Ancient engravings etched onto a mammoth tusk discovered in Siberia reveal the oldest known images of camels in Asia.
Images of two-humped camels have been found etched onto a 1.5-metre mammoth tusk discovered in the lower Tom river in western Siberia. The tusk is about 13,000 years old and also has an etching of what researchers call an anthropomorphic image, which may portray a human wearing a camel disguise.
鈥淪tylistic features of the images on the tusk date them to the final stage of the Upper Palaeolithic as well,鈥� says Yury Esin at the Khakassian Research Institute for Language, Literature, and History in Russia. Esin and his colleagues carbon-dated the tusk, and say the engravings are consistent with images of camels painted in caves around the same time. The oldest camel image was found in Kapova cave in the Ural mountains and dates to between 16,000 and 19,000 years ago.
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The images on the tusk (see below) show camels with wounds fighting, neck to neck, and one pair of camels has arrows and wounds, indicating they were hunted. 鈥淧erhaps the reason for creating this imagery was the importance of the camel fights and camel hunting in the culture of a particular community,鈥� says Esin. 鈥淚t is likely that this hunting was seasonal.鈥�
Esin speculates that since these fights would have happened at the beginning of the mating season, they could mark an important point in the annual cycle of the people who lived in the area. The only camel bones found near the Tom river area date mostly to about 30,000 to 55,000 years ago. Although one dates to the same time period as the mammoth tusk Esin鈥檚 team analysed, the bones were found several hundred kilometres to the south of the tusk, lending some weight to the idea that the people were nomadic, says Esin.
The tusk also shows an image of what appears to be a human with a camel hump on their body. Esin says this could represent a hunter wearing a skin cloak as a disguise to help approach camels.
The tusk was initially found in 1988 during a construction project, but remained nearly unstudied until now. Esin says that researchers know very little about the people who lived in this area of Siberia at the time. Other evidence shows that they hunted mammoths, although this tusk may also have been collected from an animal killed in another fashion.
Archaeological Research in Asia
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Embark on a captivating journey through time as you explore key Neanderthal and Upper Palaeolithic sites of southern France, from Bordeaux to Montpellier, with 快猫短视频鈥檚 Kate Douglas. 
Neanderthals, ancient humans and cave art: France
