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Woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean off north-eastern Siberia, until about 4,000 years ago. By then Egypt's Great Pyramid had already stood for several centuries.

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On the mainland, the last woolly mammoths died out around 10,000 years ago, as the Ice Age ended and the cold grasslands they lived on shrank. Two island populations held on much longer: one on St Paul Island in Alaska until about 5,600 years ago, and one on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago, around 2000 BC. Rising seas had cut Wrangel off from Siberia, leaving some 300 to 1,000 animals alone there for thousands of years. These dates come from radiocarbon dating of bones and tusks, which measures how much of a slowly decaying form of carbon is left in them. Genetic studies show that the population was inbred but stayed stable for thousands of years, so its end seems to have come suddenly. What finally killed the last mammoths is still unknown.

Türkçe oku
Yünlü mamutlar, Kuzey Buz Denizi'nde, Sibirya'nın kuzeydoğu açıklarındaki Vrangel Adası'nda yaklaşık 4.000 yıl öncesine kadar yaşadı. O sırada Mısır'daki Büyük Piramit birkaç yüzyıldır ayaktaydı.

Anakaradaki son yünlü mamutlar yaklaşık 10.000 yıl önce, buzul çağı sona ererken ve yaşadıkları soğuk bozkırlar daralırken ortadan kalktı. İki adadaki topluluk ise çok daha uzun dayandı: Alaska'daki Saint Paul Adası'nda yaklaşık 5.600 yıl öncesine, Vrangel Adası'nda da yaklaşık 4.000 yıl öncesine, yani MÖ 2000 dolaylarına kadar yaşadılar. Yükselen deniz Vrangel'i Sibirya'dan koparmış, 300 ile 1.000 arasında hayvan binlerce yıl adada kendi başına kalmıştı. Bu tarihler, kemik ve dişlere uygulanan radyokarbon yöntemiyle bulundu. Bu yöntem, zamanla yavaş yavaş azalan bir karbon türünden geriye ne kadar kaldığını ölçer. Genetik çalışmalar, akraba çiftleşmesi yüzünden çeşitliliğini yitiren topluluğun yine de binlerce yıl dengede kaldığını gösteriyor; bu da sonun ani geldiğini düşündürüyor. Son mamutları neyin yok ettiği hâlâ bilinmiyor.

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Background reading: Woolly mammoth
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Next card in the archiveOxford was teaching students more than three centuries before the Aztec Empire existed. Teaching there is recorded from 1096; the empire began around 1428, when three city-states in the Valley of Mexico, Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan, joined forces as the Triple Alliance.Read next →