Thousands of animal bones — and 13 mammoths — found at prehistoric hunting camp
From the duck blind to the tree stand, modern hunting has become just as much about the experience as the end result.
But when hunting was the only means of survival, picking up a spear and leaving your settlement was a matter of life and death.
Now, archaeologists in Czechia, also known as the Czech Republic, have discovered a hunting camp from 20,000 years ago — and the animals that hunters took down.
While working on preventative archaeological research at the construction site for the future Judicial Palace, researchers started to uncover animal bones, The Institute of Archaeological Monument Care in Northwestern Bohemia announced in a Jan. 31 Facebook post.
As they dug around, they kept finding more and more, until thousands of animal bones sat before them in the dirt, according to the outlet.
Researchers dated the bones and found that they were from the Pleistocene period, around 20,000 years ago, Czech Radio reported on Jan. 31.
More photos were shared by the Regional museum in Ústí nad Labem in a Jan. 31 Facebook post.
The bones belonged to dozens of hunted species, the institute said, including woolly mammoths.
The skeletons of at least 13 mammoths were discovered at the site, dating to a period researchers consider the 'peak' age of mammoth hunting, according to the post.
'This was a mammoth hunters' campsite, where animals were processed,' lead researcher Petr Lissek told Czech Radio. 'We found evidence of bone chipping and breaking, as prehistoric people used every part — meat, fat, and bones.'
Along with the bones, archaeologists found chipped stone instruments that helped date the site, the institute said.
Hunting a woolly mammoth may have had a high reward, but ancient people in central Europe likely went after other animals first.
'If we could see the animals they hunted, we might be surprised. From a strategic standpoint, they primarily focused on younger animals that had strayed from the herd, as they were easier to catch,' Lissek told Czech Radio. 'They also hunted older individuals that were slower and more vulnerable.'
Other animals found at the site include deer and a woolly rhino, according to the outlet.
Woolly mammoths were larger than modern-day African elephants, according to Czech Radio, but lived during the Ice Ages so were covered in thick fur.
They lived from around 2.6 million years ago until 4,000 years ago but really thrived during the Pleistocene era, according to Britannica. They grew to between 10 and 12 feet tall and weighed between 6 to 8 tons, with a 3-inch-thick layer of fat under thick skin.
Woolly mammoths lived throughout Eurasia and North America, and the last populations were found near the Bering Sea, Alaska and Russia.
The hunting camp was found in Ústí nad Labem in northern Czechia near the border of eastern Germany.
Facebook Translate was used to translate the Facebook post from the Institute of Archaeological Monument Care in Northwestern Bohemia.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Meteor Fragments Hit the Southeast U.S. Here's What to Know
Aiken, South Carolina - June 26, 2025 Credit - Bryan Jennings Updyke The inner solar system is a lot calmer than it was 4 billion years ago, during what's known as the heavy bombardment period. Over the course of that violent stretch, which lasted about 500 million years, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the moon were regularly pounded by asteroids, meteors, and other cosmic ordnance, many of the objects as big as the six-mile-wide rock that wiped out the dinosaurs. Things have gotten a lot quieter since then, but that's not to say everything has gone entirely still. Earth still lives inside a shooting gallery, with thousands of objects—totaling about 48.5 tons per year, according to NASA—entering the atmosphere. Yesterday, one of those space boulders exploded in the skies over Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina at 11:51 a.m EDT, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The brilliant flash, which was accompanied by a sonic boom that many mistook for an earthquake, resulted in hundreds of calls and posts to the American Meteor Society (AMS), NASA's recommended organization for reporting meteoric fireballs. In Henry County, Ga., one house was struck by debris that broke through the roof and landed inside the residence. There were no reported injuries. 'The Henry County Emergency Management Agency [EMA] passed along to us that a citizen reported that a 'rock' fell through their ceiling around the time of the reports of the 'earthquake,'' the NWS said in a Facebook post. 