theorized, because it isn't possible for bones to last even close to that long. Since we observe modern extinction events to be caused by human alterations to habitats, and over-hunting, it is therefore the most likely cause of previous extinction events as well. So it wasn't a meteor nor evolution that wiped out the terrible thunder lizards. It was your ancestors. The last two Mammoth specimens that were found virtually perfectly preserved had modern humans trying to eat them. One in North America in which Inuits were eating it at the time of it's discovery (They claimed to have killed it, though no one believed them) and the other in Siberia where one of the excavation members was kicked off the team for taking a bite of it. This is telling. How long does meat remain edible, let alone appetizing in your climate controlled freezer with vacuum sealed bags? How much less then, would meat remain appetizing if the animal just keeled over in the snow and ice of the wild? And yet you are told these creatures died somewhere between 10,000 to 100,000 years ago? Clearly the numbers are ridiculously inflated.
Areas like this had most of the tusks pilfered years ago when it was legal to do so. Nowadays, most fossilized mammoth ivory, that is still legal to trade in, is sold as knife handles and the like.
Ivory, no matter what species, is extensively traded, especially illegally. It’s used for display pieces, trophies, carving, even medicine. When you, for example, consider that some homeopathic ivory “medicine” is supposed to act as a kind of cure-all panacea, it’s not difficult to see people go great lengths to acquire it.
"Walking in the woods, thinking about mammoths..." Great story. Finding shell and coral etc. amongst the bones and no hearths seems pretty convincing that these were not houses. I used to see the bleached bones of cattle on a ranch when I was a kid. Remembering that got me wondering if these bones were assembled fresh after butchering or possibly collected later--maybe much later if the bones were lying in frozen tundra.
I cannot imagine living in a home partially made up of freshly butchered animal bones. Think of the stench and rancidness as those bones were exposed to the heat inside the abode. The construction would make more sense as a totem rather than a domicile. I also wonder about the piece of coral found with the bones. Where in the world did that originate? That specimen must have been traded a long distance from its origin. Just incredible to think of that alone.
Maybe the bones were collected later after the scavengers of that time had already cleaned the bones. Then there's no need to worry about any smell, disease or pests in a home. And anything traded over large distances and even locally sourced totems had immense value and power and could have been used to invoke protection towards the home and its occupants. Mammoths were so highly esteemed and valued not only for survival, there was a spiritual aspect to it . And what better way to link both then to utilize the bones out of necessity and adorning them with such powerful and rare items.
The end of this video made me tear up. I love thinking about people depositing gifts to these great mammoths as a way to give back or thank them for the food. I love the paleolithic peoples so much.
Thanks for your integrity in your study of archeology. In past years, 20 - 30 and more years past, I had become amazingly tired and bored with archeologists who claimed that neanderthals and other earlier humans were idiots and brutes. I am grateful for scientists who discovered DNA sequencing and established modern human's areas of similarity to our human ancestors. Also grateful to archeologists, such as you, who have pushed past the arrogant shortness of vision of too many past archeologists, and seek the truth of our human heritage.
As an architectural engineer, the structure seems unlikely to be a residence. The amount of time required to stockpile materials and the uncertainty in stacking a stable structure would make this a questionable choice. Simple and fast is better for a residential structure.
"Simple and fast" makes flimsy residential structures. Compare the houses in a modern "throw it up as quick as you can" development to the still-standing stone houses hundreds of years old over in Europe.
I like the ritual hypothesis. The modern example of the bears suggests a level of respect, and of empathy, that is significant. 'I have to kill you to survive, but I know that I have taken something of value. Thank you'. This is a sensibility which we still need. We all take life in order to live, animal or vegetable, and we must realize that it is all precious, both our lives as their lives. We must not take it for granted.
I appreciate your comment, I think we are in some way like minded. I'm not religious, but I have a deep respect for life in all it's forms. I think when many people hear "ritual" they automatically think about god. It would be interesting to know more of the Evenki people's ideas of life and how their regards for the bear fits into any traditional spirituality. A quick search says that along with shamanism they have adopted orthodox christian beliefs.
That's pretty interesting. And good for the Evenki. They will understand the body and the blood, the basic Christian paradigm, as it is the basic paradigm of evolution.@@jfu5222
I have carved hundreds of pieces of mammoth ivory, from 1" across to 3' I know what they smelt like when burned. There's a story there which I would be pleased to tell if requested. Either way that scattered sculptural trinket hoard is my personal connection with our ancient past. That is a good feeling.
Please do a follow-up video. I kept waiting for you to compare the diagrams of various excavations. If they had all been discovered in the same arrangement it would be unlikely that the bones on the inside had fallen down. No? Thanks for doing these videos. You are pretty awesome.
Wouldn't "work animal" imply some level of domestication? Im not exactly a mammoth expert, but I've personally not heard of any evidence, physical or genetic, that mammoths were ever domesticated even a little.
@@dMb1790i mean people used elephants for a very long time for work and warfare. They were never domesticated. If mammoths were similar to elephants they could totally be used in similar ways
@@dMb1790 romanticizing that Noble Savages lived in unison with their adoring pet Mammoths who volunteered their labor services for some type of ... "work" or various pre-agricultural activities...
The valuable artifacts being put into the mammoth bones sounds a lot like the dropping of swords into a nearby lakes and rivers, as if these structures were made for a sacrificial or memorial reason. These could be similar to honoring the mammoths for their sacrifice and "praying" for a good hunt next year.
I would like to add a bit in here from bush-craft/survival skills. If you make a structure you really do not want a fire too close to it. A fire about 6 feet away with a heat reflector made from saplings or rocks (or maybe memoth bones?) is good enough. The radiant heat from the fire is good enough for -25C to be relatively comfortable and -45C it will keep you alive. So perhaps they had platform fires outside the structures? That said all this argument does is bring another argument into question. It does not prove anything.
Maybe they're just organizing the bones, sorting and stacking so they can use the materials? I mean it would be a holy mess.....if you're living around there, searching for the bits that you want to use, they would be best organized. I think they're bone, material warehouses!!
Now that you bring it to our attention, the "Mammoth House" was suspect. I'd certainly prefer sleeping under a leather tent with hearth, than the RITUAL site ~
Hi Stefan Milo it’s me the Native Colombian in London again and I am excited to see this video as it interests me to see all these mass burial sites with megafaunal mammalian remains in them all over the place with different circumstances like the one in the Yellowstone Caldera caused by volcanic eruption and the one in the Mexico basin due to the hunter-gatherers of the valley
Maybe it was a sign of pride as society to stack their bones this way. Maybe it was a sign that this tribe had to be respected because this tribe had good hunters. These days you see the same with those dudes with giant lifted trucks
The burial, and making sure there is no bad blood with the animal spirits is very compelling. Especially when you have extant indigenous culture practicing similar rituals.
