title: Woolly mammoth

text: The appearance of the woolly mammoth is probably the best known of any prehistoric animal due to the many frozen specimens with preserved soft tissue and depictions by contemporary humans in their art. Fully grown males reached shoulder heights between and weighed up to . This is almost as large as extant male African elephants, which commonly reach a shoulder height of , and is less than the size of the earlier mammoth species "M. meridionalis" and "M. trogontherii", and the contemporary "M. columbi". The reason for the smaller size is unknown. Female woolly mammoths reached in shoulder heights and were built more lightly than males, weighing up to . A newborn calf would have weighed about . These sizes are deduced from comparison with modern elephants of similar size. Few frozen specimens have preserved genitals, so the sex is usually determined through examination of the skeleton. The best indication of sex is the size of the pelvic girdle, since the opening that functions as the birth canal is always wider in females than in males. Though the mammoths on Wrangel Island were smaller than those of the mainland, their size varied, and they were not small enough to be considered "island dwarfs". The last woolly mammoth populations are claimed to have decreased in size and increased their sexual dimorphism, but this was dismissed in a 2012 study.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Woolly mammoths had several adaptations to the cold, most noticeably the layer of fur covering all parts of their bodies. Other adaptations to cold weather include ears that are far smaller than those of modern elephants; they were about long and across, and the ear of the 6- to 12-month-old frozen calf "Dima" was under long. The small ears reduced heat loss and frostbite, and the tail was short for the same reason, only long in the "Berezovka mammoth". The tail contained 21 vertebrae, whereas the tails of modern elephants contain 28–33. Their skin was no thicker than that of present-day elephants, between . They had a layer of fat up to thick under the skin, which helped to keep them warm. Woolly mammoths had broad flaps of skin under their tails which covered the anus; this is also seen in modern elephants.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Other characteristic features depicted in cave paintings include a large, high, single-domed head and a sloping back with a high shoulder hump; this shape resulted from the spinous processes of the back vertebrae decreasing in length from front to rear. These features were not present in juveniles, which had convex backs like Asian elephants. Another feature shown in cave paintings was confirmed by the discovery of a frozen specimen in 1924, an adult nicknamed the "Middle Kolyma mammoth", which was preserved with a complete trunk tip. Unlike the trunk lobes of modern elephants, the upper "finger" at the tip of the trunk had a long pointed lobe and was long, while the lower "thumb" was and was broader. The trunk of "Dima" was long, whereas the trunk of the adult "Liakhov mammoth" was long. The well-preserved trunk of a juvenile specimen nicknamed "Yuka" was described in 2015, and it was shown to possess a fleshy expansion a third above the tip. Rather than oval as the rest of the trunk, this part was ellipsoidal in cross section, and double the size in diameter. The feature was shown to be present in two other specimens, of different sexes and ages.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The coat consisted of an outer layer of long, coarse "guard hair", which was on the upper part of the body, up to in length on the flanks and underside, and in diameter, and a denser inner layer of shorter, slightly curly under-wool, up to long and in diameter. The hairs on the upper leg were up to long, and those of the feet were long, reaching the toes. The hairs on the head were relatively short, but longer on the underside and the sides of the trunk. The tail was extended by coarse hairs up to long, which were thicker than the guard hairs. The woolly mammoth likely moulted seasonally, and the heaviest fur was shed during spring. Since mammoth carcasses were more likely to be preserved, possibly only the winter coat has been preserved in frozen specimens. Modern elephants have much less hair, though juveniles have a more extensive covering of hair than adults. This is thought to be for thermoregulation, helping them lose heat in their hot environments. Comparison between the over-hairs of woolly mammoths and extant elephants show that they did not differ much in overall morphology. Woolly mammoths had numerous sebaceous glands in their skin, which secreted oils into their hair; this would have improved the wool's insulation, repelled water, and given the fur a glossy sheen.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Preserved woolly mammoth fur is orange-brown, but this is believed to be an artefact from the bleaching of pigment during burial. The amount of pigmentation varied from hair to hair and within each hair. A 2006 study sequenced the "Mc1r" gene (which influences hair colour in mammals) from woolly mammoth bones. Two alleles were found: a dominant (fully active) and a recessive (partially active) one. In mammals, recessive" Mc1r" alleles result in light hair. Mammoths born with at least one copy of the dominant allele would have had dark coats, while those with two copies of the recessive allele would have had light coats. A 2011 study showed that light individuals would have been rare. A 2014 study instead indicated that the colouration of an individual varied from nonpigmented on the overhairs, bicoloured, nonpigmented and mixed red-brown guard hairs, and nonpigmented underhairs, which would give a light overall appearance.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Woolly mammoths had very long tusks (modified incisor teeth), which were more curved than those of modern elephants. The largest known male tusk is long and weighs , but and was a more typical size. Female tusks were smaller and thinner, and weighing . For comparison, the record for longest tusks of the African bush elephant is . The sheaths of the tusks were parallel and spaced closely. About a quarter of the length was inside the sockets. The tusks grew spirally in opposite directions from the base and continued in a curve until the tips pointed towards each other, sometimes crossing. In this way, most of the weight would have been close to the skull, and less torque would occur than with straight tusks. The tusks were usually asymmetrical and showed considerable variation, with some tusks curving down instead of outwards and some being shorter due to breakage. Calves developed small milk tusks a few centimetres long at six months old, which were replaced by permanent tusks a year later. Tusk growth continued throughout life, but became slower as the animal reached adulthood. The tusks grew by each year. Some cave paintings show woolly mammoths with small or no tusks, but whether this reflected reality or was artistic license is unknown. Female Asian elephants have no tusks, but no fossil evidence indicates that any adult woolly mammoths lacked them.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Woolly mammoths had four functional molar teeth at a time, two in the upper jaw and two in the lower. About of the crown was within the jaw, and was above. The crown was continually pushed forwards and up as it wore down, comparable to a conveyor belt. The teeth had up to 26 separated ridges of enamel, which were themselves covered in "prisms" that were directed towards the chewing surface. These were quite wear-resistant and kept together by cementum and dentine. A mammoth had six sets of molars throughout a lifetime, which were replaced five times, though a few specimens with a seventh set are known. The latter condition could extend the lifespan of the individual, unless the tooth consisted of only a few plates. The first molars were about the size of those of a human, , the third were 15 cm (6 in) long, and the sixth were about long and weighed . The molars grew larger and contained more ridges with each replacement. The woolly mammoth is considered to have had the most complex molars of any elephant.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Adult woolly mammoths could effectively defend themselves from predators with their tusks, trunks and size, but juveniles and weakened adults were vulnerable to pack hunters such as wolves, cave hyenas, and large felines. The tusks may have been used in intraspecies fighting, such as fights over territory or mates. Display of the large tusks of males could have been used to attract females and to intimidate rivals. Because of their curvature, the tusks were unsuitable for stabbing, but may have been used for hitting, as indicated by injuries to some fossil shoulder blades. The very long hairs on the tail probably compensated for the shortness of the tail, enabling its use as a flyswatter, similar to the tail on modern elephants. As in modern elephants, the sensitive and muscular trunk worked as a limb-like organ with many functions. It was used for manipulating objects, and in social interactions. The well-preserved foot of the adult male "Yukagir mammoth" shows that the soles of the feet contained many cracks that would have helped in gripping surfaces during locomotion. Like modern elephants, woolly mammoths walked on their toes and had large, fleshy pads behind the toes.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Like modern elephants, woolly mammoths were likely very social and lived in matriarchal (female-led) family groups. This is supported by fossil assemblages and cave paintings showing groups, implying that most of their other social behaviours were likely similar to those of modern elephants. How many mammoths lived at one location at a time is unknown, as fossil deposits are often accumulations of individuals that died over long periods of time. The numbers likely varied by season and lifecycle events. Modern elephants can form large herds, sometimes consisting of multiple family groups, and these herds can include thousands of animals migrating together. Mammoths may have formed large herds more often, since animals that live in open areas are more likely to do this than those in forested areas. Trackways made by a woolly mammoth herd 11,300–11,000 years ago have been found in the St. Mary Reservoir in Canada, showing that in this case almost equal numbers of adults, subadults, and juveniles were found. The adults had a stride of , and the juveniles ran to keep up.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The woolly mammoth was probably the most specialised member of the family Elephantidae. In addition to their fur, they had lipopexia (fat storage) in their neck and withers, for times when food availability was insufficient during winter, and their first three molars grew more quickly than in the calves of modern elephants. The expansion identified on the trunk of "Yuka" and other specimens was suggested to function as a "fur mitten"; the trunk tip was not covered in fur, but was used for foraging during winter, and could have been heated by curling it into the expansion. The expansion could be used to melt snow if a shortage of water to drink existed, as melting it directly inside the mouth could disturb the thermal balance of the animal. As in reindeer and musk oxen, the haemoglobin of the woolly mammoth was adapted to the cold, with three mutations to improve oxygen delivery around the body and prevent freezing. This feature may have helped the mammoths to live at high latitudes.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: In a 2015 study, high-quality genome sequences from three Asian elephants and two woolly mammoths were compared. About 1.4 million DNA nucleotide differences were found between mammoths and elephants, which affect the sequence of more than 1,600 proteins. Differences were noted in genes for a number of aspects of physiology and biology that would be relevant to Arctic survival, including development of skin and hair, storage and metabolism of adipose tissue, and perceiving temperature. Genes related to both sensing temperature and transmitting that sensation to the brain were altered. One of the heat-sensing genes encodes a protein, TRPV3, found in skin, which affects hair growth. When inserted into human cells, the mammoth's version of the protein was found to be less sensitive to heat than the elephant's. This is consistent with a previous observation that mice lacking active TRPV3 are likely to spend more time in cooler cage locations than wild-type mice, and have wavier hair. Several alterations in circadian clock genes were found, perhaps needed to cope with the extreme polar variation in length of daylight. Similar mutations are known in other Arctic mammals, such as reindeer. A 2019 study of the woolly mammoth mitogenome suggest that these had metabolic adaptations related to extreme environments.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Food at various stages of digestion has been found in the intestines of several woolly mammoths, giving a good picture of their diet. Woolly mammoths sustained themselves on plant food, mainly grasses and sedges, which were supplemented with herbaceous plants, flowering plants, shrubs, mosses, and tree matter. The composition and exact varieties differed from location to location. Woolly mammoths needed a varied diet to support their growth, like modern elephants. An adult of 6 tons would need to eat daily, and may have foraged as long as 20 hours every day. The two-fingered tip of the trunk was probably adapted for picking up the short grasses of the last ice age (Quaternary glaciation, 2.58 million years ago to present) by wrapping around them, whereas modern elephants curl their trunks around the longer grass of their tropical environments. The trunk could be used for pulling off large grass tufts, delicately picking buds and flowers, and tearing off leaves and branches where trees and shrubs were present. The "Yukagir mammoth" had ingested plant matter that contained spores of dung fungus. Isotope analysis shows that woolly mammoths fed mainly on C3 plants, unlike horses and rhinos.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Scientists identified milk in the stomach and faecal matter in the intestines of the mammoth calf "Lyuba". The faecal matter may have been eaten by "Lyuba" to promote development of the intestinal microbes necessary for digestion of vegetation, as is the case in modern elephants. An isotope analysis of woolly mammoths from Yukon showed that the young nursed for at least 3 years, and were weaned and gradually changed to a diet of plants when they were 2–3 years old. This is later than in modern elephants and may be due to a higher risk of predator attack or difficulty in obtaining food during the long periods of winter darkness at high latitudes.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The molars were adapted to their diet of coarse tundra grasses, with more enamel plates and a higher crown than their earlier, southern relatives. The woolly mammoth chewed its food by using its powerful jaw muscles to move the mandible forwards and close the mouth, then backwards while opening; the sharp enamel ridges thereby cut across each other, grinding the food. The ridges were wear-resistant to enable the animal to chew large quantities of food, which often contained grit. Woolly mammoths may have used their tusks as shovels to clear snow from the ground and reach the vegetation buried below, and to break ice to drink. This is indicated on many preserved tusks by flat, polished sections up to long, as well as scratches, on the part of the surface that would have reached the ground (especially at their outer curvature). The tusks were used for obtaining food in other ways, such as digging up plants and stripping off bark.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The lifespan of mammals is related to their size, and since modern elephants can reach the age of 60 years, the same is thought to be true for woolly mammoths, which were of a similar size. The age of a mammoth can be roughly determined by counting the growth rings of its tusks when viewed in cross section, but this does not account for its early years, as these are represented by the tips of the tusks, which are usually worn away. In the remaining part of the tusk, each major line represents a year, and weekly and daily ones can be found in between. Dark bands correspond to summers, so determining the season in which a mammoth died is possible. The growth of the tusks slowed when foraging became harder, for example during winter, during disease, or when a male was banished from the herd (male elephants live with their herds until about the age of 10). Mammoth tusks dating to the harshest period of the last glaciation 25–20,000 years ago show slower growth rates.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Woolly mammoths continued growing past adulthood, like other elephants. Unfused limb bones show that males grew until they reached the age of 40, and females grew until they were 25. The frozen calf "Dima" was tall when it died at the age of 6–12 months. At this age, the second set of molars would be in the process of erupting, and the first set would be worn out at 18 months of age. The third set of molars lasted for 10 years, and this process was repeated until the final, sixth set emerged when the animal was 30 years old. When the last set of molars was worn out, the animal would be unable to chew and feed, and it would die of starvation. A study of North American mammoths found that they often died during winter or spring, the hardest times for northern animals to survive.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Examination of preserved calves shows that they were all born during spring and summer, and since modern elephants have gestation periods of 21–22 months, the mating season probably was from summer to autumn. δ15N isotopic analysis of the teeth of "Lyuba" has demonstrated their prenatal development, and indicates its gestation period was similar to that of a modern elephant, and that it was born in spring.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The best-preserved head of a frozen adult specimen, that of a male nicknamed the "Yukagir mammoth", shows that woolly mammoths had temporal glands between the ear and the eye. This feature indicates that, like bull elephants, male woolly mammoths entered "musth", a period of heightened aggressiveness. The glands are used especially by males to produce an oily substance with a strong smell called temporin. Their fur may have helped in spreading the scent further.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Evidence of several different bone diseases has been found in woolly mammoths. The most common of these was osteoarthritis, found in 2% of specimens. One specimen from Switzerland had several fused vertebrae as a result of this condition. The "Yukagir mammoth" had suffered from spondylitis in two vertebrae, and osteomyelitis is known from some specimens. Several specimens have healed bone fractures, showing that the animals had survived these injuries. An abnormal number of cervical vertebrae has been found in 33% of specimens from the North Sea region, probably due to inbreeding in a declining population. Parasitic flies and protozoa were identified in the gut of the calf "Dima".


