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All about mammoths. The return of the giants: why is Russia cloning mammoths. Video - When mammoths became extinct

Where did mammoths come from? What kind of life did you lead? Why did they die out? The scientific community has been wrestling with these mysteries for centuries. And each new study refutes the previous one.

Yakut treasures

The beginning of everything was laid by the Amsterdam burgomaster Witsen, when in 1692 he first described the untouched carcass of a mammoth found in Yakutia. He did not know that he would give new life to an extinct species of animal. Modern scientists are increasingly calling Yakutia the birthplace of mammoths. Maybe this is not historical homeland, but at least the place with the highest concentration of mammoth population in the past.

Behind last years most animal remains were found here (according to statistics, about 80%), including well-preserved ones. The scientific world was especially struck by the latest find - a 60-year-old female mammoth. But its uniqueness is not so much in the preservation of tissues, but in the liquid blood contained in them. This find can give scientists new knowledge about the genetic and molecular composition of primitive animals.

Mammoths began to die out due to warming

For such a version Lately more and more scientists are leaning. Dr. Dale Guthrie from the University of Alaska, who made radiocarbon dating of the remains of animals and people who lived more than 10 thousand years ago, agrees with her. According to Guthrie climate change transformed a dry and cold area into a more humid and warm one, which in turn led to a modification of the vegetation - mammoths simply did not have time to adapt to this.

Other scientific evidence confirms the decline of tundra forests, the main habitat of mammoths. Like reindeer, mammoths, depending on the time of year, wandered in search of their usual food - in the summer they moved to the north, and in the winter to southern regions. And then one day they faced a shortage of tundra vegetation.

In 1900, on the banks of the Berezovka River, a mammoth carcass, almost untouched by time and predators, was discovered. Later, other similar remains were found. Some details, including unchewed grass, suggested that the animals died suddenly. The version of the murder disappeared immediately - there were no signs of damage. Scientists puzzled over this mystery for a long time and finally came to an unexpected conclusion - the animals died after falling into the melted wormwood. Over time, researchers were able to find more and more animals that ended up in the place of the old river bed. The rise in temperature played a cruel joke on them.

And here is another fact in favor of the version of the extinction of animals due to global warming. The researchers found that in the process of climate change, mammoths also changed their size. During the Ice Ages (Zyryansk and Sartan times), they became larger, and during periods of global warming (Kazantsev and Kargin times), they became smaller. From this it follows that it was cold that was more preferable for mammoths than heat.

People did not hunt mammoths

According to one hypothesis, mammoths were exterminated by hunters, at least the British naturalist Alfred Wallace was inclined to this version. Indeed, at the sites of ancient man's sites, many products made from the skin and tusks of a mammoth are found. We also know about the hunting of people for mammoths from school textbooks. However, modern researchers argue that people did not hunt mammoths, but only finished off sick and infirm animals. The fact is that during warming, the groundwater that had risen to the top washed out minerals from the soil, which were part of the plant food of mammoths. The fragility of the bones, which appeared as a result of a depleted diet, made the giants vulnerable to humans.

A. V. Bogdanov in his book “Secrets of the Lost Civilization” convincingly proves the impossibility of people hunting for mammoths. A modern elephant has a skin of about 7 centimeters, and a mammoth, due to the layer subcutaneous fat She was even fatter. “Try it yourself with a stick with a stone to break through the skin, which does not burst even from the tusks of five-ton males,” the writer says.

But further on, Bogdanov is even more convincing. Among the reasons, he calls the very tough and sinewy mammoth meat, which was almost impossible to eat, as well as unbearable even for large group people actions necessary for a successful hunt. To catch even a medium-sized individual, you need to dig a hole of at least 7 cubic meters, which is not realistic with primitive tools. It is even more difficult to drive a mammoth into a hole. These are herd animals and when trying to recapture at least a cub from the herd, the hunters risked being trampled by multi-ton carcasses.

Contemporaries of the Egyptian pyramids

Until recently, it was believed that mammoths disappeared from the face of the earth 10,000 years ago. But at the end of the 20th century, the remains found on Wrangel Island significantly corrected the dating. Based on the data obtained, scientists found that these individuals died about 3,700 years ago. “Mammoths inhabited this island when the Egyptian pyramids were already standing and the Mycenaean civilization flourished,” says Frederik Paulsen to explore. The mammoths of Wrangel Island lived when most of these animals on the planet had long since disappeared. What made them move to the island? This remains a mystery for now.

Holy mammoth tooth

In the Middle Ages, people who unearthed the bones of mammoths had no idea who they belonged to and often mistook them for the remains of cynocephalus who lived in legendary times - a huge growth of creatures with a dog's head and human body. For example, in Valencia, the molar tooth of a mammoth was a sacred relic, which, according to legend, belonged to the "dog-headed" Christopher, a holy martyr, revered by the Catholic and Orthodox Church. It has been recorded that during processions as far back as 1789 canons also carried a mammoth femur along with a tooth, passing it off as a fragment of a saint's hand.

Mammoth relatives

Mammoths are close relatives of elephants. This is evidenced by their scientific name Elefasprimigenius (translated from Latin as "first-born elephant"). According to one version, the elephant is the result of the evolution of the mammoth, which has adapted to a warmer climate. Perhaps this is not so far from reality, because the mammoths of the late time corresponded in their parameters to the Asian elephant.

But German scientists compared the DNA of an elephant and a mammoth, and came to a paradoxical conclusion: the mammoth and the Indian elephant are two branches that originated from the African elephant about 6 million years ago. Indeed, recent studies have shown that the ancestor of the African elephant lived on earth more than 7 million years ago, and therefore this version does not seem fantastic.

"Resurrect" the giant!

Scientists have been trying to "resurrect" the mammoth for quite a long time. So far to no avail. The main obstacle to the successful cloning of an extinct animal, according to Semyon Grigoriev (head of the Museum of the Mammoth named after P. A. Lazarev), is the lack of source material of adequate quality. But, nevertheless, he is convinced of the good prospects of this undertaking. He pins his main hopes on a recently extracted female mammoth with preserved liquid blood.

While Russian scientists are trying to recreate the DNA of an ancient animal, Japanese specialists have abandoned ambitious plans to populate the Russian Far East mammoths in view of the futility of the idea of \u200b\u200btheir "resurrection". Who was right - time will tell.

Video - When did mammoths become extinct?

10 most interesting facts about mammoths

(Notice how some of the "most interesting stories" directly contradict what you read above.)

Mammoths are a genus of extinct mammals of the family elephant detachment proboscis. The very first mammoths appeared in Africa about 5 million years ago. 2 million years ago, they spread over most of the territory of the Northern Hemisphere.

- Almost completely mammoths died out about 10-11 thousand years ago, although a separate population of mammoths still existed about 4 thousand years ago on Wrangel Island.

– The genus of mammoths included at least a dozen species, including the woolly mammoth, which is the most famous.

- The woolly mammoth was covered with long hair with a thick undercoat, had curved tusks, a large head and a large hump.

- Adult male mammoths were up to 4.5 meters tall, weighed up to 18 tons and had tusks up to 5 meters long. woolly mammoths were about 3 meters tall at the withers. However, there were also dwarf mammoths - their height was less than 1.5 meters, i.e. they were shorter than a man of average height.

- Mammoths ate mainly cereals, grass and shrubs. Their teeth were like graters and were well suited for grinding coarse food.

– It is known that primitive people hunted mammoths for their meat, skins and wool. The bones of these animals, as well as their rock carvings and figurines, are often found at the sites of ancient people.

- Hunting was just one of the reasons why mammoths disappeared from the face of the Earth. Another major cause is thought to be climate change since the end of the last Ice Age. Warming has led to the fact that the dry cold tundra-steppes, where mammoths lived, turned into swampy tundras, the forest area increased, and more snow began to fall. These places became unsuitable for the life of mammoths.

- Together with mammoths, other species of large ancient animals also died out, for example, cave lions, mastodons, woolly rhinos.

– Findings of mammoth remains in permafrost lead scientists to think about mammoth cloning. They propose to do this according to the following scheme - to introduce mammoth DNA into the egg of an elephant and wait for offspring, and then bring out a real mammoth.

Materials of encyclopedia "Krugosvet", GEO magazine are used.

Russian word mammoth presumably comes from Mansi " manga ont"- "earth horn". From Russian, this word got into many European languages, in particular in English (in the form of English. Mammoth).

Mammoths lived in the second half of the Pleistocene in Europe, North Asia and North America. Numerous mammoth bones have been found at the sites of man and the ancient and late ancient Stone Age, as well as drawings and sculptures of mammoths made by prehistoric man. And paleontological and archaeological excavations in Kostenki, in the Voronezh region, they discovered the bones of hundreds of individuals, mammoths, from which our ancestors made their dwellings, and also possibly used their bones as fuel.