Thank you for speaking of and donating to Ukraine! I enjoyed the video, but had issues with "modern day" descriptions. That was until the end, very glad I watched the entire video! As is my habit 🙂 Thanks for sharing your passion with us all ❤️
Something that makes it clear to me that these would not be dwellings is that there is no way all these bones would be the clean remains that are discovered now. Even if hunter gatherers did their best to scrape off all the meat and remove the marrow, these would still be covered in scraps of tissue that would still be undergoing decomposition. I don't believe that these would be reduced to sheer bone until enough time had passed for insects and microorganisms to fully clean them up. Are we supposed to believe that people were dwelling inside these piles of rotting meat?
someone comments above that the bones are of different ages and different areas and so them being deposits of bones brought by the river and found by the people who used them seems likely if that is true... gonna look up that now. But that would mean no meat on them. I thought they might make a perfect fridge for a mammoth meat fridge if they made the bones hut to keep food protected as they couldn't eat the whole thing in one go.
Thanks again Stefan! I really appreciate your effort to bring back intrigue to empirical archaeology. We may love learning about archaeology, but we need the curiosity of kids to truly succeed in our mission.
Archeologists excavate a Walmart: The structure seems to have been a temple where tribespeople carried out ritualistic gifts to the Walmart God. The people brought offerings to the temple where they were processed thru these lines with these counters, then taken back to put on shelves. They were stored there until religious celebrations, where they were burned. The items were made with crude tools like chisels, some had long cords attached which represented the line between the Walmart God, the stars and the earth. The entire temple was constructed from quarried stones, shaped with simple tools and out into place using 100s of workers. We know these people didn't have any sort of advanced technology because we've never found any of their tools, they most certainly didn't have any sort of machinery. There was likely a high priest in charge of the temple, responsible for accepting, organizing, and distributing the offerings for religious ceremonies. No, we do not believe aliens were involved.
Most of what we built will be fallen and covered by nature in about 100yrs. So much of our building material will rot. Stone lasts. It's said Hoover dam might last a few thousand years, but surely there's bound to be huge pressures on it. I've always wondered how long Mount Rushmore will be recognizable as something man-made
I am in Chicago's back of the yards neighborhood where there is the leftovers from turn of the century slaughter houses that still smells. Could archiologests figure out how long it will take for those gasses to stop? Is it an abrupt hault or a half life?
Always excellent. Wild speculation for the sake of conversation: What if these 'structures' are 'refrigerators'? At the time permafrost would have been very close to the surface. How to hunt very large herd animals if you are a group of no more than about 150 people (say max 50 grown men) with no firearms? Likely stampede-oriented, resulting in a huge glut of carcases. That would be a great waste without preservation. So... Dig a shallow pit down to the permafrost. Rapidly joint and arrange the corpses, maybe then cover with the pelts and some earth. You have a natural 'fridge' that will last months, but will still be accessible while largely proof against scavengers. And so no hearths! So why are these 'fridges' largely undisturbed? Well, maybe there were lots and lots. We have only found the few that were never used - in such a harsh environment over thousands of years one could imagine entire 'groups' being randomly wiped out from time-to-time, never to return to such a cache. Or... the most efficient way to make use of such a 'fridge' / cache would be to take what you need as you need it, returning the bones to the site as a means to maintain it's integrity - you'd soon end up with such an arrangement of bones, especially if the 'fridge' was used for an extended period and occasionally topped-up. Yes, yes... probably nonsense. But every reasonable explanation must start with a 'flight of fancy', to be picked apart until only the very few that withstand examination are left.
Go to drinkag1.com/stefanmilo to get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 and 5 AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Thanks to AG1 for sponsoring today's video!
8 to 12 oz of water. How much is that in cubic cubits? Or other units, maybe.
@stephanmilo I really enjoy your videos, and I admire your coverage of such interesting topics. I've learned a lot from you.
I am disappointed you are shilling for the supplements industry. I find it irresponsible. Hopefully you won't continue endorsing an industry well-known to be deceptive and unregulated.
Thanks for promoting those health supplements. They prevented COVID from catching me.
Bit dubious recommending vitamins
@@natbumpo8430 do you have any proof of that? I didn’t get Covid and I don’t take vitamins. I did bother to get vaccinated though.
Hey everyone! Thanks for watching, I was reading all your comments on my end of year video and a lot of you mentioned how much you appreciate me covering topics that we don't fully understand yet and that I am happy to mention when we don't know something.
Well I've decided to lean into that a little bit and create a series "unknown...at the moment". I do honestly feel like archaeology has shied away from mystery and intrigue as a knee jerk reaction to ancient aliens etc but it really is exciting to discuss things we don't know in an honest way considering the evidence.
Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Great idea. I watch all your videos andhave 't found one that I didn't enjoy.
A brilliant idea, it will be great to come back one day, when we know the answer, to watch it again and be amazed at how much progress we have made in research.
Love your work brother. Your passion and diligence shows. Keep it coming.
sounds like an amazing series and very keen for this mammoth videos
Agree with you, as per usual. More great content!
So happy every time you upload
You two should do a crossover :)
@@SilentSaladI absolutely second this
@@SilentSalad I don't know if I'm talented enough to have anything to offer beyond my respect - I think he's got it more than figured out!
@@RareEarthSeries All I know is that a colab between the two of you would be absolutely phenomenal :D
Ancient Rare Earth.
Last week my family’s pet gecko died, and when we buried her we all found our favorite rocks to put with her. My daughter added a tumbled piece of amethyst we got at the Renaissance Fair, my son added a rock carved into the shape of a star that I got for him in New Mexico, and I added a beautiful stone from a nearby hiking spot. Maybe these people had a connection with the mammoths as deep as the one we had with our pet and wanted to show them reverence? At least, that was what was brought to mind when you mentioned the shells placed inside the bones.
I think that’s exactly the kind of thing these people were up to. It’s an incredibly human thing to do.
Sorry about your gecko
You sound like an amazing mom. ❤
Pet mammoth. Interesting concept.
I perceive people from the paleolithic to be more brutal, intelligent, and superstitious. A funeral pyre for their main source of resources makes sense, since a common diaspora would relate stories of the long generational cycle of Mammoths, and how to properly hunt and process them.
😂
I spoke with a Ukrainian professor of anthropology who worked and researched one of these campsight. He said that these mammoth bones are probably mostly collected from long-dead individuals. They differ in age, often by hundreds and tens of hundreds of years, and show traces of mineralization in different types of soil. They were probably collected in river deltas, where they were stored for a long time and were carried away by the current, which is why we see such buildings mostly near the beds of large rivers in Ukraine and southern Russia. Therefore, we are most likely not talking about massive mammoth slaughters in these regions
So it's more likely that it was a natural depository of potential building materials for humans to use?
@@paulmryglod4802 yep
So then why are there shells placed in between vertebrae and pendants placed within the bone and coral within the skull of a mammoth? Is that somehow natural too? I don’t think that’s adequate
@Harold2124 you did not get my point. I am not claiming that those structures aren't man-made, as they are. What am trying to say is most of the bones are likely scavenged from a long-dead animal (up to hundreds of years old)
@@baryonx9463 OK, but then say that.
i am equally as confused as Harold.
What I find most fascinating about the ancient art of mammoths is the anatomical accuracy in the scupture and drawings.
I watched a documentary on that. The archaeologists saw that there was a distinct time that the cave art went from stick figures to highly detailed anatomically correct drawings (in French caves if I remember correctly) and their assessment is that this was the result of consuming Hallucinogenic mushrooms. And this may have been the beginning of advanced culture. I don't know either way but I thought it was interesting to think that some or much of the advanced thinking in our ancestors may have been from experiencing an altered sense of reality.
