page_title: Woolly mammoth
section_title: Exploitation
hierarchical_section_title: Woolly mammoth / Relationship with humans / Exploitation
caption_attribution_description: English: One of the earliest known realistic representations of a human face. Español: Una de las más antiguas representaciones detalladas del rostro humano. Français&#160;: L’une des plus anciennes représentations réalistes de visage humain. Deutsch: Eine der ältesten bekannten genauer ausgeführten Darstellungen eines menschlichen Gesichte.
context_page_description: The woolly mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in East Asia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The appearance and behaviour of this species are among the best studied of any prehistoric animal because of the discovery of frozen carcasses in Siberia and Alaska, as well as skeletons, teeth, stomach contents, dung, and depiction from life in prehistoric cave paintings. Mammoth remains had long been known in Asia before they became known to Europeans in the 17th century. The origin of these remains was long a matter of debate, and often explained as being remains of legendary creatures. The mammoth was identified as an extinct species of elephant by Georges Cuvier in 1796.
  The woolly mammoth was roughly the same size as modern African elephants. Males reached shoulder heights between 2.7 and 3.4 m and weighed up to 6 metric tons.
context_section_description: Woolly mammoth bones were used as construction material for dwellings by both Neanderthals and modern humans during the ice age. More than 70  such dwellings are known, mainly from the Russian Plain. The bases of the huts were circular, and ranged from 8 to 24 square metres (86 to 258 sq ft). The arrangement of dwellings varied, and ranged from 1 to 20 m (3.3 to 65.6 ft) apart, depending on location. Large bones were used as foundations for the huts, tusks for the entrances, and the roofs were probably skins held in place by bones or tusks. Some huts had floors that extended 40 cm (16 in) below ground. Some huts included fireplaces, which used bones as fuel, probably because wood was scarce. Some of the bones used for materials may have come from mammoths killed by humans, but the state of the bones, and the fact that bones used to build a single dwelling varied by several thousands of years in age, suggests that they were collected remains of long-dead animals. Woolly mammoth bones were also made into various tools, furniture, and musical instruments. Large bones, such as shoulder blades, were also used to cover dead human bodies during burial.
  Woolly mammoth ivory was used to create art objects. Several Venus figurines, including the Venus of Brassempouy and the Venus of Lespugue, were made from this material. Weapons made from ivory, such as daggers, spears, and a boomerang, are also known. To be able to process the ivory, the large tusks had to be chopped, chiseled, and split into smaller, more manageable pieces. Some ivory artefacts show that tusks had been straightened, and how this was achieved is unknown.
  Several woolly mammoth specimens show evidence of being butchered by humans, which is indicated by breaks, cut marks, and associated stone tools. How much prehistoric humans relied on woolly mammoth meat is unknown, since many other large herbivores were available. Many mammoth carcasses may have been scavenged by humans rather than hunted. Some cave paintings show woolly mammoths in structures interpreted as pitfall traps. Few specimens show direct, unambiguous evidence of having been hunted by humans. A Siberian specimen with a spearhead embedded in its shoulder blade shows that a spear had been thrown at it with great force. A specimen from the Mousterian age of Italy shows evidence of spear hunting by Neanderthals.  The juvenile specimen nicknamed "Yuka" is the first frozen mammoth with evidence of human interaction. It shows evidence of having been killed by a large predator, and of having been scavenged by humans shortly after. Some of its bones had been removed, and were found nearby. A site near the Yana River in Siberia has revealed several specimens with evidence of human hunting, but the finds were interpreted to show that the animals were not hunted intensively, but perhaps mainly when ivory was needed. Two woolly mammoths from Wisconsin, the "Schaefer" and "Hebior mammoths", show evidence of having been butchered by Palaeoamericans.
caption: The Venus of Brassempouy, made from woolly mammoth ivory, National Archaeological Museum, France
exif: {}