During
Prehistoric times, many cultures were dependent on animals for their food,
especially big game animals. Bands or tribes would follow these creatures as
they migrated, while hunting smaller animals and harvesting native plant life.
It is hypothesized that this principle is what led hunters to travel to the New
World, while following big game across such areas as the
Bering Strait into these newly inhabited lands.
There was quite a variety in the type of big game being hunted. The first are the Mammoths Imperator. Skeletons of this creature have been found in the caves of the Sierra de Tamaulipas located in Mexico. Other main sources of animals hunted were bison, camels and mastodons (see above picture). These hunters usually used the method of driving the game to large cliffs and driving them over, or driving them into thick swamps where they were killed with darts, projectile points, or even large stones. All parts of the animals were used for a variety of things from clothing to tools to equipment; nothing was left to waste.
The tools used to kill and butcher these animals have been found throughout much of Latin America. The Clovis and Folsom projectile points are the most widely found, being located near the edges of kill sites along swamps and lakes. At the Santa Isabel Ixtapan site such tools as obsidian side-scrapers, bi-facial knives, and flint scrapers were found, demonstrating a wide variety of processes in butchering and dividing portions of the animal.
Clark, Grahame. World Prehistory. Cambridge
University Press 1969.
Flannery, Kent. The Early Mesoamerican
Village. Academic Press 1976.
Weaver, Muriel Porter. The Aztecs,
Maya, and Their Predecessors. Seminar Press 1972.