So, mammoth Mammothus primegenius) is an extinct species of animal from the elephant family. We can say the closest relative of the elephant.

In Siberia, as well as in Alaska, cases of finding well-preserved mammoth corpses in permafrost are known. And Oleg Kuvaev, in his famous book "Territory", describes one geologist who even managed to knit a sweater from mammoth wool!

Although finds of mammoth bones, especially teeth, are also known in the Moscow region, for example in Zaraysk, and even on the territory of Moscow! During earthworks on Kaluga Square in Moscow, many mammoth bones were found, and on the banks of the Moskva River, opposite Serebryany Bor, in the peaty deposits of an ancient lake, an almost complete mammoth skeleton was found! The skeleton of a mammoth was discovered in 2000 in the Istra district of the Moscow region, near the village of Korenki.

Incidentally, the canonical rare name Mammoth or Mammoth, more precisely Mammoth, found in the list of Russian names, has nothing to do with the mammoth, but comes from the Greek word “mamao”, which means “breastfed”. So neither the family of merchants Mamontov, nor the actor and anarchist Mammoth Dalsky, had the slightest relation to mammoths!

In terms of size, the mammoth usually did not exceed modern elephants, but had a more massive body, shorter legs, very long hair and long curved tusks (up to 4 m long and weighing up to 100 kg), were located in the upper jaw, they most likely served mammoths as a bulldozer scraper, helping to shovel snow for food in winter.

Hotel subspecies, e.g. North American subspecies mammuthus imperator reached a height of 5.5 meters and a weight of 10-12 tons, i.e. were almost twice as heavy as African elephants. In total there were three subspecies of mammoths: the Asian group, which appeared more than 450 thousand years ago; american group, which appeared about 450 thousand years ago and an intercontinental group that migrated from North America about 300 thousand years ago.

Mammoth molars with numerous thin dentin-enamel plates were well adapted for chewing coarse plant food.

It is believed that mammoths died out about 10,000 years ago during the last ice age and the reason for their extinction is still not fully known. Some researchers believe that they died due to climate change, others believe that they were exterminated by humans.

The latter is unlikely. I'll give you an example. Even elephant hunting, so popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and in some places still continuing in Africa), with large-caliber rifles and explosive bullets is still extremely dangerous, it’s not so easy to kill a multi-ton giant, especially elephants, like mammoths, herd animals roam most often in open spaces, and although their eyesight is rather weak, their hearing is excellent. So it was extremely difficult to sneak up on them unnoticed! And the wounded elephant...

Although there is still a “scientifically substantiated” legend that it was a man who exterminated mammoths, and it was believed that active hunting for mammoths was “the basis of the economy of the Upper Paleolithic population.” This is exactly what the popularizer of science, geologist R.K. Balandin…

However, back in 1948, the famous geologist, paleontologist and archaeologist, specialist in the Paleolithic, V.I. Gromov, and later N.K. Vereshchagin (in 1979, 1981, 1985) expressed and clearly substantiated the point of view that this is a clear exaggeration. It is unlikely that Paleolithic hunters armed with flint-tipped spears (and an effective, accurate throw of a spear on average 20-25 m) could effectively hunt a herd animal weighing up to 7 tons and 3-3.5 meters high, with thick hair up to 1 meter long and undercoat up to 12-15 cm long, moreover, knocked into lumps. Yes, and the layer of fat in a mammoth reached several tens of centimeters.

In addition, if to defeat, for example, a bison weighing 300 kg, a spearhead 20-25 cm long is needed, then to defeat a semi-adult mammoth (weighing about 1 ton), the length of the tip must reach at least 50 cm, and finds of such tips are rare, and are likely to be of a ritual nature. Numerous mammoth bones and tusks found at various Paleolithic sites (Bereleh, Gary, Mezin, Byzovaya, Mezhirichi, etc.) are most likely not a product of hunting, but a product of "gathering", since Paleolithic hunters did not disdain (in case of an unsuccessful hunt) and carrion and the remains of a meal of predators. Cemeteries of mammoths, the formation of which is associated with the death of animals due to natural factors(holes in ground ice, landslides) served as a kind of source of food, skins and building material ( ).

Tom Prideaux notes that a two-meter spear flies ( just fly by! A.K.) 60-70 meters, and only using a spear thrower can send a spear 150 meters ( T. Prideaux, 1979). However, the lethal force of a spear using a spear thrower did not exceed, most likely, 30-40 meters. Enough to kill a deer, a horse, and even a young bison, but still not a mammoth...

The use of pit traps for the mammoth is also extremely unlikely - it is too difficult and impractical to dig out, knock out (by very primitive means!) A deep hole in the frozen ground, mask it, and then try to drive the mammoth into it. It is only possible that the prey of an animal that fell into glacial gullies or swamps, and this could serve as the basis for numerous “scientific hypotheses” and simply legends about the use of pit traps.

About 13 thousand years ago, when a man mastered almost the entire space of Siberia, in the north-east of Siberia, however, the disappearance of the mammoth is not observed.

About 12 thousand years ago, the area of the tundra-steppe (the main pasture of mammoths) began to sharply decrease (in addition, raising the level of the Northern Arctic Ocean also contributed to the disappearance of pastures), respectively, the number of mammoths began to decline. After three thousand years, they became extinct in the south and west of Eurasia and North America.

In the Arctic, mammoths died out about 8 thousand years ago, surviving only on Wrangel Island and the Pribylov archipelago in the Bering Sea, and these were small populations, and the growth of individuals did not exceed 2 meters (a dwarf form of a mammoth, Mammothus exilis And Mammothus lamarmorae).

In 2003, on the island of St. Paul in the Pribylov archipelago, in the Bering Sea, bones of mammoths aged 7900 and 5600 years were found. The conditions on the islands were not very suitable for mammoths - a lot of snow, stunted food, and yet they stayed there for five millennia longer than their relatives on the mainland, where conditions were better for preserving the species than on the islands.

And on Wrangel Island, mammoths finally disappeared about 3,500 thousand years ago, just 500 years before man arrived there. The Egyptian pyramids had been standing for a long time, and finally the mammoth disappeared only in the reign of Tutankhamun and the heyday of the Mycenaean civilization.

However, a number of authors (the same R.N. Balandin) confidently say that in ancient times, along with mammoths and rhinos, the horse was also exterminated in America (as you know, the wild horses of the American prairies are the descendants of runaway and feral horses during the Conquista, in the XVI-XVII centuries). However, the question arises, why did the bison survive (though almost exterminated by European settlers, but this was already in the 19th century)? Why did the contemporaries of the mammoth, the caribou deer and the musk ox, survive? In Europe, which has been inhabited and intensively developed for hundreds of thousands of years before America, wild Horse, a tarpan that lived in the steppes modern Ukraine, was finally destroyed only in the second half of the 19th century, probably in 1876 or 1879 (Grzimek, 1990, Zedlag, 1975), and basically no longer as hunting prey, but as a competitor to horse breeding - tarpan stallions fought off herds ( Kazdym A.A., "Historical ecology", 2010).

However, as always in scientific research, and especially "near-scientific" and "pseudo-scientific", versions and hypotheses are very numerous, but the climate hypothesis is most likely more likely. So, Dr. Dale Guthrie from the University of Alaska confirmed this by performing accurate radiocarbon dating of hundreds of remains. different types animals and people dating back more than 10,000 years ago. D. Guthrie suggests that climate change has transformed a previously dry, arid and cold region into a more humid one. And warmer temperatures in summer led to changes in vegetation that mammoths could not adapt to. In addition, mammoths easily endured severe frost, wind and dry snow, but warm winds carrying wet, sticky snow were a disaster for them - long hair froze, turning into an “ice shell” and did not protect from the cold, especially young individuals.

There is another version that was "put forward" in 2003 by Tomsk paleontologists - in their opinion, the "mystery" of the mass extinction of mammoths lies in the bones found in the Kemerovo region. According to scientists, the animals were ... sick, their bones became brittle and often broke, which is associated with a lack of calcium due to a decrease in the level of groundwater, and, accordingly, a decrease in the supply of calcium. To get the necessary substances, the animals were looking for salt licks rich in minerals, which, however, did not save them from bone diseases. And it was on the salt licks that the weakened animals were guarded and finished off by primitive people, and it was about 18 thousand years ago ... Well, any hypothesis has the right to exist, until it is either proven or refuted ...

