Prehistoric American Diet Was Rich in Mammoth Meat, Toddler Remains Reveal

The diet of a key prehistoric American group appears to have been rich in mammoth meat, a study analyzing data extracted from the 12,800-year-old remains of a toddler has revealed.

Published in the journal Science Advances, the study represents the first direct evidence that the Paleoindian Clovis culture relied heavily on mammoths—in addition to other megafauna—for food. Previously, the Clovis people's diet had been determined only by analyzing indirect evidence, such as the remains of prey animals and stone tools, or from speculative studies.

The research's results lend support to a long-debated hypothesis that the Clovis people specialized in hunting megafauna, such as mammoths and other large animals, as a primary aspect of their subsistence. Competing hypotheses have suggested that they were primarily generalist foragers incorporating a wider variety of food sources, such as smaller animals and plants.

The Clovis people were prehistoric Native Americans who lived roughly 13,000 years ago in North America near the end of the Pleistocene epoch. The culture—known for its distinctive pointed and sharp-edged stone tools—is named after the Clovis archaeological site in New Mexico where researchers first uncovered evidence of them. They are considered to be the ancestors of modern Native Americans.

An artist's reconstruction of Clovis life around 13,000 years ago depicts the Anzick-1 infant with his mother consuming mammoth meat near a hearth. The scene is inspired by the La Prele mammoth site in Wyoming... Artist Eric Carlson created the scene in collaboration with archaeologists Ben Potter and Jim Chatters

For the latest study, the research team used "stable isotope data" previously extracted from the relatively complete skeletal remains of an 18-month-old boy, known as Anzick-1, originally found in 1968 near Wilsall, Montana, at a Clovis burial site.

To date, only three individual sets of remains have been identified as likely members of the Clovis culture. But of these, Anzick-1 is particularly significant because these are the only relatively complete burial remains found in close association with Clovis artifacts and for whom researchers have been able to generate an isotopic "fingerprint."

Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. Conducting isotopic analysis of prehistoric human remains can provide unique insights into the kinds of foods these people ate.

"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," said Matthew Wooller, an author of the study and director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in a press release.

Using previously published isotopic data for Anzick-1, the research team was able to get a picture of his mother's diet, thus providing a glimpse into what this particular group—and probably Western Clovis people in general—ate.

This analysis revealed that the toddler's mother consumed a diet that was heavy in mammoth meat, which represented about 40 percent of everything that she ate—the largest single contributor.

Other large animals, such as elk, bison and a now extinct type of camel, made up the rest of the diet in significantly smaller proportions. The results also showed that the contribution of small mammals and plants in her diet was very minor to negligible.

Subsequently, the researchers compared the mother's diet with those of other carnivorous and omnivorous animals that lived around the same period, such as American lions, bears and wolves. They found that it was most similar to that of the extinct scimitar cat—strongly suspected to be a mammoth-hunting specialist.

The latest results provide "direct evidence" for Western Clovis diets around 12,800 years ago, the authors wrote in the study, while corresponding well with previous zooarchaeological evidence.

"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," said study co-lead author Ben Potter, an archaeology professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in the release.

The study suggests that Western Clovis people—represented by Anzick-1—were mainly focused on hunting megafauna, primarily mammoths, and were not generalists who regularly consumed smaller-bodied herbivores.

Hunting mammoths would likely have resulted in a flexible way of life, enabling Clovis groups to move into new areas without having to rely on smaller mammals—the availability of which could vary significantly between regions.

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

The findings may help to explain how the Clovis people rapidly expanded across the Americas south of the Pleistocene ice sheets in just a few hundred years.

"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," said Shane Doyle, executive director of Yellowstone Peoples. As part of the study, he reached out to numerous tribal government representatives throughout Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

"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," Doyle said.

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