I didn't even know mammoth created art
_Here's this Van Gork with his sketchy shaggy mammoths again. Would anybody want look at that twice?_
Sorko, Cave Art Critic, ca 25000 BC
@@reuireuiop0 Soooooooo what is point you are trying to make here? There was sketchily done paintings in caves 25,000 years and there is sketchily done art now! So what??
Well, they knew how mammoths looked like. They saw them on a regular basis. All it takes is for someone to remember how it looks like. Perhaps with others shouting in mistakes.
Geologist here. Had the bones been covered by natural processes, the sediment would likely have stratification or grading, whereas had humans buried them, this would likely be absent.
Good insight! Hopefully the conflict over there can be resolved sooner rather than later, and if there are more of these sites, maybe they can perform some careful soil logging along with the archeology. Though I'd imagine it'd be kind of difficult to log the soil if you need to remove most of it to uncover each site... Maybe if they find an exposed bit, they could advance a borehole adjacent to the site prior to uncovering it. That would at least lend a clue imho.
I love when archeology intersects with our field of study, and vice-versa. It's all just so fascinating. I'm 100% behind Stefan's goal of "reclaiming mystery and intrigue from pseudoscience". The truth, once uncovered and understood, is far more interesting than fiction.
I've read comments from other geologists that have said there is a lack of communication (not sure if that is the right way to say it) between archeologists and geologists in the scientific community. Meaning sometimes they propose unknowns that may have been better explained by a geologist.
What is your take on that?
@@Bitchslapper316 Archaeologist here. Archaeologists are usually trained in sedimentology as part of the course work. We do hire soil scientists sometimes.
They were separated by individual bone types it looks like.
My guess, I'm just a museum accessionist, they built these structures and had them as a nomadic base camp. Roll up the coverings and move on until next year.
It makes no sense at all that humans would take the time or energy to bury bones.
Loved this video. As someone living in South Africa, elephants have always been a part of my culture. As far as I know they have a very noticeable reaction when they come across the remains of their dead relatives. Of course this is a stretch, but I wonder if those hunters didn’t notice that. Perhaps they felt compelled to treat the bones in some ritualistic manner, because they recognized a similar behavior in mammoths. Big hypothetical by the way, I have no idea what I’m talking about
Very interesting point.
Makes complete sense that they may have been making a mammoth graveyard out of respect.
Especially considering the additional trinkets (shells and coral ) that was carefully placed in the bones.
That was my thought at the start of the video. Did mammoths like elephant have graveyards? And if so when the hunters came across one did they then organize, enshrine the bones since they were so necessary to their lives, and then continue to add the bones of their hunts to help appease the spirits of the mammoths.
I agree with pulepebane5679's observation, but suggest that hunters' assemblage of these mammoth bones may be not about spiritualism, ritual, or to honor the mammoths, but instead as a means to hopefully kill even more of them. Elephants linger with and grieve the bones of their dead, and sometimes revisit their relatives' bones years later. If mammoths did this, too, then mammoth hunters would surely have observed it, and thought about how they could turn it to their advantage. I suggest that assembling masses of mammoth bones was done as a lure, an attractant, for other mammoths... and those visiting mammoths would be ambushed. Say that's how these assemblages began. It would be natural for specific practices for how to do it, based on what legend says has worked best, to develop into something approaching doctrine or ritual over hundreds or thousands of years.
@@bartlebyscrivener2980 Oh yeah that’s a really cool hypothesis! It would make sense, because then they could more reliably predict where the mammoth would be in case natural features like watering holes are disrupted.
Interesting point!
"Walking in the woods... thinking about mammoths..." As you do. Don't ever change.
Archeologists' version of thinking about the Roman Empire every day
@@mfaizsyahmiwe must restore the empire INVICTA
I'm glad you decided to stick with the personal approach in your videos. I get the temptation to be detached and objective, but you're amazing at being yourself and carrying that tidal wave of enthusiasm right onto the screen.
I remember hearing that elephants are smart and social enough to visit and mourn the bones of dead members. Makes even more sense that hunters would want to honor and respect the mammoth by creating some meaningful tomb. Much like we do for our own. Perhaps owing the success of the following years hunt to the respect offered from the previous year.
I really like this interpretation, Paleolithic humans hunting these animals definitely would've noticed that behaviour as well and it makes a lot of sense that they'd feel some sort of empathy. After all, they themselves frequently had run ins with death in the family and we haven't changed much in the las 70 thousand years.
In defense of many objects being labeled as religous or ritualistic, the things most likely to survive the pressures of time are sacred objects because people go out of their way to preserve and protect ritualistic objects and places compared to ordinary objects. Ordinary objects are also in daily use which degrades them and they are usually used until they're disposed of or repurposed, whereas ritualistic objects are normally only used in special occasions.
There are way more medieval churches in Europe than medieval houses.
EDIT: Just because people don't seem to understand what I'm implying, my point specifically is that things meant for ritualistic worship tend to survive for longer because they're made to a higher standard and people take more care of them.
@@hedgehog3180that's only because houses regularly get torn down and rebuilt in more modern materials.
Those ancient monuments are too much of everything to do that with.
If rebuilding Notre Dame for the current era were feasible it would've been torn down and rebuilt ages ago
As Pole, I have to agree. Churches everywhere! Everywhere...
@@hedgehog3180, Only because the houses have been demolished to make way for sturdier houses over the centuries.
I'd also say most people making that point have an overly discrete definition of what "ritual" is. Like a kazoo is literally a ritual object, musical performance is a ritualistic activity.
Honestly this is one of my favorite channels on the whole site
Yes
I get so emotional every time I see prehistoric art like the little mammoth carving you showed 😭 I just find it beautiful that the artistic spirit of creativity is something so innate to humans
I love the cave paintings, they have little marks to show where to throw a spear to kill it. Heart and gut for the kill kids! I can imagine other random lines being a plan of attack...
I think to cope with horrors of history we dehumanize people of the past. It can be quite humbling to think someone whose brain processes information the same as wedo made that art. Hopefully they found some comfort in those moments surrounding the arts creation.
I think its pretty clear that these people were incredibly empathetic to life and were simply respecting what they killed. They decorated some of the skeletons with things that were precious and delicate to thank them for the life they gave. What an incredible culture!
Maybe or maybe just dropped them in their houses
Thank you Stefan for your donation to the children! 🙏❤
There is video evidence of modern Elephant examining and "visiting" sights of bones of past members of their herd. The hunters could drag all the bones together as a way to draw future herds to the same place instead of leaving the bones spread all over. Maybe? I also like the ritual side too.
Hopefully he sees your comment as I saw a study where even skulls from poached elephants that had been taken to a reserves camp would have elephants from their herd visit. The elephants hadnt been told they were there and smelt them out to visit.
I wish I’d read this comment before writing almost the same thing, myself. 😊
That’s an interesting idea
Why make such an elaborate structure though?
@@infinitemonkey917 maybe because it is still ritual from that practical beginning. And because humans have always loved shaping their world.
@1:59, the baby mammoth, found preserved in ice, is in good enough shape to still be adorable. Thanks for the great video, Stefan.
It makes me so sad to see this poor baby. 😢
@@jeanettewaverly2590, You ‘ve to face a that babies die.
