The mammoth's body is very well preserved, but something obviously doesn't fit. Round hole in the cheekbone. Deep notches around the ribs. Depressions in the left shoulder blade, broken jaw.

This mammoth's life was forcibly ended by hunters. This would not be surprising, it is known that the people in the Pleistocene were experts in killing mammoths. However, the location is interesting. The body was excavated from permafrost on the shores of the Gulf of the Yenisei at a remote location in central Siberia, where a huge river flows into the Arctic Ocean. This makes the brutally killed mammoth the oldest evidence of human occurrence in the area. A finding published in the journal Science could push the time limit for humanity to inhabit the northernmost extremities of the Earth, including the first transition to North America.

"Now we know that eastern Siberia up to the Arctic border was first inhabited about 50000 years ago, which helps us better understand this remote corner of the planet," said Vladimir Pitulko, an archaeologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, one of the project leaders.

The bones of a prehistoric animal were discovered in 2012. They protruded on the river bank. The Russian Academy of Sciences has commissioned a team of archaeologists to carry out excavation and research work. Team leaders Vladimír Pitulko and Alexej Bystrov soon realized that they were dealing with something special.

"When they brought a frozen block with the body to St. St. Petersburg, I went to the Zoological Museum to see the bones and tusks. The second bone I chose was the fifth rib bone, with distinct human interference. Later we discovered other injuries, "said Pitulko. According to him, the injuries were caused by hunters. When archaeologists returned to the site to take samples for radiocarbon analysis, the entire research took an interesting turn. Radiocarbon analysis revealed that the mammoth was killed 45000 years ago in a part of the world where humans should not be present at all at that time. The nearest existing site proving the presence of man is located 1600 km south and 10000 years later.

This finding calls into question our current understanding of the prehistoric history of mankind. Archaeologists believe that the ability to survive in the Nordic climate is linked to technical sophistication, including the expansion of ivory hunting spears. If such tools had occurred 45000 years ago, then people could probably have crossed the Bering Bridge directly into North America at that time. By comparison, our oldest evidence of human occurrence in North America is 15000 years ago.

Although people could migrate to North America, of course, that doesn't mean it happened. But now that we know there is such a possibility, archaeologists must begin to explore this question. "The findings raise more questions than answers and are likely to change our view of human expansion on Earth," Pitulko predicts.