'Henry County EMA also reported that the object broke through the roof, then the ceiling, before cracking the laminate on the floor and stopping.' The possibility of something tumbling from the skies this week was not entirely unexpected. Yesterday's event occurred during the ongoing Bootid meteor shower, which happens once every 6.37 years, when Earth passes through the remnants of the tail of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke. The Bootid is just one of dozens of known showers the AMS lists on its website. Many of those events produce only a fine mist of meteor fragments, visible only at night in dark conditions away from city lights, and commonly called shooting stars. Yesterday's rock was of a decidedly greater caliber, one big enough to be classified as a bolide, a meteor with enough mass to cause a bright flash and a sonic boom as it slams into the atmosphere, but too small for most of it to reach the ground without being incinerated first. To qualify as a bolide, an incoming meteor must reach the brightness of Venus, which, like the moon, is often visible in the daytime sky. A few dozen bolides occur each year, according to NASA. The most explosive recent bolide event occurred over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013, when an object estimated to have measured about 65 ft., detonated in the atmosphere, injuring nearly 1,500 people and damaging 7,200 buildings. Modern history's biggest bolide also struck Russia, in the celebrated Tunguska event of 1908, when a 350-ft. meteor flattened 830 sq. mi. of forest land. Lesser meteoric fireworks are much, much more common than bolides. According to the AMS, several thousand small fireballs erupt in the atmosphere every day, but 'the vast majority of these,' the organization says, 'occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight.' Notwithstanding the Henry County house that got hit by the recent bolide, the odds of any one spot—or any one person—being struck by space debris are vanishingly small. Barely 5% of objects that enter the atmosphere survive the fires of entry and reach the surface. Roughly 70% of that surface is ocean and much of the rest is desert or other sparsely inhabited terrain. Finally, most of the meteorites that do strike the planet are, by the time of impact, micrometeorites—too small to do any damage at all. In all of known human history, in fact, there is only one person who is believed to have been killed by a meteorite—an Indian bus driver who was struck while walking on the campus of an engineering college in the state of Tamil Nadu on Feb. 6, 2016. That effectively puts your odds of meeting the same fate as one in the total number of human beings who have walked the Earth since the dawn of homo sapiens roughly 300,000 years ago. That's not to say there haven't been close calls. On May 1, 1860, a horse was killed by a meteorite strike in Concord, Ohio. In 1954, an Alabama woman—whose picture was published and story was told in the Dec. 13, 1954 issue of LIFE magazine—sustained severe bruising to her hand and side when a 10 lb. meteorite crashed through her roof while she lay napping on her sofa. Put yesterday's event in the category of lightning strikes or shark bites—theoretically possible, highly improbable, one more thing you can take off your worry list. Write to Jeffrey Kluger at
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Time Magazine
Meteor Fragments Hit the Southeast U.S. Here's What to Know
The inner solar system is a lot calmer than it was 4 billion years ago, during what's known as the heavy bombardment period. Over the course of that violent stretch, which lasted about 500 million years, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the moon were regularly pounded by asteroids, meteors, and other cosmic ordnance, many of the objects as big as the six-mile-wide rock that wiped out the dinosaurs. Things have gotten a lot quieter since then, but that's not to say everything has gone entirely still. Earth still lives inside a shooting gallery, with thousands of objects—totaling about 48.5 tons per year, according to NASA—entering the atmosphere. Yesterday, one of those space boulders exploded in the skies over Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina at 11:51 a.m EDT, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The brilliant flash, which was accompanied by a sonic boom that many mistook for an earthquake, resulted in hundreds of calls and posts to the American Meteor Society (AMS), NASA's recommended organization for reporting meteoric fireballs. In Henry County, Ga., one house was struck by debris that broke through the roof and landed inside the residence. There were no reported injuries. 'The Henry County Emergency Management Agency [EMA] passed along to us that a citizen reported that a 'rock' fell through their ceiling around the time of the reports of the 'earthquake,'' the NWS said in a Facebook post. 