<P> Woolly mammoth ivory was used to create art objects . Several Venus figurines, including the Venus of Brassempouy and the Venus of Lespugue, were made from this material . Weapons made from ivory, such as daggers, spears, and a boomerang, are also known . To be able to process the ivory, the large tusks had to be chopped, chiselled and split into smaller, more manageable pieces . Some ivory artefacts show that tusks had been straightened, and it is unknown how this was achieved . </P> <P> Several woolly mammoth specimens show evidence of being butchered by humans, which is indicated by breaks, cut - marks, and associated stone tools . It is not known how much prehistoric humans relied on woolly mammoth meat, since there were many other large herbivores available . Many mammoth carcasses may have been scavenged by humans rather than hunted . Some cave paintings show woolly mammoths in structures interpreted as pitfall traps . Few specimens show direct, unambiguous evidence of having been hunted by humans . A Siberian specimen with a spearhead embedded in its shoulder blade shows that a spear had been thrown at it with great force . A specimen from the Mousterian age of Italy shows evidence of spear hunting by Neanderthals . The juvenile specimen nicknamed "Yuka" is the first frozen mammoth with evidence of human interaction . It shows evidence of having been killed by a large predator, and of having been scavenged by humans shortly after . Some of its bones had been removed, and were found nearby . A site near the Yana River in Siberia has revealed several specimens with evidence of human hunting, but the finds were interpreted to show that the animals were not hunted intensively, but perhaps mainly when ivory was needed . Two woolly mammoths from Wisconsin, the "Schaefer" and "Hebior mammoths", show evidence of having been butchered by Palaeoamericans . </P> <P> Most woolly mammoth populations disappeared during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, alongside most of the Pleistocene megafauna (including the Columbian mammoth). This extinction formed part of the Quaternary extinction event, which began 40,000 years ago and peaked between 14,000 and 11,500 years ago . Scientists are divided over whether hunting or climate change, which led to the shrinkage of its habitat, was the main factor that contributed to the extinction of the woolly mammoth, or whether it was due to a combination of the two . Whatever the cause, large mammals are generally more vulnerable than smaller ones due to their smaller population size and low reproduction rates . Different woolly mammoth populations did not die out simultaneously across their range, but gradually became extinct over time . Most populations disappeared between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago . The last mainland population existed in the Kyttyk Peninsula of Siberia 9,650 years ago . A small population of woolly mammoths survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska, well into the Holocene with the most recently published date of extinction being 5,600 years B.P. The last known population remained on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until 4,000 years ago, well into the start of human civilization and concurrent with the construction of the Great Pyramid of ancient Egypt . </P> <P> DNA sequencing of remains of two mammoths, one from Siberia 44,800 years BP and one from Wrangel Island 4,300 years BP, indicates two major population crashes: one around 280,000 years ago from which the population recovered, and a second about 12,000 years ago, near the ice age's end, from which it did not . The Wrangel Island mammoths were isolated for 5000 years, and due to the small population present when the island was isolated by rising post-ice - age sea level, about 300 to 1000 individuals experienced a 20% to 30% loss of heterozygosity, and a 65% loss in mitochondrial DNA diversity . The population seems to have subsequently been stable, without suffering further significant loss of genetic diversity . Genetic evidence thus implies the extinction of this final population was sudden, rather than the culmination of a gradual decline . </P>

When did the woolly mammoth species become extinct