Woolly Mammoths never extinct?

The last Woolly Mammoth died in 1650 B.C, around 500 years after the completion of the pyramids. But what would have happened had woolly mammoths still been a substantial part of the Eurasian fauna?

The megafauna of Eurasia suffered quite a lot from the effects of hunter-gatherers during the African exodus, and it was a close call that horses, reindeer, elks and other big mammals would go extinct as well.
 
It is not certain that mammoths were salvegable at that point.

Perhaps if the trend had been reversed at a previous point so there would have been mammoths in Poland, Western Russia and Siberia by 1650 B.C.
 

Yuelang

Banned
Greco-Roman Armies will have nightmares trying to hold oliphaunt riding slavic barbarian hordes ;)

though they make interesting attractions at amphitheatres
 
You'd need to preserve at least part of the subarctic prairie so the mammoths would have something to eat. Maybe if the early Siberians used fire to limit the growth of the taiga, there would be more grassland.
 
Yeah, making sure there is grass is important. Otherwise it's already quite a impossible task to keep a large grazer alive.
Current evidence suggests that mammoths actually relied more on 'forbs' (i.e. lowering herbaceous plants) than they did on the less nutritious grasses.
 
Top