Text written in Basque and translated automatically by Elia without any subsequent editing. SEE ORIGINAL

Photo of the week: House with mammoth bones

In today’s Ukraine, humans used to build houses made of mammoth bones to withstand the cold 17,000 years ago. In those cold steppes, without trees, it was necessary to build them with the freckles, skulls and jaws of the mammoths. They were used to protect against extreme cold.

They are perfect examples of the architecture of the time: they created arches with canines, with femurs the walls and skulls closed the ceilings, giving stability to the structure. They made the most of their hunting resources.

Until now it was not clear what their function was. Some researchers claimed that they were inhabited by humans at the time, while others used them to perform symbolic rituals. This time, an investigation revealed that they had the function of protecting themselves from the cold, but that they were not stable places of residence. These were structures designed by the nomadic way of life of the hunter-gatherers of the Upper Paleolithic, to build, protect and follow the path in times of extreme cold.