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Distortion in the molars is the most common health problem found in woolly mammoth fossils. Sometimes, the replacement was disrupted, and the molars were pushed into abnormal positions, but some animals are known to have survived this. Teeth from Britain showed that 2% of specimens had periodontal disease, with half of these containing caries. The teeth sometimes had cancerous growths.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The habitat of the woolly mammoth is known as "mammoth steppe" or "tundra steppe". This environment stretched across northern Asia, many parts of Europe, and the northern part of North America during the last ice age. It was similar to the grassy steppes of modern Russia, but the flora was more diverse, abundant, and grew faster. Grasses, sedges, shrubs, and herbaceous plants were present, and scattered trees were mainly found in southern regions. This habitat was not dominated by ice and snow, as is popularly believed, since these regions are thought to have been high-pressure areas at the time. The habitat of the woolly mammoth supported other grazing herbivores such as the woolly rhinoceros, wild horses, and bison. The Altai-Sayan assemblages are the modern biomes most similar to the "mammoth steppe". A 2014 study concluded that forbs (a group of herbaceous plants) were more important in the steppe-tundra than previously acknowledged, and that it was a primary food source for the ice-age megafauna.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The southernmost woolly mammoth specimen known is from the Shandong province of China, and is 33,000 years old. The southernmost European remains are from the Depression of Granada in Spain and are of roughly the same age. DNA studies have helped determine the phylogeography of the woolly mammoth. A 2008 DNA study showed two distinct groups of woolly mammoths: one that became extinct 45,000 years ago and another one that became extinct 12,000 years ago. The two groups are speculated to be divergent enough to be characterised as subspecies. The group that became extinct earlier stayed in the middle of the high Arctic, while the group with the later extinction had a much wider range. Recent stable isotope studies of Siberian and New World mammoths have shown there were differences in climatic conditions on either side of the Bering land bridge (Beringia), with Siberia being more uniformly cold and dry throughout the Late Pleistocene. During the Younger Dryas age, woolly mammoths briefly expanded into north-east Europe, whereafter the mainland populations became extinct.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: A 2008 genetic study showed that some of the woolly mammoths that entered North America through the Bering land bridge from Asia migrated back about 300,000 years ago and had replaced the previous Asian population by about 40,000 years ago, not long before the entire species became extinct. Fossils of woolly mammoths and Columbian mammoths have been found together in a few localities of North America, including the Hot Springs sinkhole of South Dakota where their regions overlapped. It is unknown whether the two species were sympatric and lived there simultaneously, or if the woolly mammoths may have entered these southern areas during times when Columbian mammoth populations were absent there.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Modern humans co-existed with woolly mammoths during the Upper Palaeolithic period when the humans entered Europe from Africa between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago. Before this, Neanderthals had co-existed with mammoths during the Middle Palaeolithic and already used mammoth bones for tool-making and building materials. Woolly mammoths were very important to ice age humans, and human survival may have depended on the mammoth in some areas. Evidence for such co-existence was not recognised until the 19th century. William Buckland published his discovery of the Red Lady of Paviland skeleton in 1823, which was found in a cave alongside woolly mammoth bones, but he mistakenly denied that these were contemporaries. In 1864, Édouard Lartet found an engraving of a woolly mammoth on a piece of mammoth ivory in the Abri de la Madeleine cave in Dordogne, France. The engraving was the first widely accepted evidence for the co-existence of humans with prehistoric extinct animals and is the first contemporary depiction of such a creature known to modern science.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The woolly mammoth is the third-most depicted animal in ice age art, after horses and bison, and these images were produced between 35,000 and 11,500 years ago. Today, more than 500 depictions of woolly mammoths are known, in media ranging from cave paintings and engravings on the walls of 46 caves in Russia, France, and Spain to engravings and sculptures (termed "portable art") made from ivory, antler, stone and bone. Cave paintings of woolly mammoths exist in several styles and sizes. The French Rouffignac Cave has the most depictions, 159, and some of the drawings are more than in length. Other notable caves with mammoth depictions are the Chauvet Cave, Les Combarelles Cave, and Font-de-Gaume. A depiction in the Cave of El Castillo may instead show "Palaeoloxodon", the "straight-tusked elephant".


