How do we know their cave drawings weren’t just fantasy? Sort of like how we draw elves slaying dragons etc.
In: Technology
Lots of mammoth bones have been found with spear points and the marks from where stone tools were used to butcher them. SO the weapon used to kill them is known and the method used to prepare them for eating is known, and if I’m not mistaken, the method of cooking them is also apparent by the burn marks on bones.
We look at the evidence we have available to us.
As a couple of examples, we have discovered cave paintings dating back millions of years. These show scenes like men with spears hunting mammoths, so we can assume this is what was happening at this point in time.
We also have various physical artifacts left behind that we can examine. So where we have surviving tools made of bone and ivory we know that man sourced those materials from somewhere (and if in large numbers, that means we hunted for those materials, rather than just gathered existing carcasses).
We can also look at the bones of the mammoth remains we have found – by looking at the injuries and sage on those skeletons we can learn a lot from what caused them – tooth marks from a big cat for example, or the distinctive marks caused by the human weapons of the time.
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