Mammoth building. Woolly mammoth. Under the skin of mammoths was an impressive layer of fat
An ancient woolly mammoth skeleton has sold for 548,000 euros (£483,000, $640,000) at an auction in the French city of Lyon.
The price of this Skeleton even exceeded its estimated value. It was bought by the head of a French waterproofing company whose logo adorns a prehistoric mammal that died out about 3,700 years ago. The largest specimen known to science fell into private hands.
This is a very rare fossilized skeleton because it is virtually intact. 80% of the skeleton is well-preserved bones. The remaining 20% is the resin used to secure the assembly.
The skeleton belonged to a male and was discovered about 10 years ago in the Siberian outback in the permafrost region. It used to belong to a hunter who kept the remains at home.
The scientists found that this individual had progressive caries, which apparently caused his death, since he could not chew on the vegetation.
The melting of ice crusts in Siberia has exposed the earth and opened to the eyes of scientists a huge number of remains of ancient mammoths.
Currently, the glaciers in Siberia's ice sheet are rapidly melting due to climate change.
The remains were preserved under the ice in perfect condition. Not only bones were preserved, but also fragments of fur, skin, muscles, internal organs - and even the remains of food in the stomachs
One of the world's best preserved woolly mammoths has been examined and found to have lived about 39,000 years ago. He was given the name Yuka - he was also found in the permafrost of Siberia.
Woolly mammoths lived in parallel with ancient man, who actively hunted them and depicted them in cave drawings.
Most Mammoths died out over 10,000 years ago, but the last surviving group lived on an island in the Arctic Ocean and died out just 4,000 years ago.
Scientists believe that human hunting for mammoths and environmental changes played a role in their extinction.
| Systematics on Wikispecies | Images at Wikimedia Commons |
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from encyclopedias we can learn that mammoths are an extinct genus of mammals from the elephant family, they were twice as heavy as the largest modern African elephants in the same encyclopedias, we learn that mammoths died out in the last ice age about 10 thousand years ago, but we will try to consider this issue from a seditious point of view in Turgenev's story the polecat and kalynych from the cycle of the hunter's note there is an interesting phrase the polecat raised his leg and showed the boot I will hide on probably mammoth skin in order to write this phrase Turgenev should have known several things rather strange for the middle of the 19th century in our current understanding he should have known that there was such a beast at the moment and know what kind of skin he had, he should have known about the availability of this skin, because judging by the text, the fact that a simple man wears boots made of mammoth skin for Turgenev was not something out of the ordinary, it should be recalled that Turgenev wrote his notes almost like documentaries without vym words for that, they and a note, he simply conveyed his impressions of meeting interesting people and it happened in the Orel province of the autumn region in Yakutia where they find a mammoth and a cemetery, there is an opinion that Turgenev expressed it allegorically, we mean the thickness and quality factor of the boot, but why then not from elephants to her elephant skin in the 19th century was well known, but according to the official version, information about mammoths was negligible until the beginning of the twentieth century, the only mammoth skeleton that could be found was in the zoological museum, but he could hardly give an answer to the question of how the skin looks like mom, so the phrase dropped that I’m not at least a puzzle to you, however, in the Tobolsk Museum of Local Lore there was a harness of the 19th century made of mammoth skin, the mention of mammoths is also present in another famous writer of the 19th century, Jack London, his story, a fragment of a critical era, tells about the meeting of a hunter in Alaska with an unseen beast which is described as two drops of water looks like a mother, but not only writers remember mammoths in their works, there is a sufficient amount of historical evidence of the meeting of people with these animals. Anatoly Kartashov collected the most mention of such cases. In the year he wrote in his notes about Muscovy in Siberia, there are a great many birds and various animals, such as sable and martens, beavers, ermines, squirrels and in the ocean live on I walrus, in addition, the weight is just like polar bears, wolves, hare, pay attention in the same row with very real beavers squirrels and walrus stands a certain, if not fabulous, then certainly mysterious and unknown weight, however, this forest could not be known only to Europeans, and for local residents, this possibly rare endangered species did not represent anything mysterious, not only in the sixteenth century, but Idris was an extra table later, in 1911, you wrote an essay in the silence of the towns, the trip got up and the narrow edge there are such lines of the weary Khanty, the pike is called the mammoth, this whole monster was covered with thick long hair and had big horns, sometimes all then, or among themselves I’ll take such that the ice on the lakes broke with a terrible coffin and it turns out in the sixteenth century almost everyone knew about mammoths, including the Austrian ambassador, another legend is known that in 1581 the warriors of the famous conqueror of Siberia Yermak saw huge hairy elephants in the dense taiga; let's move on to the 19th century, the New York Herald wrote that US President Jefferson, who held the highest office from 1801 to 1809, became interested in reports of a sleigh about mammoths, sent helmets with the nose of an envoy who, having returned, claimed fantastic things with everything, according to the Eskimos, mammoths can still be found in remote areas in the northeast of the peninsula, living mammoths, the envoy with my eyes, is true not I saw but a special will come Eskimo weapons for hunting them and this is not the only known story the case of Eskimo weapons for hunting mammoths there are lines in an article published in San Francisco in 1899, some travelers along the line raise the question of why the Eskimos would make and store weapons for hunting extinct animals at least 10 thousand years ago, here is another piece of evidence from the end of the nineteenth century in the Max Shop magazine for 1899 in a story called the murder of mothers, so it is stated that the last mammoth was killed in the Yukon in the summer of 1891, of course, now it is difficult to say what is true in this story and what literary fiction, however, at that time the story was considered to be the towns already known to us, writes in his essay a trip to the Thessaloniki region in 1911, according to the Ostyaks, in Kent us of scam the sacred forest, like in other times, mammoths live near the river and in the river itself often in winter time you can see wide cracks on the ice of the river, and sometimes you can see that the ice
Phenotype
Extinction
Most mammoths died out about 10 thousand years ago during the last Vistula Ice Age in the Late Dryas, simultaneously with the extinction of 34 genera of large animals (Great Holocene extinction). At the moment, there are two main hypotheses about the extinction of mammoths: according to the first, hunters of the Upper Paleolithic played a significant, or even decisive role in this, and the other, explaining the extinction to a greater extent by natural causes (the era of extreme flooding, which began 16 thousand years ago, rapid climate change about 10-12 thousand years ago, the disappearance of the food supply for mammoths). There are also more exotic assumptions, for example, due to the fall of a comet in North America or large-scale epidemics, but the latter remain in the position of marginal hypotheses that most experts do not support.
The first hypothesis was put forward in the 19th century by Alfred Wallace, when sites of ancient people with large accumulations of mammoth bones were discovered. This version quickly gained popularity. It is believed that Homo sapiens settled in northern Eurasia about 32,000 years ago, penetrated North America 15,000 years ago, and probably quickly began to actively hunt representatives of the megafauna. But under favorable conditions in the expanses of the tundra-steppes, their population was stable. Later, a warming occurred, during which the range of mammoths was significantly reduced, as happened before, but active hunting led to the almost complete extermination of the species. Scientists led by David Noguez-Bravo from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid cite the results of large-scale modeling to confirm these views.