title: Woolly mammoth

text: "Portable art" can be more accurately dated than cave art since it is found in the same deposits as tools and other ice age artefacts. The largest collection of portable mammoth art, consisting of 62 depictions on 47 plaques, was found in the 1960s at an excavated open-air camp near Gönnersdorf in Germany. A correlation between the number of mammoths depicted and the species that were most often hunted does not seem to exist, since reindeer bones are the most frequently found animal remains at the site. Two spear throwers shaped as woolly mammoths have been found in France. Some portable mammoth depictions may not have been produced where they were discovered, but could have moved around by ancient trading.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Woolly mammoth bones were used as construction material for dwellings by both Neanderthals and modern humans during the ice age. More than 70 such dwellings are known, mainly from the East European Plain. The bases of the huts were circular, and ranged from . The arrangement of dwellings varied, and ranged from apart, depending on location. Large bones were used as foundations for the huts, tusks for the entrances, and the roofs were probably skins held in place by bones or tusks. Some huts had floors that extended below ground. Some of the bones used for materials may have come from mammoths killed by humans, but the state of the bones, and the fact that bones used to build a single dwelling varied by several thousands of years in age, suggests that they were collected remains of long-dead animals. Woolly mammoth bones were made into various tools, furniture, and musical instruments. Large bones, such as shoulder blades, were used to cover dead human bodies during burial.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Woolly mammoth ivory was used to create art objects. Several Venus figurines, including the Venus of Brassempouy and the Venus of Lespugue, were made from this material. Weapons made from ivory, such as daggers, spears, and a boomerang, are known. A 2019 study found that woolly mammoth ivory was the most suitable bony material for the production of big game projectile points during the Late Plesistocene. To be able to process the ivory, the large tusks had to be chopped, chiseled, and split into smaller, more manageable pieces. Some ivory artefacts show that tusks had been straightened, and how this was achieved is unknown.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Several woolly mammoth specimens show evidence of being butchered by humans, which is indicated by breaks, cut marks, and associated stone tools. How much prehistoric humans relied on woolly mammoth meat is unknown, since many other large herbivores were available. Many mammoth carcasses may have been scavenged by humans rather than hunted. Some cave paintings show woolly mammoths in structures interpreted as pitfall traps. Few specimens show direct, unambiguous evidence of having been hunted by humans. A Siberian specimen with a spearhead embedded in its shoulder blade shows that a spear had been thrown at it with great force. At a site in southern Polan that contains bones from over 100 mammoths, stone spear tips have been found embedded in bones, and many stone spear points in the site were damaged from impact against mammoth bones, indicating that mammoths were the major prey for people at the time. A specimen from the Mousterian age of Italy shows evidence of spear hunting by Neanderthals. The juvenile specimen nicknamed "Yuka" is the first frozen mammoth with evidence of human interaction. It shows evidence of having been killed by a large predator, and of having been scavenged by humans shortly after. Some of its bones had been removed, and were found nearby. A site near the Yana River in Siberia has revealed several specimens with evidence of human hunting, but the finds were interpreted to show that the animals were not hunted intensively, but perhaps mainly when ivory was needed. Two woolly mammoths from Wisconsin, the "Schaefer" and "Hebior mammoths", show evidence of having been butchered by Palaeoamericans.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Most woolly mammoth populations disappeared during the late Pleistocene and mid-Holocene, alongside most of the Pleistocene megafauna (including the Columbian mammoth). This extinction formed part of the Quaternary extinction event, which began 40,000 years ago and peaked between 14,000 and 11,500 years ago. Scientists are divided over whether hunting or climate change, which led to the shrinkage of its habitat, was the main factor that contributed to the extinction of the woolly mammoth, or whether it was due to a combination of the two. Whatever the cause, large mammals are generally more vulnerable than smaller ones due to their smaller population size and low reproduction rates. Different woolly mammoth populations did not die out simultaneously across their range, but gradually became extinct over time. Most populations disappeared between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago. The youngest fossils of the mainland population are from the Kyttyk Peninsula of Siberia and date to 9,650 years ago. A small population of woolly mammoths survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska, well into the Holocene with the most recently published date of extinction being 5,600 years B.P. The last population known from fossils remained on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until 4,000 years ago, well into the start of human civilization and concurrent with the construction of the Great Pyramid of ancient Egypt. However, ancient genetic evidence supports the existence of small mainland populations that died out at around the same time as their island counterparts; two studies in 2021 found that based on eDNA, mammoths survived in the Yukon until about 5,700 years ago, roughly concurrent with the St. Paul population, and on the Taymyr Peninsula of Siberia until 3,900 to 4,100 years ago, roughly concurrent with the Wrangel population. The Taymyr Peninsula, with its drier habitat, may have served as a refugium for the mammoth steppe, supporting mammoths and other widespread Ice Age mammals such as wild horses ("Equus" sp.).


title: Woolly mammoth

text: DNA sequencing of remains of two mammoths, one from Siberia 44,800 years BP and one from Wrangel Island 4,300 years BP, indicates two major population crashes: one around 280,000 years ago from which the population recovered, and a second about 12,000 years ago, near the ice age's end, from which it did not. The Wrangel Island mammoths were isolated for 5000 years by rising post-ice-age sea level, and resultant inbreeding in their small population of about 300 to 1000 individuals led to a 20% to 30% loss of heterozygosity, and a 65% loss in mitochondrial DNA diversity. The population seems to have subsequently been stable, without suffering further significant loss of genetic diversity. Genetic evidence thus implies the extinction of this final population was sudden, rather than the culmination of a gradual decline.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Before their extinction, the Wrangel Island mammoths had accumulated numerous genetic defects due to their small population; in particular, a number of genes for olfactory receptors and urinary proteins became nonfunctional, possibly because they had lost their selective value on the island environment. It is not clear whether these genetic changes contributed to their extinction. It has been proposed that these changes are consistent with the concept of genomic meltdown; however, the sudden disappearance of an apparently stable population may be more consistent with a catastrophic event, possibly related to climate (such as icing of the snowpack) or a human hunting expedition. The disappearance coincides roughly in time with the first evidence for humans on the island. The woolly mammoths of eastern Beringia (modern Alaska and Yukon) had similarly died out about 13,300 years ago, soon (roughly 1000 years) after the first appearance of humans in the area, which parallels the fate of all the other late Pleistocene proboscids (mammoths, gomphotheres, and mastodons), as well as most of the rest of the megafauna, of the Americas. In contrast, the St. Paul Island mammoth population apparently died out before human arrival because of habitat shrinkage resulting from the post-ice age sea-level rise, perhaps in large measure as a result of a consequent reduction in the freshwater supply.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Changes in climate shrank suitable mammoth habitat from 42,000 years ago to 6,000 years ago. Woolly mammoths survived an even greater loss of habitat at the end of the Saale glaciation 125,000 years ago, and humans likely hunted the remaining populations to extinction at the end of the last glacial period. Studies of an 11,300–11,000-year-old trackway in south-western Canada showed that "M. primigenius" was in decline while coexisting with humans, since far fewer tracks of juveniles were identified than would be expected in a normal herd. A 2021 study indicates, however, that although humans likely exerted a significant selective pressure on mammoths that led to them going extinct earlier than they otherwise would have, the final impetus for mammoth extinction was likely vegetation changes caused by a changed precipitation regime at the end of the Ice Age.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The decline of the woolly mammoth could have increased temperatures by up to at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Mammoths frequently ate birch trees, creating a grassland habitat. With the disappearance of mammoths, birch forests, which absorb more sunlight than grasslands, expanded, leading to regional warming.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Woolly mammoth fossils have been found in many different types of deposits, including former rivers and lakes, and in "Doggerland" in the North Sea, which was dry at times during the ice age. Such fossils are usually fragmentary and contain no soft tissue. Accumulations of modern elephant remains have been termed "elephants' graveyards", as these sites were erroneously thought to be where old elephants went to die. Similar accumulations of woolly mammoth bones have been found; these are thought to be the result of individuals dying near or in the rivers over thousands of years, and their bones eventually being brought together by the streams. Some accumulations are thought to be the remains of herds that died together at the same time, perhaps due to flooding. Natural traps, such as kettle holes, sink holes, and mud, have trapped mammoths in separate events over time.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Apart from frozen remains, the only soft tissue known is from a specimen that was preserved in a petroleum seep in Starunia, Poland. Frozen remains of woolly mammoths have been found in the northern parts of Siberia and Alaska, with far fewer finds in the latter. Such remains are mostly found above the Arctic Circle, in permafrost. Soft tissue apparently was less likely to be preserved between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago, perhaps because the climate was milder during that period. Most specimens have partially degraded before discovery, due to exposure or to being scavenged. This "natural mummification" required the animal to have been buried rapidly in liquid or semisolids such as silt, mud, and icy water, which then froze.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The presence of undigested food in the stomach and seed pods still in the mouth of many of the specimens suggests neither starvation nor exposure is likely. The maturity of this ingested vegetation places the time of death in autumn rather than in spring, when flowers would be expected. The animals may have fallen through ice into small ponds or potholes, entombing them. Many are certainly known to have been killed in rivers, perhaps through being swept away by floods. In one location, by the Byoryolyokh River in Yakutia in Siberia, more than 8,000 bones from at least 140 mammoths have been found in a single spot, apparently having been swept there by the current.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Between 1692 and 1806, a handful of reports of frozen mammoth remains with soft tissue were published reached Europe, though none were collected during that time. While frozen woolly mammoth carcasses had been excavated by Europeans as early as 1728, the first fully documented specimen was discovered near the delta of the Lena River in 1799 by Ossip Schumachov, a Siberian hunter. While in Yakutsk in 1806, Michael Friedrich Adams heard about the frozen mammoth. Adams recovered the entire skeleton, apart from the tusks, which Shumachov had already sold, and one foreleg, most of the skin, and nearly 18 kg (40 lb) of hair. During his return voyage, he purchased a pair of tusks that he believed were the ones that Shumachov had sold. Adams brought all to the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the task of mounting the skeleton was given to Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius. This was one of the first attempts at reconstructing the skeleton of an extinct animal. Most of the reconstruction is correct, but Tilesius placed each tusk in the opposite socket, so that they curved outward instead of inward. The error was not corrected until 1899, and the correct placement of mammoth tusks was still a matter of debate into the 20th century.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The 1901 excavation of the "Berezovka mammoth" is the best documented of the early finds. It was discovered at the Siberian Berezovka River (after a dog had noticed its smell), and the Russian authorities financed its excavation. The entire expedition took 10 months, and the specimen had to be cut to pieces before it could be transported to St. Petersburg. Most of the skin on the head as well as the trunk had been scavenged by predators, and most of the internal organs had rotted away. It was identified as a 35- to 40-year-old male, which had died 35,000 years ago. The animal still had grass between its teeth and on the tongue, showing that it had died suddenly. One of its shoulder blades was broken, which may have happened when it fell into a crevasse. It may have died of asphyxiation, as indicated by its erect penis. One third of a replica of the mammoth in the Museum of Zoology of St. Petersburg is covered in skin and hair of the "Berezovka mammoth".