Living in the Interior of Alaska, USA, many bones are found. My step kids’ ancestors used the bones as the base of their homes. They used animal hides to cover the bones. Eskimo people more often used whale bones. Evidence can be seen in many villages.
Also Univ of Alaska Fairbanks has a fantastic Museum of the North!! Come visit!
There is no such thing as "Eskimo" people.
This might help explain the lack of weathering of the bones.
But they would have a hearth inside these tents? (Alaska being potentially very cold)
@@rebexyyEs·ki·mo
/ˈeskəˌmō/
noun
noun: Eskimo; plural noun: Eskimos; plural noun: Eskimo
1.
a member of an indigenous people inhabiting northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and eastern Siberia, traditionally living by hunting (especially of seals) and by fishing.
2.
either of the two main languages spoken by indigenous peoples of the Arctic (Inuit and Yupik), forming a major division of the Eskimo-Aleut family.
@@rebexyy So there is no such thing as a “Siberian” Person?
Stephan's videos always give wholesome vibes when he shows walks in nature to recreate the idea of ancestors wondering nature
i feel so so lucky that youtube suggested your channel to me! i started yesterday with your video about population y and i’m making my way through your others now.
these videos are a joy to watch because they are so well researched and presented, but i have to say that my favorite thing about them is your genuine enthusiasm for the subject!! i love your consistent sincerity and awe, it makes watching these videos an absolute delight ❤
Mammoths were absolutely essential to the people back then but also must have been an awesome sight. Almost divine. It wouldnt surprise me that these magnificent beasts were worshipped. Great Video as always! "Like"
Stafan just wanted to go the zoo and get it back on his taxes. I respect it so much. Excellent vidoe as always.
These structures first came to my attention after reading Jean Auel's "The Mammoth Hunters" as a teenager, and they've occupied a corner of my imagination for the last thirty years. Thanks for this.
I have often been asked what I was doing reading those books at that age (12), lol. I read them obsessively as a teenager and about once every year or two for the past twenty years. My favorite series.
@@jlzombiecat For me the series kinda runs out of steam after The Mammoth Hunters, but I revisit them every few years anyway because I love the first two so much.
I remember reading those decades ago.
I have read all 6 books in the series multiple times. They are very well researched. My favorite series.
I just stumbled on your channel and subscribed because of the way you explore some of the more obvious possibilities for this 'pile' of mammoth bones and in the end you say 'we just don't know'. I find that to be the most intellectually refreshing experience I have had watching an archaeological channel. You come across as just another average Joe that has different interests and a different job than I did and that increases your credibility to me exponentially. I am so tired of watching the science snobs who extrapolate a whole novel of information out of one small fragment of bone. Your doing that makes me think you respect my intellect and my ability to come to my own assumption based on the evidence you showcased in your video. I cannot tell you enough how refreshing that is.
Rituals similar to what you described have survived very long at least here in Finland, mostly as the tradition of "peijaiset" which is a celebration for the hunted animal. When our ancestors honored bears, which they considered their close animal relative, people would climb a pine tree and place the skull on the top, so the spirit of the bear could ascend back to heaven. By doing this they also hoped, that the spirit descends back upon earth and bears would be around for the future hunters too. I could easily see people of the stone ages having similar rituals, praying for continuity of the animal their livelihoods depended on.
The structures are spirit "houses" for the mammoth's spirit. You don't need a roof for a spirit house. They honoured these animals, and were grateful to them for the food they provided, much like my ancestors felt about bison and elk. Even recently, when my father would shoot an elk or a deer, he would thank the animal, then give thanks to the grandfathers and to father sun and mother earth, to the four directions, and to the nadir both of self, and of the animal he killed. He prepared the animal for butchering carefully in such a way that it's spirit could leave and be free. He did this with fish he caught too. He didn't just catch them and let them flop around. He caught them, killed them immediately, then put them with their heads in the water so that their spirit could go back to where it was most at home, and of course thanks was given for the fish, just as it would have been for a deer or an elk. When you must take a life, it is important to give the spirit of the animal whose life you took thanks for giving itself up to nourish you. My people don't believe in putting horrible chemicals in a body of our loved ones, then putting them in a box that gets put in the ground. Maybe we wrap our people in a blanket and take them to a sacred site where we will put them in the ground. We don't try to stop the process of decomposition, because to us, in our death, we are feeding the flora and fauna of this world as the flora and fauna of this world fed us. It is a circle which has been going on forever. I always wonder what it will be like thousands of years from now when they go to dig up one of our cemeteries, expecting it to be like all t he other cemeteries on this continent, but all they find is empty boxes. We bury the coffins to placate the government which have ridiculous laws about the proper disposal of a body which are there only to serve undertakers and morticians and to make them rich. We dutifully put a wooden box in the ground, then dispose of the bodies of our loved ones in the way we always have. As we consume food, we are also food, and as such our ancestors are always with us, and with the grandfathers and grandmothers and everything else which has ever lived. I cannot speak for people from other tribes. Most, I think, stick with modern ways of doing things. I wonder though, if maybe this might not be part of the reason there is so much trouble these days.
Thank you for your careful input! I tried to write about this way of approach to animals in discussions which blame men for extinction of megafauna. They blam us in a strange masochistic way, without 1) trying to calculate how many men would there had to be in order to consume all the megafauna and 2) without acknowledging the customs you described (they might read it but their eyes are blind to comprehend) and 3) without comprehending how difficult it would be to hunt to exctinction some elusive species.
I consider your way as better than the biblical one: there is this special sentence in Bible where God gives all animals to men. I think this sentence is there to exonerate us, to not feel guilty when we kill a domestic animal or hunt.
Thank you. ❤
All the people in my family always got cremated. I think they still got pumped with chemicals beforehand so people could visit the body at an open casket funeral.
@@Alarix246 Humans killed the megafauna all over the world. The every is pretty clear there.
@@Alarix246that last point is one of the main reasons I walked away from my family's religion. All I've seen that attitude do is excuse people for doing the most awful things to animals
Hmm, perhaps ancient people were making offerings to the dead mammoth spirits to make sure that the mammoth spirit doesn't ruin later hunts for not being appropriately respected? Something like a Finnish peijaiset for a bear where the point is to appease the bear spirit and semi-apologise for it for its killing.
EDIT: Oop, Stefan got a similar thing for the Evenki.
Yea, I could imagine an expression of gratitude too. Such a HUGE animal giving an enormous amount of food, as well as materials for tools and clothing in such an inhospitable environment. Not starving, freezing, or having vital/beloved people mamed or killed, that's quite a big deal.
@@seabhactheshifty Considering without the Mammoth their ancestors wouldn't have survived and humanity likes to 'make sense' of its existence, It seems extremely probable that rituals to celebrate and 'spiritually' perpetuate the practice would exist.
The Hindi revere cattle, "The cow is our mother". Indeed it is -- providing milk, cream, butter, cheese, and manure for the fields ... as well as bull calves to pull plows and new cow calves as well. Perhaps the mammoth similarly provided sustainance sufficient to confer them worthy of appreciation and reverence.
The fact that there are no hearths is very telling, and true. No fire = people cannot live there. A ritual is good explanation, but I propose a simpler one: They are storage places.
