Imagine renovating your wine cellar and stumbling upon a prehistoric treasure trove instead of vintage wine. Well, that’s exactly what happened to one lucky winemaker in Austria. Andreas Pernerstorfer made an astonishing discovery while renovating his wine cellar in the village of Gobelsburg, Austria – the remains of not one, but three Stone Age mammoths. The find has been deemed an “archaeological sensation” by researchers from the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the OeAW.
Pernerstorfer initially mistook the bones he found for a piece of wood left behind by his grandfather. However, upon digging further, he realized he had stumbled upon something much more extraordinary. The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, ORF, quoted him saying, “I thought it was just a piece of wood left by my grandfather. But then I dug it out a bit and then I remembered that in the past my grandfather said he had found teeth. And then I immediately thought it was a mammoth.”
Excavations by archaeologists Thomas Einwögerer and Hannah Parow-Souchon revealed that the bones date back between 30,000 and 40,000 years. The discovery has sparked questions about how Stone Age people hunted mammoths, shedding light on a piece of prehistoric puzzle that has long been shrouded in mystery.
The Austrian Archaeological Institute remarked that the last time a similar discovery of this scale was made in the district of Krems was 150 years ago. This recent finding provides a rare opportunity to study such ancient remains using modern methods, giving researchers a unique insight into the lives of prehistoric humans and their interactions with mammoths.
One intriguing theory put forward by the researchers is that the mammoths could have been chased to their deaths by Stone Age hunters who may have set up traps to capture them. This discovery not only offers a glimpse into the past but also raises important questions about the relationship between humans and mammoths during the Stone Age.
The bones will eventually be transported to the Vienna Museum of Natural History for further study and preservation. This remarkable find serves as a testament to the rich history that lies beneath our feet, waiting to be uncovered and explored.