Supporters of the second point of view believe that human influence is greatly overestimated. In particular, they point to a period of ten thousand years, during which the population of mammoths grew 5-10 times, that the process of extinction of the species began even before the appearance of people in the respective territories, and that along with mammoths, many other animal species died out, including small ones that were “neither enemies for the Cro-Magnons, nor prey to be destroyed”, and that there is not enough direct evidence of the active hunting of mammoths by people - only 6 “places for slaughtering and cutting proboscis” are known in Eurasia, and 12 in North America. Therefore, in this hypothesis, anthropogenic interference is assigned a secondary role, and natural changes are considered to be primary factors: changes in climate and food supply of animals and pasture areas. The connection between extinction and climate change in the Upper Dryas has been seen for a long time. But for a long time there was no convincing justification for the fatality of this particular cold snap, since this species has experienced many warming and cooling periods. Researcher Vance Haynes of the University of Arizona raised this question again in 2008, and using data from several excavations, found that the onset of the cooling and the extinction of the megafauna coincide with an accuracy of 50 years. He also drew attention to the fact that the deposits of the Upper Dryas are dark in color due to the enrichment of organic particles, the composition of which indicates a much more humid atmosphere at that time than it was before.
The same question was raised in a June 2012 publication in the journal Nature Communications, which published the results of fundamental research by an international team of scientists led by Glen MacDonald of the University of California. They followed changes in the habitat of woolly mammoths and their impact on the population of the species in Beringia over the past 50 thousand years. The study used a significant array of data on all radiocarbon dating of animal remains, human migration in the Arctic, climate and fauna changes. The main conclusion of scientists: over the past 30 thousand years, mammoth populations have experienced population fluctuations associated with climatic cycles - a relatively warm period about 40-25 thousand years ago (relatively high numbers) and a cooling period about 25-12 thousand years ago (this is the so-called " Last glaciation "- then most of the mammoths migrated from the north of Siberia to more southern regions). Migration was caused by a relatively abrupt change of tundra fauna from tundra steppes (mammoth prairies) to tundra swamps at the beginning of the Allerød warming, but subsequently the steppes located to the south were replaced by coniferous forests. The role of humans in their extinction has been assessed as insignificant, and the extreme rarity of direct evidence of human hunting of mammoths has also been noted. Two years earlier, Brian Huntley's science team published the results of their modeling of the climates of Europe, Asia and North America, which identified the main reasons for the prevalence of herbaceous vegetation over large areas over time: low temperatures, dryness and low CO 2 ; as well as the direct influence of the subsequent warming of the climate, the increase in humidity and the content of CO 2 in the atmosphere on the replacement of grassy communities with forests, which sharply reduced the area of pastures, was revealed.
In North America, the people known as the Clovis culture disappeared at the same time as the megafauna, so it is unlikely that they could have been involved in their extermination. Recently, the cosmic hypothesis of the extinction of the megafauna in North America has gained more weight. This is due to the discovery of a thin layer of wood ash (presumably evidence of large-scale fires), numerous finds of nanodiamonds, impact spherules and other characteristic particles throughout the continent, and finds of mammoth bones with holes from meteorite particles. The comet is believed to be the culprit, probably having already broken up into a whole plume of debris by the time of the collision. In January 2012, an article was published in PNAS about the results of a large scientific team on Mexico's Lake Cuitzeo. This publication marked the transition of this hypothesis from the category of marginal to the main hypotheses explaining the crisis of the Late Dryas - the cooling of the climate for a millennium, the oppression and destruction of existing ecosystems, the extinction of glacial megafauna.
Asia's largest local concentration of remains Mammothus primigenius is a burial place in the Volchya Griva area in the Novosibirsk region. Some of the bones bear traces of human processing, but the role of the Paleolithic population in the accumulation of the bone-bearing horizon of the Wolf's Mane was insignificant - the mass death of mammoths on the territory of the Baraba refugium was caused by mineral starvation. 42% of the samples of woolly mammoths found in the ancient oxbow lake of the Berelyokh River have signs of osteodystrophy - a disease of the skeletal system caused by metabolic disorders due to a lack or excess of vital macro- and microelements (mineral starvation).
Skeleton
According to the structure of the skeleton, the mammoth bears a significant resemblance to the living Indian elephant, which was somewhat larger, reaching 5.5 m in length and 3.1 m in height. Huge mammoth tusks, up to 4 m in length, weighing up to 100 kg, were located in the upper jaw, pushed forward, bent to the top and converged towards the middle.
The molars, which the mammoths had one in each half of the jaw, are somewhat wider than those of the elephant, and are distinguished by a greater number and hardness of lamellar enamel boxes filled with dental substance. As the abrasion progressed, the teeth of the mammoth, like those of modern elephants, changed to new ones, such a change could take place up to 6 times during a lifetime.
History of study
The bones and especially the molars of mammoths were found very often in the deposits of the glacial era of Europe and Siberia and were known for a long time and due to their huge size, with general medieval ignorance and superstition, they were attributed to extinct giants. In Valencia, the molar tooth of a mammoth was venerated as part of the relics of St. Christopher, and back in 1789, Canons of St. Vincentas carried a mammoth femur in their processions, passing it off as the remnant of the named saint's hand. We managed to get acquainted with the anatomy of a mammoth in more detail after, in 1799, the Tungus discovered in the permafrost soil of Siberia, near the mouth of the Lena River, a whole corpse of a mammoth, washed by spring waters and perfectly preserved - with meat, skin and wool. After 7 years, in 1806, Adams, sent by the Academy of Sciences, managed to collect an almost complete skeleton of the animal, with part of the ligaments that survived, part of the skin, some entrails, an eye, and up to 30 pounds of hair; everything else was destroyed by wolves, bears and dogs. In Siberia, mammoth tusks, washed out by spring waters and collected by the natives, were the subject of a significant holiday trade, replacing ivory in turnery.
mammoth genome
Genetic groups
Traditions of the peoples of Northern Europe, Siberia and North America
In 1899, a traveler wrote an article for a San Francisco daily about the Eskimos of Alaska, who described a furry elephant by carving it into a walrus ivory weapon. A group of researchers who went to the place did not find mammoths, but confirmed the traveler's story, and also carried out an examination of weapons and asked where the Eskimos had seen hairy elephants; they pointed to an icy desert to the northwest.
mammoth bone
Exhibits in museums
A unique stuffed adult woolly mammoth (the so-called "Berezovsky mammoth") can be seen in
Mammoth skeletons can be seen:
monuments
Mammoths in heraldry
The image of a mammoth can be seen on the coats of arms of some cities.
Mammoths in toponomics
In the Taimyrsky Dolgano-Nenets district of the Krasnoyarsk krai, in the Lower Taimyr basin, there are such objects as the Mammoth River (named after the discovery of the skeleton of the Taimyr mammoth on it in 1948), Left Mammoth and Mammoth Lake. In the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, on Wrangel Island, there are the Mammoth Mountains and the Mammoth River. A peninsula in the northeast of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, where the remains of the animal were found, was named after the mammoth.
see also
Notes
- BBC Ukrainian - Russian News - Russian and Korean scientists want to clone mammoths
- RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS TOLD HOW A TRUNK HELPED MAMMUTS TO SURVIVE
- On Taimyr they found a unique mammoth Zhenya - with meat, wool and a hump
- Chubur A. A. Man and mammoth in paleolith of the Desene. Continuing the discussion // Desninsky Antiquities (Issue VII) Materials of the interstate scientific conference "History and Archeology of the Desenya", dedicated to the memory of the Bryansk archaeologist and local historian, Honored Worker of Culture of the RSFSR Fyodor Mikhailovich Zavernyaev (11/28/1919 - 18/VI/1994). Bryansk, 2012
- Doctor of Geographical Sciences Yaroslav Kuzmin on the reasons for the extinction of mammoths
- New data of genetics and archeology shed light on the history of settlement of America Elementy.ru
- Marc A. Carrasco, Anthony D. Barnosky, Russell W. Graham. Quantifying the Extent of North American Mammal Extinction Relative to the Pre-Anthropogenic Baseline plosone.org December 16, 2009
- Humans have completed the work of nature to exterminate mammoths
It is impossible to fully imagine the atmosphere of the last ice age without a couple of furry mammoths stomping on the frozen tundra. But how much do you know about these legendary animals? Below are 10 amazing and interesting facts about mammoths that you might not know.