'Henry County EMA also reported that the object broke through the roof, then the ceiling, before cracking the laminate on the floor and stopping.' The possibility of something tumbling from the skies this week was not entirely unexpected. Yesterday's event occurred during the ongoing Bootid meteor shower, which happens once every 6.37 years, when Earth passes through the remnants of the tail of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke. The Bootid is just one of dozens of known showers the AMS lists on its website. Many of those events produce only a fine mist of meteor fragments, visible only at night in dark conditions away from city lights, and commonly called shooting stars. Yesterday's rock was of a decidedly greater caliber, one big enough to be classified as a bolide, a meteor with enough mass to cause a bright flash and a sonic boom as it slams into the atmosphere, but too small for most of it to reach the ground without being incinerated first. To qualify as a bolide, an incoming meteor must reach the brightness of Venus, which, like the moon, is often visible in the daytime sky. A few dozen bolides occur each year, according to NASA. The most explosive recent bolide event occurred over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013, when an object estimated to have measured about 65 ft., detonated in the atmosphere, injuring nearly 1,500 people and damaging 7,200 buildings. Modern history's biggest bolide also struck Russia, in the celebrated Tunguska event of 1908, when a 350-ft. meteor flattened 830 sq. mi. of forest land. Lesser meteoric fireworks are much, much more common than bolides. According to the AMS, several thousand small fireballs erupt in the atmosphere every day, but 'the vast majority of these,' the organization says, 'occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight.' Notwithstanding the Henry County house that got hit by the recent bolide, the odds of any one spot—or any one person—being struck by space debris are vanishingly small. Barely 5% of objects that enter the atmosphere survive the fires of entry and reach the surface. Roughly 70% of that surface is ocean and much of the rest is desert or other sparsely inhabited terrain. Finally, most of the meteorites that do strike the planet are, by the time of impact, micrometeorites—too small to do any damage at all. In all of known human history, in fact, there is only one person who is believed to have been killed by a meteorite—an Indian bus driver who was struck while walking on the campus of an engineering college in the state of Tamil Nadu on Feb. 6, 2016. That effectively puts your odds of meeting the same fate as one in the total number of human beings who have walked the Earth since the dawn of homo sapiens roughly 300,000 years ago. That's not to say there haven't been close calls. On May 1, 1860, a horse was killed by a meteorite strike in Concord, Ohio. In 1954, an Alabama woman—whose picture was published and story was told in the Dec. 13, 1954 issue of LIFE magazine—sustained severe bruising to her hand and side when a 10 lb. meteorite crashed through her roof while she lay napping on her sofa. Put yesterday's event in the category of lightning strikes or shark bites—theoretically possible, highly improbable, one more thing you can take off your worry list.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Meta removes scientist's Facebook page after discussion about tornadoes and climate change, he claims
A scientist claimed a Missouri weather Facebook page he ran was removed by Meta after there was a discussion about tornadoes and climate change. Professor Anthony Lupo, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Missouri, was debating with a Facebook user on the Midwest Missouri Weather page he ran on the platform for more than five years. The pair were discussing the state's busy tornado season and the possible impacts of the weather phenomenon La Nina or climate change, he told The College Fix. Shortly after the exchange, Lupo's personal account was locked and when he regained access on June 8, he discovered 'the weather page was gone.' He described the discussion as mildly 'combative' but not overtly hostile in an interview with the college outlet. The other user argued that the busy tornado season was linked to climate change, not La Nina, as the professor posted. The scholar said that Meta did not give him a reason for removing the page. He added that he only had circumstantial evidence and reasoned that the page could have been taken down for other reasons. The Independent has contacted Meta for comment. Lupo said his page shared weather forecasts and summaries of the climate in Missouri. 'Occasionally, when I've done that, I got messages about violating community standards,' Lupo told The Fix. He said these instances were 'just summarizing numbers.' 'I would get this warning that your post may violate community standards and that would appear on the page itself for a short time,' he added. Experts warned that climate misinformation could spread far rapidly since Meta decided to bring in X-style community notes and remove its third-party fact-checking. It comes as Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has implemented policy shifts that are more closely aligned with President Donald Trump since he was elected. 'The trend is towards living in a world where there basically are no facts. This is just sort of another step down the road,' Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist, previously told Politico. In April 2024, Meta blocked links on all of its platforms to a piece criticizing the company's alleged suppression of climate change content. Meta said it occurred due to a 'security error.'
