The big question: Were Jersey mammoths driven over cliffs?

Thursday 19th January 2012, 2:56PM GMT.

Dr Geoff Smith with a mammoth hip bone and tibia

THE long-held belief that stone-age hunters drove mammoths to their deaths by herding them off cliffs in Jersey is to be tested.

A major study of Jersey’s prehistoric past involving UK universities, archaeologists, scientists, Jersey Heritage and the Société Jersiaise is being undertaken in a warehouse at Augrès on Trinity Hill which holds ancient items and objects that are not on public display.

The research is being supervised by Dr Geoff Smith (30), who over the past two weeks has been sifting through hundreds of animal bone fragments to check for what he calls ‘modifications’ – marks that indicate human interaction.

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1
Kermit

January 19, 2012 at 3:18 pm

I hope they are not going to find out that the mammoths remains are coconut shells…

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2
Weirdy Beardy

January 19, 2012 at 3:22 pm

Well this is the question keeping us all awake at night isn’t it. No mention of whose funding it but it must be self funding, even the states can’t be that dumb. My theory is that they were taxed to extinction as is currently happening to most of us. The then Mammoth Tusk tax ( MTT ) initially taxed them at 3% on every inch of tusk, rising to 5% and eventually 99%.

It was either off with their tusks or into the sea, no brainer.

BTW why have all professors got a beard, now there’s a thought introduce a beard tax, berks would have to find alternative facial adornment.

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3
JERSEY GIRL,

January 19, 2012 at 7:27 pm

I reckon some of those mammoths did not go over the cliffs they made their way to the states chamber, there a bugger to shift as well!!

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4
Bob

January 20, 2012 at 8:02 am

I think the research will show that there was a stampede trying to get on “the boat in the morning”

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5
Bob W

January 20, 2012 at 9:05 am

Completely wrong Bob

Recently found documents prove that Mammoths had survived for thousands of years on Jersey – grazing on our lush grass – then for some unknown reason the chief minister (sorry) mammoth – deceided that it was OK for lazy mammoths to sit in their caves all day, and he would make all the hard workinh mammoths give around 20% of their food to the lazy ones. After a time, many mammoths found it was easier to laze around than get up and graze every day and their numbers swelled, the hard workinh mammoths complained – so the chief mammoth got a team of enforcers to stop grazing themselves – and made them work at making sure the hard working mammoths gave away their hard earned food, even though their own little mammoths were hungry. After a time all the hard working mammoths said enough is enough and chose to leave. Unfortunantely, as they waited on the cliff for the boat to arrive – the cliff collapsed and they all died.
This wasn’t the end of the mammoths in Jersey, because as you will remember it was only the hard working mammoths who chose to leave, but those that were left behind had no idea how to survive – and died of starvation in later years

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6
Baltic Boris

January 20, 2012 at 9:12 am

Were they pushed – or did they jump ? that is the question baffling scientists.
DNA Research suggestd that the mammoths in question were native Jersey mammoths who were driven to extinction by a wave of mammoth immigration – it would appear that after a couple of poor years – the grass yield fell, and it turned out that the immigrant mammoths could survive on the sort of grass that the natives couldn’t or wouldn’t eat – and slowly but surely, the true Jersey mammoth became extinct

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7
Shardernay

January 20, 2012 at 11:38 am

I might go to you knee and get a decree in prehistoricks. Then I could of a well paid job when i come back.

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