Humans & Mammoths: Known before they were unknown.
One of my favorite jokes on dark starry nights is to point to a star and say, “Wow! I can even see Pluto!” So too in the late 1500s, when large ivory tusks unearthed on the inland side of the Ural mountains were appearing in the Siberian Ivory trade. Experts said, “Walruses. Definitely Walruses. Didn’t you know they migrate over mountains to escape the summer heat?” In the 1690s Linnaeus, thought Mammoths belonged to the “mineral kingdom,” from their fossilized bones. But after 30 years he relented and decided they were…wait for it…giant walruses.
In a tragicomical story, repeated through the ages, mammoth bones were found in the bases of trenches, or in the foundations of palaces or churches. Upon their discovery, warlords, priests, and kings would order their excavation and removal for display as status symbols at their altars. When workers labored to comply, they often found moving the bones was like touching dust, and the peons were flogged for their accidental destruction. These are the type of fun historical annecdotes revealed in an ambitious and well researched book, Discovering the Mammoth, by John J. McKay.

Fossils are fragile, and paradoxically the more contemporary they are, the more delicate. Mammoths bones fall right within the weakest age for bones. Extinct but nearly contemporaneous but for the blink of an millennia. Their proteins degraded (collagen the most abundant), and their endogenous organically scaffolded minerals (like calcium) have begun their dissolutory migration away. The process of perminerization with silica has just begun at this age. Leaving many mammoth bones to hopelessly powderize and whither soon after exposure. But some were put on display back in the 1600’s and people saw them and wrote about them. Therefore some of the best fossil mammoths we know of are preserved in words not bones. Words that are complicated by fealty to origin stories, fear, and pure ignorance. This is the beginning of the science of paleontology described in Discovering the Mammoth.
This book’s strongest point is made in the first few pages through a semantical question: “Who discovered the Mammoth?” The answer is nobody. They were never unknown. However, this fact renders the title of this book somewhat paradoxical.
Humans have used mammoth tusks and bones as tinctures and tools since time immortal, and incorporated them into their cultural origin stories as villains or evidence of biblical battles, or mythical gods, painted images on cave walls of humans killing them, they literally sustained North Americans after their arrival to the continent, and their foot prints can still be discovered in Dry Lake beds in North America. The Mammoth was never unknown.
Humans struggled with what “to do” with Mammoths and their existence. To some they were clearly giant humans. To explain why they were so big, some flipped the question to explain why we were so small. Civilizations decay (life was hard in the Middle Ages) which has progressively led to our current diminution, so they said.
Others assigned them as evidence of the cyclops, and a new myth was born. The rationalists of the renaissance suggested that surely they were the bones of elephants the Romans had marched north. But even they were wrong. Though the Romans surely did march elephants North to conquer Europe (if only by intimidation), no self sustaining population could have formed due to the extreme cold. The sheer magnitude of bones (20,000 tusks have been excavated to date and it’s still a thriving trade), and ubiquity of their discovery implies an abundant long term presence of these animals in Europe, Asia and North America.
What “to do” with Mammoths became more difficult after the cult of christianity spread creation stories. Therefore, the fact of extinction became untennable when Cuvier finally synthesized the evidence around 1800. Therefore, accumulation of mammoth bones in Siberia became evidence of the great flood, which washed elephant bones to the arctic circle from the tropics. Most europeans had never seen an elephant in the middle ages, so even this explanation seemed outlandish. Enter the Unicorn craze with associated mythology, which was somehow faster to take hold than even the elephant explanation. Bones ascribed to being unicorn or ‘alicorn’ tusks became more valuable than gold. Humans will go to great lengths to contort evidence to story.
If mammoths hadn’t had tusks of ivory, so valued by humans, their early history would have been more obscure. The tusks preserve 100x better than bones. Ancient (2000 years old) chinese ivory carvings are sometimes made from mammoth, not Elephant Ivory. The trade in mammoth ivory is legal to this day, in contrast to the heavy fines for trade in elephant ivory.
I went to my local rock shop to see what the current market for mammoth parts might be. I fully expected there to be a $1,000 dollar tooth. No dice. The sales lady said, “all we have is a little piece of mammoth hair!” $50 for about 20 strands. Mutual uncertainty about their provenance, but the shop otherwise has good stuff.