1. Mammoth tusks reached 4 m in length
In addition to long furry coats, mammoths are known for their huge tusks, which in large males reached 4 m in length. Such large tusks most likely characterized sexual attractiveness: males with longer, curved and impressive tusks were able to mate with more females during the breeding season. Also, the tusks may have been used defensively to drive away hungry saber-toothed tigers, although there is no direct fossil evidence to support this theory.
2. Mammoths were the favorite prey of primitive people
The gigantic size of the mammoth (about 5 m in height and weighing 5-7 tons) made it a particularly desirable prey for primitive hunters. Thick woolen hides provided warmth in cold times, and tasty fatty meats were an indispensable source of food. It has been suggested that the patience, planning and cooperation required to capture mammoths has been a key factor in the development of human civilization!
3. Mammoths immortalized in cave paintings
From 30,000 to 12,000 years ago, the mammoth was one of the most popular objects of Neolithic artists, who depicted images of this shaggy beast on the walls of numerous caves in Western Europe. It is possible that primitive paintings were intended as totems (that is, early people believed that the depiction of a mammoth in cave paintings made it easier to capture it in real life). Also, the drawings could serve as objects of worship or talented primitive artists were simply bored on a cold, rainy day! :)
4. Mammoths weren't the only "woolly" mammals back then.
All warm-blooded animals need wool to some extent to retain body heat. One of the mammoth's shaggy cousins was the lesser-known woolly rhinoceros that roamed the plains of Eurasia during the Pleistocene era. Woolly rhinoceros, like mammoths, often fell prey to primitive hunters, who might consider it easier prey.
5. The genus of mammoths included many species
The widely known woolly mammoth was actually one of several species included in the mammoth genus. A dozen other species lived in North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene era, including the steppe mammoth, Columbus mammoth, pygmy mammoth, and others. However, none of these species was as widespread as the woolly mammoth.
6. Sungari mammoth (Mammuthus sungari) was the largest of all
Some individuals of the Sungari mammoth (Mammuthus sungari), living in Northern China, reached a mass of about 13 tons (compared to such giants, a 5-7 tons woolly mammoth seemed short). In the Western Hemisphere, the palm belonged to the imperial mammoth (Mammuthus imperator), males of this species weighed more than 10 tons.
7 Mammoths Had A Massive Layer Of Fat Under Their Skin
Even the thickest leather and thick woolen coats are not fully capable of providing sufficient protection during severe Arctic storms. For this reason, the mammoths had a 10 cm layer of fat under their skin, which served as additional insulation and kept their bodies warm in the harshest climatic conditions.
By the way, as far as we can tell from the surviving remains, the color of mammoth hair ranged from light to dark brown, just like human hair.
8 The Last Mammoths Died About 4,000 Years Ago
By the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, mammoth populations around the world had virtually disappeared from the face of the Earth due to climate change and constant hunting by humans. The exception was a small population of mammoths that lived on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia until 1700 BC. Due to the limited food supply, mammoths from Wrangel Island were much smaller than their counterparts from the mainland, for which they were often called pygmy elephants.
9. Many Mammoth Bodies Preserved in Permafrost
Even today, 10,000 years after the last ice age, the northern regions of Canada, Alaska and Siberia have a very cold climate, keeping numerous mammoth bodies almost intact. Identifying and extracting giant corpses from blocks of ice is a fairly simple task, it is much more difficult to keep the remains at room temperature.
10 Scientists Can Clone A Mammoth
Since mammoths became extinct relatively recently and modern elephants are their closest relatives, scientists are able to collect mammoth DNA and incubate it in a female elephant (a process known as "de-extinction"). Researchers recently announced that they have almost completely deciphered the genomes of two 40,000-year-old specimens. Unfortunately or fortunately, the same trick won't work with dinosaurs, as DNA doesn't hold up as well for tens of millions of years.
The solution to the fate of woolly mammoths can shed light on what happened on our planet many tens and hundreds of years ago. Modern paleontologists are studying the remains of these giants in order to find out more precisely how they looked, what their lifestyle was, who they are to modern elephants and why they died out. The results of the research work will be discussed below.
Mammoths are large herd animals belonging to the elephant family. Representatives of one of their varieties, called the woolly mammoth (mammuthus primigenius), inhabited the northern regions of Europe, Asia and North America, presumably in the interval from 300 to 10 thousand years ago. Under favorable climatic conditions, they did not leave the territory of Canada and Siberia, and in harsh times they crossed the borders of modern China and the United States, ended up in Central Europe and even in Spain and Mexico. In that era, Siberia was inhabited by many other unusual animals, which paleontologists combined into a category called "mammoth fauna". In addition to the mammoth, it includes such animals as the woolly rhinoceros, primitive bison, horse, tour, etc.
Many mistakenly believe that woolly mammoths are the progenitors of modern elephants. In fact, both species simply have a common ancestor, and, therefore, a close relationship.
What did the animal look like?
According to the description compiled at the end of the 18th century by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the woolly mammoth is a giant animal, whose height at the withers reached about 3.5 meters with an average weight of 5.5 tons, and a maximum weight of up to 8 tons! The length of the coat, consisting of coarse hair and thick soft undercoat, reached more than a meter. The thickness of mammoth skin was almost 2 cm. The summer coat was somewhat shorter and not as thick as the winter coat. Most likely, she had a black or dark brown color. Scientists explain the brown color of the specimens found in the ice by the fading of the wool.
According to another version, a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and the presence of wool are evidence that mammoths constantly lived in a warm climate with an abundance of food. Otherwise, how would they be able to work up such significant body fat? Scientists who adhere to this opinion cite two types of modern animals as an example: rather plump tropical rhinos and slender reindeer. The presence of wool in a mammoth should also not be considered evidence of a harsh climate, because the Malaysian elephant also has a hairline and at the same time feels great living on the equator itself.
Many thousands of years ago, high temperatures in the Far North were provided by the greenhouse effect, which was caused by the presence of a steam-water dome, due to which abundant vegetation was present in the Arctic. This is confirmed by the many remains of not only mammoths, but also other heat-loving animals. So, in Alaska, skeletons of camels, lions and dinosaurs were found. And in areas where today there are no trees at all, thick and rather high trunks have been found along with the skeletons of mammoths and horses.
Let us return to the description of mammuthus primigenius. The length of the tusks of older individuals reached 4 meters, and the mass of these bony processes twisted upwards was more than a centner. The average length of the tusks varied within 2.5 - 3 m with a weight of 40 - 60 kg.
Mammoths also differed from modern elephants in their smaller ears and trunk, the presence of a special growth on the skull, and a high hump on the back. In addition, the spine of their woolly relative in the back curved sharply down.
The latest woolly mammoths living on Wrangel Island were significantly inferior in size to their progenitors, their height at the withers was a little less than 2 meters. But, despite this, in the era of the ice age, this animal was the largest representative of the fauna throughout Eurasia.
Lifestyle
The basis of the diet of mammoths was vegetable food, the average daily volume of which included almost 500 kg of various greens: grass, leaves, young tree branches and needles. This is confirmed by studies of the contents of the stomachs of mammuthus primigenius and indicates that giant animals chose to inhabit areas where both tundra and steppe flora were present.
