Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - First Americans Were Killing Mammoths 3,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

An artist’s reconstruction of Clovis life 13,000 years ago shows the Anzick-1 infant with his mother consuming mammoth meat near a hearth. Another individual crafts tools, including dart projectile points and atlatls. A mammoth butchery area is visible nearby. The scene is inspired by the La Prele mammoth site in Wyoming and set against the Montana landscape where the Anzick burial was discovered. Artist Eric Carlson created the scene in collaboration with archaeologists Ben Potter (UAF) and Jim Chatters (McMaster University).

Eric Carlson

Study reveals mammoth as key food source for ancient Americans | UAF news and information

A good 3,000 years before creationism's small god allegedly created the little flat planet with a dome over it described in the Bible, thinking that's what a universe looked like, human beings had migrated to North America and were hunting mammoths.

This is according to a new stable isotope analysis by a team led by researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). Creationists should note that a stable isotope analysis does not depend on radioactive decay rates, so the evidence-free claim that radioactive decay rates have changed isn't open to them. Stabel isotope analysis shows us what the person's diet consisted of.

The analysis was conducted by Professor Ben Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and James Chatters of McMaster University, and their colleagues. Their findings are published, open access, in the journal Science Advances and is explained in a UAF new release:

According to a recent report, scientists used stable isotope analysis to model the diet of the mother of an infant discovered at a 13,000-year-old Clovis burial site in Montana, showing that it ate mammoth flesh* How does this analysis work, exactly? Stable Isotope Analysis and the Mammoth Diet Study

Stable isotope analysis is a scientific technique used to infer the diet and environmental conditions experienced by ancient organisms. In this case, scientists analyzed the isotopic composition of collagen extracted from the remains of a Clovis woman. Here's how it works:

Isotopes in Diet:

Isotopes are variants of elements with different numbers of neutrons. For diet studies, carbon (\(^{13}C\)) and nitrogen (\(^{15}N\)) isotopes are the most relevant.
Different foods have characteristic isotopic signatures. For example, plants that use different photosynthetic pathways (C3 vs. C4) or marine vs. terrestrial animals have distinct \(^{13}C\) ratios. Similarly, the \(^{15}N\) ratio increases with trophic level (i.e., predators have higher \(^{15}N\) values than herbivores).

Bone Collagen Analysis:

Collagen, a protein in bones, retains isotopic signals from an individual's diet.
Scientists extract and analyze collagen from well-preserved bones to measure \(^{13}C\) and \(^{15}N\) ratios.

Interpreting Results:

By comparing the isotopic ratios in the Clovis woman's bones to those of known dietary sources (e.g., mammoth, bison, or plants), scientists can determine the relative contributions of these foods to her diet.
High \(^{15}N\) levels in the Clovis woman suggested she consumed a significant amount of mammoth meat, a high-trophic-level food source.

And who were these Clovis people?

The Clovis people were one of the earliest known groups of humans in North America, dating back approximately 13,000 years. Here's what we know about them:

Origins:

They are believed to have descended from people who migrated from Asia to North America via the Bering Land Bridge during the last Ice Age.

Distinctive Tools:

Clovis culture is characterized by their unique stone tools, particularly the Clovis points, which are finely crafted fluted projectile points used for hunting large animals.

Lifestyle:

Clovis people were hunter-gatherers who relied heavily on megafauna like mammoths, mastodons, and bison, as well as smaller game and plant resources.

Clovis Burial Site in Montana:

The burial site mentioned in the report, known as the Anzick site, is the only known Clovis burial site. It contained the remains of an infant and a rich assemblage of stone and bone tools, which were likely part of a ceremonial burial.

Significance:

Clovis culture represents a major technological and cultural innovation in early North America. However, it lasted only a few centuries before being replaced by other cultures, possibly due to the extinction of megafauna and environmental changes at the end of the Pleistocene.

This combination of isotopic analysis and archaeological evidence provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of these ancient people, highlighting their adaptability and reliance on megafauna like mammoths.

Study reveals mammoth as key food source for ancient Americans
Scientists have uncovered the first direct evidence that ancient Americans relied primarily on mammoth and other large animals for food. Their research sheds new light on both the rapid expansion of humans throughout the Americas and the extinction of large ice age mammals.
The study, featured on the Dec. 4 cover of the journal Science Advances, used stable isotope analysis to model the diet of the mother of an infant discovered at a 13,000-year-old Clovis burial site in Montana. Before this study, prehistoric diet was inferred by analyzing secondary evidence, such as stone tools or the preserved remains of prey animals.

The findings support the hypothesis that Clovis people specialized in hunting large animals rather than primarily foraging for smaller animals and plants.

The Clovis people inhabited North America around 13,000 years ago. During that time period, animals like mammoths lived across both northern Asia and the Americas. They migrated long distances, which made them a reliable fat- and protein-rich resource for highly mobile humans.