They are made of bone and will last a long time and not be swept away by heavy weather. They are too small for a family, but with some strings or branches strung across the open space inside, you could hang all kinds of things like hides or jewelry. A single small storage place is built when all you have is a few bones and need immediate storage. More storage places are built as needed, but they are small because there are limited bones. Different storage places could hold different things- any gamer knows you organize your loot so it is quick and easy to find. A fire outside the structure means you can see inside, but no need to waste fuel when you are just ducking in to grab something.
Or they are frames to dry skins on.
My first thought was definitely storage. Live in the skins and stack all the meat in a dark cold structure made out of the bones. Keep the meat storage a distance away from your living area so you don't have visits from predators in the night looking for an easy meal. Cover the whole thing in soil for added security and better temp control during the warmer season. You could even dig down to the permafrost before the bones get laid for even cooler storage options. During the colder season they could serve as freezers so you can draw your meat ration when needed.
You would assume that the hunter gatherers followed herds during the hunting season and that they killed more than they could consume on the move. So the storage structures could serve as meat caches for the lean periods. You could survive the winter moving from cache to cache consuming the contents.
As for the ritual aspect. It doesn't take humans very long to add ritualistic aspects to any practical endeavour.
For reasons other than hearths, I'm tending to agree that these are not houses. But as for hearths, they are not essential to be inside dwelling structures, and in fact smoke can outweigh the heat created. It's still possible that cooking was conducted in adjoining structures, or that food processing entirely took place during summer and dried food was consumed in winter, heat being created by communal sleeping with heavy fur blankets.
@Jessicap4998, you and jadehamilton1878 both make insightful points, but the no fire, no heat, no people thing has one glaring oversight and the communal sleeping under heavy fur blankets ( which would be a necessity)still possibly needed some form of additional warmth during sudden cold snaps. The fattest part of the mammoth is its hump, so they had the fuel. Each group and possibly each family had the stones to create the spark. And any absorbent and slowly combustible fiber could be a wick. Then all you need is small place for a shallow stone basin and someone to look after the oil lamp. Like the northen peoples used to keep their ice houses warm enough to live. Would it have been needed all the time? Probably not needed, but if you had an abundant supply, let's say over six months of constant cold snaps worth and the winter is nearing the end it would raise people's spirits to be a little warmer. What about places that were used for rituals, there had to have been some. Because of their nature they wouldn't be in constant use and therefore, especially during the winter months , would need to be warmed before conducting the ritual and definitely before the entire community attended or they would risk everyone freezing to death .
@@pattheplanter you and MultiCappie should have been added too but I had to go take care of something, I'm sorry for that. I agree that some buildings might have had a spiritual meaning, and storage would be neccessary even for a short stay like in a hunting camp. And it makes sense to process as much meat as possible in the hunting camp because dried/smoked meat weighs less and in its various states less room needed for transport and storage, like dried meat pounded into a powder. Where I'm from we had two type of mammoth and both had thick skin, so some structures used to dry and tan the hides into the shapes needed seems necessary too. If you ignore the hair, imagine that you are anywhere from a few hundred meters to a couple of hundred miles from the ice shelf and you have to skin an elephant and make whatever kind of building covering that your group decides is going to built next. Are you going to use that building with fresh, wet skin or do you dry and tann it first. Scaffolding and frames have been used for millenia to get hides into the desired shape when dried. Everyone here has a valid point or two. Mammoths needed grassland, or steppe, to survive, and in that type of biome there is minimal rainfall so usually things don't grow larger than a Bush unless the water table, underground aquifer, is high enough like a natural spring allowing for larger plants like trees to survive. So we know that trees were a rarely seen thing on the steppe. This group of people has many different ways of looking at things and I find you all interesting, so I propose a question for you. With given the rarity of trees in a steppe environment would wood be better used in a structure or as a source of fuel?
The bones were the structure with a mammoth skin roof, the keepsakes were tucked away for safe keeping just as we would place something on a shelf or cubby.
Living in Tundra, I would build a house out of bones using earth or mud between the bones covering all with sods of grass,it would insulate the inside, if the door is closed with leather.
Absolutely ...
Not having a fire inside but having them nearby would indicate to me that they were used for food storage. The bones protect the food from scavengers and you would want it to stay cold inside, that explains the lack of a fire inside.
Cold storage huts, smoke huts with central fire pit, and heat fires against the wall in huts providing the maximum open work area. Processing meat and cleaning hides requires an open heated space. Eventually, scientists count each type of bone, discover a select few types of bones are missing, and never figure out those bones assemble neatly to form a sled suitable for hauling large packs. Scifi authors had this all figured out long ago.
Totally what I thought too..the spiral structure which I see in a few of them indicate a door and what a perfect thing to cover a mammoth with than the bones of a larger mammoth. I wonder if the bones inside are younger. Somone else said they looked at those bones ..some Prof in Ukraine and found they're many different ages and locations not all killed but old bones being used. And then maybe whene the meat was gone they sat inside and built a fire for warmth. Or to melt ice around the structure to create the fridge. If it was cold you wouldn't want to waste wood on a structure if you had big bones. And the fact there no gnawing would indicate the covering of mud and grass over as you say. Perfect use for them, the shells and whatnot in the ribs would not fit but maybe somone just wanted to hide their jewelry and put it in the fridge to hide them from their husband ...so many possibilities but I think your idea seems very logical and practical and likely.
@@OldWalkingCrownice!!
They may also have been using oil from fats in a lamp type structure to generate some heat, in the same way it is used in an igloo.
i saw a display similar to this in Kyiv's natural history museum! it's great you did a video about it, it's a really interesting but not very well known part of history.
i'm British but lived in Ukraine for 20 years until a few years ago. all the videos about Ukraine i've been watching the last 2 years are about the war, so it was unexpectedly therapeutic to relax and watch this. thank you for a well balanced and fascinating presentation as usual, and cool you donated man.
good luck for 2024 :)
so glad that museum is intact.. i am reminded that the original trojan artifacts were lost in the bombing of a German art history museum I hope they can be Safe
When our children were about 6 and nine(Rosie,eldest,Cameron,son,youngest) our 21 year old cat passed away.I felt the whole family’s sadness and felt a small ceremony could help us with closure.So we built a fire,wrapped the cat in silk.Placed him between two ceramic planter trays and lit the fire.I suggested we might like a tooth each for keepsake and with sad yet gratifying humming we waited by the fire until late….all without religious connotations or pre planned notions.We humans seem to know love,sadness’s,and deep gratitude.If we ate such huge creatures as mammoths we would certainly have learned a lot about them,perhaps even individually .So respect and heart felt actions would almost certainly follow 😊.Thanks for your heartfelt studies and presentations.❤
Is it your business? @BobsUruncle-dl7cs
Great post. One of my best friends had a little heart made of her little dog's ashes when the little dog died. She still cries, but also says that touching the heart immediately conjures pics of Finja and makes her feel better. And she has another (rescue too) dog now.
That’s a lovely story. Nice way to teach your children how to grieve and honor the life of the pet they loved. Ignore the trolls.
@BobsUruncle-dl7csgo away bro
@BobsUruncle-dl7cs what are we after, turkey, mushrooms hunting a fish to cast in front of ?
