20. Woolly Mammoths Still Existed When Ancient Egypt’s Civilization Arose
Contrary to popular perceptions, woolly mammoths did not vanish when the ice age ended around 12,000 years ago, give or take a few centuries. While no man ever saw a live dinosaur, mankind and its hominid ancestors did share the planet with woolly mammoths for hundreds of thousands of years. The ice age pachyderms were actually still around while the Ancient Egyptians were busily engaged in the construction of the Great Pyramids. Most woolly mammoths were hunted by humans into extinction, and disappeared from the continental mainland of Eurasia and North America at some point between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago.
The last mainland population, in the Kyttyk Peninsula in Siberia, vanished about 9650 years ago. However, small populations survived in offshore islands, such as Saint Paul Island in Alaska, where woolly mammoths existed until 5600 years ago. The last known population survived in Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, until 4000 years ago, or roughly 2000 BC. That was well into the era of human civilization and recorded human history, and centuries after the Great Pyramids of Giza, whose construction concluded around 2560 BC, had been built.