An even more peculiar hypothesis was put forward by an employee of the New York Museum of Natural History, Professor Ross McPhee. He believes that 130 species of giant animals, including mammoths, died out about 11,000 years ago as a result of infection with the influenza virus from humans!

According to the Nenets legend, mammoths in ancient times "went underground", along with the legendary tribe of Sikhirta, where they still live. Only on moonless nights do they come to the surface, but if the light of the moon or the sun catches them during this sad walk, they die. After that, people find their bones in the tundra.

Mammoth skeletons are regularly found on the Yamal Peninsula. As early as the 18th century, tusks were taken out of here, and until now there are well-preserved and most complete skeletons of "underground deer".

The giant mammoth cemetery is the New Siberian Islands. In the past, from 8 to 20 tons were mined there annually. elephant tusks. Before the First World War, the "export" of tusks from North-Eastern Siberia was 32 tons per year, which corresponds to about 220 pairs of tusks. And over the past 200 years, tusks from about 50 thousand mammoths have been exported from Siberia.

One of the latest, most massive and southernmost burials of mammoths is located on the territory of the Kargat region Novosibirsk region, in the upper reaches of the Bagan River in the Wolf's Mane area. It is estimated that there are at least 1,500 mammoth skeletons there.

After the ban on the export of ivory, the demand for mammoth tusk increased sharply - a kilogram of a good tusk goes abroad for $100, and Japanese firms are now offering from $150,000 to $300,000 for a mammoth skeleton! Well, in our "capitalist" world, everything is sold and everything is bought, even the most valuable paleontological finds...

And the mammoth Dima, found in 1977 by the bulldozer driver Dmitry Logachev, at the mouth of the Kirgilyakh stream at its confluence with the Berelekh River (Susumansky district, Magadan region), when sent to a trade exhibition in London in 1979, was insured for 10 million rubles. Although in the scientific sense, he has no price at all. Yes, science...

In 1908, on Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island (Novosibirsk Islands) near the Eterikan River, the famous geologist K.A. Volosovich discovered a well-preserved mammoth carcass in permafrost.

Excavations began in 1908 and continued for two years. Volosovich transported the mammoth carcass first to Yakutsk by ship, and then by railway- to St. Petersburg.

But all this needed money, and a lot of it, and Volosovich overspent the funds allocated to him by the Academy of Sciences, the creditors from whom he had to borrow were already threatening to sue. And it was necessary to pay more and more new amounts, in addition, a huge debt had accumulated for storing a mammoth in St. Petersburg, in a huge refrigerator.

K.A. Volosovich unsuccessfully tried to prove Russian academicians that a mammoth specimen is invaluable to science. But the Russian Academy of Sciences persisted and was categorically unwilling to pay for the "cost overrun". (However, this is happening now ... Quite often ... What's the matter Russian Academy sciences to some kind of science there ...).

Then K. A. Volosovich took a desperate step and turned to the Estonian count Stenbock-Fermor for help, telling him about his misadventures. The count gave the scientist the necessary amount, and disposed of the mammoth in his own way - ... presented it to the city of Paris. So the carcass of the Siberian mammoth still causes general surprise among visitors to the Paris Museum. jardindesPlantes (Kazdym A.A. "...A little about Paris", in press).

Since the remains of mammoths are in giant natural "refrigerators" - in layers, formerly called "permafrost", and now "permafrost soils", they are well preserved and often reach us in good condition. Scientists no longer deal with individual fossils or several bones of skeletons, but can even study the blood, muscles, hair of these animals and also determine what they ate. Some specimens have preserved internal organs, and a stomach, and even a mouth full of grass and branches!

There is a legend that in 1581 the warriors of the conqueror of Siberia Yermak saw huge hairy elephants in the dense taiga. Whom could the glorious combatants see? Ordinary elephants were already known in those days: they were found in the royal menagerie. Since then, the legend of living mammoths has lived ...

Yes, and in the legends and legends of many northern peoples and Indians of North America, memories of mammoths are alive. Probably, the Paleo-Asiatic tribes who came to Berengia and North America could well catch the last mammoths, in addition, the finds of practically “fresh”, frozen remains suitable for food created legends that these giants were still alive. And legends, as you know, are passed down from generation to generation, often overgrown with new rumors and “details”, modified and in this form have survived to this day ...

The Komi called the mammoth "earth deer", which was so heavy that it fell into the ground, the Eskimos from the shores of the Bering Strait called the mammoth "Kilu kruk", that is, "a whale named Kilu", and the Chukchi considered the mammoth an evil spirit living underground. The Yukaghirs, who live between the delta of the Lena and Kolyma rivers, in their legends call the mammoth "Kholkhut", and that the spirit of the giant mammoth is the keeper of souls.

By the way, both local residents and Russian industrialists and pioneers ate mammoth meat, and dogs ate it very willingly.

In 1962, a Yakut hunter told geologist Vladimir Pushkarev that before the revolution, hunters had repeatedly seen huge hairy animals “from big nose and fangs”, that about ten years ago this hunter himself discovered traces unknown to him “the size of a basin”.

There is also a story of two Russian hunters who in 1920 met traces of a giant beast at the edge of the forest, by the Chistaya and Tasa rivers (the interfluve of the Ob and Yenisei). Oval in shape, the footprints were about 70 cm long and about 40 cm wide. The creature placed its front legs four meters from its hind legs. The stunned hunters followed the tracks and a few days later they met two monsters. They followed the giants from a distance of about three hundred meters. The animals had curved white tusks, brown coloration and long hair.

One of recent posts in the press that Russian geologists in Siberia saw living mammoths appeared in 1978. “It was the summer of 1978,” recalls the foreman of the miners S.I. Belyaev, our team was washing gold on one of the nameless tributaries of the Indigirka River. In the predawn hour, when the sun had not yet risen, a dull clatter was suddenly heard near the parking lot, and a splash of water was heard from the river. We, seizing our guns, began to stealthily make our way in that direction. As we rounded the rocky outcropping, an incredible scene presented itself to our eyes. In the shallow waters of the river there were about a dozen God knows where the mammoths came from. Huge, shaggy animals slowly drank water. For about half an hour we looked at these fabulous giants as if spellbound. And those, having quenched their thirst, decorously, one after another, went deep into the forest thicket ... ".

Is it really by some miracle that these ancient animals, despite everything, survived, and are alive to this day?

The Chinese geographer Sima Qian in his historical notes (188-155 BC) wrote that: "... from the animals there are ... huge boars, northern elephants in bristles and northern rhinoceroses," and Herberstein, the ambassador of the Austrian emperor Sigismund, who visited in In the middle of the 16th century, Russia wrote in his “Notes on Muscovy” that “In Siberia ... there is a great variety of birds and various animals, such as, for example, sables, martens, beavers, ermines, squirrels ... In addition, weight. In the same way, polar bears, hares ... ". "weight" or "whole"- this is how the Kolyma Khanty called a certain “monster”, covered with thick, long hair and having “horns”. However, maybe it was a musk ox?

Have mammoths survived to this day? There are still persistent rumors that surviving mammoths are still found in Siberia. However, the unanimous opinion of biologists suggests that in reality, thousands of living individuals are needed to maintain the population. And they would hardly have gone unnoticed, especially in connection with the active development of the tundra and forest tundra.

Alexey Arkadyevich Kazdym,
candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences,
member of MOIP
Author's photo

Russian word mammoth presumably comes from Mansi "manga ont" - "earth horn". From Russian, this word came into many European languages, in particular, into English (in the form of English. Mammoth).

Mammoths lived in the second half of the Pleistocene in Europe, North Asia and North America. Numerous mammoth bones have been found at the sites of man and the ancient and late ancient Stone Age, as well as drawings and sculptures of mammoths made by prehistoric man. And paleontological and archaeological excavations in Kostenki, in the Voronezh region, discovered the bones of hundreds of individuals, mammoths, from which our ancestors made their dwellings, and also possibly used their bones as fuel.

So, mammoth Mammothus primegenius) is an extinct species of animal from the elephant family. We can say the closest relative of the elephant.

By the way, the canonical, rare name Mamant or Mammoth, or rather Mammoth, found in the list of Russian names, has nothing to do with the mammoth, but comes from the word of the Greek word “mamao”, which means “breastfed”. So neither the family of merchants Mamontov, nor the actor and anarchist Mammoth Dalsky, had the slightest relation to mammoths!

Hotel subspecies, e.g. North American subspecies mammuthus imperator reached a height of 5.5 meters and a weight of 10-12 tons, i.e. were almost twice as heavy as African elephants. In total there were three subspecies of mammoths: the Asian group, which appeared more than 450 thousand years ago; an American group that appeared about 450 thousand years ago and an intercontinental group that migrated from North America about 300 thousand years ago.

