Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - Ancient Hunters Targeted Female Mammoths

Excavation in Langmannersdorf, Austria, 2025.

Photo: Marc Händel/Austrian Academy of Sciences

Ancient DNA reveals Ice Age hunter-gatherers preferentially targeted female mammoths - Stockholms universitet

A heap of ancient bones does not come with a label explaining how it was formed. When large accumulations of woolly mammoth remains are found at Upper Palaeolithic sites, archaeologists must determine whether the animals were killed by people, scavenged after natural deaths, or accumulated through entirely natural processes such as floods, landslides or animals becoming trapped in bogs.

Cut marks, deliberately broken bones and stone projectile points embedded in mammoth remains show that humans sometimes hunted and butchered these enormous animals. But such evidence is not present on every bone, leaving open the possibility that some of the great mammoth bonebeds of Eurasia resulted largely from natural mortality rather than sustained human exploitation.

Now an international team led by researchers at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm has approached the problem from an ingenious new direction: instead of asking only what happened to the bones, they used ancient DNA to determine whether the mammoths were male or female.

As described in a newly published paper in Current Biology, the researchers analysed genome data from 521 woolly mammoths, Mammuthus primigenius, recovered across Eurasia and North America. These included 448 animals sequenced for the first time, making this one of the largest palaeogenomic studies yet undertaken on an extinct species.

The contrast was striking. Among 421 mammoths recovered as dispersed remains from natural depositional settings, 66 per cent were male and only 34 per cent female. That male bias is consistent with the behaviour of modern elephants: adult males commonly leave their natal herds and live alone, making them more likely to take risks or become caught in natural traps such as bogs, sinkholes and landslides.

However, among 100 mammoths from large bone accumulations associated with Upper Palaeolithic people, the ratio was almost exactly reversed: 70 per cent were female and only 30 per cent male. As the researchers explain, this substantial difference provides population-scale evidence that human activity, rather than natural mortality alone, was the principal force creating these bone accumulations.

That does not necessarily mean that hunters deliberately selected females simply because they were smaller than adult males. If mammoths lived like modern elephants, females and their young would have travelled in matriarchal herds capable of mounting a formidable collective defence. However, such herds may also have followed more predictable routes than solitary males, making them easier for hunter-gatherers to locate repeatedly. People may have hunted them, scavenged animals that died along those routes, or—most probably—used a combination of both strategies.

Either way, the result opens a remarkable window onto human behaviour between about 30,000 and 20,000 years ago. Mammoths supplied meat and fat for food, hides for clothing and shelter, bones for construction, and ivory for tools, ornaments and works of art. By combining genetics with archaeology and knowledge of elephant social behaviour, scientists can now reconstruct something of how Upper Palaeolithic people located and exploited this critically important resource.

And all this human ingenuity, accumulated ecological knowledge and repeated interaction with mammoth herds was taking place tens of thousands of years before creationists believe their god created Earth and everything upon it. Once again, the evidence reveals not a recently created world interrupted by a global flood, but a deep and richly documented human past—one preserved not merely in tools and bones, but in fragments of ancient DNA surviving within those bones.

How Ancient DNA Reveals a Mammoth’s Sex—and Why It Matters. Genetically sexing an extinct mammoth

Like most mammals, woolly mammoths had an XX/XY sex-chromosome system. Females normally possessed two X chromosomes, while males possessed one X and one Y chromosome.

Ancient DNA is usually highly fragmented, but researchers do not need to reconstruct an animal’s complete genome to determine its genetic sex. They sequence millions of surviving DNA fragments and compare the proportion originating from the X chromosome with the proportion originating from the autosomes—the chromosomes that are not sex chromosomes.

Because females had two X chromosomes for every pair of autosomes, their relative X-chromosome coverage is approximately twice that of males, which had only one X chromosome. DNA fragments from the Y chromosome, when sufficiently well preserved, provide additional evidence that an animal was male.

This method allows researchers to determine the sex of remains that cannot be sexed reliably from their size or skeletal anatomy. It is especially valuable when only isolated teeth, tusks or bone fragments survive.

What modern elephants can tell us

No one can observe mammoth society directly, but their closest living relatives provide a useful behavioural model. Female African and Asian elephants normally live with their young in stable family groups led by an experienced matriarch. Mature males generally leave their natal families and live alone or in much looser male associations.

If woolly mammoths behaved similarly, this social difference could help explain the contrasting genetic sex ratios found in their remains:

Dispersed natural remains were predominantly male. Solitary males may have ranged more widely, taken greater risks and been more likely to become trapped in bogs, sinkholes, landslides or other environments favourable to preservation.

