Dr Hannah Moots, lead author of the study, said: “While it is tempting to assume that hunters would have targeted females because they were smaller than adult males, the reality may have been more complex.
“If mammoths behaved like modern elephants, females living in matriarchal herds may have had group defences that would have made encounters with herds equally or even more risky.
“Another possibility is that female-led herds moved across the landscape in more predictable ways than solitary males, meaning Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers may simply have encountered them more frequently, whether for hunting or scavenging.”
The researchers said mammoths were a vital resource for Ice Age human populations, providing meat, fat, hide and bones for building structures, and ivory for tools, art and ornaments.
The mammoth bone accumulations included in the study span 11 key Ice Age archaeological sites across Eurasia, dating to around 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.
The team analysed 100 individuals from the human-associated site accumulations with 421 mammoths from natural depositional settings.
The unprecedented scale provides a rare look at how ancient humans and woolly mammoths interacted.
Prof Love Dalén, co-senior author of the study, of Stockholm University, said: “This research demonstrates the power of ancient DNA studies to answer long-standing archaeological questions.
“By scaling up sample sizes, ancient DNA can go beyond evolutionary history to teach us about animal behaviour and human culture tens of thousands of years ago.”