Mammoths and People

Archaeological research has shown that mammoths existed on the landscape at the time of Alaska’s first inhabitants. At least a half-dozen archaeological sites in the Tanana Valley contain broken mammoth tusks, carved mammoth ivory rods, and/or cut-up mammoth long bone fragments alongside stone tools, dating between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago. We don’t yet know if people were hunting mammoth or scavenging tusks and meat from fallen animals. Also, if people were encountering mammoths in central Alaska after this time, there is no evidence of it. When the boreal forest expanded in the area after 6000 years ago, soils became much more acidic and bones found in archaeological sites are much less well preserved.

People have collected fossil mammoth ivory and bones across Alaska for thousands of years. They gathered these materials from gravel bars to make tool handles, household goods, and decorative items. Modern Alaska Native people and their ancestors knew where to find mammoth tusks for use as a raw material. The Yup’ik language, for example, has a word to denote fossil mammoth ivory (keligvak or quugiinraq).

A word for mammoth or mastodon is found in several Alaska Native languages including Iñupiaq (kiligvak), Koyukon (nin’ yahtʇ’ina’), andYup’ik (quugaa). Mammoths have even figured in some traditional stories. In Yup’ik legend, these large creatures were thought to live underground. In contrast, Nunamiut elders Simon Paneak and Elija Kakinya have told the story of the Kiligvak Hunters, who tracked mammoth coming down to earth from the sky.

Scientists and archaeologists believe that human and mammoth interactions only happened during the end of the last Ice Age in mainland Alaska. Finding younger dates on these creatures would certainly modify interpretations of the archaeological record!