title: Woolly mammoth

text: By 1929, the remains of 34 mammoths with frozen soft tissues (skin, flesh, or organs) had been documented. Only four of them were relatively complete. Since then, about that many more have been found. In most cases, the flesh showed signs of decay before its freezing and later desiccation. Since 1860, Russian authorities have offered rewards of up to for finds of frozen woolly mammoth carcasses. Often, such finds were kept secret due to superstition. Several carcasses have been lost because they were not reported, and one was fed to dogs. Despite the rewards, native Yakuts were also reluctant to report mammoth finds to the authorities due to bad treatment of them in the past. In more recent years, scientific expeditions have been devoted to finding carcasses instead of relying solely on chance encounters. The most famous frozen specimen from Alaska is a calf nicknamed "Effie", which was found in 1948. It consists of the head, trunk, and a fore leg, and is about 25,000 years old.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: In 1977, the well-preserved carcass of a seven- to eight-month-old woolly mammoth calf named "Dima" was discovered. This carcass was recovered near a tributary of the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia. This specimen weighed about at death and was high and long. Radiocarbon dating determined that "Dima" died about 40,000 years ago. Its internal organs are similar to those of modern elephants, but its ears are only one-tenth the size of those of an African elephant of similar age. A less complete juvenile, nicknamed "Mascha", was found on the Yamal Peninsula in 1988. It was 3–4 months old, and a laceration on its right foot may have been the cause of death. It is the westernmost frozen mammoth found.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: In 1997, a piece of mammoth tusk was discovered protruding from the tundra of the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia, Russia. In 1999, this 20,380-year-old carcass and 25 tons of surrounding sediment were transported by an Mi-26 heavy lift helicopter to an ice cave in Khatanga. The specimen was nicknamed the "Jarkov mammoth". In October 2000, the careful defrosting operations in this cave began with the use of hair dryers to keep the hair and other soft tissues intact.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: In 2002, a well-preserved carcass was discovered near the Maxunuokha River in northern Yakutia, which was recovered during three excavations. This adult male specimen was called the "Yukagir mammoth", and is estimated to have lived around 18,560 years ago, and to have been 282.9 cm (9.2 ft) tall at the shoulder, and weighed between 4 and 5 tonnes. It is one of the best-preserved mammoths ever found due to the almost complete head, covered in skin, but without the trunk. Some postcranial remains were found, some with soft tissue.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: In 2007, the carcass of a female calf nicknamed "Lyuba" was discovered near the Yuribey River, where it had been buried for 41,800 years. By cutting a section through a molar and analysing its growth lines, they found that the animal had died at the age of one month. The mummified calf weighed , was high and in length. At the time of discovery, its eyes and trunk were intact and some fur remained on its body. Its organs and skin are very well preserved. "Lyuba" is believed to have been suffocated by mud in a river that its herd was crossing. After death, its body may have been colonised by bacteria that produce lactic acid, which "pickled" it, preserving the mammoth in a nearly pristine state.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: In 2012, a juvenile was found in Siberia, which had man-made cut marks. Scientists estimated its age at death to be 2.5 years, and nicknamed it "Yuka". Its skull and pelvis had been removed prior to discovery, but were found nearby. After being discovered, the skin of "Yuka" was prepared to produce a taxidermy mount. In 2019, a group of researchers managed to obtain signs of biological activity after transferring nuclei of "Yuka" into mouse oocytes.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: In 2013, a well-preserved carcass was found on Maly Lyakhovsky Island, one of the islands in the New Siberian Islands archipelago, a female between 50 and 60 years old at the time of death. The carcass contained well-preserved muscular tissue. When it was extracted from the ice, liquid blood spilled from the abdominal cavity. The finders interpreted this as indicating woolly mammoth blood possessed antifreezing properties. In 2022, a complete female baby woolly mammoth was found by a miner in the Klondike gold fields of Yukon, Canada. The specimen is estimated to have died 30.000 years ago, and was nicknamed "Nun cho ga", meaning "big baby animal" in the local Hän language. It is the best preserved woolly mammoth mummy found in North America, and was the same size as Lyuba.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The existence of preserved soft tissue remains and DNA of woolly mammoths has led to the idea that the species could be resurrected by scientific means. Several methods have been proposed to achieve this. Cloning would involve removal of the DNA-containing nucleus of the egg cell of a female elephant and replacement with a nucleus from woolly mammoth tissue. The cell would then be stimulated into dividing and inserted back into a female elephant. The resulting calf would have the genes of the woolly mammoth, although its fetal environment would be different. Most intact mammoths have had little usable DNA because of their conditions of preservation. There is not enough to guide the production of an embryo.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: A second method involves artificially inseminating an elephant egg cell with sperm cells from a frozen woolly mammoth carcass. The resulting offspring would be an elephant–mammoth hybrid, and the process would have to be repeated so more hybrids could be used in breeding. After several generations of cross-breeding these hybrids, an almost pure woolly mammoth would be produced. In one case, an Asian elephant and an African elephant produced a live calf named Motty, but it died of defects at less than two weeks old.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The fact that sperm cells of modern mammals are viable for 15 years at most after deep-freezing makes this method unfeasible.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Several projects are working on gradually replacing the genes in elephant cells with mammoth genes. By 2015 and using the new CRISPR DNA editing technique, one team, led by George Church, had some woolly mammoth genes edited into the genome of an Asian elephant; focusing on cold-resistance initially, the target genes are for the external ear size, subcutaneous fat, hemoglobin, and hair attributes. If any method is ever successful, a suggestion has been made to introduce the hybrids to a wildlife reserve in Siberia called the Pleistocene Park.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Some researchers question the ethics of such recreation attempts. In addition to the technical problems, not much habitat is left that would be suitable for elephant-mammoth hybrids. Because the species was social and gregarious, creating a few specimens would not be ideal. The time and resources required would be enormous, and the scientific benefits would be unclear, suggesting these resources should instead be used to preserve extant elephant species which are endangered. The ethics of using elephants as surrogate mothers in hybridisation attempts has been questioned, as most embryos would not survive, and knowing the exact needs of a hybrid elephant–mammoth calf would be impossible. Another concern is the introduction of unknown pathogens if de-extinction efforts were to succeed. In 2021, an Austin-based company raised funds to reintroduce the species in the Arctic tundra.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The woolly mammoth has remained culturally significant long after its extinction. Indigenous peoples of Siberia had long found what are now known to be woolly mammoth remains, collecting their tusks for the ivory trade. Native Siberians believed woolly mammoth remains to be those of giant mole-like animals that lived underground and died when burrowing to the surface. Woolly mammoth tusks had been articles of trade in Asia long before Europeans became acquainted with them. Güyük, the 13th-century Khan of the Mongols, is reputed to have sat on a throne made from mammoth ivory. Inspired by the Siberian natives' concept of the mammoth as an underground creature, it was recorded in the 16th-century Chinese pharmaceutical encyclopedia, "Ben Cao Gangmu", as "yin shu", "the hidden rodent".