Mammoth molars with numerous thin dentin-enamel plates were well adapted for chewing coarse plant food.

Science may well enrich folklore, which is clearly seen in the example of the appearance of the saying "died out like mammoths." A very bright event in the educational process of primary and high school, a story about mammoths who lived and lived peacefully, plucked grass, did not touch anyone, and then once - and died out. However, more and more reports have appeared lately, which, if justified, will mean that for the figurative designation of the expression “disappeared irretrievably from the face of the earth”, a replacement for mammoths will have to be found ...

Big but peaceful

Mammoths are the closest relatives of modern African and Indian elephants, which is natural, since they belong to the same elephant family. Mammoths lived in Europe, Asia, North America and Asia for a total of almost 4.5 million years until about 5 thousand years ago (although there is scientific evidence that an autonomous population of mammoths lived on Wrangel Island until almost 3500 years ago). BC). Since the habitat of mammoths was very wide, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to Africa and Mexico, several types of mammoths appeared, differing in size, intensity of wool cover, and the like.

The largest representatives of mammoths reached a height of 5.5 meters and a weight of 12 tons, but even average mammoths (height 4 meters, weight about 8 tons) significantly exceeded their current relatives, elephants. However, in their structure and lifestyle, mammoths have much in common with elephants. They stand out due to their size, woolen cover, due to a generally more severe climate and especially in northern latitudes, slightly different body outlines, shorter legs and long curved tusks. In terms of lifestyle, mammoths, according to scientists, were also herbivores living in groups controlled by an older female, forced to constantly move in search of food. There are several hypotheses regarding the reasons for the extinction of mammoths, which include changing of the climate(warming), and hunting by humans, and disease.

Or maybe mammoths did not die out ...

However, there is an opinion that mammoths, if they did not survive to this day (although there are supporters of such a version), then, at least, existed in in large numbers until the middle of the 20th century, when possible areas of their habitat, primarily the tundra of Siberia, began to be actively developed by man. In favor of this opinion, a number of evidence is given, starting from the Middle Ages. In the 16th century, in the notes of several foreigners who visited Moscow, there is a mention of animals living in Siberia, among which an elephant covered with wool is described.

The source of such messages was the Cossacks who conquered Siberia, who, in turn, received this information from the local peoples, who called this animal “weight” or “all”. However, it is quite difficult to separate the myths of the peoples of Siberia from reality, but there have been no reports from Russians who would have seen mammoths. Rumors that even until the forties of the last century, Soviet pilots flying over the tundra and taiga saw small herds of mammoths from the air have no sources that could be verified. As a result, in the late nineties, a completely extreme version appeared that mammoths are still alive, but only switched to a semi-aquatic lifestyle - in winter, when the temperature is comfortably low for them, they live on land, and in the summer they live in rivers because the water temperature is lower than the air temperature. Official science does not comment on such considerations as absolutely fantastic, but the supporters of this version do not let up, drawing attention to the fact that elephants, close relatives of mammoths, are excellent swimmers.

There are chances to stroke a live mammoth

Oddly enough, but from the point of view of science, there is a much better chance of reviving mammoths thousands of years after their disappearance than meeting a live mammoth. Talk about the possible cloning of mammoths from the genetic material found in their remains has been going on since the very beginning of the 2000s, from the moment the cloning of living organisms became a fact. Work in this direction is being carried out quite actively by several groups of specialists at once, and Japanese experts, who work in close contact with scientists from Yakutia, have taken up this task especially actively. It is noteworthy that most scientists are extremely skeptical about the possibility of cloning a mammoth - since, according to general scientific data, the DNA of a living organism is destroyed shortly after its death. When it comes to DNA, which is several thousand years old, this means a fundamental change in the chemical structure of the molecules, which makes it impossible to restore them. That is, it's the same as taking apart a certain mechanism - in the aggregate it will be the same machine, only it is not able to work.

However, Japanese scientists do not give up - for example, in 2008 they managed to clone a mouse that died 16 years before the experiment with its DNA. Under these conditions, in 2011, when a more or less intact DNA molecule was found in the remains of a mammoth in Yakutia, Japanese experts announced that they would need five to six years to prepare the DNA for cloning, after which they would fertilize the egg of a female elephant . True, even if the experiment is successful, which most scientists still do not believe, it will be difficult to say whose genetic material will be more in the clone, mammoth or elephant.

In addition, a number of problematic issues immediately arise related to the possible restoration of the mammoth population. Firstly, this means the risk of the appearance of ancient viruses that “slept” in the DNA of a mammoth, and when it is cloned, they will come to life and can be dangerous not only for animals, but also for people who will not have immunity to this infection. Secondly, it is necessary to look for a zone of natural habitat for mammoths, which, in the conditions of the difficult ecological situation of the modern world with its global warming pretty hard. Thirdly, with the advent of such a large and consuming huge amount of plant food animal there is a risk of changing the ecological balance with unpredictable consequences. Finally, the successful cloning of a complex animal that died many thousands of years ago will invariably lead to a new round of discussion about the possibility of cloning dead people, which is already invading the fundamental ethical foundations of human life.

Why mammoths became extinct

The extinction of certain animal species is not uncommon for the Earth: the dinosaurs have died out, and in general, 99% of all animal species that have ever existed have disappeared by now. But there is a special interest in mammoths and the problem of their extinction, albeit difficult to explain. Perhaps the interest in the circumstances and reasons for the death of mammoths is fueled by increased talk about the possibility of recreating them by cloning. Or maybe the factor of the increased ecological culture of the society played here, which wants to know if the ancestors of people exterminated the mammoths.

Climate change version

There are several versions of the reasons for the extinction of mammoths, but there are three main ones. The first and most common of them concerns climate change, which has led to a deterioration in the living conditions of mammoths and their gradual, but rather intense death. As you know, the last long ice Age lasted more than a hundred thousand years and ended about 10-12 thousand years ago, and the warming trend began about 20 thousand years ago. By that time, a climate had been established on a significant part of the Earth, to which mammoths were able to adapt remarkably. Scientists have calculated that the most comfortable climatic niche for mammoths was the territory where average temperature the coldest month of the year was "minus 30" degrees Celsius, the average temperature of the warmest month of the year was "plus 14-15" degrees, and the annual rainfall was at the level of 240 mm. After the start of warming, the territories with such conditions became less and less, which reduced the habitat of mammoths.

It's not even that the woolly mammoths were too hot. Much more important was the change in the food base. Over a hundred thousand years of being in a cold climate, mammoths began to specialize in very specific types of plants - for example, willow plants, which were adapted to grow and spread precisely in such conditions, contained many nutritious and useful material. When the climate changed, willow plants, which grew in large numbers in these natural climatic zones, began to feel worse themselves, and more heat-loving plants, for example, conifers, competed with them. As a result, mammoths lost their main source of food and simply did not have time to adapt to a different diet. True, this theory cannot explain that other animals, like musk oxen, in this situation were able to adapt to new conditions and still live.

Version of man hunting for mammoths

Historically, even before the moment when climate fluctuations were established and proven by science in the distant past, the first version of the reasons for the disappearance of mammoths was the human factor. At that moment it seemed logical, especially since this theory was put forward primarily by European scientists who were not familiar with the practice of hunting Indian elephants - the smaller relatives of mammoths.

The scheme looks like this: on the border of the Ice Age, when climatic conditions began to improve for people, the human population began to grow. This necessitated an increase in stocks of food, clothing, building materials. All this - meat, skins, bones - could be provided by mammoths. Using their reason, the ability to think abstractly and using the mammoths natural susceptibility to panic, people used mass driven hunting, which led to the death of a large number of mammoths. The increase in food and economic resources spurred a demographic boom among primitive people, mammoths began to be hunted even more often and on a larger scale - and as a result, all mammoths were exterminated in a few thousand years.

Today, the version that people are primarily responsible for the extinction of mammoths is recognized as unlikely. Firstly, scientists doubt that the population of the then humanity was such that it made it possible to destroy mammoths in a vast territory from Europe to Mexico. Secondly, it turned out that hunting for mammoths is much more difficult than one could imagine. By analogy with elephants, which are difficult to hunt even with firearms, angry mammoths at the time of danger were hardly easy prey, and the level of tools then available to people (spears and arrows with stone tips) made the mass destruction of these giants impossible. Thirdly, the predominant role of mammoths in the diet of people has not been proven - it was much easier to hunt smaller game, and the abundance of mammoth bones in human sites is explained by the collection of the remains of dead animals.

