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In Praise of the Mammoth
by Elizabeth Barrette, Managing Editor

The old she-mammoth sunk to her knees, tried once to rise up, then fell over on her side. Her trunk rose once more in an effort to cry a warning, then slowly, almost gracefully, dropped to the ground. Brecie touched a spear to the head of the valiant old cow, praised her brave struggle, and thanked the Great Mother for the sacrifice which allowed Earth's Children to survive.1

For thousands of years, we walked together, humans and mammoths - and now we humans walk on alone. Yet we remember the majesty of the mammoths, passed down to us in art and legend by our ancestors. We have even rediscovered these creatures for ourselves, excavating their preserved remains from tarpits and permafrost. Today, the very word "mammoth" summons up not just an image of the animal itself but of an entire age, the Ice Age, and all that went with it. The mere mention serves to transport our minds back to the time of our ancestors. Is it any wonder that a primal shiver of excitement races down our spines when we think of mammoths?

I have always loved mammoths. They move through my life as they once moved through the frozen landscape: suddenly appearing through the veils of snow, only to disappear again a short while later. I never know when their spirit will touch me next or what form it will take. In early encounters, I mostly met mammoths through books, reading about them and looking at pictures. There used to be only fragmentary information available; today, whole books exist on the topic. The evocative writing of Jean M. Auel's prehistoric novels captured my attention as firmly as the archeological articles.

During high school, I attended a wonderful summer camp called Ancient Lifeways. The land included a small cave, part of an abandoned quarry. Our guide led us up there to learn traditional skills, which included flint knapping and cave painting. Two figures adorned the wall, a bison and a mammoth, neither complete at the time I visited. Cave painting takes a lot of work! It took me half an hour to color a couple tablespoons of linseed oil by rubbing a chunk of red ochre through it; then the resulting red paint quickly soaked into the limestone walls and did not go very far. Yet I thrilled to feel the slick paint and the rough stone under my fingertips as I added my strokes to the image. I got the distinct impression of the mammoth slowly emerging from the stone wall, not so much created as summoned by our work. As we sat in that cave and listened to stories told by firelight, the paintings truly seemed to move. It gave me a new and deeper understanding of the mammoth's power.

I have also managed to acquire a couple of mammoth artifacts. The first was a tiny Goddess figure hung as a pendant. She had a rich ivory color over most of her body, with brown spots on Her nipples and buttocks. I delighted in having something every bit as traditional as the famous Venus figures in museums! One stormy winter night, in the middle of particularly arduous drive homeward through a blizzard, She left me - untying a very secure double square knot in a leather thong and slipping off into the snow. An act of protection, I like to think, since we made it home safely. Another example is more of a collector's item, a sample of mammoth hair sealed in a display placket. This includes both the soft, gingery undercoat and the coarse, darker guard hairs from a mammoth found in Taimyr, Siberia. I keep this one on my altar. In both cases I felt drawn to the power of these objects, a combination of great age, natural origin, and - in the case of the Goddess icon - human artistry honoring the Divine.
So when we decided to present a PanGaia theme on prehistoric matters, naturally my thoughts turned to mammoths and their connection to our earliest cultural and spiritual explorations.

When Mammoths Lived
Mammoths belong to the order Proboscidea, as do modern elephants. Relevant members include the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), the dwarf mammoth (Mammuthus exilis), and the American mastodon (Mammut americanum).2 Each species had its own particular niche; they lived in different regions and habitats, with a little overlap.
The woolly mammoth spanned most of northern Europe and Asia, crossed over the land bridge at Beringia, and extended into North America; they evolved in Europe about 250,000 years ago and lasted until around 10,000 years ago. Perfectly adapted to the cold, they had tiny ears and a dense coat.3 They stood ten to twelve feet tall and weighed six to eight tons. Their strong grinding teeth allowed them to eat grass, and their northerly habitat sometimes overlapped the southerly Columbian mammoths in America.4 The trunk ended in a pair of long, agile "fingers" which could grasp objects delicately or firmly.5 Humans had substantial contact with this species.

