Nothing is more incredible
V. Lukyanov
Scanty lines from the reference book: “… Now extinct mammal of the elephant family, which lived in the second half of the Pleistocene in Eurasia and North America. They reached a height of 5.5 meters and a body weight of 10-12 tons. The reasons for the extinction are not fully known, although it is believed that they died as a result of climate change and the incessant hunt for them by human tribes. Mammoths disappeared from the face of the Earth about fifteen thousand years ago …"
For our ancestors, they were the same routine as in our time dogs, cats, horses and cows … Can you imagine the world of the next century without dogs and cats ?! So our century should have seemed more than strange to our distant ancestors if they were told that we do not have mammoths.
Mammoth lived
The scientific world amicably classifies the mammoth as a long-extinct animal. None of the biologists have yet brought the skin of a "freshly killed" mammoth from the northern expeditions, therefore, it does not exist. The question for scientists is only as a result of what cataclysms the mammoths died out. There are two main versions: mammoths were either eaten by people, or they were killed by the climate (cold). In fact, if I hadn't been an animal advocate, I would have liked the first version better.
At the beginning of the last century, the most popular hypothesis was the amazing dexterity of primitive hunters who specialized exclusively in eating mammoths. There is no doubt that people ate mammoths, this can be evidenced by the sites of a primitive man with the remains of a mammoth bone. It is even possible that, while hunting large animals, man learned the collective organization of labor and acquired speech, so that we owe mammoths not only what they ate, but also to all the human beings that we have.
Promotional video:
A fresco in the Moscow Historical Museum depicts the ease with which people slaughter mammoths with large stones. The victory of our mind over a primitive mountain of muscles flatters our pride.
But it’s hard to believe in the success and success of such a hunt, it’s enough to remember that both Indian and African elephants until recently absolutely calmly dealt with much better armed people and kept them at a respectful distance from themselves. Asian hunters generally considered it unprofitable to eat an elephant - there is a lot of trouble, but little benefit, it is much more profitable to take a young and stupid elephant by cunning, raise it and use it in heavy work as a pet and a powerful mechanism that does not require spare parts.
If the ancient people could catch living mammoths, they would have tamed them and used them in the household, because it is foolish to just eat what modern Asian elephant drivers consider the greatest wealth ("the chicken that lays the golden eggs"). Why hunt powerful thugs, if there was an abundance of various game around?
The meat of mammoths also fell on the dinner table - the ancient people did not disdain rotten meat and carrion, especially since they came across fresh bodies of those who died from the cold and accidents. And even without eating mammoths, the ancient man would hardly have passed by the free mammoth bone, which is so convenient to use in the household (apart from relatively light tusks and heavy stones, there were no other durable building materials then).
So, to the delight of the "green", most likely mammoths died out not because of people. Then - the climate?
At the end of the 20th century, the most popular version was of a sharp change in climate in Siberia and Canada, as a result of which large northern herbivorous mammals (mammoth, woolly rhinoceros) were deprived of their usual food and quickly became extinct. However, for some reason, these changes did not affect their contemporary - the musk ox (musk ox), which not only survived, but to this day does not stop multiplying, despite any climatic cataclysms.
Such considerations make cryptozoologists doubt the general extinction of mammoths.
Is the mammoth alive?
Foreigners who visited Muscovy wrote about the existence of mammoths. Geographer Qian in his notes in 188-155 BC. wrote: "… from animals are found … huge wild boars, northern elephants in bristles and northern rhinoceros genus."
In the 16th century, the ambassador of the Austrian emperor Sigismund Herberstein wrote in his "Notes on Muscovy": "In Siberia … there are a great many birds and various animals, such as sables, martens, beavers, ermines, squirrels … In addition, weight. In the same way, polar bears, wolves, hares "… Weight, or all - this animal, according to the description, resembles the same mammoth. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, among the Kalym Khanty, the strange mammoth pike, called "all", was covered with thick long hair and had large horns. Sometimes "all" started such a fuss that the ice on the lakes broke with a terrible roar …
Ermak's warriors, who conquered Siberia, also met huge hairy elephants in the forests.
Both the Ob Ugrians and the Siberian Tatars described the hairy elephant in detail: "Mammoth, by its nature, is a meek and peaceful animal, and affectionate to people; when meeting a man, a mammoth does not attack him."
