← Back to the front page

Fascinating Biblical and Biblical Era Archaeology

Khalid Elhassan May 4, 2025 17 min

Archaeology - Ashurbanipal in a chariot, inspecting booty and prisoners from Babylon — Ashurbanipal in a chariot, inspecting booty and prisoners from Babylon. Wikimedia

13. The Great Pyramids and Ice Age Denizens

Woolly mammoths still roamed the earth when the Great Pyramids were built. Ancient Wonders of Archaeology

The Great Pyramids are so old that they coexisted with the Ice Age’s most famous extinct animal. When, actually, did woolly mammoths go extinct? The Ice Age ended about twelve thousand years ago, circa 9700 BC. It is widely assumed that woolly mammoths must have gone extinct sometime around then, if not sooner.

However, woolly mammoths did not completely vanish at the end of the Ice Age. 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 hairy pachyderms were still around while the Ancient Egyptians were busy building the Great Pyramids.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.