The Columbian mammoth lived only in North America, from what is now Mexico nearly to the Canadian border. They reached up to thirteen feet tall, weighing around ten tons. Though probably not as shaggy as their northern relatives, they had the same impressive tusks.6 Humans had a good deal of contact with this species too. The peculiar dwarf mammoth is an offshoot of the Columbian mammoth, formed when populations became isolated on the California Channel Islands. These lived between 30,000 and 12,000 years ago; they only stood four to six feet high and weighed about one ton.7

The American mastodon lived in North America from about 3.75 million to
10,000 years ago. They weighed four to six tons, standing about eight to ten feet tall at the shoulder. Their cone-shaped teeth suggest that they were browsers, feeding on trees and shrubs rather than on grass like the mammoths.8 Although often confused with each other, mastodons are actually different from mammoths; I mention them here for contrast and clarification.

We can deduce how mammoths lived from fossil evidence and from studying their nearest living relatives, the elephants. Although mammoths ate mainly grasses and sedges, they supplemented their diet with other plants and would sometimes strip the bark from trees and knock down the trunks to reach tender leaves.9 Wear and tear on the ivory suggests that mammoths used their tusks for such things as feeding, breaking ice, and fighting.10 Woolly mammoths probably lived as long as elephants, about sixty years; Columbian mammoths may have lived longer than eighty years.11

Like modern elephants, mammoths lived in family groups consisting of a matriarch, her female relatives, and their offspring; males left the herd after reaching maturity at ten to twelve years. Other members of the herd would care for a sick or injured individual, even adopting a calf if the mother died.12 Some evidence suggests that mammoths may have shared elephants' trait of remaining with their dead for up to several days, sometimes even burying the carcass with leaves or soil.13

We do not know for certain why mammoths died out. The latest remains date from about 10,000 years ago. This coincides with two trends at that time: changing climate and human predation. While some theorists prefer an exclusive model of habitat loss or overhunting, many today believe that the combination caused the extinction.14 The climate theory argues that warming after the end of the Ice Age transformed the lush steppes into forests and tundra, unsuitable mammoth habitats.15 The predation theory argues that humans, growing rapidly in both numbers and hunting prowess, put more stress on the mammoths than the herds could sustain.16 However, computer models argue convincingly for a combined effect.17 What relationship, then, did our ancestors have with the mammoths?

Mammoths and Our Ancestors
Across much of Europe, Asia, and North America humans mingled with mammoths. Among the best-known evidence of this are the cave paintings in France, Spain, and Russia which date from about 30,000 to 10,000 years ago. Artists made paint from minerals like red ochre or black manganese dioxide, probably mixed with cave water, animal fat, or plant oil.18 In southwest America, petroglyphs depict mammoths or mastodons.19 Artists rendered these animals with varying degrees of skill and detail. Many images show the mammoth's hair, the trunk "fingers," and the tiny ears; others show groups of mammoths, even their interactions with each other. A few scenes also show or suggest humans hunting mammoths. Given the amount of effort required to create artwork with such primal materials, our ancestors clearly had very special feelings about these creatures.
People also carved mammoth ivory and bone into various objects. Tools include a spear-thrower, spatulas, and cleavers. Ornaments include bracelets and beads. There are even musical instruments such as a mammoth-skull drum and a femur xylophone.20 Some of these items bore the mammoth's image as well as coming from its substance. "When we find Magdalenian dagger-handles carved to represent charging mammoths or scampering deer, it may be inferred that their owners believed that these possessed the strength and prestige of the one animal and the swiftness and sureness of the other." 21

Mammoths played a key role in the spiritual life of at least some humans. A grave at Sungir in Russia holds the remains of two children - and hundreds of mammoth artifacts including beads, a spoked wheel, and a staff of straightened ivory. Then there are the famous "Venus" figures, many of them made from mammoth ivory. These icons depict females with exaggerated breasts, bellies, and buttocks; yet they almost never show facial features. The head is just a knob, sometimes carved to suggest braids all the way around. Some have been found in ceremonial settings.22 Of all the artifacts, these hold great meaning for many contemporary Pagans.