Every video on this channel just shows me more of what we don’t know. If one wants to go into the sciences to make discoveries, archaeology is kinda the final frontier
I love this series already! (Although i'm a little late hehe)
In my msc thesis i wrote about Eurasian Steppe pastoralists and i stumbled upon so called "meeting-sites" or "meeting-points". Remains of seemingly abandoned structures that possibly groups of people from a larger area visited on a seasonal or otherwise regular basis! I think this would be a possibility to think about when it comes to these mammoth bone structures 👀
Untanned hides that were dry or frozen could easily be used in combination with bones to build a structure. I wouldn't be surprised if the leather from a full grown mammoth was about an inch thick. Just build the structure gradually with wet hides then let them dry or freeze. They probably also packed mud between the bones to support the structure. Such a structure would have been insulated very well and probably didn't require a large fire to keep warm. Providing an escape for the smoke may have been considered counterproductive.
The structures may also have been used primarily to store food. Meat placed in such a structure would have been preserved much better over the summer months. Very much like a root cellar. And a secure structure would have deterred predators from raiding the cache.
I was also going to suggest food storage. Dehydrated meat (smoked and/or jerky) would smell great to other predators, and as any backpacker in bear country could tell you you don't want to sleep with the food...
That was my first thought ´it wouldn’t have made any sense building a dwelling full of holes , so the mammoth hide makes most sense , also they could have moved from a place they had lived and dismantled the bone houses in a particular way
Gotta love that the Evenki go to such trouble burying the bear then go "wasn't me" Amazing :D
Stef keep up the great work! Your content and production value are on par or better than PBS and BBC...legit seriously.
Look, I'm not a specialist in archeology, but I have an idea that might satisfy both views...
Given the size, weight and amount of work, I think it would make sense for a tribe to go live where the mammoths were killed, at least for the time it took to process the carcasses. It would also make sense that they would use whatever came from those carcasses to support their activity.
Such a village would need housing, but also altars or spiritual middens. So both could be possible. About the lack of hearths: as you mentioned, there is little to no cover in the steppes. The very best way to cope with wind in the steppe is to stay low. Very low structures, covered with skin from the mammoth, hairs on the inside. During the day they need fire for the processing, and at night they could take hot rocks that lined the fires and take them into the low tents. It would be most efficient if it was just a crawl space, perhaps half a meter high on the sides, one meter in the middle. That's how I would do it in a survival situation. Such a structure would be very quickly constructed, and perhaps they would bring the most handy bones from previous sites to start the settlement. However they did it, with such a construction, the bones would now be in the position they were placed, and they would function both as dwelling as well as for rituals...
I wonder if they were used to smoke the mammoth meat. No fire needed, only embers to smoke for a long period. Preserves the meat for long trips. Surely they understood how tasty the smoke meat was. Hawaiians smoke meat by burying the embers and then meat and then leaves on top. Love the videos, especially of you walking outdoors!
Watching this I couldn't stop thinking about Kutne Hora, the bone church in Czechia. It's fantastic and very eerie to see the remains of hundreds of people arranged in so many intricate ways. There are huge structures made only by interlocking the bones and careful stacking. The fact is that people have always loved creating things, structures, patterns. I think it's an inherent part of who we are. We may not ever know what they were created for, perhaps they were just created because they could.
I appreciate the shot of Grotte Niaux at 8:58--I recognized it instantly because I've been there; the public can tour the cave, and the art is fantastic (11-13,000 BPE). GREAT video Stefan!
So as a Hunter, I have a guy in my party who has been leaving a deer antler from his harvest every year, for about 13 years now, at the base of the same tree, Its just HIS Ritual, and we all respect it.
Are you sure he's not building a house?
Well played 🤣
I think it's pretty clear they didn't fulfill a practical purpose, but rather a status-based, ritualistic one. Aka if they built structures out of the bones it's doubtful people actually lived in them. Based on burials, and the probable difficulty in taking down a mammoth- it stands to reason a tribe would want to display evidence of their successes.
Bro I’ve been watching your videos everyday on my way to work on the train since I discovered your channel in January. Ancient human history and pre history is so so fascinating and incredible, that it’s even more fantastic than we could ever imagine. Love your channel and presentation and joy that you display man. Keep it up and can’t wait to see all the new videos and ideas/topics!
It definitely does say a lot about some aspects of society when the go to explanation is that we used their bones as objects and lived in them. Imagine if they revered mammoth and these were shrines, as you mentioned, the cultural leap from us to them is pretty huge.
I think it pairs well and is very telling how many people have a general negative response to the amount of objects and finds that are generally catalogued as religious in nature even tho the evidence is pretty good of them being that.
Just go and study actual hunter gatherer tribes right now. They perform rituals before every hunt, add ritual behaviors in common day activities and have supertitious thinking all the time. No wonder Archeology has to lean so much on the ritual argument.
I think the constant need to explain things we don't understand with religion and superstition is kind of lazy. Why are we assuming anyone built shrines that long ago? For all we know religion is a modern (-10,000 year old) construct. A cave man didn't wonder out into the open and start building shrines to "gods" out of nowhere.
@@Mark_GLtheir survival was much less predictable and more vulnerable to chance than ours is. I think that would definitely foster a very superstitious mindset and magical thinking could be considered rational.
@@Bitchslapper316 Ok, sure, we don't know 100%, but literally since we have records of human activity, religion is at the center of it in some way or another. Every piece of writing from 5000 years ago tells us religious and spiritual believes were deeply important in everyday life. Every isolated tribe we find in the Amazon jungle has some form of religion, as do the tribes deep in Africa, or every tiny village deep in the Eurasian plateau. For pretty much every society that we have records of, including many modern people, religious believes aren't a once every Sunday thing but an ever present everyday thing.
Scientifically, you'd have to be deeply stubborn to not think paleolithic people had deeply ingrained spiritual/religious believes, and it's arrogant from people to think archeologists are lazy for assuming ritual looking objects to be ritualistic, because every group of humans we've ever met no matter how isolated or for how long they've been without meeting any other humans, has them.
Are some objects other things? Sure, ancient humans had toys, tools, souvenirs,. random Knicks knacks, but people here on the internet seem to think that we should just assume paleolithic humans had a big luxury goods based economy with trading card games, daimakura pillows, and anime figurines or something, which is ridiculous. Ancient humans moved around, they couldn't afford to carry piles of commodities around, most of what they carried had to be deeply important, which means that most of it would be survival gear, and things with DEEP emotional importance, a lot of which was bound to carry some religious or spiritual significance as well.
And for that matter, it also seems like modern people don't understand that religion for ancient people was very different, acts that carry no spiritual significance for us today did so back in the day. Since I'm on my phone I won't list a ton, but my favorite example is gambling games. Nowadays they're seen as dumb sleazy fun, but ancient people had GODS attached to them, for ancient people, even a game of dice would be a religious or spiritual act, because they believed a god was guiding the game, ancient people believed sickness was the result of demons and lemme tell ya sickness was definitely an everyday occurrence, the rising and setting of the sun, the moon, the tides. For hunter gatherers every animal they killed had a soul and was a sentient creature no different than us. Absolutely everything for ancient people was the result of divine action, and this is bound to be MORE truth the further back you go in time when humans understood even less about the physical mechanisms that drove things.
