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Archaeologists in Russia have found a magnanimous circle made out of the stuff of horror movies : the bones of mammoths and other ice age creatures that lived more than 20,000 years ago , a new field of study finds .
Among the remains are the bones of more than five dozen mammoths , as well as bones fromreindeer , sawhorse , bear , wolves , crimson foxes and Arctic slyboots , the study researcher say .
Archaeologists found bones belonging to mammoths, reindeer, horses, bears, wolves, red foxes and Arctic foxes at the site.
" It is made up of thousands of bones that amount from at least 60 differentwoolly mammoths , " subject field lead story researcher Alexander Pryor , a lecturer of prehistoric archaeology at the University of Exeter in England , told Live Science . " All portion of the mammoth physical structure are represent , from very large osseous tissue like skull and leg bones to smaller castanets like vertebrae . "
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There are about 70 otherice age"bone circles " at about 25 sites inUkraineand Russia already known to archaeologists , but the new discovered one is the onetime on book , Pryor say . It was found by study co - investigator Alexander Dudin , the managing director of the Kostenki Museum - Preserve in Voronezh , Russia , who was doing view work in 2015 at the archaeological situation of Kostenki 11 , about 350 miles ( 560 kilometers ) south of Moscow .
Archaeologists excavate the incredible bone structure made during the last ice age.(Image credit: Alex Pryor)
The bone lap measures about 36 feet ( 11 meters ) in diameter . It ’s hard to say what this and other bone - made structures would have looked like during the last ice age , Pryor said , " but at Kostenki 11 , we can imagine a ring of mammoth bone piled up on top of each other . Some of the bone were still in articulatio [ joined together ] , indicating that at least some of the bones still had flesh on them when they were supply to the cumulation . "
He bestow that , " beyond this , some have speculated about wooden poles used to affirm a ceiling made of creature fell , but there is no grounds for this yet at Kostenki 11 . "
The bone used to construct the body structure were in all likelihood scavenge , Pryor said . There is some evidence that during the ice age people trace mammoth , as evidenced by thediscovery of a javelinembedded in a 25,000 - year - older gigantic costa in Poland , but this may have been an elision , not the norm , Pryor say .
During the last ice age, humans arranged these bones in a circle.(Image credit: Alex Pryor)
Extreme cold
The last ice age span northern Europe between 75,000 and 18,000 years ago , but it reached its most ivory - chilling temperatures during a period last from about 23,000 to 18,000 year ago , when the dress circle at Kostenki 11 was ramp up .
During this time , the summers were short and cool , while the winters were prospicient and cold , reaching temperatures as low as minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit ( minus 20 degrees Celsius ) . These freeze temperatures prompted many human groups to head in the south , where prey and other resources were more abundant . finally , the community that establish this bone circle left , too , even though there was a river nearby that could have supply them with overbold water , Pryor tell .
That biotic community did n’t get out behind many hint about how it used this structure . Maybe it was a domicile , archaeologists have suggest . But Pryor and his colleagues have another idea ; perhaps these boney construction were used for rite or even for food warehousing , give that each mammoth had a " mammoth " amount of meat on it , he said .
A view of the sheer amount of bones at the site.(Image credit: Alex Pryor)
It ’s improbable that it was a habitation because there ’s less grounds of human activity there than would be expected of a full - blown home , he say . Moreover , this sort of house would n’t have been good . " The fact that some of the bones are still articulated substance that they would have still been smelly , " because they would have had meat on them , Pryor say . " They would have been attractive to wolves andfoxesand other scavengers . "
An psychoanalysis of petite detritus found within the bone lot and three pit locate outdoors of it revealed burned piece of music of charcoal and bone . These determination indicate that , despite the bitter cold , there were trees nearby that could be burned , Pryor enounce . In addition , it shows that these people were burning ivory , which produces a brighter fire with less heat compared with a forest fire , he said .
The junk psychoanalysis also revealed 300 tiny stone and flint chips , likely bring on when ancient citizenry there knapped stones into shrewd tools for slaughter animals and trash fell . It also turned up more than 50 small charred seeds , the clay of plants growing topically or mayhap food remains from cooking and feeding .
A bird’s-eye view of the site.(Image credit: Alex Pryor)
" This is a floor about our human ancestors innovate to survive the coldest breaker point of the last ice eld and using all resource and material that they had , " Pryor say . " It would have been a ambitious place to endure , but they were make a success out of it . "
The prompting that the ivory social structure was used for computer storage and the pits around it as trash cans " are not Earth - shatter revelations , [ but ] they do render utilitarian insights into the lives of the people who once occupied the site , " enjoin E. James Dixon , an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico who was not involve in the study .
The last ice age is a " fascinating time period in Eurasiatic archaeology , " Dixon told Live Science in an e-mail , and the study " clearly march that modern humans were accommodate to high latitudes at the very height of the last ice age . "
Notice the mammoth tooth just above this researcher’s arm.(Image credit: Alex Pryor)
The study was bring out online March 17 in the journalAntiquity .
Originally published onLive scientific discipline .
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This structure may have served as a house, a storage facility for meat or even a place for rituals.(Image credit: Alex Pryor)
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