Humans Didn’t Actually Hunt Woolly Mammoths To Extinction
What really killed the mammoths?
Encased within the iconic geodesic dome in Walt Disney World is one of my favorite attractions — Spaceship Earth. Spaceship Earth is a chill ride where you get to slowly traverse through human history. As a history buff and someone who likes slow moving rides, it is the perfect fit for me. (I also loved the People Mover in Tomorrowland.) One of the first scenes on the ride shows a group of fur-clad humans surrounding and hunting a woolly mammoth. This is a popular vision in the minds of most people. For decades, the prevailing thought was that at the end of the Ice Age, humans hunted these large beasts for their meat and fur to survive in a harsh and cold climate and that humans hunted these beasts to extinction. The last woolly mammoths vanished roughly 4,000 years ago.
For years, humans got a bad rap for eliminating one of the icons of the Ice Age. The woolly mammoth has often been pointed to as an example of human barbarity and how even the earliest humans managed to kill off millions of animals.
However, new information suggests that humans didn’t actually hunt woolly mammoths to extinction. In fact, scientists now doubt whether or not early humans even had the means to kill these animals in large numbers.