title: Woolly mammoth

text: The indigenous peoples of North America used woolly mammoth ivory and bone for tools and art. As in Siberia, North American natives had "myths of observation" explaining the remains of woolly mammoths and other elephants; the Bering Strait Inupiat believed the bones came from burrowing creatures, while other peoples associated them with primordial giants or "great beasts". Observers have interpreted legends from several Native American peoples as containing folk memory of extinct elephants, though other scholars are skeptical that folk memory could survive such a long time.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Siberian mammoth ivory is reported to have been exported to Russia and Europe in the 10th century. The first Siberian ivory to reach western Europe was brought to London in 1611. When Russia occupied Siberia, the ivory trade grew and it became a widely exported commodity, with huge amounts being excavated. From the 19th century and onwards, woolly mammoth ivory became a highly prized commodity, used as raw material for many products. Today, it is still in great demand as a replacement for the now-banned export of elephant ivory, and has been referred to as "white gold". Local dealers estimate that 10 million mammoths are still frozen in Siberia, and conservationists have suggested that this could help save the living species of elephants from extinction. Elephants are hunted by poachers for their ivory, but if this could instead be supplied by the already extinct mammoths, the demand could instead be met by these. Trade in elephant ivory has been forbidden in most places following the 1989 Lausanne Conference, but dealers have been known to label it as mammoth ivory to get it through customs. Mammoth ivory looks similar to elephant ivory, but the former is browner and the Schreger lines are coarser in texture. In the 21st century, global warming has made access to Siberian tusks easier, since the permafrost thaws more quickly, exposing the mammoths embedded within it.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: Stories abound about frozen woolly mammoth meat that was consumed once defrosted, especially that of the "Berezovka mammoth", but most of these are considered dubious. The carcasses were in most cases decayed, and the stench so unbearable that only wild scavengers and the dogs accompanying the finders showed any interest in the flesh. Such meat apparently was once recommended against illness in China, and Siberian natives have occasionally cooked the meat of frozen carcasses they discovered. According to one of the more famous stories, members of The Explorers Club dined on meat of a frozen mammoth from Alaska in 1951. In 2016, a group of researchers genetically examined a sample of the meal, and found it to belong to a green sea turtle (it had also been claimed to belong to "Megatherium"). The researchers concluded that the dinner had been a publicity stunt. In 2011, the Chinese palaeontologist Lida Xing livestreamed while eating meat from a Siberian mammoth leg (thoroughly cooked and flavoured with salt) and told his audience it tasted bad and like soil. This triggered controversy and gained mixed reactions, but Xing stated he did it to promote science.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: There have been occasional claims that the woolly mammoth is not extinct and that small, isolated herds might survive in the vast and sparsely inhabited tundra of the Northern Hemisphere. In the 19th century, several reports of "large shaggy beasts" were passed on to the Russian authorities by Siberian tribesmen, but no scientific proof ever surfaced. A French "chargé d'affaires "working in Vladivostok, M. Gallon, said in 1946 that in 1920, he had met a Russian fur-trapper who claimed to have seen living giant, furry "elephants" deep into the taiga. Due to the large area of Siberia, the possibility that woolly mammoths survived into more recent times cannot be completely ruled out, but evidence indicates that they became extinct thousands of years ago. These natives likely had gained their knowledge of woolly mammoths from carcasses they encountered and that this is the source for their legends of the animal.


title: Woolly mammoth

text: In the late 19th century, rumours existed about surviving mammoths in Alaska. In 1899, Henry Tukeman detailed his killing of a mammoth in Alaska and his subsequent donation of the specimen to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The museum denied the story. The Swedish writer Bengt Sjögren suggested in 1962 that the myth began when the American biologist Charles Haskins Townsend travelled in Alaska, saw Inuit trading mammoth tusks, asked if mammoths were still living in Alaska, and provided them with a drawing of the animal. Bernard Heuvelmans included the possibility of residual populations of Siberian mammoths in his 1955 book, "On The Track Of Unknown Animals"; while his book was a systematic investigation into possible unknown species, it became the basis of the cryptozoology movement.


title: Two-spirit

text: Two-spirit (also two spirit, 2S or, occasionally, twospirited) is a modern, , umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) ceremonial and social role in their cultures.


title: Two-spirit

text: The term "Two Spirit" (original form chosen) was created in 1990 at the Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering in Winnipeg, and "specifically chosen to distinguish and distance Native American/First Nations people from non-Native peoples". The primary purpose of coining a new term was to encourage the replacement of the outdated and considered offensive, anthropological term, "berdache". This new term has not been universally accepted, having been criticized as a term of erasure by traditional communities who already have their own terms for the people being grouped under this new term, and by those who reject what they call the "Western" binary implications, such as implying that Natives believe these individuals are "both male and female". However, it has generally received more acceptance and use than the anthropological term it replaced.


title: Two-spirit

text: "Two Spirit" was not intended to be interchangeable with "LGBT Native American" or "Gay Indian"; rather, it was created in English (and then translated into Ojibwe), to serve as a pan-Indian unifier: to be used for general audiences instead of the traditional terms in Indigenous languages for what are diverse, culturally-specific ceremonial and social roles, that can vary widely (if and when they exist at all). Opinions vary as to whether or not this objective has succeeded. The decision to adopt this new, pan-Indian term was also made to distance themselves from non-Native gays and lesbians, as the term and identity of two-spirit "does not make sense" unless it is contextualized within a Native American or First Nations framework and traditional cultural understanding. However, the gender-nonconforming, LGBT, or third and fourth gender, ceremonial roles traditionally embodied by Native American people and Indigenous peoples in Canada, intended to be under the modern umbrella of two-spirit, can vary widely, even among the Indigenous people who accept the English-language term. No one Native American/First Nations' culture's gender or sexuality categories apply to all, or even a majority of, these cultures.


title: Two-spirit

text: The neologism "two-spirit" was created in English, then translated into Ojibwe, in 1990 at the third annual Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as a replacement for the offensive, anthropological term, "berdache". The Ojibwe translation was proposed to honor the language of the Peoples in whose territory the conference was being held. This term had not been previously used, in either Ojibwe or English, until this conference in 1990, nor was this term ever intended to replace the traditional terms or concepts already in use in any Native cultures.


title: Two-spirit

text: The decision to adopt this new, pan-Indian term was deliberate, with a clear intention to distance themselves from non-Native gays and lesbians, as well as from non-Native terminology like "berdache", "gay", "lesbian", and "trans". The primary purpose of coining a new term was to encourage the replacement of the outdated, and offensive, anthropological term "berdache", which means "passive partner in sodomy, boy prostitute". Cameron writes, "The term two-spirit is thus an Aboriginal-specific term of resistance to colonization and non-transferable to other cultures. There are several underlying reasons for two spirited Aboriginals' desire to distance themselves from the mainstream queer community." Lang explains that for Aboriginal people, their sexual orientation or gender identity is secondary to their ethnic identity. She states, "at the core of contemporary two-spirit identities is ethnicity, an awareness of being Native American as opposed to being white or being a member of any other ethnic group".


title: Two-spirit

text: It is unclear who first coined the term "two-spirit" in English. Pember notes the involvement of non-Native Will Roscoe who, like his also non-Native mentor Harry Hay, is involved in the hippie/counterculture gay men's group, the Radical Faeries, a "non-Native community that emulates Native spirituality" and engages in other forms of cultural appropriation: "Non-Native anthropologist Will Roscoe gets much of the public credit for coining the term two spirit. However, according to Kristopher Kohl Miner of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Native people such as anthropologist Dr. Wesley Thomas of the Dine or Navajo tribe also contributed to its creation. (Thomas is a professor in the School of Dine and Law Studies.)" More recently, Myra Laramee, (Anishinaabe) has said that she proposed the term at the 1990 gathering after the phrase came to her in a dream.


title: Two-spirit

text: Some who enthusiastically took up the term and used it in the media said that this new, English-language term carried on the full meaning and implications of the Indigenous-language terms used in-community for the specific traditional, ceremonial roles that the anthropologists had referred to – emphasizing the role of the Elders in recognizing a two-spirit person, stressing that "Two Spirit" is not interchangeable with "LGBT Native American" or "Gay Indian", and that the title differs from most Western, mainstream definitions of sexuality and gender identity in that it is not a modern, self-chosen term of personal sexual or gender "identity", but is a sacred, spiritual and ceremonial role that is recognized and confirmed by the Elders of the Two Spirit's ceremonial community. Talking to "The New York Times" in 2006, Joey Criddle said, "The elders will tell you the difference between a gay Indian and a Two-Spirit ... underscoring the idea that simply being gay and Indian does not make someone a Two-Spirit."


title: Two-spirit

text: Even though it has gained far more mainstream recognition and popularity than any of the traditional terms in Indigenous languages, the term has never met with universal acceptance. While use of the term to replace "berdache" proceeded, the word also began to replace tribally-specific terms and cultural teachings, leading to criticism, largely from more traditional members of Indian Country: "Nations and tribes used various words to describe various genders, sexes and sexualities. Many had separate words for the Western constructs of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, intersex individuals, cross-dressers, transgenders, gender-variant individuals, or 'changing ones', third genders (men who live as women), and fourth genders (women who live as men) Even these categories are limiting, because they are based on Western language and ideas rooted in a dichotomous relationship between gender, sex, and sexuality. This language barrier limits our understanding of the traditional roles within Native American/First Nations cultures."


title: Two-spirit

text: Even at the series of conferences where the term was gradually adopted (1990 being the third of five), concern was expressed by a number of the Native attendees that traditional Natives back in the reservation communities would never agree to this newly-coined concept, or adopt the neologism being used to describe it: "At the conferences that produced the book, "Two-Spirited People", I heard several First Nations people describe themselves as very much unitary, neither 'male' nor 'female', much less a pair in one body. Nor did they report an assumption of duality within one body as a common concept within reservation communities; rather, people confided dismay at the Western proclivity for dichotomies. Outside Indo-European-speaking societies, 'gender' would not be relevant to the social personae glosses 'men' and 'women', and 'third gender' likely would be meaningless. The unsavory word 'berdache' certainly ought to be ditched (Jacobs et al. 1997:3-5), but the urban American neologism 'two-spirit' can be misleading."


