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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Nicola Davis Science correspondent

Prehistoric humans may have stuck pikes in ground to kill mammoths, say experts

Illustration of a woolly mammoth
Capturing megafauna, like woolly mammoths, 13,000 years ago, might have relied on enticing the animals to charge on to sharp pikes driven into the ground. Photograph: Andrew Nelmerm/Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley

When it came to taking down giant animals, prehistoric hunters would quite literally have faced a mammoth task. Now researchers have shed fresh light on how they might have done it.

Experts studying sharp stone points made by the Clovis people, who lived in the Americas from about 13,000 years ago, say that rather than hurling spears at enormous animals such as giant bison, mammoths or ground sloths, the tribes could have planted their weapons point-up in the ground to impale charging creatures.

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