Mammoths Died So We Could Survive

Ice-age people were experts on insulating their homes. In regions without caves and grottos, mammoths supplied the materials.

Ice-age people were very inventive, when it came to their homes, shown in more than 70 huts built as long as 14,000 years ago. The huts, which are made of mammoth bones, have been discovered in both Ukraine and Russia.

The huts consist of up to 600 small and large bones. Anything from the huge animal's tusks and skull to its thighbones and toes were included in the generouslysized (5-10m across) dome-like huts. These are complex structures, and it probably took four people about a week to erect one single hut. In addition, the collection of bones also required time. Some huts were made up of bones from more than 150 individual mammoths, and in one example, approximately 20 tonnes of bones were used for just one hut! Mammoth tusks can weigh over 200 kg, so it must have been difficult, even dangerous, to handle the huge “building blocks”.