Some people lived in shelters built primarily from mammoth parts, for instance at Mezhirich in the Ukraine. Skulls, jaws, vertebrae, and other bones formed the framework. Animal hides covered the structure, held down with more bones. Tusks formed doorways and arches. Although some of the components may have come from hunting, the builders probably scavenged others from floodplains or similar natural collections of mammoth remains.23 The book Past Worlds shows an interesting reconstruction of one such shelter, along with a map of human dwellings, burials, and other sites from the Upper Paleolithic period.24

Evidence shows that humans did hunt mammoths. The question is how many tribes did this, and how much. At Naco in Arizona, excavation revealed Clovis spearpoints lodged in vital areas of a mammoth skeleton.25 At Lehringen in Germany, a shattered wooden spear pierced the ribs of a Palaeoloxodon antiquus, a straight-tusked elephant; this suggests a very early human success at killing proboscideans, as the site dates to 125,000 years ago.26 Other finds suggest that humans may have used pitfalls or driven mammoth herds over cliffs.27 Another map in Past Worlds indicates mammoth kill sites in America.28

Thomas R. Holme offers this view of Paleolithic hunting: "The woolly mammoths shed their wool once a year leaving the two foot long strands in piles against trees and among shrubs and brush. Humans covered themselves with pieces of this abundant wool and stealthily crept up on herds. (Thousands of years of such mammoth hair covering no doubt evolved into the first clothing.) ... Covered in mammoth wool the hunters would appear the size of young mammoths and could get very close to their prey. In every way the human's hunting skills more refined and their blades and axes became sharper." 29 This argues not just for sustained hunting which hastened or caused the mammoth's extinction, it also draws a close connection between humans and mammoths culturally.

For whatever reason, eventually the mammoths did disappear. Their passing left a deep void for our ancestors. If there ever were people who relied on mammoths the way the Lakota Sioux later relied on the buffalo - they were no more, forced to find other sustenance as their favored source dwindled and died out. Although signs of human religion predate the mammoth's extinction by a long way, that extinction may have added some extra kick to our ancient yearning to understand and connect with the Divine. Boria Sax puts it this way:

Religious changes accompanied environmental ones. The varieties of animals depicted on the walls of caves, animals like the mammoth, eventually became extinct or rare. The memory of their size, power, habits and appearance surely persisted in oral traditions, after they could no longer be observed. This left the attributes of the great mammals, themselves no longer present, to be claimed by either deities or human beings. Religion, then, developed partly in response to a sense of disorientation due to massive environmental changes, such as the end of the Ice Age. Through divine images human beings were able to bridge the vast gulf between experience and memory.30

Perhaps this explains why, even today, the mammoth holds such power for us- why its name and shape so readily evoke an entire time and climate. Somehow, we remember them, and we miss them. Somehow, we wish that we could touch them one more time.

Mammoths in Contemporary Literature
With humans being avid storytellers, a favorite way of connecting with mammoths comes to us through fiction. The passage at the top of this article comes from one of the most popular books in print today, Jean M. Auel's The Mammoth Hunters. Her "Earth's Children" series has been translated into dozens of different languages and published in countries all over the globe. In this book we read about the Mamutoi, whose name means Mammoth Hunters, and who base their culture and lifestyle around their greatest prey even though they also hunt other animals. Auel drew her inspiration for this from a diversity of archeological finds including a mammoth-skull drum from Mezhirich and a mammoth-ivory goddess figure from Kostienki, both in the Ukraine. The story is beautiful and uplifting, the mammoths treated with great reverence.