title: Two-spirit

text: Other concerns about this pan-Indian, English-language term have centered around the binary nature of "two-spirit", a sense not found in the traditional names for these individuals or their roles in traditional cultures: "It implies that the individual is both male and female and that these aspects are intertwined within them. The term moves away from traditional Native American/First Nations cultural identities and meanings of sexuality and gender variance. It does not take into account the terms and meanings from individual nations and tribes. ... Although "two-spirit" implies to some a spiritual nature, that one holds the spirit of two, both male and female, traditional Native Americans/First Nations peoples view this as a Western concept."


title: Two-spirit

text: Another contemporary term in use, as an alternative to "two-spirit", and which does not rely on binary conceptions of gender, is "Indigiqueer". Originally spelled "Indigequeer", the term was coined by TJ Cuthand, and popularized by author Joshua Whitehead. Cuthand first used "Indigiqueer" for the title of the 2004 Vancouver Queer Film Festival’s Indigenous/two-spirit Program, and has written that he came up with this alternative term, "because some LGBTQ Indigenous people don’t feel as comfortable with the two-spirit title because it implies some dual gender stuff, which some people just don’t feel describes their identity."


title: Two-spirit

text: Additional issues with "two-spirit" that others have voiced is that they see it as a capitulation to urbanization and loss of culture that, while initially intended to help people reconnect with the spiritual dimension of these roles, was not working out the way it had been intended. In 2009, writing for the "Encyclopedia of Gender and Society", Kylan Mattias de Vries wrote:


title: Two-spirit

text: With the urbanization and assimilation of Native peoples, individuals began utilizing Western terms, concepts, and identities, such as gay, lesbian, transgender, and intersex. These terms separated Native cultural identity from sexuality and gender identity, furthering a disconnect felt by many Native American/First Nations peoples in negotiating the boundaries of life between two worlds (Native and non-Native/Western). The term "two-spirited" was created to reconnect one's gender or sexual identity with her or his Native identity and culture. ...


title: Two-spirit

text: Some Native Americans/First Nations people that hold to more traditional religious and cultural values view "two-spirit" as a cultural and social term, rather than one with any religious or spiritual meaning. ... Since historically, many "berdache/two-spirit" individuals held religious or spiritual roles, the term "two spirit" creates a disconnection from the past. The terms used by other tribes currently and historically do not translate directly into the English form of "two spirit" or the Ojibwe form of .


title: Two-spirit

text: While some have found "two-spirit" a useful tool for intertribal organizing, "the concept and word "two-spirit" has no traditional cultural significance". Not all tribes have ceremonial roles for these people, and the tribes that do usually use names in their own languages.


title: Two-spirit

text: With over 500 surviving Native American cultures, attitudes about sex and gender can be diverse. Even with the modern adoption of pan-Indian terms like two-spirit, and the creation of a modern pan-Indian community around this naming, not all cultures will perceive two-spirits the same way, or welcome a pan-Indian term to replace the terms already in use by their cultures. Additionally, not all contemporary Indigenous communities are supportive of their gender-variant and non-heterosexual people now. In these communities, those looking for two-spirit community have sometimes faced oppression and rejection. While existing terminology in many nations shows historical acknowledgement of differing sexual orientations and gender expressions, members of some of these nations have also said that while variance was accepted, they never had separate or defined roles for these members of the community. Among the Indigenous communities that traditionally have roles for two-spirit people, specific terms in their own languages are used for the social and spiritual roles these individuals fulfill. The following list is not comprehensive.


title: Two-spirit

text: The increasing visibility of the two-spirit concept in mainstream culture has been seen as both empowering and as having some undesirable consequences, such as the spread of misinformation about the cultures of Indigenous people, pan-Indianism, and cultural appropriation of Indigenous identities and ceremonial ways among non-Natives who do not understand that Indigenous communities see two-spirit as a specifically Native American and First Nations cultural identity, not one to be taken up by non-Natives.


title: Two-spirit

text: My concern is not so much over the use of the words but over the social meme they have generated that has morphed into a cocktail of historical revisionism, wishful thinking, good intentions, and a soupçon of white, entitled appropriation.


title: Two-spirit

text: "Two-spirit" does not acknowledge either the traditional acceptance or the nonacceptance of individuals in various nations and tribes. The idea of gender and sexuality variance being universally accepted among Native American/First Nations peoples has become romanticized.


title: Two-spirit

text: Accordingly, the change from "berdache" to "two-spirit" is most accurately understood as a non-Native idealization of the social acceptance of gender variance, idealizing a romanticized acceptance of gender variance.


title: Two-spirit

text: For First Nations people whose lives have been impacted by the Residential Schools, and other Indigenous communities who have experienced severe cultural damage from colonization, the specific two-spirit traditions in their communities may have been severely damaged, fragmented, or even lost. In these cases there have been serious challenges to remembering and reviving their older traditional ways, and to overcoming the homophobia and other learned prejudices of forced assimilation.


title: Two-spirit

text: When Indigenous people from communities that are less-accepting of two-spirits have sought community among non-Native LGBT communities, however, the tendency for non-Natives to tokenize and appropriate has at times led to rifts rather than unity, with two-spirits feeling like they are just another tacked on initial rather than fully included:


title: Two-spirit

text: The term two-spirited was chosen to emphasize our difference in our experiences of multiple, interlocking oppressions as queer Aboriginal people. When non-Aboriginal people decide to "take up" the term two-spirit, it detracts from its original meaning and diffuses its power as a label of resistance for Aboriginal people. Already there is so much of First Nations culture that has been exploited and appropriated in this country; must our terms of resistance also be targeted for mainstream appropriation and consumption?


title: Two-spirit

text: Two-spirited is a reclaimed term designed by Aboriginals to define our unique cultural context, histories, and legacy. When people do not see the harm in "sharing" the term, they are missing the point and refusing to recognize that by appropriating the term they will inevitably alter its cultural context.


title: Two-spirit

text: In academia, there has since 2010 or earlier been a move to "queer the analytics of settler colonialism" and create a "twospirit" critique as part of the general field of queer studies. However, much of this academic analysis and publishing is not based in traditional indigenous knowledge, but in the more mainstream, non-Native perspectives of the broader LGBT communities, so most of the same cultural misunderstandings tend to be found as in the outdated writing of the non-Native anthropologists and "explorers". Claiming a viewpoint of "postidentity" analysis, supporters of "queer of color critique" aim to examine settler colonialism and the ongoing genocide of Native peoples while "queering Native Studies". However, Indigenous identity is predominantly cultural, rather than a racial classification. It is based on membership in a particular community, cultural fluency, citizenship, and Native American and First Nations people may or may not even consider themselves to be "people of color".


title: Two-spirit

text: Male-bodied two-spirit people, regardless of gender identification, can go to war and have access to male activities such as male-only sweat lodge ceremonies. However, they may also take on "feminine" activities such as cooking and other domestic responsibilities. According to Lang, female-bodied two-spirit people usually have sexual relations or marriages with only females.


title: Two-spirit

text: Among the goals of two-spirit societies are group support; outreach, education, and activism; revival of their Indigenous cultural traditions, including preserving the old languages, skills and dances; and otherwise working toward social change.


title: Two-spirit

text: Some two-spirit societies (past and present) include: 2Spirits of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario; the Wabanaki Two Spirit Alliance in Nova Scotia; the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (est. 1998) in San Francisco, California; Central Oklahoma Two Spirit Natives in Oklahoma City; the East Coast Two Spirit Society and the NorthEast Two-Spirit Society in New York City; Idaho Two-Spirit Society; the Indiana Two-Spirit Society in Bloomington; Minnesota Two Spirits; the Montana Two-Spirit Society in Browning; the Northwest Two-Spirit Society in Seattle, Washington; the Ohio Valley Two Spirit Society of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Southern Illinois; the Portland Two Spirit Society (est. May 2012) in Portland, Oregon; the Regina Two-Spirited Society in Regina, Saskatchewan; the Texas Two Spirit Society in Dallas; the Tulsa Two-Spirit Society in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Two-Spirit Society of Denver in Denver, Colorado; and the Wichita Two-Spirit Society in Wichita, Kansas.


title: Two-spirit

text: Unfortunately, depending on an oral tradition to impart our ways to future generations opened the floodgates for early non-Native explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists to write books describing Native peoples and therefore bolstering their own role as experts. These writings were and still are entrenched in the perspective of the authors who were and are mostly white men.


title: Two-spirit

text: According to German anthropologist Sabine Lang, cross-dressing of two-spirit people was not always an indicator of gender identity. Lang believes "the mere fact that a male wears women's clothing does not say something about his role behavior, his gender status, or even his choice of partner". Other anthropologists may have mistakenly labelled some Native individuals two-spirit or "berdache" because of a lack of cultural understanding, specifically around an Indigenous community's worldview, and their particular customs concerning clothing and gender.


title: Two-spirit

text: According to non-Natives including author Brian Gilley and anthropologist Will Roscoe, the historical presence of male-bodied two-spirits "was a fundamental institution among most tribal peoples", with both male- and female-bodied two-spirits having been documented "in over 130 North American tribes, in every region of the continent". However, Ojibwe journalist Mary Annette Pember argues that this depiction threatens to homogenize diverse Indigenous cultures, painting over them with an overly broad brush, potentially causing the disappearance of "distinct cultural and language differences that Native peoples hold crucial to their identity".


title: Two-spirit

text: Don Pedro Fages was third in command of the 1769–70 Spanish Portolá expedition, the first European land exploration of what is now the U.S. state of California. At least three diaries were kept during the expedition, but Fages wrote his account later, in 1775. Fages gave more descriptive details about the native Californians than any of the others, and he alone reported the presence of homosexuality in the native culture. The English translation reads:


title: Two-spirit

text: I have submitted substantial evidence that those Indian men who, both here and farther inland, are observed in the dress, clothing and character of women – there being two or three such in each village – pass as sodomites by profession. ... They are called "joyas", and are held in great esteem.