In the notes of the cryptozoologist M. Bykova there is information about modern encounters with the mammoth. On one of the rivers of Western Siberia, several boats with local residents sailed slowly along the river. Suddenly, a huge body, three meters high, covered with long hair, rose from the water. Raising one or the other leg, it began to beat them on the water. After that it swayed on the waves and dived into the water …
The pilots flying over the taiga in the 40s of the last century talked about huge shaggy animals seen from above …
Of course, it would be difficult for a mammoth to survive in the harsh Siberian winters. In the 1990s, a version appeared in the Russian press for the first time that mammoths, to protect themselves from the cold, could well have switched … to a semi-aquatic lifestyle! With such a lifestyle, large animals are able to endure even 60-70-degree frost - if, like walruses, they hide in water that has a temperature of at least zero. Moreover, the larger the animal, the more comfortable it will feel in the water. And what could be the largest mammoth on earth? The only question is, how comfortable will the mammoth feel in the water?
Better than we can think of! The mammoth swims (swam) well, the closest relatives - elephants, as it turned out relatively recently, are excellent swimmers, sometimes swimming for tens of kilometers in the sea. And the distant relatives of mammoths - the famous sea sirens - have retained the signs common with elephants: mammary glands, molars change throughout life and tusk-like incisors.
And elephants also retained some of the properties of sea animals, they have the ability to emit and hear infrasounds below the sensitivity threshold of the human ear (only marine animals, for example, whales, have such abilities). Moreover, Australian zoologist Anne Gate, who studied elephant embryos at the University of Melbourne, concluded that the trunks appeared much earlier than is commonly believed. E. Gate is convinced that elephants were even once amphibians …
All this is so convincing that it is surprising - why do we still not see mammoths frolicking in the water in the Moscow River? Perhaps, if by mistake the mammoths have degenerated, then it is worth reviving their tribe again? Now we won't let them go to waste.
The mammoth will live !?
Russia is the homeland of elephants, I say this completely without irony. If anyone doubts that the first (still hairy) elephants were once found on the territory of present-day Siberia, then maybe soon they will have nothing to cover. If where the huge hairy elephants are reborn, then only in Russian Siberia.
The idea of artificially breeding mammoths, of course, first appeared as a fantastic story on the pages of the popular magazine "Technology of Youth". But, as you know, a particularly lazy reader does not bother to read the very postscript that this is just science fiction, and takes everything he read as a guide to action.
In the late 90s of the last century, after the first successful experiments on cloning, there were also reports about a project to create hypothetical breeding animals that are planned to be artificially created using genetic engineering and other achievements of modern sciences. 1996, summer - a scientific expedition to Siberia was formed in Japan with the aim of finding the body of a male mammoth in the "mammoth cemetery" in the permafrost layer in Japan, then isolating the mammoth sperm with not a destroyed DNA molecule, but with the resulting material to fertilize the elephant.
It was assumed that the calf that appeared would be 2/3 a typical mammoth and only a third an elephant. Maybe later it will be possible to create a whole colony of new (old) animals, almost entirely similar to those that became extinct in Siberia just a few thousand years ago. So, the number one task is to find a fresh mammoth carcass.
For the first time, the remains of a mammoth were found in the permafrost of Siberia in 1798. Since that time, several hundred such finds have been made. In the north (in Yakutia, Kolyma, Chukotka, Alaska), bones, tusks, and even practically whole carcasses, sometimes untouched by rot, are often found. Most often, such finds occur during the work of gold miners, when excavators remove large layers of soil and peat.
Corpses of mammoths, relatively well preserved in the permafrost, are also found. Until now, northern elephants have been removed from the soil in the same primitive way. They were washed out of the frozen ground with hot water. Because of which, it was not possible to preserve the entire hairline, skin in its original form, and the internal organs also suffered.
Mammoth cemeteries or mammoth nurseries?
In the 1996 season, the Russian-Japanese expedition failed to find a suitable candidate for the "father" of the future mammoth elephant … The members of our "Cosmopoisk" were also engaged in the search for a suitable mammoth carcass for more than a year. The hope of finding a specimen of the desired freshness was fueled by the relatively recent history of a decently preserved specimen of "Dima the mammoth", discovered by an excavator while clearing a gold-bearing layer near Susuman in the Magadan Region.
Later, the space explorers were in these parts, questioning the gold artelists about the same "Dima No. 2" … Soon they told about the find of the seemingly necessary sample in secret at one of the mines, but … the geneticists were not satisfied this time either.