"Mall-mall!" Prem Chand shouted. Behind him, he heard Paul Tilak give Hannibal the same command, and emphasize it with a whack of the elephant goad. The hairy elephants surged forward as far as their harness would allow.31

Harry Turtledove took a completely different approach. He imagined a world in which Homo erectus crossed the Siberian land bridge to the Americas- but Homo sapiens did not, and only discovered the place during the age of exploration. Less efficient as hunters, the "sims" never succeeded in killing off the mammoths and other Pleistocene megafauna. One of the stories in the collection A Different Flesh is "The Iron Elephant." Set in 1782, it concerns a railroad system powered by draft mammoths, at a time when the first steam engine arrives. Like most of the stories in this book, "The Iron Elephant" has a rather melancholy tone, a sense of something mighty and marvelous and also doomed. Yet it also holds the dogged determination of humanity, and even a certain admiration for our less-advanced ancestors.

The great head rears up. A trunk comes questing, and immense tusks sweep. An eye opens, warm, brown, intense, startlingly human. This is not a vision from prehistory. This is real: a living thing a hundred times as massive as any human, a living thing prospering in this frozen desert. The great trunk lifts, and the woolly mammoth trumpets her ancient songs of blood and wisdom. Her name is Silverhair.32

Stephen Baxter veered off on still another tangent. He started with the idea of mammoths as sentient beings, people with their own stories to tell. In his novel Silverhair, he shares the story of one young cow who struggles to save her herd from the threat of humans. But this isn't ancient history - it's a story set in the here and now, with a remnant population having survived into modern times, only to fall prey to something more deadly than the Arctic winter. Us. This book is downright depressing, but a fascinating rendition of mammoths.

Mimmoths - tiny verminous mammoths. Originally somebody's experiment, they escaped and quickly populated most of Europe. They fill the same niche as mice and live alongside them. They get into machinery and push things around with their tusks, wreaking havoc.33

Not all stories involving mammoths are morbid, or even serious. Phil and Kaja Foglio came up with an absolutely wacky rendition for their graphic novel series Girl Genius. Here, miniature mammoths provide comic relief and a convenient way of causing the ubiquitous machinery to break down. Tiny mammoths are not quite unfounded; remember the island-dwelling dwarf ones.

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Ponter. "I have been thrown by a mammoth now and again, and..."
"You've what?" said Henry.
"Been thrown by a mammoth..."
"A mammoth?" repeated Angela, agog.34

In this case, Robert J. Sawyer set up a diverging history in which humans and Neanderthals both became sentient - but each in their own universe. Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal, accidentally gets flung into our world. His own has developed very differently, and still has a lot of animals now extinct here. Mammoths are one of the things that Ponter feels homesick about, and they appear intermittently to emphasize the divergence between worlds. Few other creatures have the power to so concisely convey an entire environment, a trick characteristic of Sawyer's sharp, thoughtful writing. The above scene comes from the second book, Humans, after a bit of traffic has sprung up between the worlds and Ponter has the chance to chat with humans socially.

Mammoths move through literature in a variety of ways. They can be icons, archetypes, allegories. They can be animals or people. They can be serious or silly. They can hold up a telescope to show us our ancestors, or a mirror to show us ourselves. Writers have taken mammoths on some uncanny journeys, and readers have followed along.

Studying Mammoths Today
The more we learn about mammoths, the more interesting they get. Contemporary science offers us many ways to study these ancient creatures. Mammoth remains have turned up in tarpits, gravel mines, Siberian and Alaskan permafrost, in widely varied condition. We now know how a mammoth skeleton fits together, how their body shape changed as they grew older, and how individual specimens died. Carbon dating provides accurate dating so that we have a better idea when mammoths lived and when they became extinct. One of the most dramatic excavations was captured in the Discovery Channel documentary, Raising the Mammoth.35

Some people are working on ways to bring mammoths back from extinction. Two basic methods suggest themselves: 1) Extract viable sperm from a frozen mammoth carcass and use it to impregnate an Asian elephant, the mammoth's closest living relative. This would produce a crossbreed which could be bred back to mammoth sperm, eventually creating an almost-purebred mammoth. 2) Extract DNA from frozen mammoth flesh, use it to replace the nucleus of an Asian elephant egg, and implant the result in a surrogate mother elephant. This would produce a pure mammoth.36