Giants lived up to 70 - 80 years. They became sexually mature at 12-14 years of age. The most viable hypothesis suggests that the way of life of these animals was the same as that of elephants. That is, mammoths lived in a group of 2-9 individuals, which was headed by the eldest female. Males, on the other hand, led a solitary lifestyle and joined groups only during the rut.
Artifacts
Bones of mammuthus primigenius are found in almost all regions of the northern hemisphere of our planet, but Eastern Siberia is the most generous for such “gifts from the past”. During the life of the giants, the climate in this region was not harsh, but mild, temperate.
So, in 1799, on the banks of the Lena, the remains of a woolly mammoth were first found, which was called “Lensky”. A century later, this skeleton became the most valuable exhibit of the new St. Petersburg Zoological Museum.
Later, such mammoths were found on the territory of Russia: in 1901 - "Berezovsky" (Yakutia); in 1939 - "Oeshsky" (Novosibirsk region); in 1949 - "Taimyrsky" (Taimyr Peninsula); in 1977 - (Magadan); in 1988 - (the Yamal peninsula); in 2007 - (Yamal peninsula); in 2009 - baby mammoth Khroma (Yakutia); 2010 - (Yakutia).
The most valuable finds include the "Berezovsky mammoth" and the baby mammoth Khroma - individuals completely frozen in a block of ice. According to paleontologists, they have been in ice captivity for more than 30 thousand years. Scientists managed to obtain not only ideal samples of different tissues, but also to get acquainted with food from the stomach of animals that had not had time to be digested.
The richest place for the remains of mammoths are the New Siberian Islands. According to the descriptions of the researchers who discovered them, these territories are almost entirely composed of tusks and bones.
Thanks to the material collected in 2008, researchers from Canada managed to decipher 70% of the woolly mammoth genome, and 8 years later, their Russian colleagues completed this grandiose work. Over many years of painstaking work, they were able to collect about 3.5 billion particles into a single sequence. In this they were helped by the genetic material of the aforementioned Khroma mammoth.
Reasons for the extinction of mammoths
Scientists around the world have been arguing for two centuries about the reasons for the disappearance of woolly mammoths from our planet. During this time, many hypotheses have been put forward, the most viable of which is considered to be a sharp cooling caused by the destruction of the steam-water dome.
This could happen for various reasons, for example, due to the fall of an asteroid to Earth. The celestial body, when falling, split the once single continent, due to which the water vapor above the planet's atmosphere first condensed, and then poured out in a heavy downpour (about 12 m of precipitation). This provoked an intense movement of powerful mud flows, which on their way carried away animals and formed stratigraphic layers. With the disappearance of the greenhouse dome, ice and snow bound the Arctic. As a result of this, all representatives of the fauna were instantly buried in the permafrost. Therefore, some woolly mammoths are found "fresh frozen" with clover, buttercups, wild beans, and gladioli in their mouths or stomachs. Neither the listed plants, nor even their distant relatives now grow in Siberia. Because of this, paleontologists insist on the version that mammoths were killed at lightning speed due to a climate catastrophe.
This assumption interested paleoclimatologists and, taking the results of drilling as a basis, they came to the conclusion that in the period from 130 to 70 thousand years ago, a rather mild climate reigned in the northern territories located within the 55th and 70th degrees. It can be compared with the modern climate of the north of Spain.
July 17, 2017
The fate of ideas about this northern elephant was curious. Mammoths - their way of life, habits - were well known within 70-10 millennia ago by our distant ancestors - Paleolithic people. They hunted them and depicted them in flat drawing and sculpture. Then, after the extinction of the nose-handed giants, the memory of them, probably, was almost erased in a series of generations for long millennia. In any case, we do not know their images in the monuments of the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age. In ancient antiquity, and then in the Middle Ages and in our era, ideas about mammoths arose anew, but in the form of fantastic retellings of Hyperborean legends and a discussion of the facts of finding their fossils.
The natives of Northern Siberia of the historical era, roaming along the rivers, observed the thawing of the banks of bones, tusks, and sometimes even whole corpses of mammoths from the frozen ground. Thus, naive ideas arose about the mammoth as a giant rat living underground, after the passage of which the earth sags in ditches and pits, and the animal itself dies as soon as it touches the air. Such a legend lasted until the 18th century, and in some places even longer. Naturally, the ideas of Europeans about the mammoth were born on the basis of Siberian stories, works of fables and legends. The latter, apparently, are best reflected in the state adviser of the Petrine era, V. N. Tatishchev. His remarkable study, published in 1730, was recently republished in Kyiv (Tatishchev, 1974).
Outlining the legends, Tatishchev adhered to quite reasonable views on the fact that hairy elephants inhabit the north of Siberia. He resolutely rejected the idea that these animals were brought to the North by Alexander the Great and the corpses were brought there by the global flood, and tried to explain their life in Siberia by a warmer climate.
Scientists have always been particularly interested in the frozen corpses of mammoths. In the Pleistocene, in the presence of permafrost, such carcasses were also in Europe, but when the soil was defrosted, they decomposed. Obtaining information about the finds of corpses in Siberia, especially Yakutia, is hampered by the prejudice of local residents that the first finder who communicated with a mammoth should die in the first year. In addition, such information was simply lost and lost on the ground, and the exposed carcass is hidden in a landslide for the next season. In Taimyr, mammoth meat is considered the best bait for catching arctic foxes. Feed such meat and sled dogs. Therefore, reindeer herders and hunters prefer to dispose of the discovered carcass on their own, without bothering to disseminate information, the benefits of which are very problematic.
One of the first literary reports about the frozen corpse of a mammoth on the river. Alazeya was made by Vice-Admiral G. A. Sarychev (1802, reprinted: 1952, p. 88). On October 1, 1787, while still a lieutenant commander and being in the Alazeya village, he wrote down:
“The Alazeya River, flowing near the village itself, flows into the Arctic Sea at its mouth. The local inhabitants said that along this river down a hundred versts from the village, from its sandy shore, half the skeleton of a large animal, the size of an elephant, was washed up in a standing position, completely intact and covered with skin, on which long hair is visible in places. Mr. Merk really wanted to examine it, but as it was far away from our path and, moreover, deep snows then fell, he could not satisfy his desire.
Already E. Pfitzenmayer (Pfizenmayer, 1926) listed in the 20s of our century 23 sites of finds of frozen corpses of mammoths and rhinos and their parts, starting with the mammoth Izbrand Ides (1707 on the Yenisei) and ending with the mammoth Vollosovich on about. Boiler house in 1910. Out of this number, 4 finds accounted for rhinos. This information - 11 finds per century - was repeatedly published and reprinted in special and popular reviews (Byalynitsky-Birulya, 1903; Pfizenmayer, 1926; Tolmachoff, 1929; Illarionov, 1940; Augusta, Burian, 1962, etc.). Only a map of the places of these finds is given here, supplemented with the latest data (Fig. 2).
The most outstanding finds in the past were: the carcass of an old mammoth from the lower reaches of the Lena (mammoth Adams, 1799), the carcass of an adult mammoth from the Berezovka River (mammoth Hertz, 1901). Their skeletons and parts of carcasses are in the Museum of the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad.
Let us give a brief description of the conditions of occurrence of whole skeletons and carcasses of mammoths in three newest localities.
