Science knows that individual groups of mammoths that lived in nature reserves cut off from the world survived the end of the ice age for a long time. On Wrangel Island less than four thousand years ago (that is, in the era of the construction of the ancient Egyptian pyramids!), A small population of mammoths continued to cling to life, however, they were crushed to the state of dwarfs. An adult male did not reach even one and a half meters at the withers.
A similar situation took place in America: an isolated island herd of the so-called Columbian mammoths (a species very close to that inhabited in Siberia) barely survived until the discoveries of Columbus, and these animals also became dwarfs, of course, compared to ordinary mammoths …
The deeds of days gone by
However, island isolation does not seem to be necessary. In the foothills of the Andes, the last species of American mammoths may have survived to the rise of the first Native American civilizations. There is evidence of their later existence in the New World and in the vastness of Eurasia. Part of the data still comes from paleontology, but the recent, postglacial, for example, the discovery of mammoth bones near the village of Mezhyrich (Ukraine) gives an approximate date: V-IV millennium BC. There is also evidence based on eyewitness accounts.
The Chinese historian and geographer Sima Qian (145 or 135 - c. 86 BC) in his "Historical Notes" unequivocally reports about northern Siberia: "Among the animals are found … huge wild boars, northern elephants in bristles and northern rhinoceroses." … There is an old Chinese drawing of such an elephant, but of much later times.
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The creature depicted on it looks like a mammoth very conditionally, but no less than the Chinese "elephant" drawings look like elephants. But one cannot be completely sure whether the artist relied on impressions of a living creature or his carcass thawed out of the permafrost ?!
Baron Sigismund Herberstein, who left detailed memories of his trips to Muscovy in the second half of the 16th century, describing the Samoyed tribes living across the Pechora River and up to the Ob, mentions an animal called wess among the animals they hunt. In the language of the Ostyaks, this is a mammoth. But was it the name of a living beast or just the source of the fossil tusks? Did Herberstein know anything about "weight" except that this is the very animal "from which the tusks grow" (at that time they could well have been fossils for him too!). But in general, he described the fauna of Siberia very accurately, from sable to “fish named salmon”.
Even more interesting is the message of the boyar Musin-Pushkin (he was the governor in Smolensk, but as a government quartermaster he also visited Siberia), dated 1685. According to him, there are islands in the mouth of the Lena where the hippopotamus, a game animal, which local residents hunt for its tusks, lives. The biblical term "hippopotamus" is clearly used by analogy, it hardly indicates anything other than the large size of the beast. On the whole, the information makes us recall the isolated island groups of mammoths, which for many millennia have survived “their” time.
True, isolation on a river island is very relative, especially if its inhabitants swim well. After all, it is known how often modern elephants gravitate towards water, how well they swim and move through swamps, feed along rivers and lake shores. It is also known that evolution has more than once led many proboscis to a semi-aquatic lifestyle.
But these are all matters of bygone days. Is there any more recent data?
From Monsieur Gallon's report
Most of the details are contained in the observation recorded in 1918 by Monsieur Gallon, the French consul in Vladivostok. In his report, Gallon cites the story of an experienced taiga hunter. Unfortunately, the consul does not name his name (this caution is understandable: the report was published shortly after the civil war, and anonymity was required at least simply for the safety of a person who in the recent past collaborated in one way or another with the allies of the White Guards), but it is clear that this was not native, and one of the Russian inhabitants of the region.
“… A couple of years ago in the taiga I saw incredibly large and strange footprints. I have never seen a beast that leaves such imprints, or even heard of it. It was already quite late autumn, but the frost had not yet come, so the tracks were imprinted in the mud very clearly. These were oval depressions of about 60 by 45 cm, with smooth edges. Following them, I soon saw a huge pile of droppings. The tracks led from the edge of the forest into the depths of the forest, and from the height at which the broken branches were found in the bowl, I understood that the animal reached at least 3 meters from the ground to the upper part of the body."
It is unlikely that a taiga hunter, even if relatively literate for that place and time (and he, as it turned out, had at least seen books with pictures, which, incidentally, was not so rare in the Far East in those years, even among the common people), measured the distance in meters and centimeters. Most likely, it was the French consul who converted the dimensions indicated by him into the metric system. Continuing the questioning, the consul found out that the prints led approximately in the direction the hunter planned to go, therefore (and also out of curiosity) he followed the unknown beast for several days. In the end, this chain of footprints converged with another, very similar to it. Soon after, the hunter managed to see the animals themselves. The observation lasted about five minutes.
“… Now the footprints were so fresh that I realized that the animals had passed here not long before me. The wind was blowing in my direction, so they could not smell me. Finally, I was able to see in the distance, between the trees, one of the animals: it was a huge elephant with white, strongly curved tusks. His body was covered with chestnut hair, which seemed to me to be longer on the back of the body than on the front. I never thought elephants were so big! I happened to see elephants in pictures, but I always thought that they should be smaller. The same animal seemed simply huge, although I watched it from a distance of about 270 m (most likely, in this case, the hunter also named a familiarly rounded figure like “just under 400 steps”, but Monsieur Gallon again converted this distance into meters. - Auth.). Not far from him was another elephant. It was half-hidden by tree trunks, so I considered it worse. But, as it seemed to me, it was not inferior in size to the first one."
It should be noted that although by the standards of today's fauna of the Far East (and "pictures in books") the three-meter beast is really a giant, for an adult mammoth, as well as for an elephant, these dimensions are not very large.
And they saw and heard the snoring
In 1960-1980, Russian cryptozoologists occasionally recorded testimonies coming from different regions of Siberia. The most mysterious of them relate to the Khanty-Mansiysk District, and they, again, make you think about an animal that has switched to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. For example, the old Khant CE. Kachalov said that in the 1930s, on Lake Syrkovo, he, then a child, heard loud snoring, noise and splashes of water at night. The hostess of the house Anastasia Petrovna Lukina (died in 1957 at the age of 97) reassured the boy and said that there was no need to be afraid that it was a mammoth who often comes to the lake, that they live nearby - in a swamp in the taiga, that she herself was not I saw them once.
In 1958 or 1959, according to Kachalov, on the Salym River, the boat, in which the inspector and the procurer were sailing at night, threw a strong blow ashore. In the dark, they could not see the attacker, but both claimed that it was some kind of very large animal.
In the 1970s, other reports appeared, albeit less specific. There is a known case when Khanty hunters heard a loud roar not far from their camp, clearly emitted by some mighty beast. And although they did not see the animal itself (sounds came from the river reeds), they still preferred to move away from this place.
According to other information, in the upper reaches of the Kolyma, geologists at a great distance saw either a small herd or a family group of mammoth animals.
Unfortunately, none of the information contains as many details as the story of a Far Eastern hunter, preserved by the French consul. But it seems that mammoths or their somewhat modified descendants really retained at least a theoretical chance to survive to this day.
Grigory Panchenko