Similar problems plague both methods. First, mammoth carcasses are not easy to locate and retrieve. They rarely show sufficient preservation to make even an attempt at obtaining usable sperm or DNA. Even given a successful conception, physiological differences between mammoths and elephants might prevent a healthy delivery.37 So is it possible to restore mammoths, or not? Scientists vary in their opinions: "Even Dick Mol, a member of the Jarkov expedition, thinks the idea of cloning a mammoth is ridiculous. Nevertheless, a few pioneering labs are going to try. Mol's colleague Larry Agenbroad is one scientist who views the idea optimistically. 'People tell me you won't get good DNA. The same people would have said 10 years ago that you couldn't clone a sheep,' says Agenbroad." 38

People also have different ideas what to do with the mammoths in the event of success. Some want to restore the animals to their previous native habitat: "Larry Agenbroad, professor of geology at North Arizona University and one of the principal scientific advisers to the expedition, believes it may be possible in the long term to introduce the animals to North America." 39 Others want to make more of a public attraction: "Professor Akira Iritani, of Kinki University, hopes to find a suitable habitat for mammoths in a 100 square mile wildlife reserve in the Russian republic of Yakutia, known as Pleistocene Park. It is currently home to Yakutian horses and Canadian bison." 40

Would I go to see a restored mammoth? In a heartbeat! For me, it would not be a tourist's trip to the zoo, just to gawk at the latest marvel. For me, it would be a pilgrimage, a journey every bit as holy as a Muslim's hajj to Mecca. I would go to see the living face of the Great Mother in a form that has not walked this Earth for thousands of years. I would go to bless and be blessed by an animal snatched back from the Underworld; I would go to bear witness that Earth's Children had finally grown up enough to undo some of the damage we have done. And I would go to share with my ancestors the experience of standing near one of the mightiest mammals that has ever lived, touching my life to theirs and growing richer for having done so.

Nor am I alone in my interest. The article "Will mammoths walk again?" included excerpts from a reader poll asking what people thought about the matter. A significant majority indicated that they approved of restoring mammoths if possible, though a few dissenting opinions also appeared.41 Likewise, I have found similar approval in discussing this topic with other Pagans.

Mammoths also play an intriguing role in contemporary art. You can find sculptures, jewelry, and other items carved from mammoth bone and ivory from two major regions: North America and Russia. These range from large, elaborate pieces most suited for museums or serious collections to smaller items ideal for personal adornment or spiritual use. Stones-n-Silver features a selection of mammoth ivory jewelry 42 and American Pacific International offers statuettes.43
On the more dramatic side, there are whole new styles evolving: "Valeria and her school combined mammoth ivory with metal and wood to achieve stunning results. It is for the first time in the history of Russian bone carving that artists could use monumental compositions to embody the world of their experiences, emotions and subconscious associations." 44 Two pieces that particularly caught my eye were her sculptures of "The Bronze Age" (mammoth tusk and copper; made in 1995) which looks rather like the ancient Venus figures, and "The Pagan Priest" (mammoth tusk, copper, and wood; made in 1997) which shows an elegant man with wings.

Despite having left us millennia ago, mammoths continue to inspire us in many different ways. Echoes of their presence still surface in unexpected ways. How we choose to respond... is up to us.

Conclusions
On a cold winter morning, when the snow covers the road to invisibility and the wind whips skeins of white flakes along the ground, I like to stand outside and imagine what it must have been like for my ancestors to gaze out over a landscape not unlike this and see a herd of mammoths marching along the horizon. I look at the pictures, I finger the artifacts, and I find that somewhere in my bones I remember these awe-inspiring beasts. Even now, with the Ice Age long vanished, I revere the spirit of a creature who not only played a significant role in our past but who continues to inspire us today.