Mystery disease version

There is also an opinion that mammoths could be ruined by their own health. Scientists do not exclude that at the end of the ice age there was a major outbreak of an unknown disease, from which the mammoth population was reduced to catastrophically small values. Moreover, it is possible that the same disease affected other animal species of that time, which turned out to be more resistant to it and, unlike mammoths, were able to survive it. Some experts are even inclined to call this disease - it could be the flu virus, which mammoths somehow contracted through contact with people. And since mammoths did not have immunity against this virus, this led to their disappearance.

An original theory was also put forward based on materials from archaeological finds in Siberia, in the Kemerovo region. A large number of mammoth bones were found there, which are affected by a specific disease that leads to calcium deficiency and increased bone fragility. It is possible that a change in the food supply has led to a shortage of minerals in the mammoth menu, which is why they have become less active in reproduction and more prone to fatal injuries. In general, everything more modern scientists are inclined to accept a combined version of the reasons for the extinction of mammoths: changing of the climate led to the reduction of areas suitable for mammoths, a reduced population due to illness or a change in diet became more available as prey, and human hunters could finish off the last remnants of the once numerous mammoths.

Mammoth hunting: heroism, legend or massacre?

Modern people who get food in supermarkets in exchange for the money they earn, for the most part, do not even suspect how difficult and dangerous hunting was for our not so civilized ancestors. And what could be more dangerous than hunting for the largest land animal, which in times primitive history Homo sapiens was a mammoth? And besides the danger factor, hunting for mammoths has many interesting moments.

Disputes do not stop: because of people, whether mammoths died out or not

In science, hunting for mammoths is considered, first of all, in the light of resolving the issue of the causes of the extinction of these animals. Since hunting for mammoths by an increasing population of mankind is one of the main options among the hypotheses about the disappearance of these woolly relatives of elephants. And there is no complete clarity on this issue. Initially, the extermination of mammoths by people was considered as the main version - the ice age was ending, the climate was getting milder, the conditions for people's lives were becoming more comfortable, the population of mankind was growing, which means that the need for food and other useful "spare parts" that could be obtained from mammoths also grew. .

Then, taking into account new scientific data, the version was corrected and at present the most common opinion is that mammoths died out as a result of a combination of factors, among which there was also a human, but it was not the main one. Ten or twelve thousand years ago ended ice Age, and warming happened quite quickly, which led to a natural reduction in the habitat of mammoths, accustomed to the cold. In addition, many plants that were part of the diet of mammoths have disappeared, and have now been replaced by more heat-loving competitors. In addition, it is very likely that an epidemic of some disease occurred. All this reduced the population of mammoths and weakened it, and hunting by people became only an additional circumstance of the gradual disappearance of these animals.

Recently, however, a number of experts have again returned to the hypothesis that humans are still to blame for the extinction of mammoths. So far, most scientists do not share this version, which is that people used driven hunting methods, in which many more animals died than humanity needed. The basis of this version is a huge number of mammoth bones found at the sites of primitive people. Critics, however, argue that for the most part these are picked up bones of already dead animals.

Who and why hunted mammoths

The question of who and why hunted mammoths at first glance seems obvious and even stupid - of course, people hunted mammoths and they did it for the sake of meat and animal skins. But not everything is so simple. The fact is that hunting for mammoths, even taking into account the possibility of using driven hunting (setting fire to the steppe and the like), was a dangerous and difficult business. In addition to the fact that it was necessary to drive the mammoth, it was also necessary to kill him. In itself, the task of killing an animal, whose average height was four meters, weight about eight tons, and tusks reached several meters in length, is a difficult task. Especially if you remember that a person of that time had no other tool than spears and arrows with stone tips, which were not easy to get to the skin of a mammoth - since the length of its coarse wool was half a meter, often more.

Therefore, it is unlikely that in primitive times there could be tribes of people who specialized in hunting mammoths. Most likely, these were isolated cases that occurred during those periods when the seasonal migration routes of mammoths passed close to human habitats. Moreover, there were enough other living creatures, the hunting of which was associated with less danger (for example, huge herds of bison). If it was possible to kill one or more mammoths, their meat was harvested for future use, which was quite realistic in a cold climate and frozen soil in which it was possible to dig holes for storing supplies for the winter. As for the large number of mammoth bones found in human sites, it is logical to assume that people collected the bones of dead mammoths. Large bones served as the main building material for dwellings in those natural areas where wood was in short supply; all kinds of tools were made from smaller ones.

Hunting is a dangerous business

There are several assumptions about how hunting for mammoths looked like in practice. First of all, this is the same driven hunt, when, as a result of some source of panic for mammoths (fire, a large group of people, and so on), animals were driven either into a specially arranged trap or to a natural cliff, from which the mammoth fell and broke. True, this option is not very consistent with the practice of hunting elephants, relatives of mammoths. Elephants, although panicked animals, however, in conditions where they have the opportunity to attack the offender or there is no way to retreat, they become furious and attack themselves. It is difficult to judge what was the behavior of mammoths in such situations, but it is unlikely that they were radically different.

There is an assumption that hunting for mammoths was a process extended over time. So, several hunters got as close as possible to the animals and, throwing spears from a distance, inflicted several wounds on the mammoth. Then, for several days, people followed the herd of mammoths, waiting for the moment when the animal, weakened by the loss of blood, would lag behind its relatives. And then already the mammoth sought from a closer distance.

A variant is also proposed, which is based on a rather original idea that mammoths hibernated for a certain time. Allegedly, they could not constantly migrate, at some point they had to wait out the period when there was no food at all, and then they would huddle in groups and fall asleep. And here, according to this version, people came and, as they say, took the mammoths "warm". True, this option of hunting for mammoths is not supported by anything other than assumptions.

Alexander Babitsky

Abridged version

We bring to the attention of readers a chapter from a book that is more than thirty years old. The author wrote it in the early 50s, when only a few people in the world dealt with issues of cryptozoology - scientists and simply enthusiastic people who were not afraid to challenge official science. Therefore, the book of B. Eivelmans had the effect of an exploding bomb in the West. Still would! After all, the scientist and writer told in it about things that simply did not fit in the mind - about the "Bigfoot" and the living dinosaurs of Africa, about the giant sloth of Patagonia and the nightmarish size of the anaconda ... This is in our days, when dozens of books about mythical and mysterious animals, reports about them no longer seem so amazing, and then, in the early 50s, the works of A. Sanderson and Willie Ley, Frank Line and B.F. Porshnev were not yet written ...

In a word, Euvelmans turned out to be the pioneer of the cryptozoological topic in world natural science. Since then, many interesting events have taken place in this area: several species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, not to mention insects, have been found, or rather, rediscovered. Lost worlds of Venezuela discovered. But the agenda remains snowman”, giant reptiles of Africa, sea serpent. And mammoth. It's not yet evening, gentlemen, says B. Eivelmans. More precisely, the 20th century is not over yet!

H Some time ago, the Soviet information service broadcast sensational news to the whole world: live mammoths were seen in Siberia!

However, this information did not find a wide response in the press - apparently, the topic was considered somewhat outdated. Indeed, how many times these mammoths have already surfaced on the pages of the press!

But the attention of scientists was again riveted to the Far North, where for more than half a century there have been eyewitnesses who claim to have seen a living mammoth...

What do the Eskimos say?

Science once came close to accepting the hypothesis that mammoths actually existed: in 1899, a San Francisco daily newspaper published an article in all seriousness that the Eskimos of Alaska were too aware of the famous furry elephants - as to their appearance. as well as about morals. The traveler who sent the article was surprised to find among the Eskimos a weapon made of walrus tusks, on which images of a furry colossus with long curved tusks were carved. Moreover, the drawing was made relatively recently!

The version that the image of the animal was passed on unchanged from generation to generation for 20-25 thousand years, that is, from the time when mammoths supposedly disappeared, seemed too implausible.

IN specified place a scientific commission immediately left - they did not meet mammoths there, but confirmed the traveler's message. The bone weapon was taken for examination, which determined that it was made recently. When researchers asked the Eskimos where the woolly elephants lived, they pointed them towards the icy desert to the northwest.

Maybe they just wanted to show the place where their ancestors once hunted mammoths? If so, then mammoths must have disappeared quite recently. The radiocarbon method, which was used to study archaeological finds, made it possible to accurately establish that the Eskimos settled in the American Far North no more than a thousand years ago.

Or maybe the legends about furry giants came to them from distant Siberia? In any case, the Eskimos give such details about mammoths that science can only establish with the help of comparative analysis.

They live underground!

In Scandinavia, we will come across a slightly modified legend: the Laplanders living in the Far North firmly believe in the existence of furry giants. But they live, according to these people, under the eternal snows of the Great North.

And throughout Siberia to the Bering Strait, there are beliefs about shaggy underground colossi.

