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Mammoth |
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Mammoths have been sighted for hundreds of years,one of the earliest reports (16th century)describes a large elephantlike creature living somewhere out in siberia. According to the report the natives coveted the animal as a food source, and called it,in traslation, "mountain of meat". A more recent(1920) sighting from a French consulate in Valdivostock Russia tells of a detailed report of an encounter with mammoths in remote Siberia. In a book by Ed Ferrrell, titled "Strange Stories of Alaska and the Yukon" many reports of mammoths are mentioned, including: *1881-herd of live mammoths reported on upper Stikine River. *Undated-people report "huge wooly beasts with horns like the trunks of birch trees" and "Puffs of steam issue from their nostrils like the escaped pipe of a steam boat." *1889-Agent for the Alaska Fur and Commercial Company bought "fossil" ivory with decomposing flesh and blood attached. The natives he bought it from told him that they had found a herd of about 50 and had killed a cow and bull. * 1903-Fresh mammoth tracks found and followed, no sightings made. More on Alaskan mammoths; Henry Turkmen wrote a fanciful story about an Indian he knew who killed a mammoth, and even the famed Jack London wrote a short story on the killing of a mammoth, entitled "A Relic of the Pleistocine". The best evidence of surviving mammoths comes from Wrangle Island, off the coast of Siberia in the Chuckahi Sea, where bones of a pygmy(7 feet tall as opposed to the average 13) mammoths have been radiocarbon dated to be no more than 3,700-7,000 years old, which falls into the time early civilizations were in swing. - entry provided by Ethan H. Touzjian
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