Around 400,000 years ago, prehistoric people living in western Ukraine found remains of Mammuthus trogontherii, or steppe mammoths.

The Paleolithic titans were just one animal that made survival in Central Asia possible, along with cows, horses, deer, bears, big cats and wild boars.

When the animal remains were processed, whatever wasn’t eaten or used was left behind, eventually creating layers in the soil and stone spotted hundreds of years later.

In 2011, one of these multilayer sites was discovered outside Medzhybizh and was later excavated in 2018, according to a study published March 27 in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

Along with discovering pieces of animal bone, archaeologists uncovered mammoth ivory, which has a slightly different composition than bone and comes from the animal’s tusks.

Some of the “fragments show cut marks” and evidence of “knapping,” a technique typically used on pieces of flint to carve and shape the stone into usable tools, researchers said.

“Currently, 24 ivory fragments have been recovered from (the site),” according to the study. “The surfaces are typically rounded and shiny, although some display fresh white areas suggesting recent damage, while others are heavily stained with manganese and appear grey.”

The pieces show clear signs of intentional human modification, especially when compared to ivory pieces from later in history, but there have been no knapped ivory found from this far in the past, according to the study.

These pieces, therefore, would represent the “earliest evidence of deliberate ivory processing,” researchers said.

But asking why they were crafted creates more questions than answers.

Ivory doesn’t hold up as well against weathering as bone, making it a less suitable material for toolmaking, researchers said. It also breaks into smaller pieces, making it harder to use with any deal of ease, making them less effective compared to stone tools.

“We see a few possible explanations for these finds. One is technological: the site is in an area with poor access to quality stone, so the inhabitants may have experimented with different materials — including ivory — to see if they could be used for knapping,” study author Vadim N. Stepanchuk, from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, told McClatchy News in an email.

“But these pieces may not have been made for practical use. They’re extremely small, an ivory of this size doesn’t hold a cutting edge like stone does,” Stepanchuk said. “Still, their shapes mimic typical flake tools from the site — a pointed piece, a core-like fragment and tiny waste flakes.”

Instead, Stepanchuk said, these could be imitations of tools. They would be made with the same technique but in a material never intended to be utilitarian.

“The resemblance to real tools, combined with the fragility of ivory, led us to consider a social or behavioral explanation. They may reflect play or learning behavior — perhaps children copying adult knappers. If so, these are (artifacts) about tools, not tools themselves,” Stepanchuk said.

The earliest-known processed ivory therefore may have been an experiment, or even created by children, according to the study.

Medzhybizh is in western Ukraine, about a 190-mile drive southwest from Kyiv.

The research team includes Stepanchuk and Oleksandr O. Naumenko.

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