So among the Eskimos inhabiting the Asian coast of the strait, the mammoth is known under the name "Kilu kruk", that is, "a whale named Kilu." According to legend, this whale quarreled with sea monster Aglu was thrown onto land, but turned out to be too heavy and sank into the ground. Since then, he has settled under the permafrost, where he digs his powerful tusks.

Among the Chukchi, who occupy the most extreme northeastern part of Siberia, the mammoth personifies the carrier evil spirit. He lives underground, in narrow passages - corridors. When a person encounters tusks sticking out of the ground, he should immediately dig them out. Then the sorcerer will lose his power. They say that one day several Chukchi saw two fangs peeping out of the ground. They acted according to the precepts of their ancestors - and dug up a whole mammoth along with the fangs. Throughout the winter, their tribe ate mammoth.

The Yukaghirs, whose possessions stretch beyond the Arctic Circle from the Lena Delta to the Kolyma, mention in their legends the mammoth under the name "Kholkhut". Some local shamans believe that the giant's spirit is the guardian of souls. So a shaman who has been possessed by the spirit of a mammoth is incomparably stronger than an ordinary shaman.

“Based on this information,” wrote Waldemar Jochelson at the beginning of the century, who brought northern legends to us, “we can assume that once mammoths lived simultaneously with people.”

According to Yokhelson, who led Ryabushinsky's expedition to Kamchatka, the Aleutian, Commander and Kuril Islands, the Yukaghirs did not record the fact of the disappearance of furry monsters in their legends. They simply believe that the exorbitant weight of the giants did not allow them to survive in the wetlands. It is noteworthy that many scientists adhere to this point of view.

To the south, among the Yakuts and Ustyaks, as well as among the Koryaks inhabiting the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, one can hear legends about a certain giant rat, which is called "Mamantu", that is, "the one that lives underground." She is said to be intolerant of daylight. As soon as she emerges from the ground, thunder rumbles and lightning flashes. These giant rats are allegedly the cause of tremors and earthquakes.

The Kamchadals in Kamchatka have preserved only echoes of these legends. Here you can hear about a fairy-tale character named Tuyla, who rides underground on a dog sled. When he returns to his house, his dog Kozey shakes off the snow - that's why there is increased seismicity in those areas!

In Mongolia, the ghost of a hairy elephant named Tai-Shu can still be found in local legends. In the book "Se-chu", or "Four Volumes on the Philosophy of Morals and Politics of China", a shaggy monster with tiny eyes and a short tail is mentioned, which digs tunnels in the snow with fangs.

In the encyclopedic treatise "The World of Animals", the authorship of which is attributed to Quang Chi, the first emperor of the Manchu dynasty (1662-1723), one can also find an echo of Siberian legends: yenshu", or "mother mouse". In the book "Mirror of the Manchu language" it is called the "rat of ice." This is a huge, elephant-like animal that lives only underground and dies as soon as it appears above and touches the sun's rays.

The writer-emperor adds a few prosaic details to this information: “Fengshu come across that weigh up to 10 thousand pounds. Their teeth look like elephant tusks: northern peoples make dishes, combs, knife handles, etc. from them. I saw with my own eyes these teeth and products made from them. Therefore, I believe the stories about "Feng Shu" found in our old books.

“The Mirror of the Manchurian Language” reports surprisingly accurate information about mammoths: “The rat of ice and glaciers lives deep in the north, under eternal snows. Its meat can be eaten. Its coat is several feet long. It can be used to weave carpets that do not allow damp air to pass through.

From Northern Elephant to Baron Kagg's Supercow

But let's return to Siberia, where local residents not only can talk about mammoths, but also show their huge tusks, reaching five meters in length and weighing more than 200 kilograms, on occasion.

The trade in mammoth tusks has long flourished in Siberia. At the beginning of this century, their export only from the Yakutsk region reached an average of 152 pairs per year. Over the previous two centuries, only registered tusks from more than 25,000 animals were exported from this area. And from all of Siberia, if we proceed from the amount of taxes indicated in the customs books, - from 60 thousand mammoths. This is not counting the leakage of valuable material at an earlier time.

The mention of mammoth bone is found in the Chinese chronicle, even before our era. And in the 9th century, the Arabs, who succeeded in various types of trade, put its sale on a grand scale. They bought tusks from the Bulgars on the Volga and took them to Europe, where they sold them as ivory. Clever merchants passed them off as the horn of the mythical narwhal and sold them literally for their weight in gold.

The delight of buyers subsided only in 1611, when English traveler J. Logan allegedly brought to London the tusk of an elephant, which he acquired in Russia.

"In Russia? It's impossible!" cried his compatriots. They were well aware that elephants are found only in Africa and India. Of course, their remains are also found in Europe, but these are none other than Hannibal's elephants...

But J. Logan stood his ground. He claimed to have bought the tusk from a Samoyed near the mouth of the Pechora River, which flows into the Barents Sea.

At the end of the 17th century, Logan's words were confirmed by the report of the Dutch diplomat Evert Ide, who was sent to China by Peter the Great. There, in 1692, he had heard stories that in the north of Siberia, bones and giant fangs of animals called mammoths were sometimes found. One Russian told him that he himself found the frozen parts of this animal in the Yenisei region.

But unusual stories, which the indigenous people told about these mole-like creatures, did not inspire confidence in European naturalists. In the end, the scientists decided that this was an unusual animal that had a distant relation to elephants, but, like him, had valuable tusks. So walruses entered the scene. Without a doubt, the remains of these huge pinnipeds, reaching a length of 5 meters (fangs - up to 60 centimeters!), And were mistaken by travelers for the bones of elephants! True, the tusk of a walrus is not as huge as the tusk of a mammoth, but walruses can often be found along the northern coasts.

The confusion was further aggravated by the fact that the Russian merchants who exported the tusks called them "Mammoth bone" and not "tusk" or "teeth". They themselves were misled by the Yukaghirs, the main suppliers of this raw material, who called it “holhutonmun”, that is, “horn” and even “log” of a mammoth. This does not mean that they did not represent the structure of the mammoth: they called tusks "horns growing from the mouth." As for the "logs", they apparently seemed to the northerners the most suitable subject for comparison with thick curved tusks, which, in their opinion, had nothing to do with teeth.

However, this was not the most egregious case of delusion, as evidenced by the story described in the scientific work of Willy Ley "Dragons in Amber":
“In 1772, a Swedish scientist and officer, Baron Kagg, colonel of the royal cavalry, being a prisoner of war, ended up in Siberia. His partner, also a prisoner, devoted all his free time to collecting information about famous giant, the owner of an expensive bone. One day he met a Russian who told him that he was familiar with this animal and agreed to draw it. The partner gave the drawing to Kagg to send it to Sweden, where this masterpiece is still kept in the Lenkoping library. It is difficult to say whether that Russian, who depicted a cow with claws and horns twisted with a corkscrew, believed in the truth of his drawing, or whether he wanted to play a trick on his former enemy ... "

Willie Lay remarks with irony:
“Baron Kagg himself sincerely believed the drawing. What can not be said about scientists.

Unexpected appearance of hippopotamus and woolly rhinoceros

While European scientists were puzzling over the riddle, the only clue in which could be considered a tusk brought by J. Logan, the Russians were taking concrete steps. Deciding to unravel the mystery, Peter the Great sent to Siberia a German naturalist, who enjoyed considerable trust and authority, Dr. D. G. Messerschmidt. He was instructed to continue exploring the vast expanses of Siberia and at the same time pay due attention to the search for the mysterious digging elephant.

During the trip, the researcher learned that not far from Indigirka, they found the corpse of a mammoth, exposed from under the ice. The scientist arrived at the place when most of the carcass had already been taken by wolves. Messerschmidt got only the skeleton of a monster, as well as a piece of skin covered with long hair, reminiscent of a goat.

Alas! Comparative anatomy was still too poorly developed in those early years. The venerable scholar concluded without hesitation that the remains belonged to "the animal referred to in the Bible as 'Behemoth'."

Fortunately, few people were impressed by this "discovery".

In 1771, another find was made, which added a rhinoceros to the list of suspected animals. The well-known German naturalist and naturalist Peter Simon Pallas, traveling through Siberia at the expense of Catherine the Great, discovered on one of the tributaries of the Lena an incomplete skeleton of an unknown animal, covered with the remains of the skin of an unknown animal. The skin was covered with thick and long dark brown hair. As the scientist correctly established, the skeleton could not belong to the legendary mammoth, it belonged to a rhinoceros.

Researchers who did not believe in Siberian elephants had to admit the existence of a woolly rhinoceros in the Far North - two-horned, with nostrils separated by a septum. Now paleontological works began to appear in Europe, in which it was mentioned that the ancestors of modern rhinos once lived here.

