How did early humans use sharpened rocks to bring down megafauna 13,000 years ago? Did they throw spears tipped with carefully crafted, razor-sharp rocks called Clovis points? Did they surround and jab mammoths and mastodons? Or did they scavenge wounded animals, using Clovis points as a versatile tool to harvest meat and bones for food and supplies?
UC Berkeley archaeologists say the answer might be none of the above.
Instead, researchers say humans may have braced the butt of their pointed spears against the ground and angled the weapon upward in a way that would impale a charging animal. The force would have driven the spear deeper into the predator’s body, unleashing a more damaging blow than even the strongest prehistoric hunters would have been capable of on their own.
You would need a lot of time and energy to build a trench, mammoths may not stay in the area.
I am under the impression you don’t stay with the spear and its spike zone serving a similar purpose as a trench. Maybe they realized mammoths will try to ram those if you provoke em from behind the spikes zone.
Especially in a snowy area i can see it doable to quickly plant some spikes walls in the snow to help wall in an animal. Though it may be just bias that i assume mammoth = snow area
Doesn’t exclude using other techniques combined with that. I am pretty sure that trenches with spikes did exist some time in history