A MYSTERIOUS ‘Palace of Bones’ made of 40,000-year-old mammoths has been unearthed – leaving experts baffled.
This latest bone relic has been crowned as the oldest and largest “mammoth house” ever found in the Russian archaeology site.
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Researchers in Russia excavated the hunter-gatherer relic, dubbed Kostenki 11, around 300 miles south of Moscow – but cannot pinpoint why they’d be made from bones of over 60 mammoths.
Smaller relics had been previously discovered in the 1960s and 70s at the excavation site, but not of this unbelievable size.
Researchers found the structure measuring around 30ft by 30ft and made up of mammoth bones that date all the way back to the Ice Age, the Antiquity journal reports.
While the remains were originally excavated a few years ago, a recent study shows the mammoth bones date back a whopping 40,000 years.
Remains of charred wood were also miraculously discovered, suggesting Ice Age humans had wood fires crackling within the mammoth palace.
Walls of the structure were reportedly built from a shocking 51 mammoth jawbones and 64 mammoth skulls.
Despite them being found recently, it’s believed they spent so long hidden due to a buildup of sediment over the years.
They therefore consequently stand one foot below surface level.
But there has been speculation as to why the humans chose this specific spot to build the unbelievable structure.
The leading archaeologist on the study, University of Exeter’s Dr. Alexander Pryor, said: “Kostenki 11 represents a rare example of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers living on in this harsh environment.
“What might have brought ancient hunter gatherers to this site?
“One possibility is that the mammoths and humans could have come to the area on masse because it had a natural spring that would have provided unfrozen liquid water throughout the winter – rare in this period of extreme cold.”
While it remains unclear as to why this specific location was picked, experts believe it held cultural significance at the time.
Dr Pryor continued: “It clearly meant something to them, and there was very likely a ritual element to it, even if the structure ultimately had some sort of practical purpose too.
“It’s not yet clear whether the bones are from mammoths recently hunted and killed by humans or if they were scavenged from carcasses of animals that died of natural causes.”
Researchers continue to investigate the incredible site.
It comes after over a dozen skeletons belonging to Woolly Mammoths were found in gigantic man-made traps near Mexico City.
Two pits in Tultepec, just north of Mexico‘s capital are the first Woolly Mammoth traps to ever be discovered.
The pits held the remains of at least 14 Woolly Mammoths – totalling around 800 bones.
Scientists think the dead bones indicate that early humans hunted down the humongous mammals with torches and branches.
They think the hunters who built the traps used these tools to herd them into the pits – both 5ft 6in deep and 82ft in diameter.
Experts from National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) initially thought humans would only kill the creatures if they were trapped or hurt.
But this groundbreaking discovery – that the traps were built by humans, strongly indicates that hunters planned the brutal attacks.
Diego Prieto Hernández, director of INAH said: “This represents a watershed, a turning point in what we until now imagined to be the interaction between hunter-gatherers with these huge herbivores”.
INAH say archaeolgoists have been digging up the pits for the last ten months.
What is the Ice Age?
THE earliest ever ice age is said to date back more than 570 million years – but what is it?
An ice age is a period of colder global temperatures that have the potential of lasting hundreds of millions of years.
There have been at least five ice ages in the history of the planet.
Humans developed significantly during the most recent glaciation period – resulting in becoming the dominant land animal after large animals like the woolly mammoth went extinct, History reports.
These ice ages begin when a drop in temperature prevents snow from fully melting – resulting in thick layers of ice across surfaces.
The most recent ice age began roughly three million years ago and continues today.
But currently our planet is in one of the last stages of the ice age, called a warm interglacial period.
This stage is said to have begun over 11,000 years ago.
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