Recall that in the Middle Ages, when scientists had to dig up the fossilized bones of dinosaurs preserved in European clays or gravels, it was generally accepted that they belonged to giant people- Titans and Atlantes. To this day, “dragon bones” are kept in churches. elephant tusks were mistaken for the horns of another fairy-tale hero - the narwhal.

In 1799, John Friedrich Blumenbach of the University of Göttingen solemnly announced that there used to be elephants in Europe that did not look like modern elephants. Those tusks were bizarrely bent. You recognized them, of course: the scientist meant our mammoths!

But the famous German zoologist, well aware of the woolen cover of the extinct elephant, did not guess to compare it with the legendary mole-like giant, which the Siberians called the mammoth. He christened the animal, whose skeleton was painstakingly assembled from bones found both in churches and in quarries, Elephas primigenius. This name was not successful, since mammoths were a very isolated group of animals, very different from modern elephants.

preserved mammoth

Around the same time that Blumenbach shocked the Western world with his discovery, one of his favorites appeared in the flesh before the eyes of a modest Evenk mammoth ivory miner named Osip Chumakov. The animal was located in a block of ice not far from the Lena delta and probably looked rather ominous, since, having stumbled upon it, the Evenk began to run as fast as he could. For according to legend, the mammoth had an evil eye.

However, driven by curiosity, Osip came every spring to visit his beast. One day he saw that a piece of a tusk appeared from the ice. For a mammoth bone miner, this was too strong a temptation. The poor fellow tried several times to gouge a valuable tusk from under the ice, but each time he was afraid that the monster would wake up from pain and break out.

Frozen colossi have long been rumored formidable. Even Jochelson caught their echoes. “Going out to the Sea of Okhotsk in the area of the Kolyma River,” he wrote, “I spent the night on the shores of Lake Kememnan (Mammoth Lake). When I asked where the name of the lake came from, they told me that once a family of Evenk nomads stopped for the night on its shore. Waking up in the morning, they saw a pair of mammoth tusks sticking out of the snow not far from the parking lot. Terrified, they jumped on the sled and sped off, but at the next parking lot, everyone died, with the exception of one boy.

Osip, who knew many impressive stories about furry giants, was so worried that one fine day he fell ill and decided that his last hour had come.

Fortunately, at that time there was a Russian merchant named Boltunov in the village, who, sensing a good deal, quickly brought the superstitious Evenk back to life. He painted before Osip's eyes a picture of a profitable enterprise, promising him that if he took him to the frozen mammoth, he himself would take the trouble to gouge the tusks from under the ice. In anticipation of the harvest, Osip quickly recovered. Two companions managed to safely free the animal's tusks. Having given the Evenk 50 rubles, Boltunov became the owner of the booty.

The Russian merchant not only took the tusks with him, but also made a drawing from life, which eventually ended up with Blumenbach.

Of course, the animal in the drawing bore little resemblance to an elephant. Moreover, before the appearance of Boltunov, the carcass was attacked by hungry wolves, and under the pressure of ice it was fancifully deformed, the skin was torn, the tusks turned out to the sides. But Blumenbach easily recognized him as his Elephas primigenius. It was enough for him to look at one of the teeth of the animal, carefully sketched by the merchant. The German scientist immediately published the drawing with the comment:
"Elephas primigenius", called in Russia a mammoth, dug together with skin and wool in 1806 at the mouth of the Lena River near arctic ocean. The drawing was made from life, the remains of the animal are depicted as they were found, that is, damaged and partially ruined.

Inspired by the news of the almost preserved mammoth, a Russian scientist, Professor Adams, got ready for the journey. He wanted to see the remains with his own eyes and make the necessary observations. Unfortunately, the famous botanist was outstripped by wolves, foxes and wolverines, as well as the Yakuts, who fed their dogs with fossil meat.

However, the skeleton itself was well preserved, it lacked only one leg. Three-quarters of the animal's skin was preserved, covered with reddish and brown hair, which reached a length of 70 centimeters on the neck. The thickness of the skin in some places exceeded 2 centimeters. Ten people could hardly lift the find. Adams carefully packed all the parts of the priceless fossil and even sifted the ground scattered around him, collecting 17 kilograms of mammoth wool. With the greatest precautions, the relics were transported to St. Petersburg and sold to the Kunstkamera for 8,000 rubles. These remains can still be seen in the Zoological Museum of the city.

Portrait of a shaggy colossus

The discovery of a frozen mammoth led to a series of similar discoveries in various places northern Siberia, between the Ob and the Bering Strait. Constant erosion erodes the clay-ice graves where these giants sleep.

In April 1901, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences was informed by the governor of Yakutsk about a new find - a perfectly preserved mammoth was discovered, frozen into ice on the banks of the Berezovka, one of the tributaries of the Kolyma. The tsar personally donated 16,000 rubles to the academy, with which an expedition was immediately equipped under the leadership of the head of the zoological department, Dr. Otto Hertz. This time, the famous butterfly hunter was on his way for bigger prey!

Wolves and other predators did not have time to get ahead of the researchers. The thawed part of the corpse began to decompose, so the burial exuded a characteristic smell.

Among the participants of the expedition was a young German scientist E.V.Pfitzenmayer. This thirty-two-year-old paleontologist has long dreamed of digging out of the depths of the earth prehistoric monster, and fate gave him such an opportunity. It was not just a surviving fragment of skin and a pile of bones that had to be cleaned and processed: Pfitzenmayer had the good fortune to dissect the untouched flesh of a huge beast, to thoroughly understand its anatomy. Subsequently, his work on the study of mammoths was recognized throughout the scientific world, and he was appointed curator of the Tiflis Museum, where he lived until 1917: then the scientist returned to his homeland in Wurtenberg.

The specimen found on the Berezovka River served as the reason for determining the scientific name of the Siberian mammoths. He was named Elephas berezkius.

The whole body of the mammoth, extracted from the permafrost, was covered with reddish-yellow wool. In some places it was black and reached from 30 to 70 centimeters in length. Probably, earlier its color was black and reddish, but changed over time.

The tail of the animal was short. A curious detail: at the base, he had a special skin fold to protect against the cold of the anus.

Saved from frost and subcutaneous fat layer up to 9 centimeters thick. In addition, the animal carried two fatty outgrowths on its head and neck: they served it, like camels, as a source of food in times of famine.

The researchers were struck by how much the appearance of a mammoth resembled that of an Asian elephant. Especially with his hunchback, small ears and concave forehead.

Blood samples were taken from the subcutaneous vessels of the animal and carefully examined. The results of the analysis irrefutably proved that mammoths are related to Indian elephants.

Since we are talking about elephants, let's try to find out the true growth of mammoths. Looking at illustrations for textbooks and other books, one might think that mammoths reached 6 meters in height. But Siberian mammoth never exceeded a height of 3 meters at the withers, it was even lower than modern Indian elephants (recall, African elephants reach a height of 3 meters 70 centimeters at the withers). But if we take into account that the body of mammoths was covered with long hair, and by winter impressive growths grew on the head and neck, then one can imagine what mountains of wool and meat they seemed to be!

Now we even know what the giants ate. Pfitzenmeier dissected the contents of the monster's stomach - 12 kilograms of chewed, but not digested food. Botanists were able to determine the animal's usual diet: it consisted of larch, pine and spruce needles, seasoned with sage and wild thyme, as well as pine cones, moss, alpine poppy and buttercups. Further analysis established that the food of Siberian elephants was also dwarf willow and birch, alder, poplar, various types of reed and grass vegetation.

In a word, in their stomachs one could find everything edible that grew in those days in the tundra and forest-tundra.

When did mammoths disappear? And why?

It would seem that well-preserved finds obviously prove the existence of mammoths at the present time, as the peoples living in the far North believe in this. But science categorically refutes this hypothesis. Cuvier, who contributed to the unprecedented rise of paleontology, convinced European scientists of the 19th century that mammoths, whose remains are found everywhere from North America to Siberia, inclusive, are an extinct group. The evolutionary doctrine of the development of the animal world ruled out the possibility of preserving an animal whose entire genus had long since died out. Thus, the bodies of mammoths, even if their meat was still suitable for food, must have been in a frozen state from 10 to 100 millennia!

In 1864, Edouard Lartete, who can rightfully be considered the founder of human paleontology, dug up an ivory blade in the area of La Madeleine, on which the design of a mammoth was clearly engraved.

This magnificent specimen ancient art accepted at the Academy of Sciences for a fake. The figure clearly shows the supraoccipital fat hump, which those who allegedly forged it could not know about. The trouble was that at that time scientists did not know about the existence of the hump. It became known, as we have already said, several decades later.

