Two Traps Where Woolly Mammoths Were Driven to Their Deaths Found in Mexico

Two Traps Where Woolly Mammoths Were Driven to Their Deaths Found in Mexico

In the neighborhood of Tultepec, just north of Mexico City, plans were recently underway to convert a patch of land into a garbage dump. But during preparatory excavations, workers at the site found themselves digging up woolly mammoth bones—hundreds of them. Over the course of ten months of archaeological and anthropological work, experts were able to piece together a grim picture of what appears to have been a prehistoric hunting site. The team had, according to the Associated Press, stumbled upon two large man-made traps—pits where hunters drove woolly mammoths to their deaths.

Researchers with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced the discovery this week, saying that it lends “unprecedented context” to experts’ understanding of how ancient humans hunted woolly mammoths. The pits date to 15,000 years ago, each measuring 5.5 feet deep and 82 feet long, reports CNN's Jack Guy. Inside the pits were 824 mammoth bones, among them eight skulls, five jaws, a hundred vertebrae and 179 ribs. Experts say the remains correspond to at least 14 individual mammoths. Bones belonging to a camel and a horse were also found.

According to INAH researchers, the pits may have been vital tools for ensnaring a formidable prey; woolly mammoths, which went extinct some 4,000 years ago, could stand more than 11 feet tall and weigh up to eight tons. Experts think that groups of hunters, perhaps numbering between 20 and 30 people, would separate one individual from the herd and drive it towards the pits, possibly frightening it with torches and branches. Once inside the trap, the animal would be killed.

GlamTribal Jewelry Now Shipped by Amazon | PRIME Members Rejoice!

GlamTribal Jewelry Now Shipped by Amazon | PRIME Members Rejoice!

Our first 10 styles of GlamTribal Earrings are now shipped by Amazon USA. The goal is to move 90% of our GlamTribal inventory into Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). International friends can buy the jewelry from Amazon.com, with shipping across the globe.

GlamTribal Jewelry and Anne of Carversville are passionate about elephants . . . like forever . . . like since I was a little girl. It was decades later in 2010, when I learned about woolly mammoths after seeing our adored former First Lady Michelle Obama wearing woolly mammoth ivory jewelry as part of a symposium on saving elephants.

At GlamTribal, we’re only talking mammoth bones beads in our jewelry. Nada ivory. Never.

Debate ensued from day one — noted then on Tree Hugger — that promoting long-dead woolly mammoth ivory as an ecological, sustainable and ethical alternative to murdering elephants was a win-win for all parties involved in the debate. Almost a decade later, the significant supply of woolly mammoth ivory on the global market has not stopped the killing of elephants for their ivory.

AOC has tracked both sides of the debate for years now, most recently with the decision at the August 2019 CITES conference — also known as World Wildlife Conference — in Geneva to table the Israeli proposal to declare the long-extinct woolly mammoth an endangered species until the 2022 meeting.

GlamTribal Jewelry only uses woolly mammoth bone beads, and bone beads from other mammoth species.

Genesis 2.0 Documentary Inspires New GlamTribal Woolly Mammoth Pendants

Genesis 2.0 Documentary Inspires New GLAMTRIBAL Woolly Mammoth Pendants

Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei will premiere his documentary Genesis 2.0 in Sundance's World Documentary section. Frei co-directs the film focused on the efforts to bring the extinct woolly mammoth back to life with Maxim Arbugaev. The co-directors embed with a group of tusk hunters on the remote New Siberian Islands for an entire season, and the first trailer introduces these hunters who search for the ivory tusks of the animals that have been fully extinct for 10,000 years.

Noted geneticist George Church, whose team at Harvard successfully modified elephant cells with DNA retrieved from a preserved mammoth, also assumes an important role in the documentary. While many ethicists are opposed to "playing God" with cloning, many scientists and conservationists see cloning the woolly mammoth as an important step in insuring that elephants -- considered to be descendants of the woolly mammoth -- do not become extinct. 

GlamTribal Design has a strong commitment to elephant conservation, earmarking 5% of our revenues to support elephants, as well as 5% of revenues for the Kibera School for Girls in Nairobi. 

GlamTribal Design uses both woolly mammoth bone beads and featherweight, balsa wood beads decoupaged with woolly mammoth images printed on vellum as key components in our collections. These new silk cord pendants with and without leaf and ladybug earrings are ready with FREE SHIPPING in North America. 

Eye| Nicolo & Carlotta Oddi Show Alanui's S/S 2018 Collection | GlamTribal Woolly Mammoth Jewelry

Nicolo & Carlotta Oddi Show Alanui's Spring/Summer Collection At Pitti Uomo

Carlotta Oddi cut her design chops as a styling assistant to Anna Dello Russo at Vogue Japan, although her design aesthetic couldn't be more different than Russo's. Oddi describes herself as a true bohemian at heart, describing her own design aesthetic as 'chameleonic/eclectic'. in general, a crossover brew of different world inspirations."

Brother Nicolò Oddi developed the knitwear brand under the name Alanui, which translates to 'large path' in Hawaiian. 

“Alanui has started its journey as a brand with a collection that focuses on a single item, produced in a variety of patterns: a buttonless oversized jacquard cashmere cardigan, edged with a dense fringe and closed with a two-tone belt. That’s it: an adaptable piece with no immediate gender connotation and no season. The colorful jacquards pay homage to the Indian America iconography, but this is just the beginning of a path that can lead in many different directions.

GlamTribal Design Jewelry & Gifts is inspired by the migration of humanity and animals out of Africa. In our pursuit of elephant conservation and news around the perils of elephant conservation in the modern world, we met mammoths, and woolly mammoths in particular. 

Elephants no longer live in the American Southwest or in the south of France, near the caves of Lascaux. They live in Africa, imperiled by the insatiable greed of humans in pursuit of ivory.

In the last two years, woolly mammoths have emerged as a strong design influence for GlamTribal, unifying collections like Alanui's American Southwest, native people's inspiration with tribal heritages in Africa. We regularly use their bone beads and our featherweight decoupage wooden beads with woolly mammoth imagery in our jewelry designs. 

When we began our woolly mammoth journey, the tie supported concerns about elephant extinction and also the religious disputes around creationism and human evolution. I've spoken with customers at high-quality artisan shows who told me that it was impossible that the woolly mammoth bones were 10,000-100,000 years old because God made the world much more recently. 

I do not have the patience for these conversations and generally end them quickly. A recent discovery near a highway in San Diego -- the bones and teeth of a mastodon dated at 130,000 years -- is rewriting our scientific understanding of when humans first reached North America. 

We delight, however, in the emergence of the woolly mammoth -- and mammoths generally -- as a unifying element in linking our human evolution heritage globally, leaving no doubt that GlamTribal's woolly mammoth jewelry looks simply fabulous with the gorgeous, over-sized sweaters from Alanui's spring/summer 2018 collection. 

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GlamTribal Design Woolly Mammoth Necklace and Pendant + Earrings Sets