Human-associated bone accumulations were predominantly female. Female-led herds may have followed regular seasonal routes and visited predictable feeding or watering places, making them easier for people to locate repeatedly.

Female mammoths were smaller than fully grown males, but they were not necessarily easy prey. A defensive herd of adult females protecting calves could have been at least as dangerous as a solitary male. Predictability, rather than physical vulnerability alone, may therefore have made female-led herds more frequently available to human hunters and scavengers.

The female bias does not prove that every mammoth represented in these bonebeds was deliberately hunted. People could also have butchered animals that died naturally or transported useful bones from carcasses encountered elsewhere. What it does show is that the accumulations were not simply random samples of naturally preserved mammoths. Human behaviour had substantially altered which animals entered the archaeological record.

The paper in Current Biology was accompanied by a Stockholm University news release:

Ancient DNA reveals Ice Age hunter-gatherers preferentially targeted female mammoths
Analysing ancient DNA of over 500 mammoth bones, an international team of researchers found that Ice Age humans selectively targeted female woolly mammoths. The results of the study, published in Current Biology, show that in contrast to the sex ratio among naturally occurring woolly mammoth remains, large bone accumulations associated with ancient human activity are dominated by females.

Whether these massive mammoth bone accumulations were formed naturally or by human hunting has been debated for decades. By comparing the genetic sex ratios of hundreds of mammoths from natural settings with those found in these archaeological contexts, we can now infer that human activity was the primary driver behind these bone accumulations.

David Díez del Molino, co-senior author
Centre for Palaeogenetics
Stockholm, Sweden.

Divergent sex ratios in different contexts
The team analysed genome data from 521 woolly mammoths across Eurasia and North America, including 448 individuals sequenced for the first time. Genetic sex inference revealed a striking contrast depending on where the remains were found. Mammoth remains recovered from dispersed, natural settings were mostly male (34 per cent female: 66 per cent male), consistent with the idea that solitary males were more likely to die in natural traps (for example sinkholes or landslides), thereby increasing the chance of long-term bone preservation. In contrast, mammoths from accumulation sites were predominantly female (70 per cent female: 30 per cent male). These results raised questions about how Ice Age hunter-gatherers interacted with mammoths.

We know that Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers sometimes hunted mammoths directly, as evidenced by projectile points embedded in mammoth bones, and they may also have scavenged material from carcasses

Jarosław Wilczyński, co-author
Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals
Polish Academy of Sciences
Kraków, Poland.

While it is tempting to assume that hunters would have targeted females because they were smaller than adult males, the reality may have been more complex. If mammoths behaved like modern elephants, females living in matriarchal herds may have had group defences that would have made encounters with herds equally or even more risky. Another possibility is that female-led herds moved across the landscape in more predictable ways than solitary males, meaning Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers may simply have encountered them more frequently, whether for hunting or scavenging.

Dr. Hannah M. Moots, lead author.
Centre for Palaeogenetics
Stockholm, Sweden.

Reconstructing Ice Age human-mammoth interactions
Mammoths were a vital resource for Ice Age human populations, providing meat, fat, hide and bones for building structures, and ivory for tools, art, and ornaments. The mammoth bone accumulations included in the study span eleven key Ice Age archaeological sites across Eurasia, dating to roughly 30,000–20,000 years ago. By combining 100 individuals from these human-associated site accumulations with 421 mammoths from natural depositional settings, the team analysed a large dataset of woolly mammoths across Eurasia and North America. This unprecedented scale provides a rare look at how ancient humans and woolly mammoths interacted across the Late Pleistocene.
This research demonstrates the power of ancient DNA studies to answer long-standing archaeological questions. By scaling up sample sizes, ancient DNA can go beyond evolutionary history to teach us about animal behaviour and human culture tens of thousands of years ago.

Professor Love Dalén, co-senior author.
Centre for Palaeogenetics
Stockholm, Sweden.

Rare genetic discovery in extinct species
The researchers identified one mammoth from Wrangel Island that was neither XX (biologically female) nor XY (biologically male). Instead, this individual had a different sex chromosome combination known as X0/XX mosaicism, where the individual has a single copy of the X chromosome in some cells, and two in others. In humans, this is known as Turner syndrome. This is the first time that this has been documented in an extinct species.