In 1972, on the right bank of the Shandrin River, east of the mouth of the Indigirka, an inspector of fishing supervision discovered tusks 12 cm in diameter sticking out of a cliff and broke them out of the skull. Yakut geologists B. Rusanov and P. Lazarev washed out here with a fire engine a whole skeleton, densely painted over with vivianite. Under the protection of the ribs and pelvic bones, frozen internal organs, especially the intestines, were preserved. The skeleton lay in river cross-layered silty loams with bark, wood chips, larch cones and ... fish eye lenses. The front legs stretched forward and the hind legs bent under the belly, the intestines stuffed with food, the venerable age of the beast (about 60-70 years old) showed that he quietly died lying in a shallow riverbed, and then the remains of his carcass and the skeleton cleaned with fish and water were washed into silt and froze about 41 thousand years ago.
In 1977, in a steep cliff on the left bank of the Bolshaya Lesnaya Rassokha River (the basin of the Khatanga River, Eastern Taimyr), local reindeer herders found and sawed off tusks sticking out of the sand, with a diameter of 18-19 cm (!). Having eroded the frozen river sands and pebbles of the coastal ravine to a depth of 5.5 m, the expedition of the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in July 1978 removed a frozen head, a left hind leg, a humerus and scapula gnawed by predators, cervical vertebrae, and ribs. Under the lower jaw, a piece of pink tissue of the tongue and salivary gland has been preserved. A large section of the trunk with fresh pinkish cartilage and the right leg with muscles were removed by the reconnaissance party of the Academy of Sciences back in 1977. The currents and waves of the surf in the bed of the ancient stream dismembered the corpse and skeleton of this specimen about 40 thousand years ago. Later, the restructuring of the river network changed the local relief so much that the remains of a mammoth were at a height of 8 m above the low water level of the river.
According to the results, the conditions for preserving the carcass of the Magadan baby mammoth, discovered by prospectors in the summer of 1977 near the town of Susuman, turned out to be completely unique. This cub died of exhaustion about 40 thousand years ago. Having weakened, the baby mammoth fell into the waterhole of a stream on the gentle right slope of the taiga gorge Kirgilyakh in the upper reaches of the river. Kolyma. Unable to raise his head, he swallowed muddy deposits and fell silent, lying on his left side. Postmortem peristalsis drove the sludge from the stomach into the large intestine. It happened at the end of summer. In a cold slush, at the intersection of ground ice veins, the carcass was preserved until frost and soon froze. The next summer, a frozen puddle with a baby mammoth was blocked by a new removal of rubble and silt, which formed a reliable permafrost shield. To our days, the carcass was already at a depth of two meters under frozen silt and rubble, interbedded in places with brown peat. By the cares of the bulldozer operator A. Logachev, the mummified carcass of a mammoth, with peeling hair, was saved for science.
It is interesting that, despite the enormously increased volume of exploration and industrial work in the North, the appearance of helicopters, all-terrain vehicles, motor boats, the mass media, the rate of finds of frozen carcasses of mammoths and other animals in the 20th century increased compared to the 19th century. only twice. This is partly due to the high payment to pioneers in the last century for finding a whole carcass (up to 500 and even up to 1000 rubles). In addition, in the first forty years of Soviet power, there was obviously no time for mammoths. The most important finds of the last decade are an extensive collection of bones (8300 copies) from the Berelekh cemetery (1970); skeleton and skin of the Terektyakh mammoth (1977); skeleton and intestines of the Shandrin mammoth (1972); carcass of the Magadan baby mammoth (1977); head in skin and parts of the skeleton of the Khatanga mammoth (1977-1978).
The appearance of the mammoth is now known from the drawings and sculptures of the Stone Age masters, as well as from frozen corpses (Fig. 3). The hairy giant was impressive - his height at the withers reached 3.5 m, weight - up to 6 tons. A large head with a hairy trunk, huge tusks bent up and inward, with small ears overgrown with thick hair, sat on a short neck. With long spinous processes of the thoracic vertebrae, the withers protruded noticeably. Judging by the mounted skeletons, the butt was lowered less than the artists usually depict. The columnar legs were each equipped with three rounded horny plates - nails on the frontal surface of the hoofed phalanges. The thick, rough soles of the feet were as hard as horn. Its diameter in adult animals reached 35-50 cm, in a one-year-old mammoth - 13-15 cm. The tail was short, densely overgrown with coarse hair. The mammoths were warmly dressed, especially in winter. From the shoulder blades, sides, hips, belly hung almost to the ground, the stiff guard hairs of the suspension - a kind of "skirt" a meter long or more. A warm undercoat, up to 15 cm long, was hidden under the covering hair of the awn. The thickness of the outer hair reached 230-240 microns, and the undercoat - 17-40 microns, i.e. it was 3-4 times thicker than merino wool. The yellowish hair of the undercoat was gently crimped along its entire length, which increased its thermal insulation properties. However, both the outer and down hairs of mammoths lacked an axial canal and core cells. Judging by the partially faded hair collected in different places from the soil and from the skin, the main color tone was yellowish-brown and light brown. Tufts of black hair predominated on the withers and tail, as well as in places on the upper legs (Fig. 4). Rigid black hair grew obliquely forward on his forehead. Mammoths were also born furry. In a 7-8-month-old Magadan baby mammoth from the upper Kolyma, the hair on the legs reached 12-14 cm in length, on the trunk - up to 5-6 cm, and on the sides - 20-22 cm.
The skull of the mammoth, like that of other elephants, is sharply different from the skulls of other terrestrial animals. The long maxillary and premaxillary bones forming thin-walled tubes held heavy tusks. The nasal opening was high on the forehead between the eyes, almost like whales. A small brain capsule was located deep under a thick (up to 30-35 cm) layer of the frontal sinuses - cells separated by thin bone walls (Fig. 5). The upper molars sat in thin-walled alveoli. The lower jaw was more massive.
The heaviest part of the mammoth skull is the dentition, especially the tusks. The mammoth's tusks are basically what made him famous. Many people think that these are overdeveloped fangs and are often referred to as such in the literature. In fact, the tusks are the middle pair of incisors, and the fangs of elephants do not develop at all either in the upper or in the lower jaw. Tiny, 3-4 cm long, milk tusks were already present in a newborn baby mammoth, and they were forced out at the age of one by permanent ones. The tusk of an adult mammoth is a series of dentine cones, as if strung on top of each other. The tusk had no enamel coating, and therefore its surface was not hard. He easily scratched and grinded off during work. The tusks grew in length and thickness throughout the life of the beast. The size of the tusks varies greatly. The author found and knocked out of the permafrost near the Laptev Strait a tusk 380 cm long, 18 cm in diameter and weighing 85 kg. Two huge tusks in the exposition of the Zoological Museum of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad from the Kolyma River have the following dimensions: the right one is 396 cm long, 19 cm in diameter at the alveoli, and weighs 74.8 kg; left - respectively 420 cm, 19 cm and 83.2 kg. The largest tusks of males reach a length of 400-450 cm, with a diameter at the exit from the alveolus of 18-19 cm. The weight of such a tusk reaches 100-110 kg, but, apparently, there were also heavier ones - up to 120 kg.
The tusks of African elephants do not usually reach this size. The largest tusks, now in the British Museum in London, belong to an elephant killed at Kilimanjaro in Kenya in 1897. They weigh 101.7 and 96.3 kg each. The "monarch" of the African jungle elephant Ahmed in Kenya, who died at the age of 60-67, had tusks 330 cm long and 65-75 kg each. The tusks of Indian elephants are significantly inferior in size to African ones. The difference in tusk work between African elephants and mammoths is also clearly visible. The ends of the tusks of the Africans were ground evenly, forming a rather steep pointed cone. This type of tusk abrasion has never been seen in mammoths. Sometimes mammoths also developed second, thin tusks. They either sat in the jaw on their own or grew together along the entire length with the main ones. There were also diseases of the tusks, when they grew in the form of ugly warty formations. Such expansions of tusks are found on the New Siberian Islands.