As for how old religion itself is, true, we don't know for sure, but we have good evidence of it potentially being older than homo sapiens, potentially at least as old as the neanderthal (tho this is deeply debated). Certainly no mainstream archeologists or historian doubts that religion is AT LEAST as old as homo sapiens.
So, in summary, no, I don't think it's even a little bit lazy to assume most strange things we find from ancient times had religious significance. Obviously the context of the dig is important, and there's always room for other theories like this video demonstrated, but I think people are far too high on their own farts if they think they're being oh so clever by telling professional archeologists who dedicate their lives to studying ancient humans that they're being lazy in their analysis.
The devil put them there to confuse the elephant scientist
I know what your objections would be obviously…
These are future elephants
Uncle Dave?
To make little kids ask questions
Hahaha
Correction they were alien cyborg elephants from the future, thank you.
clearly an advanced civilization of mammoths
Skeletal mammoths, at that!
Thanks!
Love that you donate to Ukraine. Wish we all could do more.
British people saying "vitamin" warms my heart 😂❤
British people saying Aluminum makes me 🤤
@@spacemanapeinc7202 US Americans trying to say aluminium is sooo funny.
American: Aluminum, Sodum, Potassum, Helum, Lithum, Radum, Calcum
@@helenamcginty4920you mean aluminum
When I was a left tenant in the milla tree, I would take a vittamin to supplement my diet of mostly chicken fillitz, pa-totto crisps and wooster sauce.
I made certain to take it right on shedjool at hallf-eight each morning, and washed it down with a swig of wootah from my alloo-MIN-ee-um flask.
Id love to see some longer videos every once in a while where you go over broader topics in detail .
always a good day when a stefan video comes out
Mammoths were likely hunted to extinction, like most such creatures, and likely lived much more recently than is generally suggested, like most such creatures.
92% of what have been called fossils are actually just good old fashioned bones.
This means virtually none of the dinosaurs or other pre-historic creatures are anywhere near the often millions of years old dating that are commonly theorized, because it isn't possible for bones to last even close to that long. Since we observe modern extinction events to be caused by human alterations to habitats, and over-hunting, it is therefore the most likely cause of previous extinction events as well. So it wasn't a meteor nor evolution that wiped out the terrible thunder lizards. It was your ancestors.
The last two Mammoth specimens that were found virtually perfectly preserved had modern humans trying to eat them. One in North America in which Inuits were eating it at the time of it's discovery (They claimed to have killed it, though no one believed them) and the other in Siberia where one of the excavation members was kicked off the team for taking a bite of it.
This is telling.
How long does meat remain edible, let alone appetizing in your climate controlled freezer with vacuum sealed bags? How much less then, would meat remain appetizing if the animal just keeled over in the snow and ice of the wild?
And yet you are told these creatures died somewhere between 10,000 to 100,000 years ago?
Clearly the numbers are ridiculously inflated.
This leaves me with just one question:
_Where are all the tusks?_
They are all circulating the black market.
Areas like this had most of the tusks pilfered years ago when it was legal to do so. Nowadays, most fossilized mammoth ivory, that is still legal to trade in, is sold as knife handles and the like.
Ivory, no matter what species, is extensively traded, especially illegally. It’s used for display pieces, trophies, carving, even medicine. When you, for example, consider that some homeopathic ivory “medicine” is supposed to act as a kind of cure-all panacea, it’s not difficult to see people go great lengths to acquire it.
Mammoth ivory is still being traded and sold. I have a knife with mammoth ivory and you can buy mammoth tooth or tusk online.
Where are all the skins? How did they cure the leather?
"Walking in the woods, thinking about mammoths..." Great story. Finding shell and coral etc. amongst the bones and no hearths seems pretty convincing that these were not houses.
I used to see the bleached bones of cattle on a ranch when I was a kid. Remembering that got me wondering if these bones were assembled fresh after butchering or possibly collected later--maybe much later if the bones were lying in frozen tundra.
I cannot imagine living in a home partially made up of freshly butchered animal bones. Think of the stench and rancidness as those bones were exposed to the heat inside the abode. The construction would make more sense as a totem rather than a domicile.
I also wonder about the piece of coral found with the bones. Where in the world did that originate? That specimen must have been traded a long distance from its origin. Just incredible to think of that alone.
Maybe the bones were collected later after the scavengers of that time had already cleaned the bones. Then there's no need to worry about any smell, disease or pests in a home. And anything traded over large distances and even locally sourced totems had immense value and power and could have been used to invoke protection towards the home and its occupants. Mammoths were so highly esteemed and valued not only for survival, there was a spiritual aspect to it . And what better way to link both then to utilize the bones out of necessity and adorning them with such powerful and rare items.
I love this channel and Stefan's enthusiasm for inquiry!
The end of this video made me tear up. I love thinking about people depositing gifts to these great mammoths as a way to give back or thank them for the food. I love the paleolithic peoples so much.
Thanks for your integrity in your study of archeology. In past years, 20 - 30 and more years past, I had become amazingly tired and bored with archeologists who claimed that neanderthals and other earlier humans were idiots and brutes. I am grateful for scientists who discovered DNA sequencing and established modern human's areas of similarity to our human ancestors. Also grateful to archeologists, such as you, who have pushed past the arrogant shortness of vision of too many past archeologists,
and seek the truth of our human heritage.
Well known trick - keep stones by your campfire (not TOO close) and bring them into your tent at night. They'll dissipate heat all night.
100+ Mammoths!? Damn that's a lot of grand soul gems...
As an architectural engineer, the structure seems unlikely to be a residence. The amount of time required to stockpile materials and the uncertainty in stacking a stable structure would make this a questionable choice. Simple and fast is better for a residential structure.
They would probably want portable structures like any nomads.
"Simple and fast" makes flimsy residential structures. Compare the houses in a modern "throw it up as quick as you can" development to the still-standing stone houses hundreds of years old over in Europe.
I like the ritual hypothesis. The modern example of the bears suggests a level of respect, and of empathy, that is significant. 'I have to kill you to survive, but I know that I have taken something of value. Thank you'. This is a sensibility which we still need. We all take life in order to live, animal or vegetable, and we must realize that it is all precious, both our lives as their lives. We must not take it for granted.
I appreciate your comment, I think we are in some way like minded. I'm not religious, but I have a deep respect for life in all it's forms.
I think when many people hear "ritual" they automatically think about god. It would be interesting to know more of the Evenki people's ideas of life and how their regards for the bear fits into any traditional spirituality. A quick search says that along with shamanism they have adopted orthodox christian beliefs.
That's pretty interesting. And good for the Evenki. They will understand the body and the blood, the basic Christian paradigm, as it is the basic paradigm of evolution.@@jfu5222
I have carved hundreds of pieces of mammoth ivory, from 1" across to 3' I know what they smelt like when burned. There's a story there which I would be pleased to tell if requested. Either way that scattered sculptural trinket hoard is my personal connection with our ancient past. That is a good feeling.
Please, tell the story . . .
Please do a follow-up video. I kept waiting for you to compare the diagrams of various excavations. If they had all been discovered in the same arrangement it would be unlikely that the bones on the inside had fallen down. No? Thanks for doing these videos. You are pretty awesome.
I'm going to enjoy this series!