Publication:
Moots, Hannah M.; Larsdotter, Juliana; Oteo-García, Gonzalo; et al
Paleogenomic sex inference of mammoth remains sheds light on the anthropogenic nature of bone accumulations
Current Biology (2026) doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.07.023

Highlights

Genetic sex determination of 521 woolly mammoths based on genome-wide data
Naturally deposited mammoth remains are consistently biased toward males
In contrast, 70% of remains in Upper Paleolithic mammoth accumulations are female
This female bias suggests mammoth bone accumulations resulted from human exploitation

Summary
Whether large accumulations of woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) bones reflect natural mortality or deliberate human resource exploitation has long been debated, with major implications for understanding Late Pleistocene human-megafaunal interactions.^1,2,3,4,5 Here, we use ancient DNA to investigate site-formation hypotheses by comparing genetic sex ratios from mammoth remains recovered in putative anthropogenic bone accumulations and from geographically dispersed, non-anthropogenic contexts. We studied genome-wide data from 521 woolly mammoths—including 100 mammoths from bone accumulation sites and 421 mammoths from natural depositional settings across Eurasia and North America—of which 448 are newly generated. Genetic sex determination reveals a striking contrast between contexts: mammoths from dispersed sites show a male bias (∼66.5%), which is consistent with the heightened vulnerability of solitary males to hazards such as natural traps, where bones are more likely to be preserved, whereas mammoths from anthropogenic bone accumulations are predominantly female (∼70%). This female bias is pervasive across multiple sites, indicating an anthropogenic origin for these accumulations as a result of Upper Paleolithic hunters preferentially exploiting female mammoths, possibly derived from herd contexts. Together, these results provide population-scale genetic evidence that highlights the central role of mammoths in the subsistence and material economies of some Paleolithic communities.

Figure 1 Excavation documentation for four bone accumulation sites and the geographical locations of the woolly mammoths analyzed in this study
(A–D) Bone accumulations from the sites of (A) Mus-Khaya, (B) Langmannersdorf, (C) Kraków Spadzista, and (D) Dolní Věstonice 1. (E) The geographical locations of all analyzed woolly mammoths (n = 521, from 11 accumulation sites and 420 dispersed contexts). Red circles indicate sites with putative anthropogenic provenance, and blue circles represent natural depositional contexts. Circle size is relative to the number of individual specimens sampled per location. The map uses a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection centered on the North Pole and was generated using the Natural Earth dataset. See Data S1A for detailed sample metadata. Photo credits: (A) Albert Protopopov, (B) Marc Händel, (C) Jarosław Wilczyñski, and (D) Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno.

Moots, Hannah M.; Larsdotter, Juliana; Oteo-García, Gonzalo; et al
Paleogenomic sex inference of mammoth remains sheds light on the anthropogenic nature of bone accumulations
Current Biology (2026) doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.07.023

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Cell Press (Elsevier Inc.) Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

The significance of this study lies not merely in identifying the sex of several hundred dead mammoths, but in revealing a repeated pattern of human behaviour tens of thousands of years ago. By bringing together ancient DNA, archaeology, taphonomy and the behaviour of living elephants, the researchers have extracted evidence of human–mammoth relationships from bones that had appeared incapable of yielding such information.

The results do not tell us that every female mammoth represented in these accumulations was hunted. Some may have been scavenged, and bones may have been transported from elsewhere. Science does not manufacture certainty where the evidence does not justify it. Nevertheless, the marked contrast between male-dominated natural remains and female-dominated human-associated bonebeds provides powerful evidence that people were chiefly responsible for creating those accumulations through repeated exploitation of female-led herds.

Even implausibly compressing it into a biblical timeline by ignoring the geochronology, creationists cannot plausibly explain these bonebeds as the indiscriminate wreckage of a global flood. A flood would not systematically place predominantly female mammoths in association with human occupation, stone tools and butchery evidence while leaving a contrasting male bias among geographically dispersed natural remains. To dismiss the conclusion, creationists must reject the mutually supporting evidence from genetics, archaeology, geology and animal behaviour simply because all four contradict their preferred mythology.

These sites record knowledgeable Upper Palaeolithic communities tracking, hunting, scavenging and processing mammoths between about 30,000 and 20,000 years ago—long before creationists believe Earth existed. There is no trace here of a recent creation or a civilisation restarted after a global flood. Instead, there is another meticulously reconstructed chapter of a deep human past: one in which people learned the behaviour of other animals and adapted their own behaviour accordingly, just as evolutionary beings occupying an ancient and changing world would be expected to do.

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