Can you imagine hunting elephants with weapons like these? Around 10,000 years ago, Paleo-Indian peoples hunted prehistoric elephants called mastodons using spears tipped with stone points. How were they able to do that? They were also armed with knowledge and cooperation. They knew a lot about their environment, including the habits of mastodons. And, since killing a mastodon required many spears, they had to assemble a group of several hunters and develop a strategy that would allow a handful of people to kill a large, powerful animal like a mastodon.