09 June 2009

I wonder what a "mammoth barbecue" smelled like?


Archaeologists in Moravia have excavated a cooking pit from 29,000 B.C. which was used for the cooking of mammoths:

Svoboda, a professor at the University of Brno and director of its Institute of Archaeology, and colleagues recently excavated Pavlov VI, where they found the remains of a female mammoth and one mammoth calf near a 4-foot-wide roasting pit. Arctic fox, wolverine, bear and hare remains were also found, along with a few horse and reindeer bones.

The meats were cooked luau-style underground. Svoboda said, "We found the heating stones still within the pit and around."

Boiling pits existed near the middle roaster. He thinks "the whole situation -- central roasting pit and the circle of boiling pits -- was sheltered by a teepee or yurt-like structure."

It's unclear if seafood was added to create a surf-and-turf meal, but multiple decorated shells were unearthed. Many showed signs of cut marks, along with red and black coloration. The scientists additionally found numerous stone tools, such as spatulas, blades and saws, which they suggest were good for carving mammoths.

2 comments:

  1. What happened to the post about the mummies? I read it, went to the Discovery site you linked to to look at the photos and see if there was more information (there wasn't), and when I came back, the post was gone. What gives?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The only thing I can think of is that I reaccessed it for a minute to add the via. Perhaps blogspot doesn't allow viewing a post while it's being edited??

    ReplyDelete

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