Prof Alice Roberts uncovers how ancient humans survived the Ice Age | BBC Timestamp

During the Ice Age, modern humans spread right across Europe and Asia, right up to the coast of the Arctic Ocean. But as the last glacial maximum approached and conditions worsened, they sought refuge in the south. Even there, though, the climate was harsh. But they found ways of surviving. Using the natural resources available to them, they eked out a living in the challenging environment of central Europe and southern Siberia. Evidence of their survival skills has been found here, in the town of Zuraisk, on the banks of the Ozotura River in Russia. A medieval fortress now stands on this spot, but excavations show that humans were making their home here 20,000 years ago. And there are clues as to how they survived the Ice Age. These ancient hunter-gatherers used whatever material they could lay their hands on. And there was one material in particular that was to be found in great abundance across swathes of Europe and Asia at the time. And that was the remains of woolly mammoths, their bones and their tusks. Sergey Lev leads the project. It is a big mammoth tooth. Sometimes we find very many of them lying separately or together, or their remains being burned. This is not coal, it is burned bone remains. Trees were scarce during the Ice Age, and mammoth bones, teeth and tusks offered an alternative fuel. 200,000 artefacts have already been found here, some of which suggest an ingenuity not known in Neanderthals. This is a really beautiful example of something that would have been used probably for piercing or for drilling some kind of material, probably quite hard material. And we can tell just from the lovely slender shape and the fact that there's all this wear around the top. They've shaped it very carefully to begin with, and then we have additional wear on top of that. So that's been used to drill through something? It's good for ivory. You think it's for ivory working? Yeah, it's good for ivory. The archaeologists have discovered some really ingenious uses for mammoth remains. Tusks were driven into the ground to form a frame, and Sergei believes that traces of organic material suggest that hides were stretched over the top to form a roof. These semi-subterranean pit dwellings are some of the very first houses ever built. Our ancestors had been using Ice Age giants to survive.