LIFE IN THE ICE AGE

Looking cool, keeping warm. When the ice came, close-fitting, warm, fur clothes sewn with needles offered insulating protection against the cold. New discoveries and accurate DNA analyses give scientists a full impression of ice-age life. Our ancestors were clever and resourceful - and that's why we're alive today.

Mammoths died so we could survive

Ice-age people were experts on insulating their homes. In regions without caves and grottos, mammoths supplied the materials.

Ice-age people were very inventive, when it came to their homes, shown in more than 70 huts built as long as 14,000 years ago. The huts, which are made of mammoth bones, have been discovered in both Ukraine and Russia.

The huts consist of up to 600 small and large bones. Anything from the huge animal's tusks and skull to its thighbones and toes were included in the generouslysized (5-10m across) dome-like huts. These are complex structures, and it probably took four people about a week to erect one single hut. In addition, the collection of bones also required time. Some huts were made up of bones from more than 150 individual mammoths, and in one example, approximately 20 tonnes of bones were used for just one hut! Mammoth tusks can weigh over 200 kg, so it must have been difficult, even dangerous, to handle the huge “building blocks”.

Storerooms preserved meat, fish, and vegetables

A "paleo diet" in the ice-age was simple: communities ate anything they could get their hands on.

Unlike the popular belief that our ice-age ancestors feasted on red meat, several archaeological excavations have revealed that the real paleo diet did indeed include carbohydrates and starch. These provided life-saving energy.

In ice-age settlement kitchen middens and in fireplaces, scientists have found lots of evidence of seeds, nuts, and charred plant parts plus animal bones and oyster and sea shells. Scientists have determined that the menu varied according to region and season.

Many people consumed mammoths, since the huge animals provided enough meat to feed an entire family for a year. Along with meat – fresh and air-dried – nuts, roots, and seeds made up important elements of the diet.

According to scientists, ice-age people were relatively healthy, because their food was rich in energy and vitamins. Death from "lifestyle" was rare. Death from misadventure, though, was almost certain, and life was short.

It takes many grains to make a flour...

Recent archaeological discoveries of microscopic seeds left on stone tools from different settlements in Italy, the Czech Republic, and Russia, indicate that by 30,000 years ago – long before farming – ice-age people figured out how to make flour from wild-grown plants. They might also have made 'bread' based on the processed plants, such as by mixing flour and water and frying the dough on a stone plate over a fire.

Ice-age dentistry, anyone?

In 2014, analyses of teeth from 52 adults discovered in a grotto in Morocco revealed that dental decay was already a fact of life 15,000 years ago, and did not arise with farming and processed food about 10,000 years ago, as previously believed. More than half of the individuals suffered from dental decay. The cause? Probably starchy pine nuts and sweet acorns, which were ground into flour and subsequently used to make a porridge or flat bread.

According to recent research, there were dentists in the ice-age... sort of. In April 2017, an international team of scientists reported to have discovered the world’s oldest dental fillings in 13,000-year-old teeth from Italy.

A freezer well-stocked with life

In spite of the cold, myriad animals and plants thrived in the open landscape, which stretched 10,000 km from Europe to North America.

Groups of huge mammoths grazed quietly side by side with huge, woolly rhinos. The landscape was full of flowers, and far away, where land and sky merged on the horizon, you could make out the edge of the ice cap, which separated the snowline and the fertile steppe. During the night, it was freezing cold, but in the daytime, temperatures rose to zero degrees C, and a cool, dry wind swept the flat ice-age steppe.

Known as the mammoth steppe, the 20 million km2 region – as big as the USA and Canada combined – stretched some 10,000 km from Western Europe across Siberia to North America. All other regions in the Northern Hemisphere were buried in a thick layer of snow, and under such tough conditions, no animals nor plants could survive. But on the steppe, life was thriving.

Until recently, scientists imagined the mammoth steppe to be a huge grassland. But DNA analyses of stomach contents and faeces from woolly rhinos and mammoths, plus 50,000-year-old plants from the Arctic permafrost, a new picture has emerged. Back in 2014, geneticist Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen found that the steppe was more likely a "carpet" of herbs. His DNA analyses show that the vegetation was highly diversified, primarily consisting of different species of flowering herbs, which are much more rich in protein than ordinary grass.

Just like on the African savannah, herbivores covered long distances searching for food, and they were followed by hunters armed with arrows and predators with sharp teeth and a healthy appetite. To all of them, the mammoth steppe was a huge buffet. Small and large animals existed side by side, and just like modern giraffes and zebras, the four-legged steppe inhabitants were interested in different types of food. The mammoth preferred herbs, whereas the cave bear liked juicy berries, and sabre-toothed tigers loved red meat.

About 10,000 years ago, the high-protein herbs were almost gone, probably due to an extraordinarily cold and dry period, which had began 20,000 years ago, when global temperatures plummeted. Bushes and grass filled the tundra, and over time, the herbs succumbed, and so did the animals which primarily fed on herbs.

Mammoths surrounded and killed with spears

Well-preserved mammoth carcasses have provided scientists with unique knowledge about how ice-age people killed the huge animals.

Our ancestors hunted all major animals, including the awesome mammoth. Scientists know this, as they have discovered several well-preserved mammoths in the Siberian permafrost with deep stab wounds and cut marks left by sharp weapons.

One of the dead prehistoric giants, a some 15-year-old male, which was discovered complete with a hump and penis on the Siberian peninsula of Taymyr in 2012 after 45,000 years in the ice, had deep stab wounds caused by spears and stone fragments in its bones. The fragments are probably from spearheads, which were forced into the creature's ribs with tremendous force.

Based on the fossils' wounds and injuries, scientists have reconstructed the hunting method, discovering that the hunters encircled the animal, killing it with their spears.

Fine cloaks, detailed leatherwork, true art

Fitted leather clothes with bead ornaments and knee-high moccasins saved lives, and enriched cultures.

Ice-age clothes were essential protection against the brutal cold. Several discoveries have provided scientists with invaluable insight into ice-age clothing, indicating that thanks to sewing needles, people were able to make warm, fitted clothes. When he was buried, a man who lived in Russia 28,000 years ago, wore a leather tunic, leather pants, leather moccasins, a long fur mantle, and a hat ornamented with 24 fox teeth on its back.

All his clothes were decorated with thousands of mammoth bone beads on strings attached to the clothes in neat rows. According to scientists’ calculations, it may have taken as long as 2,625 hours to make and attach the 3,000+ beads.

Neanderthal clothes were not as fine. Unlike modern humans, they had no sewing needles, wrapping themselves in loose mantles. Based on different animal droppings found in ice-age settlement fireplaces, Canadian scientists determined that Neanderthal probably had no warm outdoor clothes. Humans hunted many more species of fine-furred animals, including wolverine, mink, and rabbit, which could be skinned and turned into warm, windproof coats. Neanderthal settlements usually only include remains from ox and deer, whose hides do not have the same thermal properties as fur.

In "Science Illustrated", Australia, n.53, 2017, excerpts pp.38-45. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted b Leopoldo Costa.