Previously thought to be a natural animal trap, the site has now been shown to have been created by humans during the Upper Paleolithic.
The Börölekh “mammoth cemetery” (Yakutia), which was long considered a natural trap for these large animals, was in fact a kind of warehouse and maceration station (tissue softening). This is stated in an article published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
The “cemetery” got its name from the Börelekh River, on the left bank of which it is located; this river is a tributary of the Indigirka. The location was discovered in 1947, and in 1970-1971 it was explored by expeditions of paleontologists B.S. Rusanov and N.K. Vereshchagin. According to the recollections of the participants, the bank for 250 meters was strewn with mammoth bones. The expedition collected about 8,500 bones, which belonged to about 140 mammoths of different ages. The number of bones was enormous even by the standards of Yakutia, which is very rich in mammoth remains (one of the first in the world in this indicator).
Despite the fact that an Upper Paleolithic site was discovered near the site in 1970, the “cemetery” was considered a natural phenomenon: no direct evidence of mammoth hunting was found at the site, and individual mammoth bones were thought to have been simply brought to the site from the site. It was assumed that there could have been a blind channel or backwater in that place, where the current carried the carcasses of the animals. Or that a group of mammoths died in this area, possibly swamped in ancient times. Or that it was some kind of natural “trap” into which mammoths fell year after year.
Now the researchers have decided to re-examine the bones from the Börölökh “cemetery”, the geology of the coast in the area of the site, as well as the archaeological artefacts discovered there from 1970 to 2009.
Among the finds, attention was drawn, first of all, to the points of a specific shape. According to the authors of the article, they are rarely found in this region, but always on mass accumulations of mammoth bones. These points could have been used in the cutting parts of tools, or as tips. In addition, it was possible to find fragments of mammoth ribs with traces of processing and waste from the production of products from tusks.
Radiocarbon dating showed that mammoth bones at Börölökh accumulated between 14.4 and 13.5 thousand years ago, which is a fairly short period of time by Stone Age standards. The accumulation was uneven: at first rather slow, then more intense. In addition, peaks of “accelerated accumulation” were recorded: about 14.4, 14 and 13.8 thousand years ago.
Researchers also note that a similar location in the lower reaches of the Yana River, although more ancient, also coincides with a period of active human activity.
All this, according to the authors of the article, suggests that the Börölekh “cemetery” is the result of the same activity. In addition to skins, wool, meat and fat, people highly valued mammoth tusks and bones. Removing tusks from the skull and completely cleaning the bones is quite a labor-intensive job. Maceration, the softening of tissues under the influence of microorganisms, could make it easier. There were many of them in the swampy riverbed, or oxbow lake of Börölekh, so people brought them there.
The study involved staff from the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, and the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Based on materials from the press service Russian Science Foundation (RSF).
Source: www.nkj.ru