I favor the idea that they were work animals, buried in this manner at common grave sites, with meaningful memorabilia left with some.
Wouldn't "work animal" imply some level of domestication? Im not exactly a mammoth expert, but I've personally not heard of any evidence, physical or genetic, that mammoths were ever domesticated even a little.
that's adorable.
@@chuckleezodiac24 Oh? In what way?
@@dMb1790i mean people used elephants for a very long time for work and warfare. They were never domesticated. If mammoths were similar to elephants they could totally be used in similar ways
@@dMb1790 romanticizing that Noble Savages lived in unison with their adoring pet Mammoths who volunteered their labor services for some type of ... "work" or various pre-agricultural activities...
The valuable artifacts being put into the mammoth bones sounds a lot like the dropping of swords into a nearby lakes and rivers, as if these structures were made for a sacrificial or memorial reason. These could be similar to honoring the mammoths for their sacrifice and "praying" for a good hunt next year.
Thank you for this video. The information provided is absolutely fascinating.
I would like to add a bit in here from bush-craft/survival skills. If you make a structure you really do not want a fire too close to it. A fire about 6 feet away with a heat reflector made from saplings or rocks (or maybe memoth bones?) is good enough. The radiant heat from the fire is good enough for -25C to be relatively comfortable and -45C it will keep you alive. So perhaps they had platform fires outside the structures? That said all this argument does is bring another argument into question. It does not prove anything.
Bro I love you. Your personality and content just makes me very happy( and pleased? Idk). I don't even know why I felt like commenting this lol.
I understand John and feel the same way.
Maybe they're just organizing the bones, sorting and stacking so they can use the materials? I mean it would be a holy mess.....if you're living around there, searching for the bits that you want to use, they would be best organized. I think they're bone, material warehouses!!
I grew up with the mental image of mammoth bone houses. Good and interesting to see where these ideas actually came from.
Really good..in depth knowledge
Great! You have so many hats too!
Continuity error in film making… 😂
Now that you bring it to our attention, the "Mammoth House" was suspect.
I'd certainly prefer sleeping under a leather tent with hearth, than the RITUAL site ~
Hi Stefan Milo it’s me the Native Colombian in London again and I am excited to see this video as it interests me to see all these mass burial sites with megafaunal mammalian remains in them all over the place with different circumstances like the one in the Yellowstone Caldera caused by volcanic eruption and the one in the Mexico basin due to the hunter-gatherers of the valley
I really like your work. It's informative and entertaining.
Maybe it was a sign of pride as society to stack their bones this way. Maybe it was a sign that this tribe had to be respected because this tribe had good hunters. These days you see the same with those dudes with giant lifted trucks
The burial, and making sure there is no bad blood with the animal spirits is very compelling. Especially when you have extant indigenous culture practicing similar rituals.
Thank you for speaking of and donating to Ukraine! I enjoyed the video, but had issues with "modern day" descriptions.
That was until the end, very glad I watched the entire video! As is my habit 🙂
Thanks for sharing your passion with us all ❤️
Something that makes it clear to me that these would not be dwellings is that there is no way all these bones would be the clean remains that are discovered now. Even if hunter gatherers did their best to scrape off all the meat and remove the marrow, these would still be covered in scraps of tissue that would still be undergoing decomposition. I don't believe that these would be reduced to sheer bone until enough time had passed for insects and microorganisms to fully clean them up. Are we supposed to believe that people were dwelling inside these piles of rotting meat?
someone comments above that the bones are of different ages and different areas and so them being deposits of bones brought by the river and found by the people who used them seems likely if that is true... gonna look up that now. But that would mean no meat on them. I thought they might make a perfect fridge for a mammoth meat fridge if they made the bones hut to keep food protected as they couldn't eat the whole thing in one go.
Hearths outside; could have been tenting-teepees tied sideways to the exterior bone walls. Insides small spaces could have been showers or toilets.
Thanks again Stefan! I really appreciate your effort to bring back intrigue to empirical archaeology. We may love learning about archaeology, but we need the curiosity of kids to truly succeed in our mission.
the professionalism. keeps me coming back for the next episode!
Looking good Stefan! thank you for the great content as always!
This makes me feel like I’m reading The Mammoth Hunters by Jean Auel again. Very cool as always ❤
Great presentation Stefan, thanks.
Hey Stefan, you forgot to link to Natasha Reynolds's site in the description. Fascinating video as always!
Archeologists excavate a Walmart:
The structure seems to have been a temple where tribespeople carried out ritualistic gifts to the Walmart God. The people brought offerings to the temple where they were processed thru these lines with these counters, then taken back to put on shelves. They were stored there until religious celebrations, where they were burned. The items were made with crude tools like chisels, some had long cords attached which represented the line between the Walmart God, the stars and the earth. The entire temple was constructed from quarried stones, shaped with simple tools and out into place using 100s of workers. We know these people didn't have any sort of advanced technology because we've never found any of their tools, they most certainly didn't have any sort of machinery. There was likely a high priest in charge of the temple, responsible for accepting, organizing, and distributing the offerings for religious ceremonies. No, we do not believe aliens were involved.
Most of what we built will be fallen and covered by nature in about 100yrs. So much of our building material will rot. Stone lasts. It's said Hoover dam might last a few thousand years, but surely there's bound to be huge pressures on it. I've always wondered how long Mount Rushmore will be recognizable as something man-made
I recognize some of the trails you walk. Cool knowing such an interesting person is in our community.
Absolutely Love this Channel! More Please!
That is super fascinating, thank you for telling me about it!
Watched the Ad just for you, because you're such a nice guy.
Nice one Stefan. I hope these invaluable sites don’t get destroyed.
i have your book, wonderfully full of knowledge, the bones as supports and walls, easier than cutting huge trees without an axe
I am in Chicago's back of the yards neighborhood where there is the leftovers from turn of the century slaughter houses that still smells. Could archiologests figure out how long it will take for those gasses to stop? Is it an abrupt hault or a half life?
If you've ever seen a bear skinned it's apparent why a human would treat it as somehow related.
Always excellent. Wild speculation for the sake of conversation: What if these 'structures' are 'refrigerators'?
At the time permafrost would have been very close to the surface. How to hunt very large herd animals if you are a group of no more than about 150 people (say max 50 grown men) with no firearms? Likely stampede-oriented, resulting in a huge glut of carcases. That would be a great waste without preservation. So...
Dig a shallow pit down to the permafrost. Rapidly joint and arrange the corpses, maybe then cover with the pelts and some earth. You have a natural 'fridge' that will last months, but will still be accessible while largely proof against scavengers. And so no hearths!
So why are these 'fridges' largely undisturbed?
Well, maybe there were lots and lots. We have only found the few that were never used - in such a harsh environment over thousands of years one could imagine entire 'groups' being randomly wiped out from time-to-time, never to return to such a cache.
Or... the most efficient way to make use of such a 'fridge' / cache would be to take what you need as you need it, returning the bones to the site as a means to maintain it's integrity - you'd soon end up with such an arrangement of bones, especially if the 'fridge' was used for an extended period and occasionally topped-up.
Yes, yes... probably nonsense. But every reasonable explanation must start with a 'flight of fancy', to be picked apart until only the very few that withstand examination are left.
Pretty good by me, friend👍❤️🇨🇦🍻