* * *
References

1. Jean M. Auel, The Mammoth Hunters, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, NY, 1985, pp. 642-643.

2. Adrian Lister and Paul Bahn, Mammoths, Boxtree Limited, London, England, 1995, pp. 16-33.

3. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 16-26.

4. "Mammoths" on "The Midwestern U.S. 16,000 Years Ago" page of the Illinois State Museum Website, no author listed, 2002.
www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/mammuthus.html.

5. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 76-78.

6. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 28-29.

7. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 32-33.

8. "Mastodons" on "The Midwestern U.S. 16,000 Years Ago" page of the Illinois State Museum Website, no author listed, 2002.
www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/mammut.html.

9. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 64-65.

10. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, p. 81.

11. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, p. 89.

12. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 84-85.

13. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, p. 89.

14. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 120-136.

15. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 120, 131-133.

16. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 122, 126-130.

17. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, p. 136.

18. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 94-95, 100-103.

19. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, p. 103.

20. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 96, 108-114.

21. Donald A. Mackenzie, Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, Chapter II, "Palaeolithic Magic and Religion," page accessed 6/17/03. www.sacred-texts.com/cla/moc/moc07.htm.

22. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 111-113.

23. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, pp. 104-109.

24. Elizabeth Wyse and Barry Winkleman, Past Worlds: Atlas of Archaeology, HarperCollins, Ann Arbor, MI, 1988, 2003, pp. 72-73.

25. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, p. 126.

26. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, p. 128.

27. Lister and Bahn, Mammoths, p. 129.

28. Wyse and Winkleman, Past Worlds, p. 207.

29. Thomas R. Holme, "Ancestral Stomping Grounds of Our Mother-loving Mammoth-eating Ancestors," on the garden e danu Website, page accessed 6/17/03. www.geocities.com/gardenofdanu/garden_e_danu.htm.

30. Boria Sax, "Animals in Religion," on the Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Website, page accessed 6/17/03. www.psyeta.org/sa/sa2.2/sax.html

31. Harry Turtledove, "The Iron Elephant" in A Different Flesh, Worldwide Library Books, Buffalo, NY, 1989, p. 103.

32. Stephen Baxter, Silverhair, EOS, New York, NY, 1999, p. 2.

33. Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius: The Secret Blueprints for Volume One, Studio Foglio, Seattle, WA, 2000, p. I.22.

34. Robert J. Sawyer, Humans: Book Two of the Neanderthal Parallax, Tor Books, New York, NY, 2003.

35. Raising the Mammoth directed by Jean-Charles Deniau, 91 minutes, documentary film originally aired on Discovery Channel, 2000.

36. EXN Staff, "Will mammoths walk again?" March 9, 2001. http://exn.ca/mammoth/Cloning.cfm

37. EXN Staff, "Will mammoths walk again?"

38. EXN Staff, "Will mammoths walk again?"

39. "Woolly Mammoths," no author given, on Crystalinks: Ellie Crystal's Metaphysics and Science Site, page accessed 6/25/03.
www.crystalinks.com/wooleyanimals.html.

40. "Woolly Mammoths."

41. EXN Staff, "Will mammoths walk again?"

42. Stones-n-Silver shop, site accessed 6/25/03. www.stonesnsilver.com/mammoth_ivory.htm.

43. American Pacific International shop, site accessed 6/25/03. www.ampacinternational.com/.

44. "Contemporary sculpture from Valeria Mokeeva and her school," no author listed, site accessed 6/25/03. www.mokeeva.spb.ru/e-modern.htm.

- Elizabeth Barrette is the Managing Editor of PanGaia and Assistant Editor of SageWoman. You can write to her c/o PanGaia or email her at: ysabet@worthlink.net. Her story "Mrs. Hinkle and The Blue-Nosed Witch" just won the Grand Prize in the 3Sides Pagan Muse Short Fiction Contest. Find out more on the 3Sides Website at http://busywitch.cjb.net/.

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