It is officially believed that most of the mammoths died out about 10 thousand years ago during the last cooling of the Vistula Ice Age. Some groups of animals lived longer. On Wrangel Island, for example, less than four thousand years ago, a small group of dwarf mammoths could still be found.
But it is possible that the mammoths have survived to this day, and there are many witnesses to that. You can read more about their stories in this article, and in this one we will focus on one specific fact: the mention of mammoth leather boots in 19th century literature.
In the story of Ivan Turgenev "Khor and Kalinych" from the cycle "Notes of a Hunter" there is an interesting phrase: "…" Yes, here I am a man, and you see … "At this word, Khor raised his leg and showed a boot, probably cut from mammoth skin …"
In order to write this phrase, Turgenev needed to know several things, rather strange for the middle of the 19th century. He should have known that there was such a mammoth beast, and know what kind of skin he had. He should have known about the availability of this skin. Indeed, judging by the text, the fact that an ordinary peasant living in the middle of a swamp wears mammoth leather boots was not something out of the ordinary for Turgenev. However, this thing is still shown as somewhat unusual, uncommon.
It should be recalled that Turgenev wrote his notes almost like documentaries, without fiction. That's why they are notes. He simply conveyed the impressions of meeting interesting people. And it happened in the Oryol province, and not at all in Yakutia, where mammoth cemeteries are found. There is an opinion that Turgenev expressed himself allegorically, referring to the thickness and quality of the boot. But why not "elephant skin" then? The elephants were well known then. But mammoths …
According to the official version, the awareness of them was then negligible. One of the first "academic" mammoth skeletons with preserved remains of soft tissues was found by the hunter O. Shumakov in the Lena River delta, on the Bykovsky Peninsula in 1799. And this was a great rarity for science. In 1806 the botanist of the Academy M. N. Adams organized the excavation of the skeleton and took it to the capital.
The exhibit was collected and exhibited at the Kunstkamera, and later transferred to the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences. Only these bones could Turgenev see. Half a century will pass before the discovery of the Berezovsky mammoth and the creation of the first stuffed animal (1900). How did he know what kind of skin the mammoth had, and even determined it offhand?
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Mammoth carcass
So, whatever one may say, the phrase dropped by Turgenev is puzzling. Not to mention the fact that the skin of the "ever-frozen" mammoth is not at all suitable for furrier business. She loses her qualities.
At the same time, Turgenev is not the only writer of the 19th century who let it slip about the "extinct beast." None other than Jack London, in his story "The Remnant of the Tertiary Era", conveyed the story of a hunter who met a living mammoth in the vastness of Northern Canada. In gratitude for the treat, the narrator presented the author with his mukluks (moccasins), sewn from the skin of an unprecedented trophy.
At the end of the story, Jack London writes: “… but I advise all those of little faith to visit the Smithsonian Institution. If they make recommendations and arrive at the appointed time, they will no doubt be received by Professor Dolvidson. Mukluks are now kept with him, and he will confirm, if not how they were obtained, then, in any case, what material went to them. He authoritatively claims that they are sewn from the skin of a mammoth, and the entire scientific world agrees with him. What else do you want?.."
It is difficult to say yet what is true and what is fiction. But, I think, the last point in "mammoth studies" has not yet been set.