Early hints of mammoth knowledge came from map makers who left clues through icons and images they placed on their maps. Often these were of organisms in correct geographic position of their existence. Images of tusked elephants show up in Siberia before written description of them being there. Mammoths were known before they were unknown.
There was the understandable confusion with walruses, and the outlandish claim that they must have migrated over mountains. Or that they’re still extant, giant burrowing shrews. That frost heave in the winter isn’t frost heave — giant burrowing shrews. Seeing Pluto seems more plausible now, right?
Discovering the Mammoth is a story more about humans, and their comical attempts at coming to terms with these giant extinct creatures. It is our privilege to stand now on the backs of generations of scientists, anatomists, physiologists, and evolutionary biologists and to scoff at these early attempts at explanation.
This book is remarkable for what it does not contain. Many of the facts below were gleaned from other recent books dealing with the Mammoth, Woolly, by Ben Mezrich, which I recently reviewed, and Atlas of a Lost World, by Craig Childs.
This book does not mention that: 1) The Mammoth Genome has been sequenced. 2) Mammoth foot prints can still be discovered in North America around dry lake beds, 3) Sites of human Mammoth kills could potentially rewind the clock of human habitation of North America by 1,000s of years, 4) Mammoth carcuses with meat still on them are occasionally discovered in the icy far north, 5) That serious attempts at de-extinction of the mammoth are underway, and 6) Drawf Woolly Mammoths were alive until 3,500 years ago on Wrangal Island, while the contenetal species went extinct after the last ice-age, most likely due to human hunting pressure.
Parts of this book read like Anna Kerrinina, not 1000 pages but at least 25 are devoted to the rise and fall of Russian tzars, love and intrigue abound, all to explain the map making prothlizer Witsen who included the mammoth icons on maps of Siberia, and who popularized the Russian word Mammout or Mammona to Mammoth or something similar in Dutch. The world would be a different place without him, apparently, but I would have appreciated being sparred reading so much about him, or his ancillary contacts.
But this book is worth reading for the fun tidbits of history that can be gleaned from it. For example:
An important mammoth discovery occured in Efurt Germany, where a mammoth with complete eight foot long tusks was found in 1695 in a sand bank. Local scientist figured someone had buried it there, but were still confused why they would leave all that Ivory. That would be idiotic! It would have been worth the equivalent of thousands of dollars at any time in history.
This fossil forced Leibniz to consider two advanced yet heretical ideas: 1) that earth’s climate may have changed, and this area or Germany was once habitable for elephants (maybe the earths axis had tilted — so precocious), or this area was once underwater, and that would settle it. Marine creatures are so weird. The giant walrus scapegoat again. Or 2) animals have changed through time. Not extinct, just changed to be more diminutive, like the argument that mammoths were giant humans. But still, change through time, this is a big advance for 18th century science. Next came Leibniz’s “scala natura” which was decidedly less ‘changey ’.
Following the discovery in Erfurt, and after acknowledging that Mammoths were found all over the north, a Great Northern Expidition of Science and Discovery was hatched and embarked. Personal conflicts led to decreased productivity, Mr. Bering of Bering strait fame was a jerk, but more fossil mammoth bones and Ivory were found, surely placed there by the deluge.
Jefferson thought in 1781 that they were still alive, partly because he didn’t believe in extinction, and the Lewis and Clark expition was hatched partly to go find them.
It’s not until page 171 that Cuvier enters the story, which is remarkable in a book about the ‘discovery’ of an extinct creature. I get the sense that the author has a distain for Cuvier — that he was a blowhard primadona, a mere synthesizer, not a discoverer.
In the ending paragraphs of the book the author suggests that humans and mammoths have a special bond. Humans may have followed mammoths out of Africa, and they may have showed us what was safe to eat. No data to support this other than observations by Elizabeth Vrba (of ‘exaptation’ fame with Stephen J Gould) .
The author is a historian and linguist with a seeming disgust for natural history unless it involves a cultural reference. With a training in technical writing, the author takes us on a circuitous journy to (ir)relevant facts. This book is about mammoths, the words ‘mammoth’ or ‘bones’, are contained in nearly every paragraph, as if placed there by some algorithim. But yet, you could learn more about mammoths on Wikipedia. But you would learn much less about their discovery, and the lengths to which humans have gone to understand their place in — human — history.
Discovering the Mammoth is an important historical record of human discovery, rediscovery, and re-rediscovery of the Mammoth. A book like this will never be written again. It is one of a kind.
