Dietary evidence reinforces the reputation of Clovis hunters as mammoth killers

The ancient North Americans are increasingly looking like experienced mammoth killers.

Archaeologists have long debated whether the Clovis people, who lived about 13,000 years ago, had the knowledge and technology to regularly hunt megafauna (SN: 1/11/22). A new chemical analysis suggests that the Clovis diet was indeed dominated by mammoths, scientists report Dec. 4 in Advances in science.

Arguments about whether the Clovis people were primarily hunters or foragers have been based on the location of spearheads, reconstructed spear tests, and knowledge of modern foraging behavior. The new dietary analysis provides direct evidence that these ancient humans may have relied on mammoths as a food source, supporting claims that they were experienced megafauna hunters.

“It wasn’t a hint of evidence, it was a ‘slap in the face’ of evidence,” says archaeologist James Chatters of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Chatters and colleagues, in consultation with Native American tribes, analyzed the remains of the only confirmed Clovis individual—an 18-month-old male named Anzick-1 found in Montana. The team focused on certain forms, or isotopes, of the elements carbon and nitrogen that were deposited from food in his bones. Since the child would probably have been breastfed, his isotope values ​​mirrored those of his mother, providing clues to her diet.

Teasing out what the mother ate required comparing calculated dietary isotope values ​​with those found in potential prey species. The researchers then calculated the potential contribution of each species she ate to her overall diet. Mammoths contributed 35 to 40 percent, according to the team, with elk, bison and camels contributing much less. Small mammals accounted for only 4 percent of its intake.

The percentages are not a snapshot of a meal, but reflect at least a year of the woman’s diet, as isotopes take time to accumulate in tissues. And since Clovis people in western North America had similar behaviors and equipment, it’s likely that others had similar diets, the team says.

“This is not just a single site with a single mammoth meal,” says co-author Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “This is a tradition of the people.”

Other researchers are more cautious. “It is certainly the first time to see evidence of the mammoth [Clovis] human remains,” which is “a big deal,” says anthropologist Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona in Tucson. But such sweeping assumptions cannot be made from a single skeleton, he says. “I don’t know how you can ever prove them unless you find more human remains.”