The focus on mammoths helps explain how Clovis people could spread throughout North America and into South America in just a few hundred years.

James C. Chatters, co-lead author
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

What's striking to me is that this confirms a lot of data from other sites. For example, the animal parts left at Clovis sites are dominated by megafauna, and the projectile points are large, affixed to darts, which were efficient distance weapons.

Professor Ben Potter, co-lead author University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA.
Hunting mammoths provided a flexible way of life, Potter said. It allowed the Clovis people to move into new areas without having to rely on smaller, localized game, which could vary significantly from one region to the next.

This mobility aligns with what we see in Clovis technology and settlement patterns. They were highly mobile. They transported resources like toolstone over hundreds of miles.

Professor Ben Potter.
Researchers were able to model the Clovis people’s diet by first analyzing isotopic data published during earlier studies by other researchers of the remains of Anzick-1, an 18-month-old Clovis child. By adjusting for nursing, they were able to estimate values for his mother’s diet.

Isotopes provide a chemical fingerprint of a consumer's diet and can be compared with those from potential diet items to estimate the proportional contribution of different diet items.

Mat Wooller, co-author
University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA.
The team compared the mother’s stable isotopic fingerprint to those from a wide variety of food sources from the same time period and region. They found that about 40% of her diet came from mammoth, with other large animals like elk and bison making up the rest. Small mammals, sometimes thought to have been an important food source, played a very minor role in her diet.

Finally, the scientists compared the mother’s diet to those of other omnivores and carnivores from the same time period, including American lions, bears and wolves. The mother’s diet was most similar to that of the scimitar cat, a mammoth specialist.

Findings also suggest that early humans may have contributed to the extinction of large ice age animals, especially as environmental changes reduced their habitats.

The Anzick-1 site
Photo by Larry Lahren

If the climate is changing in a way that reduces the suitable habitat for some of these megafauna, then it makes them potentially more susceptible to human predation. These people were very effective hunters

Professor Ben Potter.

You had the combination of a highly sophisticated hunting culture — with skills honed over 10,000 years in Eurasia — meeting naïve populations of megafauna under environmental stress.

James C. Chatters.
An important aspect of this research, according to Potter and Chatters, is their outreach to Native Americans in Montana and Wyoming about their concerns and interest in this work.

"It is important and ethical to consult with Indigenous peoples on questions relating to their heritage," they said.

They worked with Shane Doyle, executive director of Yellowstone Peoples, who reached out to numerous tribal government representatives throughout Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

The response has been one of appreciative consideration and inclusion. I congratulate the team for their astounding discovery about the lifeways of Clovis-era Native people and thank them for being tribally inclusive and respectful throughout their research. This study reshapes our understanding of how Indigenous people across America thrived by hunting one of the most dangerous and dominant animals of the day, the mammoth.

Shane Doyle.
Other authors of the paper include Stuart J. Fiedel, independent researcher; Juliet E. Morrow, University of Arkansas; and Christopher N. Jass, Royal Alberta Museum.

Abstract
Ancient Native American ancestors (Clovis) have been interpreted as either specialized megafauna hunters or generalist foragers. Supporting data are typically indirect (toolkits, associated fauna) or speculative (models, actualistic experiments). Here, we present stable isotope analyses of the only known Clovis individual, the 18-month-old Anzick child, to directly infer maternal protein diet. Using comparative fauna from this region and period, we find that mammoth was the largest contributor to Clovis diet, followed by elk and bison/camel, while the contribution of small mammals was negligible, broadly consistent with the Clovis zooarchaeological record. When compared with second-order consumers, the Anzick-1 maternal diet is closest to that of scimitar cat, a mammoth specialist. Our findings are consistent with the Clovis megafaunal specialist model, using sophisticated technology and high residential mobility to subsist on the highest ranked prey, an adaptation allowing them to rapidly expand across the Americas south of the Pleistocene ice sheets.

Fig. 1. Location of Anzick site, faunal samples (circles) used in this study, and major Clovis sites (triangles).
Glacial ice at 12,800 cal yr B.P. (72).

FAQ: Clovis diet.

Chatters, James C.; Potter, Ben A.; Fiedel, Stuart J.; Morrow, Juliet E.; Jass, Christopher N.; Wooller, Matthew J.
Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet Science Advances 10(49); DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adr3814

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

How on Earth anyone could imagine the Bronze Age authors of Genesis could have known anything about mammoths or people in North America is bizarre in the extreme. The simple reason they never included anything that wasn't within a few days walk of the pastures in the Middle East was because they knew nothing about it. The entirety of the history of the planet, life on it, its geology and even its shape were unknown to them, which is why they made up such implausible tales to fill the massive gaps in their knowledge and understanding.

That there are grown adult today who believe they wrote real history and real science, beggars belief, when you can compare what they wrote with what science is revealing.

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