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Iain,
you should read Weston Price 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" (1939) an
essential classic. The pygmy tribesmen used to hunt and kill elephants with
spears! Eventually cutting the trunk and the elephant bleeds until exhausted
and they kill it.
Ben

> shearest luck disabling a mammoth.  Modern African hunters know that the
> most dangerous animals to approach are the large herbivores –elephant,
> hippo, rhino, buffalo- all them cranky, and with the brawn to back it up!
> Ancient times would also have been dangerous because of other predators-
> imagine our hunters had managed to kill a large beast- the kill would
> almost certainly attract other predators which would drive them from the
> kill- bears, wolves, Asiatic lion even ranged over much of that area in
> ancient times.  I know that bones of large animals have been found with
> marks on them indicating human butchering but I wonder whether these are
> simply more likely to survive as fossils. I’m inclined to think that
> catching the rabbit was more likely, but would you bother taking such a
> small amount of meat back to the cave- wouldn’t you just eat it there and
> then as a snack?
>
> Our hunters are desperately seeking food to sustain a heavily pregnant
> female who is about to give birth. I find it unbelievable that a female
> would give birth at the start of a season of increasing scarcity.  Other
> animals time their delivery to Spring when the flush of new growth
> guarantees pregnant and lactating females a plentiful supply nourishment
> and energy.  A baby could wait safe and snug in its mother’s body until
> conditions improved. If other animals could (and still) do this why
> couldn’t humans?  Of course we modern humans can afford to ignore the
> seasonal imperatives.
>
> So there you have it- I think the producers were under pressure to “sell a
> story” rather than get the science right.
>

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