Since then, two facts have been established. First, woolly elephants once occupied vast territories in Europe, Asia and North America. Secondly, they were contemporaries of man. This was confirmed by the drawings discovered in France in the Dordogne caves, where before the eyes of the researchers appeared such carefully written images of mammoths that there was no doubt: they were made from life. But if mammoths disappeared from Europe, and man remained, then the universality of Cuvier's law, according to which a complete change species composition fauna occurs as a result of major natural disasters.

If some great flood or earthquake was not the reason for the disappearance of shaggy elephants, then what was the reason for their death?

Science has established that mammoths appeared in the Far North later than in Central and Western Europe. This is quite understandable, considering climatic conditions which are known to have undergone significant changes.

Siberian tigers have longer coats than Bengals, and Alaskan grizzlies have warmer coats than their Malaysian counterparts. Long hair, of course, is one of the main adaptations for existence in cold conditions. In the same way, it is no coincidence that the hairiness of mammoths contrasts with the almost bare skin of African and Indian elephants.

If mammoths once lived in the vast territories of North America and Europe, then this is because in those days there was a lower temperature than today. Modern research has shown that the glaciers that today cover the mountains of Scandinavia in that era extended throughout northern Europe. It was they who turned the once flourishing region, filled with animals that now live in the tropics, into the Siberian tundra.

The remains of mammoths and woolly rhinos with nostrils separated by a septum, found in Europe, correspond to the last period of glaciation, which ended, according to scientists, about 12 thousand years ago.

It is quite logical to assume that mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses followed the receding glacier northward, which provided them with much-needed coolness.

But if cold-loving animals left their former pastures, which gradually began to be covered with dense forests, this does not mean that inevitable death awaited them in the expanses of Siberia. After all, their favorite climate reigns there to this day!

What killed the giants?

Scientists puzzled over what caused the death of a huge number of animals that were not only well adapted to the cold, but also preferred it to a warm climate. Maybe they were swept into the sea by a flash flood caused by the melting of glaciers? But he could not destroy all the animals on several continents at once.

In search of an answer to this question, the French zoologist Neuville questioned the frost resistance of mammoths. Were they really so well protected from the cold, as it seems when looking at their thick woolen cover? Did the cold cause their death? They must have experienced an incredible cold snap if their frozen bodies could survive to this day!

In their stomachs, we can find plant particles that could not develop in a too harsh climate. Maybe we don't know about a sudden wave of cold air that killed the main vegetation, leaving large animals without food?

No, Neville replies. This could not have happened in such a vast space. In addition, the stomachs of the found mammoths are usually full of food, and the layer of subcutaneous fat is thick enough to indicate the onset of a hungry period.

It seems that the disappearance of the giants was not caused by external factors. Neville began to carefully study the skin of mammoths and compare it with the skin of modern elephants. He concluded that they were identical. In particular, neither one nor the other has sweat and sebaceous glands (Now these data are questioned. Ed.). But in the absence of fat treatment, thick mammoth wool ceases to be a warm fur coat. Rain and snow can easily penetrate through it, turning it into an ice crust.

Neuville also observed that the famous tusks were nearly circular in shape, making them useless as weapons; on the contrary, they only weighed down the animal.

In addition, the legs of the giants were “shod” in powerful horny growths, which, according to the scientist, made the movements of mammoths awkward and slow.

In short, the disappearance of mammoths was the result of a gradual but steady degeneration. They were unsuitable for severe frosts and had other shortcomings in the structure of the body. Such was the opinion of the famous zoologist.

To me, perhaps, none of Neville's arguments seems convincing.

On the one hand, the permeability of a fur coat should be more than compensated by a powerful fatty layer, which, as you know, is an excellent protection against the cold. In addition, the presence, as we have already noted, of a special skin fold at the base of the tail speaks of fairly advanced mechanisms for protection from icy air. Finally, one can ask the question: did the horny growths, on the contrary, help our heavyweights to walk on viscous soil and deep snow?

However, the objection can be quite simple: if the mammoths were so oppressed by the cold, why did they not stay in Europe after the retreat of the glaciers? They didn't have to run away from warming to freeze in Siberia!

The argument, according to which the weapons of mammoths have turned into a useless load, is completely refutable: for example, it is known that elephants, defending themselves with tusks, try not to pierce, but to knock down the enemy. And for this, rounded tusks are quite suitable.

Have they really disappeared?

The most popular hypothesis today claims that the mammoths died as a result of the disaster. Was it not an accident that killed the mammoth Berezovka? The study found a fracture of one of the paws and the pelvis. Obviously, the woolly elephant took a wrong step and fell off a cliff covered in recent snowfall. Wallowing in a landslide, he caused a new avalanche of snow, which buried him forever.

Couldn't such accidents become widespread under certain conditions? For example, during the retreat of the glacier, many gullies appeared, hidden and obvious, lying in wait for giants.

But is it possible to seriously consider the cause of the extinction of an entire species to be such a rare event for an animal as a fall from a steep? On the contrary, animals instinctively try to avoid suspicious places. It is unlikely that mammoths, going to new territories in order to survive, would blindly rush from the slopes.

Elk, reindeer, wolverine, polar fox and lemming lived side by side with mammoths during the glaciation, and with them the musk ox and Przewalski's horse. All of them found refuge in Siberia and Alaska. Why were mammoths an exception?

Most scientists agree that they could have survived until very recent times. So? Why couldn't a small part of them have survived somewhere in the lands of the Yakuts and Yukaghirs?

In science, much often depends on how the question to which we are looking for an answer is posed. Until now, we have tried to answer the question: do mammoths live in the tundra today, and if not, why did they become extinct? But why exactly in the tundra? Just because their remains are found only among the swampy plains? However, this does not prove that mammoths did not live elsewhere. After all, if the remains of monkeys and lions are found in Europe, this does not mean that these animals did not live anywhere else.

It is likely that the taiga used to extend much further north than it does today, just where most of the remains of mammoths are found.

However, the fact that the mammoth is primarily a taiga animal, and not a tundra animal, is confirmed by the contents of their stomachs. In the tundra, the main vegetation is moss. But the diet of the giants, as we found out, was much more diverse. We also found out that their skin was devoid of sebaceous glands, but at the same time it turned out to be provided with a fatty layer. That is, the animal was poorly protected from rain and snow, but tolerated the cold well. It turns out that the forest landscape, where the dense crowns of conifers provide good shelter from rain and snow, was preferable for mammoths.

The monster was seen alive

In this vast forest of birch and conifers, crossed by numerous rivers, mammoths would find ideal living conditions for themselves. Why did they need to leave these satisfying and safe places to reign among the icy desert?

If my assumption is correct, is it possible to assume that shaggy giants still roam the taiga expanses? Of course! Taiga is the longest forest in the world. Most of it is completely unexplored. Mammoths can roam it with no hope of ever meeting a human.

But surely the local tribes occasionally managed to see mammoths. If readers treat the testimonies of these peoples cut off from civilization with distrust, then for them we have reserved the story of two Russian hunters who in 1920 met traces of a huge beast at the edge of the forest. It happened between the rivers Chistaya and Taz (the area between the Ob and the Yenisei). Oval in shape, the tracks were from 60 to 70 centimeters long and about 50 wide. The animal placed its front legs four meters from its hind legs. Heaps of manure, coming across from time to time, testified to the powerful size of the beast.

Excited hunters followed these tracks. In the forest, they noticed branches broken off at a height of three meters. After several days of chasing, they finally met two monsters, which they observed from a distance of about 300 meters. Animals had a brown color, long hair; moved slowly. The hunters could make out the bent tusks.

In favor of this evidence is the fact that the events took place where the mammoth "was not customary" to meet. Deceivers usually choose the most reliable details for their stories. The traditional image of the mammoth is confined to the snowy desert or tundra - this is how it is depicted in all scientific works and textbooks. Although, in my opinion, this is the most unnatural habitat for furry colossi.

Maybe in winter, when there was nothing to eat in the taiga, the mammoths went out into the tundra in search of reindeer moss? It was there that they fell into insidious traps, like a frozen swamp.

I hope that Russian specialists who study mammoths will eventually come to the same conclusions as I do. Interest in these animals does not weaken, expedition after expedition follows the places of finds. Some of them are not directed to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, but to the Ob and its tributaries.

In conclusion, let us recall that the famous conqueror of Siberia, Ermak Timofeevich, mentioned a meeting among Ural mountains with hairy elephant. This "mountain of meat" was considered by the locals, according to the Cossack, as a symbol of the wealth of their country...

Bernard Euvelmans | Translated from French by Pavel Trannua

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