Japan unearths mammoth ovens

TOKYO (Reuter) - Archaeologists have found vestiges of 28,000-year-old ovens they think were used by Stone Age man to cook the flesh of Naumann elephants, a woolly mammoth that roamed the Japanese plains, a local government official said yesterday.

The theory would indicate that the ancient inhabitants of Japan had a high degree of culinary sophistication, said the education board official in Numazu, west of Tokyo, where the ruins of the ovens were found. To date, people of that era were believed to have eaten meat raw, barbecued over flames or smoked, he said.