Mammoth tusks were always weaker, thinner, straighter. In an 18-20-year-old female from Berelekh, they reached a length of 120 cm and a diameter of 60 mm at the alveolus. As a rule, they did not twist as strongly as in males, but their ends were also noticeably erased from the outside.
There is a lot of organic matter in the tusks - protein, and when burned, they give black coal. It is believed that during life, mammoths grew and wore out, like modern elephants, six molars in each half of the jaw.
The first three teeth are considered to be milk premolar and denoted Pd 2/2; Pd 3/3; Pd 4/4 . The last three are designated M 1/1; M 2/2; M 3/3 and are actually indigenous. Before the loss of the rest of the fifth tooth (M2/2) and the complete work of the sixth tooth M 3/3, two teeth were present and erased at once in each half of the jaw: Pd 2/2+Pd 3/3; Pd 3/3+Pd 4/4; Pd 4/4+ M 1/1; M 1/1+M2/2; M 2/2+M 3/3.
A 7-8-month-old, severely emaciated male Magadan mammoth, weighing 80-90 kg, had non-cut milk tusks, supported by permanent ones, heavily worn second Pd 2/2 and medium worn third Pd 3/3 milk molars. The fourth ones (Pd4/4) were already formed, but still sat in the depths of the jaws (Fig. 6).
Mammoth molars consisted of a series of flat, thin-walled enamel pockets surrounded and welded together by a mass of dentin. In the last - sixth - teeth, during the final erasure of which the mammoths died, the number of such pockets, as if folded into an accordion, reached 28, and the thickness of the enamel walls was 2.2 mm, rarely more. The usual thickness of tooth enamel in Late Pleistocene mammoths was only 1.2–1.5 mm.
Possessing great strength, the molars of elephants were preserved even after the complete destruction of the shards and skeletons. Geologists usually find them in lacustrine, river, slope and even marine sediments.
To hold several tons of skin, muscles and internal organs, the mammoth needed a strong skeleton. In total, there are about 250 individual bones in the mammoth skeleton, including 7 cervical, 20 thoracic, 5 lumbar. 5 sacral and 18-21 tail vertebrae. There were 19–20 pairs of gently curved, moderately wide ribs (Fig. 7).
The bones of the limbs of mammoths are massive and heavy. A huge mass of muscles was attached to the wide shoulder blades and pelvic bones. The heaviest and thickest-walled were the humerus and femur, weighing 15-20 kg each in an adult animal. The short bones of the hand and foot resemble heavy kolobashki. The internal organs of mammoths are still poorly understood. In a severely deformed corpse of the Magadan mammoth, a small tongue 19X4.5 cm was found, a simple and empty stomach, a collapsed thin intestine about 315 cm long and a thick one stuffed with earth about 132 cm long. The lungs, weighing 520 g, looked like triangular sheets with a length along the upper edge 34 cm and anterior height 23 cm. Heart, weighing 405 g with a pericardial sac and 375 g without it, in the form of a collapsed bag 21 cm long and 16 cm wide along the atria. Liver - weighing 415 g, whole, without lobes, size - 19X14 cm. Kidneys, weight 40 g, looked like flat elongated plaques 22 × 4 cm with a thickness of 1.7 cm. A testis 20X35 mm in size was found under the left kidney. The penis with cavernous bodies, 30 cm long and 35 mm in diameter, had a smooth oval head, drawn into the preputial bag.
The way of life and living conditions of mammoths were still little known. Animal painters and zoologists usually depict mammoths in the landscape of the tundra, forest-tundra, among ice and swamps. In museums, such paintings represent mammoths, bison, and horses grazing on swampy plains bordered by vertical walls of ice, and sometimes right on glaciers with their cracks, boulders, etc. Such a vulgarization of glacial ideas is of little educational benefit.
Huge herbivores demanded daily three or four centners of loose fodder mass. It could be obtained in the summer only in river valleys, along the outskirts of lakes and swamps - in thickets of reeds, reeds and grass-forb big grasses, among clumps of river willow. Mammoths lived and grazed in such places. There was no place for them in the mossy tundra and in the dry steppe of modern types, as well as in the dark coniferous taiga. It is highly probable that far to the north, beyond the Arctic Circle, mammoths came out into the cold, but rich in grassy fodder, tundra-steppe of the Pleistocene only in summer; in winter, they roamed the valleys to the south, as modern reindeer do in Siberia and Canada. In winter, they probably fed, like elks, on the shoots of pine, larch, willow and dwarf alder, which form impenetrable jungles in the floodplains of northern rivers. During floods, mammoths were forced out to watersheds and fed along the edges of forests, in meadows and in meadow steppes on young grass.
Gravity to the floodplains of the rivers concealed great dangers during floods and freezing. The main death of mammoths occurred precisely in the floodplains, when crossing the fragile ice of rivers and lakes, and during sudden floods, when the animals tried to escape on the islands. Mammoths also lived in mountainous regions along wide intermountain valleys and plateaus of the Caucasus, Crimea, the Urals, Siberia, and Alaska. Mammoths entered the deserts of Central Asia only along river valleys. Here it was dry and scarce for them. The modern landscape of Central Asia is unsuitable even for Indian elephants. Interesting in this regard is the "experiment" of Genghis Khan after the capture of Samarkand, noted by the chronicler Rashid ad-Din (1952, p. 207).
“Leaders of elephants (Khorezm Shah had 20 war elephants in Samarkand, - N. V.) led to Genghis Khan at the disposal of elephants and asked him for food for them, he ordered to let them into the steppe, so that they themselves would find food there and eat. The elephants were untied, and they wandered until they died of hunger.”
The nutrition and feeding regime of mammoths are known from the contents of the stomachs and intestines of two adult animals that died in the summer. In the Berezovsky mammoth (Kolyma basin), according to the research of V.N. Sukachev, small cereals and sedges with mature seeds, as well as shoots of green mosses, were found in the stomach - obviously, the animal died at the end of summer.
The food mass of the stomach and intestines of the Shandrin mammoth (east of the lower Indigirka) weighed more than 250 kg in ice cream, and, therefore, dried. The mass of this monolith consisted of 90% stems and leaves of sedges, cotton grass and grasses. A smaller part consisted of thin shoots of shrubs - especially willows, birches, alders. There were also lingonberry leaves and abundant shoots of hypnum and sphagnum mosses. Mature seeds were not found, the animal probably died in early summer - June, July.
In the Magadan baby mammoth, the large intestine was 90% clogged with a dark earthy mass. The remains of herbaceous plants accounted for about 8-10% of the content. In the stomach of the Shandrinsky mammoth, larvae of gadflies of a special species from the genus Cobboldia, characteristic of modern elephants.
The thin enamel of their teeth also indicates the predominant herbivory of mammoths.