1997, July 29 - a group of specialists from the Department of Biological Resources of the Ministry of Nature Protection of Yakutia and the local mammoth museum flew to Ustya-Yanovskiy district, where hunters found the remains of a mammoth on the bank of the Maksu-Nuoka river.
The huge hairy elephant lost its tusks and part of its head, but its carcass rested in the ice shackles of the permafrost. The last circumstance is very important, because Japanese scientists need the most intact torso with genitals … And again, scientists rejected the found fossil.
In the late 90s of the XX century, an international research expedition for the first time in the world managed to extract a mammoth completely intact. The first to discover the carcass of a fossil mastodon was a Russian expedition member named Zharkov. This surname was assigned to the mammoth. The extraction technology was quite complex and time consuming. A whole team of workers during excavations created a stable microclimate there, the temperature was not higher or lower than minus 15 degrees.
Zharkov himself (mammoth) weighed 4 tons, but together with the parallelepiped of ice and soil, in which he was embedded and with which he was removed, as much as 23 tons. All this was tied to the Mi-26 helicopter, which pulled the mammoth out of the permafrost … The first sample of mammoth DNA was sent for research.
In 1999-2000, attempts to search for mammoth carcasses continued. Once we received a message about the discovery of a "very fresh" carcass too late. While we phoned the Japanese, while we found money for the trip, while we agreed with the military about help with transportation by air, like fresh mammoth meat … we ate it! We were outstripped by the businessmen who made good money on satisfying the lust of gourmets by flying French tourists and a professional chef straight to Siberia …
So the Cosmopoisk Association still appeals to all hunters and artel workers not only with the old request “If you see - let me know!”, But also with a new one - “Don't eat!” …
Time will tell whether the search engines will be able to find, and the scientists to isolate the mammoth sperm and thereby begin the experiment. And if the hopes of Russian, Yakut, Japanese researchers are justified, humanity may become a witness to the soon sensational result of the experiment.
Siberian roots Nesen?
There is one more argument in favor of the existence of a mammoth in the North. In the descriptions of eyewitnesses of the appearance of monsters of the Nesen type on the surface of lakes, the following details often appear: a long flexible neck, and behind it a body rising above the water (back?). Supporters of the aquatic existence of mammoths argue that in reality it is a highly raised trunk and a mammoth head! Beautiful version! Or, as skeptics would say, an amazing legend …
In fact, it is much easier to assume that it was not plesiosaurs and other reptiles of the Cretaceous period that lived 60-75 million years ago that lurked in the water, but mammoths that lived "only" ten thousand years, and maybe only a few centuries ago. It has already been written above about whether mammoths are able to survive in a cold climate in cold water. Of course they can!
And if the heads of plesiosaurs appeared only in Siberian reservoirs (but no, they are seen in relatively warm climates in England, Ireland, America and even in Africa), then I would be the first for the version about waterfowl mammoths mistaken for lizards. But why would a mammoth, if we assume that they survived in Africa, hide under water and there ?! And if mammoths come ashore at least occasionally, then why are they not seen in densely populated Scotland and Ireland? Or are mammoths in Siberia, but not mammoths in Africa?
True, there is one more "but" in defense of the kinship of Nesen and the prehistoric elephant. The elusive mammoths and the elusive water monsters have one more thing in common, related to them, property. Both have all the signs of ghostly chronomirages.
Mammoth timelines?
So, many stories that only 100-200-300 years ago mammoths were seen in the lost corners of the taiga have not yet been confirmed in practice. It is clear that there are no traces of mammoths on the earth, but to this day it is still completely unclear whether the mammoth died out, bathing in the rays of posthumous glory, or whether it bathes in the icy Siberian water, remaining unknown. And if … neither one nor the other?
How simplified everything is if we assume that mammoths really died out, but occasionally - when the necessary physical conditions and the emotional state of the observers are formed for this - they appear to us in all their glory. How real are they at such moments? The warriors of the Napoleonic wars, or the plesiosaurs, or the pilots of the starships of the XXV century are no more real - they all already or do not exist yet. Or they exist, but not in our spatio-temporal reality, being displayed in our country in approximately the same way as a television image becomes reality for a room with a TV set in it.
From the point of view of the savage who first saw the TV, the mammoth on the color screen is a real one, but very soon the wild man will be convinced that the hunt for a moving image of game will fail completely. Are we the new savages in front of a huge natural “TV” showing before us images of long-dead monsters?
V. Chernobrov