Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) in mainland Alaska overlapped with the region’s first people for at least 1,000 years. However, it is unclear how mammoths used the space shared with people. In new research, scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and elsewhere analyzed a 14,000-year-old female mammoth tusk found at the archaeological site of Swan Point in the Shaw Creek basin in interior Alaska to show that she moved nearly 1,000 km (621 miles) from northwestern Canada to inhabit an area with the highest density of early archaeological sites in interior Alaska; early Alaskans seem to have structured their settlements partly based on mammoth prevalence and made use of mammoths for raw materials and likely food.
The woolly mammoth at the center of the study, named Élmayuujey’eh by the Healy Lake Village Council, was discovered at Swan Point, the earliest archaeological site in Alaska, which also contained remains of a juvenile and a baby mammoth.
Mammoth remains have also been found at three other archaeological sites within 10 km of Swan Point.
In their study, University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Audrey Rowe and colleagues conducted a detailed isotopic analysis of a complete tusk and genetic analyses of remains of many other individual mammoths to piece together their subject’s movements and relationships to other mammoths at the same site and in the vicinity.
They determined that the Swan Point area was likely a meeting ground for at least two closely related, but distinct matriarchal herds.
“This is a fascinating story that shows the complexity of life and behavior of mammoths, for which we have very little insight,” said Dr. Hendrik Poinar, director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre at McMaster University.
The authors sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of eight woolly mammoths found at Swan Point and other nearby sites to determine if and how they were related.
They also performed isotopic analyses of the 14,000-year-old…
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