[roamer_1]

[...] I just don’t see them as having manufactured rope, metal and sufficient numbers to accomplish ‘hunting trips’. More like accidental luck when the mammoths succumbed to natural causes, accidents or other predatory animals. Also must have taken a lot of flint tools to butcher the carcasses. Much more practical to catch small critters.

As for rope, give me a nettle patch and an afternoon, and I can make you more cordage than you ever thought possible - and nettles grow everywhere. And that cordage can be twisted together to make very serviceable ropes. And for more strength and durability, let's not forget sinew and rawhide, which would probably be used for things needing more permanence (putting an axe head onto an handle, as an instance).

Metal is overrated. Again, give me an afternoon and a decent quarry site, and I will hand you a serviceable axe, a knife, six arrow-heads, and a spear-point. The difficulty is really not in the knapping (albeit that it takes a touch), so much as in the handles. Finding long, straight shafts can really be a difficulty... Shaping wood is very hard, and binding the stone to the handle is equally difficult using plant-based cordage (only necessary until one gets a kill, where rawhide or gut will do much better). Really, the stone work is the 'easy' part.

Flint and obsidian are surprisingly durable, and putting an edge back on is not a terrible chore.

Small game is probably easier - in that you are correct - but small game is virtually *gone* in the winter, when it is very difficult to move around. No, I will guarantee that large prey was certainly on the menu, and for the same reason that a moose is preferred to a deer... One hunt can guarantee the winter for a family. One mammoth would likewise supply the needs for possibly four families in the same case.

No doubt, an Hunter-Gatherer tribe would certainly take advantage of carrion and wounded animals, but these cannot be *counted on*. There is no doubt in my mind that large animals were hunted purposefully.

[sodpoodle]

Found some interesting notations here:

http://www.thebigzoo.com/animals/Woolly_Mammoth.asp

Wonder if this thread will reach 1,000 posts;)

[trisham]

I agree with you. Imho, modern man is too dismissive of early man’s intelligence and adaptability. Our ancestors may not have had our access to technology, but I believe that they were equally capable, if not more so. They had to be, or they didn’t survive.