What this makes clear is that inthe general areas of interest, local traditions remember the Mammoth.
It is also clear that mankindhunted them out to the operating extent of their hunting ranges over the pastfew thousands of years. In Asia , they also hunted to extinction both the Asian bisonand the muskoxen. Both have begun restoration.
That larges parts of Alaska and Northern Asia were never particularly occupied and hunted out is actually reasonable. In Alaska and surely in Asia , villages relied on thebounty of the salmon rivers and congregated there, thus controlling where theirhunting ranges were. Distant valleysremained distant.
Besides, the mammoth was not astupid animal and avoidance works. That strategywas plausible here and they likely have good night vision.
Could small herds of mammoths liveout there today? My sense of it is thatit is at least possible and particularly so with our WWII sightings when therewas a sky full of slow moving, low flying aircraft.
Today the hunting ranges havebeen generally abandoned and all wildlife is recovering. Perhaps even the mammoths will soon come outof the shadows. It will take a while forthe populations to build up and for them to expand out of their refugia. Thus we have to wait.
The second item introduces the sightings taking place in New York State, and the likelihood that any such sighting would be a mastodon.
In fact, whatever version of mammoth exists in Asia, it is almost certainly a browser also. The open plains are just too vulnerable while a forest is cover to a few feet.
Again we grossly overestimate our ability to actually observe wooded country. Unless one walks a close grid, you have seen little and flushed almost nothing. On top of that it is almost impossible for a human wearing shod boots to walk quietly in the woods. It takes a lot of effort, and if at night when you hear a twig snap, it is certainly a human. Every other critter remains unheard.
Sightings of living woolly mammoths
by Terrence Aym
March 20, 2011
Have all woolly mammoths gone extinct? Perhaps not.
Although orthodox science has declared the mammoth species to be long dead, itsaid the same about dinosaurs even though dinosaurs called tuataras still existin
Reports during the last several centuries suggest that small pockets of mammothsurvivors may still walk the earth.
Sightings by Siberian hunters
During the mid-19th Century, large shaggy beasts were reported to Russianauthorities by hunters in northeastern
Almost 70 years later, M. Gallon—a French chargé d'affaires posted in
Gallon said the most remarkable thing about his meeting with the trapper wasthat the man knew nothing about woolly mammoths, what they looked like, or thatthey were thought to be extinct creatures. The trapper talked about the animalsas another type of forest animal he'd come across during his days as a trapperand took it for granted that the great beasts lived on the tundra and forests.
The American Indian legends
Early missionaries to the new land of North America were told by the PoncaIndians, who had migrated from what later became northeastern Nebraska, thatthey had sometimes hunted and killed what could only be called woolly mammothsduring their twice a year tribal buffalo hunts. The kills were made along thebanks of what is now called the NiobraraRiver.
According to their calculations, the missionaries believed the hunts and killstook place hundreds of years earlier, perhaps as far back as the 12thCentury.
Much farther northwest come stories from the Kaska tribe of northern
A university ethnologist recorded the Kaskaian tradition during 1917. Thetribes elders told him of “A very large kind of animal which roamed the countrya long time ago. It corresponded somewhat to white men's pictures ofelephants.
"It was of huge size, in build like an elephant, had tusks, and was hairy.These animals were seen not so very long ago, it is said, generally singly, butnone have been seen now for several generations."
The researcher learned that Indians occasionally found the giant bones. Laterthe ethnologist claimed he and some companions had seen one of the bones too: ashoulder-blade as wide as a table, approximately three feet across.
The Alaskan myth
Swedish investigator Bengt Sjögren relates stubborn tales about survivingmammoths in
Native tribes including the Inuit, however, claimed that they had seen andhunted the great shaggy beasts. The stories had enough detail that American zoologistCharles Haskins Townsend traveled to the region. He met with some natives thatwere trading mammoth tusks. When he asked them if any of the animals were stillalive and showed them drawings of the creatures, some of the natives, trying tobe helpful, agreed they had seen them.
Sjögren was convinced that none had. He believes that the meetings withTownsend began the persistent cycle of myths about living Alaskanmammoths.
Last of the mammoths?
Scientists have determined that "dwarf" woolly mammoths stillsurvived just 4,000 years ago. They believe the diminutive mammoths wentextinct on an island north of Siberia, in the
Because the smaller mammoths disappeared more than 9,000 years after theirfull-sized cousins went extinct elsewhere in the world, it's a strongprobability that humans hunted them into extinction.
Whether the Indian legends of hunting them as recently as 800 years ago istrue, or if Siberian trappers really saw mammoths—or something like them—lessthan 200 years ago, no one may ever know for sure.
Mammoth Sighted in Northern NY
Enthusiasts claim: “Proof in our time”
The latest, in a series of woolly mammoth sightings, was reportedoutside the town of Chazy
A mammoth and a native person living in harmony, circa 12,000 BC
Paleontologists believe that both the mastodon and the mammoth disappearedsome 10,000 years ago with the rest of the Pleistocene megafauna. Any claimedsightings are considered sheer fantasy, delusions, or just some pranksterpulling our collective leg. “Another mammoth sighting? What did you findthis time? A big footprint? Some guy off the side of the road at 2 am drunk outof his mind who claims one ran out in front of him and that’s why he smashed uphis truck?” scoffed Dr. Paula Ashter, head of The Institute for The Search ForLong Since Dead Megafauna. “I’ve been in this business for over 20 years nowand I can tell you I’ve seen it all. Next you’ll be telling me some jokerclaims she’s seen a mountain lion in the Adirondacks .That’s a stitch. If I had a nickle for every one of these sightings, I wouldn’thave to spend half my time looking for grant money to fund this dead-end job.”
The continued existence of the mammoth is controversial in part becauseno actual physical evidence of a live specimen has yet to surface. “Ifthey were out there somebody, somewhere would have at least stepped in agigantic turd by now,” remarked Dr. Ashter. “But we have yet to see thedirty sneaker to prove it.” Indeed some argue that, almost certainly, anymammoth sightings are more probably sightings of the similar, but less well known,mastodon. “It’s a common mistake,” explained Sheila Voop, president of MastodonNow. “But they are really very different species. Any resemblance is strictlysuperficial. Mastodons are browsers while mammoths are grazers. They’renot even in the same genus for gosh sakes. I mean really. I very much doubtanyone has seen a mammoth around here. We don’t have the grasslands to supportthem. A mastodon, though; now that’s a very different thing all together. Theylike to nibble on leaves and twigs. We’ve got plenty of that around here. Onejust last year ate my favorite lilac right to the ground. I have some photossomewhere of the poor thing. I just wish I could remember where the heck I putthem.”
The mastodon: oft neglected cousin to the mammoth
Most scientists argue that humans were likely a significant cause ofthe demise of both species. Native groups however bristle at that explanation.“Our ancestors lived in harmony with nature,” said Tina Two Smokes, researcherwith the Ancient Peoples Were in Harmony with Nature Foundation. “They onlytook from nature as much as they needed. If there was a decline in the mammothor mastodon population our ancestors would have reacted quickly by banninghunting and instituting a breeding program. We have no evidence of any of thathappening so it follows that mastodons and mammoths must still be around today.They’re probably just really good at hiding. How else could they have survivedall this time?”
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