title: Two-spirit

text: Although gender-variant people have been both respected and feared in a number of tribes, they are not beyond being reproached or, by traditional law, even killed for bad deeds. In the Mojave tribe, for instance, they frequently become medicine persons and, like all who deal with the supernatural, are at risk of suspicion of witchcraft, notably in cases of failed harvest or of death. There have been instances of murder in these cases (such as in the case of the gender-nonconforming female named Sahaykwisā). Another instance in the late 1840s was of a Crow "badé" who was caught, possibly raiding horses, by the Lakota and was killed.


title: Two-spirit

text: Lang and Jacobs write that historically among the Apache, the Lipan, Chiricahua, Mescalero, and southern Dilzhe'e have alternative gender identities. One tribe in particular, the Eyak, has a single report from 1938 that they did not have an alternative gender and they held such individuals in low esteem, although whether this sentiment is the result of acculturation or not is unknown.


title: Two-spirit

text: Among the Iroquois, there is a single report from Bacqueville de la Potherie in his book published in 1722, "Histoire de l'Amérique septentrionale", that indicates that an alternative gender identity exists among them.


title: Two-spirit

text: Many, if not all, Indigenous cultures have been affected by European homophobia and misogyny. Some sources have reported that the Aztecs and Incas had laws against such individuals, though there are some authors who feel that this was exaggerated or the result of acculturation, because all of the documents indicating this are post-conquest and any that existed before had been destroyed by the Spanish. The belief that these laws existed, at least for the Aztecs, comes from the Florentine Codex, and that evidence exists that indigenous peoples authored many codices, but the Spaniards destroyed most of them in their attempt to eradicate ancient beliefs.


title: Two-spirit

text: Some contemporary Zapotec peoples in Mexico embody the traditional third gender role known as "muxe". They consider themselves to be ""muxe" in men's bodies", who do the work that their culture usually associates with women. When asked by transgender researchers in 2004 if they ever considered surgical transition, "none of the respondents found the idea interesting, but rather strange" as their essence as "muxe" is not dependent on what type of body they are in.


title: Two-spirit

text: Before the late twentieth-century, non-Native (i.e. non-Native American/Canadian) anthropologists used the term "berdache" (), in a very broad manner, to identify an indigenous individual fulfilling one of many mixed gender roles in their tribe. Most often these anthropologists applied the term to any male whom they perceived to be homosexual, bisexual, or effeminate by Western social standards, though occasionally the term was applied to lesbian, bisexual and gender nonconforming females as well. This led to a wide variety of diverse individuals being categorized under this imprecise term. At times they incorrectly implied that these individuals were intersex (or, "hermaphrodites").


title: Two-spirit

text: The term "berdache" has always been repugnant to Indigenous people. De Vries writes, "Berdache is a derogatory term created by Europeans and perpetuated by anthropologists and others to define Native American/First Nations people who varied from Western norms that perceive gender, sex, and sexuality as binaries and inseparable." The term has now fallen out of favor with anthropologists as well. It derives from the French "" (English equivalent: "bardash") meaning "passive homosexual", "catamite" or even "boy prostitute". "Bardache", in turn, derived from the Persian "barda" meaning "captive", "prisoner of war", "slave". Spanish explorers who encountered these individuals among the Chumash people called them """", the Spanish for "jewels".


title: Two-spirit

text: Use of "berdache" has now been replaced in most mainstream and anthropological literature by "two spirit", with mixed results. However, the term "two spirit" itself, in English or any other language, was not in use before 1990.


title: Two-spirit

text: In the 1970 film "Little Big Man", the Cheyenne character Little Horse, portrayed by Robert Little Star, is a gay man who wears clothing more commonly worn by women in the culture. He invites the protagonist, Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) to come live with him. In a departure from most portrayals in Westerns of the era, Crabb is touched and flattered by the offer.


title: Two-spirit

text: The 2009 documentary film "Two Spirits", directed by Lydia Nibley, tells the story of the hate-murder of 16-year-old Navajo Fred Martinez. In the film, Nibley "affirms Martinez' Navajo sense of being a two spirit 'effeminate male', or "nádleeh"". Martinez' mother defined "nádleeh" as "half woman, half man".


title: Two-spirit

text: The film "Two Spirits", shown on "Independent Lens" in 2011, and winner of the annual Audience Award for that year, is about two-spirit people, particularly Fred Martinez, who was murdered at age 16 for identifying as a two-spirit.


title: Two-spirit

text: In 2017 two-spirited Metis filmmaker Marjorie Beaucage released a "Coming In Stories: Two Spirit in Saskatchewan" as way to raise awareness about the experiences of two-spirited individuals living in Saskatchewan, Canada.


title: Two-spirit

text: In the 2018 indie film, "The Miseducation of Cameron Post", a Lakota character – Adam Red Eagle, played by Forrest Goodluck – is sent to a conversion camp for identifying as "winkte" and two-spirit.


title: Two-spirit

text: In the 2019, second season of "American Gods", Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs (Mohawk) plays a young Cherokee woman, Sam Black Crow, who self-identifies as "two-spirited" (although in the book, she is mentioned in passing as being bisexual). Her character, raised by a white mother and estranged from her Native father, speaks of looking to older ancestors to try to find her own beliefs, much like the other humans in the series. In an interview she says, "I identify as queer, and not two-spirited, because I'm Mohawk and we don't have that" and that Neil Gaiman (author of the novels on which the series is based) advocated strongly for her to be cast in the role.


title: Two-spirit

text: "Lovecraft Country", a 2020 HBO television series, features Yahima, an Arawak two-spirit character. Showrunner Misha Green addressed the fate of this character by tweeting "I wanted to show the uncomfortable truth that oppressed folks can also be oppressors. It's a story point worth making, but I failed in the way I chose to make it." The term "two-spirit" is used anachronistically in the series, being set in the 1950s whilst the term itself was coined in the 1990s.


title: Two-spirit

text: In 2012, a marker dedicated to two spirit people was included in the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago, Illinois, that celebrates LGBT history and people.


title: Two-spirit

text: "Self-identified" here is meant as a contrast to the way a traditional two spirit must be recognized as such by the Elders of their Indigenous community when the term is used as a synonym for a traditional ceremonial role (for which there will be an already-existing term in that culture's Indigenous language). Inclusion in this list is thus not an indication of whether the person is recognized or not.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan had intended to send the Light Brigade to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions, a task for which the light cavalry were well-suited. However, there was miscommunication in the chain of command and the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. The Light Brigade reached the battery under withering direct fire and scattered some of the gunners, but they were forced to retreat immediately, and the assault ended with very high British casualties and no decisive gains.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The events were the subject of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's narrative poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854), published just six weeks after the event. Its lines emphasise the valour of the cavalry in bravely carrying out their orders, regardless of the nearly inevitable outcome. Responsibility for the miscommunication has remained controversial, as the order was vague and Captain Louis Nolan, who delivered the written orders with some verbal interpretation, was killed in the first minute of the assault.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The charge was made by the Light Brigade of the British cavalry, which consisted of the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, the 17th Lancers, and the 8th and 11th Hussars, under the command of Major General James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan. Also present that day was the Heavy Brigade, commanded by Major General James Yorke Scarlett, who was a past Commanding Officer of the 5th Dragoon Guards. The Heavy Brigade was made up of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, the 5th Dragoon Guards, the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons and the Scots Greys. The two brigades were the only British cavalry force at the battle.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The Light Brigade was the British light cavalry force. It rode unarmoured light fast horses. The men were armed with lances and sabres. Optimized for maximum mobility and speed, they were intended for reconnaissance and skirmishing. They were also ideal for cutting down infantry and artillery units as they tried to retreat.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The Heavy Brigade under James Scarlett was the British heavy cavalry force. It rode large heavy chargers. The men were equipped with metal helmets and armed with cavalry swords for close combat. They were intended as the primary British shock force, leading frontal charges to break enemy lines.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Overall command of the British cavalry resided with Lieutenant General George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan. Cardigan and Lucan were brothers-in-law who disliked each other intensely. Lucan received an order from the army commander Lord Raglan stating: "Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate." Raglan wanted the light cavalry to prevent the Russians from successfully withdrawing the naval guns from the redoubts they had captured on the reverse side of the Causeway Heights, the hill forming the south side of the valley. This was an optimal task for the Light Brigade, as their superior speed would ensure the Russians would be forced to either quickly abandon the cumbersome guns or be cut down "en masse" while they tried to flee with them.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Raglan could see what was happening from his high vantage point on the west side of the valley. However, the lie of the land around Lucan and the cavalry stopped him from seeing the Russians' efforts to remove the guns from the redoubts and retreat.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The order was drafted by Brigadier Richard Airey and carried by Captain Louis Nolan. Nolan carried the further oral instruction that the cavalry was to attack immediately. When Lucan asked what guns were referred to, Nolan is said to have indicated with a wide sweep of his arm—not the causeway redoubts—but the mass of Russian guns in a redoubt at the end of the valley, around a mile away. His reasons for the misdirection are unknown because he was killed in the ensuing battle.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: In response to the order, Lucan instructed Cardigan to lead his command of about 670 troopers of the Light Brigade straight into the valley between the Fedyukhin Heights and the Causeway Heights. (Russell's report in "The Times" recorded that just short of 200 men were sick or for other reasons left behind in camp on the day, leaving "607 sabres" to take part in the charge.) In his poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854), Tennyson dubbed this hollow "The Valley of Death".


