Tribal Game Hunt

This video is from a long time ago to protect the politically incorrect and it is a bit difficult to take.  So view at your own risk.  Yet it is a valuable teaching moment.

A major question is answered.  The Folsom point from around 12,000 to 13,000 years ago was posited as designed to take down Ice Age mega fauna such as the mammoth in particular.  It was clearly capable of doing just that.  My issue was imagining a lone or even a small band actually taking on such a task and not getting killed more often than not.

This video makes it completely clear that such would never be done.  Instead the herds would be beaten into a killing ground and then set upon with literally a flurry of hard thrown spears always away from the animal’s line of sight.  This strategy is clearly capable of taking down any elephant and anything else that is caught in the encirclement.

It also appears that the hunters pretty well avoided injury while engaging in this attack.

All this means is that the big hunts were very much tribal affairs in which hundreds would gather to meet the migrating herds in order to knock down as much game as could be readily preserved over the next week by drying and smoking and converting into pemmican.

In the North Country, one would have the additional advantage of an approaching winter that would easily extend the life of the meat into the next year and prevent insect attacks.

Most likely the tribe would gather at a convenient choke point to harvest animals migrating south for the winter.  They could then winter over at a nearby winter camp (gobekli Tepe?) and follow the returning herds as small hunting bands into the summer pasture and take advantage of plentiful deer.