Mammoths from one and a half to two years old used their 5-6 cm tusks, working with lateral movements of the head, so the ends of the tusks were grinded from the lateral, outer side. By such erasing zones it is easy to determine whether the tusk belongs to the right or left side. With age, the ends of the tusks were bent up and inward “heteronymously”, i.e. the left one twisted to the right, the right one to the left. Therefore, the zone of abrasion of the end of the tusk, formed in youth, moved to old age, partly to the upper - frontal surface. The wear of the ends of the tusks indicates their vigorous use for obtaining some kind of food, but what!? With tusks 5-6 cm long, young animals could not pick the soil in search of rhizomes, since for this they would have to lie down on their side or graze on very steep slopes. Such small tusks were probably used in the summer to peel off the bark of trees -. willows, aspens, perhaps even larch and spruce.
On the strongly curved, huge tusks of old males, “erasure zones” are also traced, 30-40 cm long or more. The main part of such wear due to the bending of the tusks now turned out to be inside and on top. It was no longer possible to dig, pierce, peel off the bark with tusks bent up and inward. They could only break the branches of shrubs and trees.
Almost nothing is known about the reproduction of mammoths, and one has to go by the method of analogies.
Sexual maturity and the first mating in African and Indian elephants occurs at the age of 11-15 (Sikes, 1971; Nasimovich, 1975). Pregnancy lasts exceptionally long - 660 days, i.e. almost 22 months. Most mating occurs in May, June. Usually one baby elephant is born, and twins range from 1 to 3.8%. Baby elephants are fed up to 1.5 years of age. The interval between two births in African elephants ranges from 3 to 13 years. Elephants of the age of 1-2 years in the herd of African elephants are from 7 to 10%. The sex ratio is usually 1: 1. At the age of one year, an African elephant calf has a height of about a meter at the withers, the Magadan mammoth calf had a height at the withers of 104 cm, with an oblique body length of 74 cm (Fig. 8).
It used to be that elephants live for a very long time - more than a hundred years. Now it has been found out that 80-85 years is the extreme limit to which Indian elephants live in nature and zoos. The life limit of African elephants is less - about 70 years.
Whether this was the case for mammoths is not known, but the severity of the conditions of their homeland should have left an imprint on both the seasonality of mating and the timing of pregnancy. According to our research (Mammoth Fauna..., 1977), in the herd of Berelekh mammoths, about 15% of all individuals died as young, at the age of 1-5 years. Approximately the same ratio was noticed by Ukrainian scientists on the remains of mammoths in the Desna Paleolithic sites.
Polar explorer V. M. Sdobnikov (1956, p. 166) wrote that the bones of mammoths in the tundra of Taimyr come across more often than the bones of a hairy rhinoceros, horse, reindeer, elk, bison, musk ox. And the frozen corpses of these mammoth companions were apparently not found at all. He explained this by the special abundance of mammoths. Actually it was different. Large bones are more noticeable and less lost in the breed. Horse and buffalo carcasses are now known, and rhinoceros carcasses have been found in the days of Pallas. Small frozen carcasses without tusks received less attention.
The geographic distribution of mammoths was extensive. They inhabited at different times of the Pleistocene all of Europe, the Caucasus, the northern half of Asia, Alaska and the southern half of North America, which was not subjected to glaciation. Their teeth are found even in the area of the modern shelf - on the banks of the North Sea and in the Atlantic against New York.
A little about the "mammoth bone". Talking about the mammoth, one cannot remain silent about the history of the use of mammoth tusks. Already in the Middle Ages, trade and scientists, and especially bone carvers and jewelers, were interested in the mysterious light cream bone that came from Muscovy to Western Europe. The material was perfectly worked with a chisel, distinguished by a beautiful mesh pattern in the section and was suitable for the manufacture of expensive snuff boxes, figurines, chess pieces, combs, bracelets, necklaces, inlaid boxes, scabbard linings and handles of blades and sabers, canes, etc. In general, Mamontov bone” was not inferior to the more expensive ivory imported from India and Africa. For master jewelers, it was obvious that it also belonged to elephants. But what kind of elephants could live in Muscovy and Siberia - a country of eternal frost and snow? Here even bright minds began to get confused, express and build fantastic conjectures and hypotheses.
And today, as soon as it comes to finding a mammoth, usually the interlocutor immediately asks stereotypical questions: “And the tusks?”, “Large?”, “Whole?”, “How and where can I get at least a piece?” ... Mammoth tusk It is both an original souvenir and a rare material for jewelry. Moreover, it turned out that even now, in the presence of polymers, "Mammoth bone" has taken a special place in electronics. It is almost indispensable in radio relay devices as an excellent elastic dielectric that does not yield to deformation.
In the tundra and taiga of Siberia, mammoth tusks are held in high esteem. Their main use among the Evenks, Yakuts, Yukaghirs, Chukchis, Eskimos is the manufacture of knife handles and parts of a reindeer team. Members of geological, geophysical, topographical and other expeditions will also not miss the opportunity to purchase or personally search for a mammoth tusk. And it often happens that, having found and dug up a tusk weighing 50-60 kg, its owner throws it away, since it is very difficult to carry a load across the hummocky tundra, and air transportation does not justify the costs. A lot of invaluable finds for science and museums have been and are being lost as a result of pitiful and mercenary aspirations! After all, behind the tip of the tusk sticking out of the permafrost, there is a skull, and sometimes a whole corpse of an outlandish beast. So it was with mammoth Adams in the Lena delta in 1802, with Berezovsky in 1901, with Shandrinsky in 1972, with Khatanga in 1977.
If today you can practically do without a mammoth bone, then in the late Stone Age the situation was different. From mammoth tusks in the Paleolithic, spearheads up to a meter long, and even solid asegai two meters long, were made. Such asegai were discovered by Professor O. N. Bader in the burial of two boys at the Paleolithic site of Sungir near Vladimir.
The dressing of tips, and even more so of whole asegai, was a serious matter. Probably the tusks of females were taken, as they were more straight, with a diameter of 70-80 mm. They were soaked in water for a long time, and then cut longitudinally crosswise on four sides with flint blades. It was hardly possible to make such longitudinal grooves-notches deeper than 8-10 mm, and therefore the tusk was split by wedges into four longitudinal segments and then processed by blows of flint knives to a round section. The method of straightening such a tip is still not clear, but on the example of a finished rod with a diameter of 25 mm and a length of 94 cm from the Berelekh site, it is estimated that at least 3500 blows with flint knives were spent on its final processing. There is reason to think that heavy spears with such tips were used specifically for hunting thick-skinned.
Judging by the inventory from the Kostenkovsko-Borshevsky Paleolithic sites on the Don and the sites of Eliseevichi, Berdyzh, Mezin, Kirillovskaya, Mezhirich and others on the Desna and Dnieper, spatulas of unknown purpose, awls and needles, bracelets, figurines depicting Mammoths, bears, lions, corpulent women and other items. It is possible that as a result of the manufacture of bracelets from mammoth tusk plates, the sign of the swastika arose in such ancient times, which appears on sections of the mesh structure of the layers during polishing and laying the plates in a special order.