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The opposing Russian forces were commanded by Pavel Liprandi and included approximately 20 battalions of infantry supported by over 50 artillery pieces. These forces were deployed on both sides and at the opposite end of the valley.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Lucan was to follow with the Heavy Brigade. The Heavy Brigade was better armoured and intended for frontal assaults on infantry positions, but neither force was anywhere near to being equipped for a frontal assault on a fully dug-in and alerted artillery, much less one with an excellent line of sight over a mile in length and supported on two sides by artillery batteries providing enfilading fire from elevated ground. The semi-suicidal nature of this charge was surely evident to the troopers of the Light Brigade, but if there was any objection to the orders, it was not recorded.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The Light Brigade set off down the valley with Cardigan in front, leading the charge on his horse Ronald. Almost at once, Nolan rushed across the front, passing in front of Cardigan. It may be that he realised that the charge was aimed at the wrong target and was attempting to stop or turn the brigade, but he was killed by an artillery shell and the cavalry continued on its course. Captain Godfrey Morgan was close by:


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The Light Brigade faced withering fire from three sides which devastated their force on the ride, yet they were able to engage the Russian forces at the end of the valley and force them back from the redoubt. Nonetheless, they had suffered heavy casualties and were soon forced to retire. The surviving Russian artillerymen returned to their guns and opened fire with grapeshot and canister shot, indiscriminately at the mêlée of friend and foe before them. Captain Morgan continues:


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: When clear again of the guns I saw two or three of my men making their way back, and as the fire from both flanks was still heavy it was a matter of running the gauntlet again. I have not sufficient recollection of minor incidents to describe them, as probably no two men who were in that charge would describe it in the same way. When I was back pretty nearly where we started from I found that I was the senior officer of those not wounded, and, consequently, in command, there being two others, both juniors to me, in the same position — Lieut. Wombwell and Cornet Cleveland.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Lucan and his troops of the Heavy Brigade failed to provide any support for the Light Brigade; they entered the mouth of the valley, but did not advance further. Lucan's explanation was that he saw no point in having a second brigade mown down, and he was best positioned to render assistance to survivors returning from the charge. The French light cavalry, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, was of more assistance, clearing the Fedyukhin Heights of the two half-batteries of guns, two infantry battalions, and Cossacks to ensure that the Light Brigade would not be fired upon from that flank, and it provided cover for the remaining elements of the Light Brigade as they withdrew.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: War correspondent William Howard Russell witnessed the battle and declared, "Our Light Brigade was annihilated by their own rashness, and by the brutality of a ferocious enemy."


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Cardigan survived the battle, although stories circulated that he was not actually present. He led the charge from the front, never looking back, and did not see what was happening to the troops behind him. He reached the Russian guns, took part in the fight, and then returned alone up the valley without bothering to rally or even find out what had happened to the survivors. He afterwards said that all he could think about was his rage against Captain Nolan, who he thought had tried to take over the leadership of the charge. After riding back up the valley, he considered that he had done all that he could. He left the field and boarded his yacht in Balaklava harbour, where he ate a champagne dinner. He described the engagement in a speech delivered at Mansion House, London which was quoted in the House of Commons:


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: We advanced down a gradual descent of more than three-quarters of a mile [1.2 km], with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left, and all the intermediate ground covered with the Russian riflemen; so that when we came to within a distance of fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery which had been hurling destruction upon us, we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire, in addition to the fire of the riflemen upon our flanks.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: As we ascended the hill, the oblique fire of the artillery poured upon our rear, so that we had thus a strong fire upon our front, our flank, and our rear. We entered the battery—we went through the battery—the two leading regiments cutting down a great number of the Russian gunners in their onset. In the two regiments which I had the honour to lead, every officer, with one exception, was either killed or wounded, or had his horse shot under him or injured. Those regiments proceeded, followed by the second line, consisting of two more regiments of cavalry, which continued to perform the duty of cutting down the Russian gunners.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Then came the third line, formed of another regiment, which endeavoured to complete the duty assigned to our brigade. I believe that this was achieved with great success, and the result was that this body, composed of only about 670 men, succeeded in passing through the mass of Russian cavalry of—as we have since learned—5,240 strong; and having broken through that mass, they went, according to our technical military expression, "threes about," and retired in the same manner, doing as much execution in their course as they possibly could upon the enemy's cavalry. Upon our returning up the hill which we had descended in the attack, we had to run the same gauntlet and to incur the same risk from the flank fire of the Tirailleur as we had encountered before. Numbers of our men were shot down—men and horses were killed, and many of the soldiers who had lost their horses were also shot down while endeavouring to escape.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: But what, my Lord, was the feeling and what the bearing of those brave men who returned to the position. Of each of these regiments there returned but a small detachment, two-thirds of the men engaged having been destroyed? I think that every man who was engaged in that disastrous affair at Balaklava, and who was fortunate enough to come out of it alive, must feel that it was only by a merciful decree of Almighty Providence that he escaped from the greatest apparent certainty of death which could possibly be conceived.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The brigade was not completely destroyed, but did suffer terribly, with 118 men killed, 127 wounded, and about 60 taken prisoner. After regrouping, only 195 men were still with horses. The futility of the action and its reckless bravery prompted the French Marshal Pierre Bosquet to state: ""C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."" ("It is magnificent, but it is not war.") He continued, in a rarely quoted phrase: ""C'est de la folie"" — "It is madness." The Russian commanders are said to have initially believed that the British soldiers must have been drunk. Somerset Calthorpe, aide-de-camp to Lord Raglan, wrote a letter to a friend three days after the charge. He detailed casualty numbers but did not distinguish between those killed and those taken prisoner:


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Slow communications meant that news of the disaster did not reach the British public until three weeks after the action. The British commanders' dispatches from the front were published in an extraordinary edition of the "London Gazette" of 12 November 1854. Raglan blamed Lucan for the charge, claiming that "from some misconception of the order to advance, the Lieutenant-General (Lucan) considered that he was bound to attack at all hazards, and he accordingly ordered Major-General the Earl of Cardigan to move forward with the Light Brigade." Lucan was furious at being made a scapegoat: Raglan claimed he should have exercised his discretion, but throughout the campaign up to that date Lucan considered Raglan had allowed him no independence at all and required that his orders be followed to the letter. Cardigan, who had merely obeyed orders, blamed Lucan for giving those orders. Cardigan returned home a hero and was promoted to Inspector General of the Cavalry.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Lucan attempted to publish a letter refuting point by point Raglan's "London Gazette" dispatch, but his criticism of his superior was not tolerated, and Lucan was recalled to England in March 1855. The Charge of the Light Brigade became a subject of considerable controversy and public dispute on his return. He strongly rejected Raglan's version of events, calling it "an imputation reflecting seriously on my professional character." In an exchange of public correspondence printed in the pages of "The Times", Lucan blamed Raglan and his deceased aide-de-camp Captain Nolan, who had been the actual deliverer of the disputed order. Lucan subsequently defended himself with a speech in the House of Lords on 19 March.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: Lucan evidently escaped blame for the charge, as he was made a member of the Order of the Bath in July of that same year. Although he never again saw active duty, he reached the rank of general in 1865 and was made a field marshal in the year before his death.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The charge continues to be studied by modern military historians and students as an example of what can go wrong when accurate military intelligence is lacking and orders are unclear. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was a keen military historian and a former cavalryman, insisted on taking time out during the Yalta Conference in 1945 to see the battlefield for himself.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: One research project used a mathematical model to examine how the charge might have turned out if conducted differently. The analysis suggested that a charge toward the redoubt on the Causeway Heights, as Raglan had apparently intended, would have led to even higher British casualties. By contrast, the charge might have succeeded if the Heavy Brigade had accompanied the Light Brigade along the valley, as Lucan had initially directed.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: According to Norman Dixon, 19th-century accounts of the charge tended to focus on the bravery and glory of the cavalrymen, much more than the military blunders involved, with the perverse effect that it "did much to strengthen those very forms of tradition which put such an incapacitating stranglehold on military endeavor for the next eighty or so years," i.e., until after World War I.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: The fates of the surviving members of the charge was investigated by Edward James Boys, a military historian, who documented their lives from leaving the army to their deaths. His records are described as being the most definitive project of its kind ever undertaken.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: In October 1875, survivors of the charge met at the Alexandra Palace in London to celebrate its 21st anniversary. The celebrations were fully reported in the "Illustrated London News" of 30 October 1875, which included the recollections of several of the survivors, including those of Edward Richard Woodham, the Chairman of the Committee that organised the celebration. Tennyson was invited, but could not attend. Lucan, the senior commander surviving, was not present, but attended a separate celebration, held later in the day, with other senior officers at the fashionable Willis's Rooms, St James's Square. Reunion dinners were held for a number of years.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: On 2 August 1890, trumpeter Martin Leonard Landfried, from the 17th Lancers, who may have sounded the bugle charge at Balaclava, made a recording on an Edison cylinder that can be heard , with a bugle which had been used at Waterloo in 1815.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: In 2004, on the 150th anniversary of the charge, a commemoration of the event was held at Balaklava. As part of the anniversary, a monument dedicated to the 25,000 British participants of the conflict was unveiled by Prince Michael of Kent.


title: Charge of the Light Brigade

text: A survivor, John Penn, who died in Dunbar in 1886, left a personal account of his military career, including the Charge, written for a friend. This survives and is held by East Lothian Council Archives.