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A comment on To kill mammoths in the Ice Age, people used planted pikes, not throwing spears. Parent comment

Re:To kill mammoths in the Ice Age, people used planted pike... by morbicer on Sunday August 25, 2024 @06:13AM (#41346112)
I don't know how much this is based on science but our history (and popular) books about ice age always depicted a hunting method that involves a dug out pit with spikes. Then the hunters would chase the animal and steer it towards the pit, where the mammoth gets trapped and they could finish him off.

Maked sense to me as a kid because directly attacking a thick wooled mammoth with stone tips on sticks wouldn't be feasible.

I guess the theory from the article could work too, it's more flexible than betting on chasing the animal to a specific pit.

But I am surprised the pit method isn't mentioned at all as an option in the article.

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Re:To kill mammoths in the Ice Age, people used planted pike... by kubanczyk on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @02:00PM (#41370679)
It's a question of a typical behavior of mammoth. One method would work if an encircled mammoth was apt to charge humans. The other method would work if a mammoth was prone to panic and always ran away from aggressors. Looking however at the size of the animal, I doubt if the latter was its survival strategy.
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