Fishing - searches and export - of tusks existed long before the first Russian Arctic explorers. Mammoth tusks and walrus tusks first went to Mongolia and China. As early as 1685, the Smolensk voivode Musin-Pushkin, being the quartermaster of the government in Siberia, knew that there were islands at the mouth of the Lena, where the population hunted the "behemoth" - an amphibious animal (obviously, a walrus), whose teeth are in great demand. At the end of the 18th century, tusks were already collected on the Lyakhovsky Islands and taken out on reindeer and dogs by the Cossacks Vagin and Lyakhov. The Cossack Sannikov brought in 1809 from the New Siberian Islands 250 pounds of tusks, from about 80-100 animals. In the first half of the XIX century. from 1000 to 2000 pounds of mammoth bone passed through the Yakut fairs, up to 100 pounds - through Turukhansk and the same amount through Obdorsk. Academician Middendorf believed that at that time tusks from about 100 mammoths were mastered annually. Thus, in 200 years it will be up to 20,000 heads. Various authors tried to calculate in more detail the number of bones taken out of Siberia. Unfortunately, this statistic is arbitrary. IP Tolmachev (1929) cited some data on the export of mammoth tusks to England. In 1872, 1630 excellent tusks arrived there from Russia, and in 1873 - 1140, weighing 35-40 kg each. In the second half of the XIX century. and at the beginning of the 20th century. through Yakutsk, according to the then statistics, passed up to 1500 pounds of bone. If we assume that the average weight of the tusk was 3 pounds (i.e., 48 kg - a figure that is clearly exaggerated - N. V.), then it can be calculated that the number of mammoth specimens discovered in Siberia (not necessarily whole skeletons and carcasses) over 250 years was 46,750. our century. Similar calculations and figures usually migrated from article to article of later compilers.
At the beginning of the XX century. Purchases of mammoth ivory at Yakut fairs were made annually in the amount of 40 to 90 thousand rubles.
In Soviet times, the organized collection of mammoth ivory almost ceased. True, it occasionally came from reindeer breeders and hunters in the Soyuzpushnina trading post, to the bases and stations of the Main Northern Sea Route, and to the procurement offices of the Integral Cooperation. In the Yamalo-Nenets national district of the Tyumen region in the 20-50s, bone harvesting reached only 30-40 kg per year. It is known that from October 1, 1922 to October 1, 1923, the Yakut consumer union "Kholbos" procured 56 pounds 26.5 pounds of mammoth bone in the amount of 2540 rubles 61 kopecks ("Kholbos is 50 years old", 1969). No later figures have been preserved, until 1960, when Holbos harvested 707.5 kg; in 1966, this organization prepared 471 kg, in 1967 - 27.3 kg, in 1968 - 312 kg, in 1969 - 126 kg and in 1971 - 65 kg. In the 70s, harvesting continued more intensively in connection with the revival of bone carving and the establishment of a procurement price (4 rubles 50 kopecks per 1 kg of tusk), as well as with the demands of the aviation industry. A significant number of tusks are now taken out by members of various expeditions, employees of polar stations, and tourists.
The search for tusks was and is carried out mainly along the eroded shores of the seas, rivers, lakes, i.e., in areas of water erosion and thawing of ground ice - the so-called thermokarst. The most interesting have always been the marginal areas of gently sloping hills - edom, with their large landslides and thick layers of ice melting out of the air. Such hills are nothing but the remains of the former ice-loess plain, on which mammoths, rhinos, horses, bison once grazed, died and in some places were buried. Tusks, washed out of the original frozen soil by a river, sea, lake and redeposited on their bottom, deteriorate and collapse.
Such a valuable raw material, thawing annually and again leaving for millennia in a redeposited form, should be collected and utilized as completely as possible through a properly organized search. Along the way, you can expect to find whole carcasses. To do this, large-scale aerial survey maps should be used, highlighting promising areas of badgerahs and erosion of relict hills on them.
The author of this book tried to determine the total stock of tusks in Siberia and the number of dead mammoths based on field observations. The frequency of finds of tusks along the cliffs of "mammoth graves" - on the relic ice-loess remains of the Yano-Kolyma - Primorskaya lowland, namely in the upper layer of the cover loess, has been calculated. And in particular, the calculations were carried out along the southern coast of the Laptev Strait - Oyagossky Yar and along the yedoms of the river. Allah. According to these data, it turned out that about 550 thousand tons of tusks were washed and reburied on the shelf as a result of the erosion of ancient land at the bottom of the Laptev and East Siberian Seas. Within the boundaries of the surviving Primorskaya lowland, between Yana and Kolyma, there are still about 150 thousand tons of tusks that may be found. If we assume that the average weight of one tusk is 25-30 kg (i.e., 50-60 kg per animal), then the total number of male mammoths who lived and died in the Late Pleistocene - Sartan on the plains of northeast Siberia can be estimated at about 14 million individuals. Given that the same number of adult females still lived here, whose tusks were not collected, we get a total population of adults of 28-30 million, plus approximately 10 million young of different ages. Taking the duration of the late segment of the last ice age to be 10 millennia, we can assume that during one year about 4000 mammoths lived in the extreme north-east of Siberia - a figure probably underestimated by 10-15 times, since when searching for tusks in abrasive and landslide outcrops, no more than 3-5% of the actual presence of tusks is found.
mammoth ancestors. The origin of the species is little known. The hairy elephant, enduring fierce cold and snowstorms, did not come into the world suddenly, not as a result of a supermutation. The living African and Indian elephants are tropical inhabitants, although they sometimes climb Kilimanjaro and the Himalayas to the snow line. According to the exterior, the structure of the skull and teeth, the composition of the blood, the mammoth is closer to the Indian elephant than to the African one. The distant ancestors of mammoths - primitive elephants and mastodons - also lived in a warm climate and were poorly dressed, almost hairless.
Among fossil elephants, in terms of the structure of teeth, skull and skeleton, the closest thing to a mammoth is a huge trogontherian elephant that lived in Europe and Asia about 450-350 thousand years ago. The climate of that era - the early Pleistocene - was still moderately warm in the middle latitudes, and moderate in the high latitudes. In the extreme northeast of Asia and Alaska, mixed deciduous forests grew and meadow-steppes and tundra-steppes were located. Probably, this elephant already had the rudiments of a hairline. His last - sixth - teeth had up to 26 enamel pockets, and the thickness of their enamel reached 2.4-2.9 mm. Finds of isolated teeth, bones, and sometimes even whole skeletons of this elephant are known throughout the vast territory of Europe and Asia. It is assumed that the ancestor of the trogontherian elephant was a southern elephant, probably almost hairless; it reached 4 m in height at the withers, the sixth teeth of this elephant had up to 16 pockets, the thickness of the enamel reached 3.0-3.8 mm. Its skeletons and teeth are found in layers of the late Pliocene - Eopleistocene. The ancestors of the southern elephant have not yet been found within our borders.
The most frequent finds of the remains of the southern elephant in Ukraine, in the Ciscaucasia, Asia Minor. In the museums of Leningrad, Rostov, Stavropol, there are even whole skeletons of him.
Since the work of G. F. Osborne (1936, 1942) the hypothesis has been accepted that the mammoth represents the last stage in the genetic line: the southern elephant, the trogontherian elephant, the mammoth. This was confirmed to some extent by the consistent dating of geological layers, with their remains of elephants, according to other geomorphological features. However, in recent decades, findings of thin-enamelled mammoth-type teeth have been made in North-Eastern Siberia in the layers of the early Pleistocene. In this regard, the mammoth should probably be considered a descendant of a special line of cold-tolerant elephants that lived within the northeast of Siberia and Beringia, and then widely settled in the last ice age.
It is still generally accepted that mammoths died out at the end of the last ice age or at the beginning of the Holocene. According to the archaeological scale, this is Mesolithic bad. The latest absolute dates of mammoth bones according to radioactive carbon are as follows: Berelekh "cemetery" - 12,300 years, Taimyr mammoth - 11,500 years, Kunda site in Estonia - 9,500 years, Kostenkov sites - 9,500-14,000 years. The reasons for the death and extinction of mammoths have always caused a lively discussion (see Chapter V), but it could never be complete without considering the living conditions of other members of the mammoth fauna, some of which also died out. One of these contemporaries of the mammoth was the hairy rhinoceros.