By the evening edition.
In Austria, a winemaker discovered 40,000-year-old mammoth bones in a wine cellar. According to archaeologists from the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAI) of the Academy of Sciences, this is a particularly important discovery.
While undertaking renovation work in his wine cellar, Andreas Pernerstorfer, an Austrian winemaker from Gobelsburg, a village west of Vienna, made an extraordinary discovery. It was not a forgotten grand cru, but the bones of prehistoric mammoths.
“I thought it was a piece of wood left by my grandfather. But I did a little digging and remembered that my grandfather said he found teeth in the past. I immediately thought it was a mammoth. he declared to theORF, Austrian public media. He reported his discovery to authorities, who identified them as the bones of at least three Stone Age mammoths.
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The winemaker reported his discovery to the Federal Monuments Office, which referred him to the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). These bones turned out to be mammoth bones dating from the Stone Age, specifies the ÖAW on its site, describing the discovery as “sensational”.
Since mid-May, his cellar has been transformed into a real archaeological excavation site. According to ÖAW archaeologists Thomas Einwögerer and Hannah Parow-Souchon, stone objects and charcoal found at the site indicate that the bones are between 30,000 and 40,000 years old.
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At least three different mammoths
In this cave, archaeologists discovered several layers of mammoth bones. They assume there are the remains of at least three different mammoths. “Such a dense layer of bone is rare,” explains Hannah Parow-Souchon who directs the excavations. “This is the first time we can examine something like this in Austria with modern means – a unique opportunity for research,” she emphasizes. And to add: “Other comparable sites in Austria and neighboring countries were mostly excavated at least 100 years ago and have been largely lost to modern research. »
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This discovery questions in particular how Stone Age men were able to hunt these enormous animals. “We know that people hunted mammoths, but we still know little about how they did it”adds the archaeologist.
Scientists believe the mammoths could have died where the bones were found, hunted by humans who set a trap for them. Once dug up and examined, the bones will be transported to the Natural History Museum in Vienna, where the bones will be restored.
