Their illnesses reinforced the taboo against disturbing mammoth remains. To scientists, these giant tusks are objects of study. To Siberian nomads, they represent the mystery of the underworld. Siberians are not the only people to have subscribed to the rodent theory. In the 1600s, the Chinese Emperor K'ang-hsi authored a book on animals in which he endorsed the belief that the mammoth fossils were the bones of massive rodents that died upon breaking through the surface of the ground.
Mammoth fossil finds around the world gave rise to mythological explanations of their own.
In 16th-century Mexico, Spanish conquistadors speculated that the bones they found belonged to giants who had walked the Earth long ago. A century later in England, a similar hypothesis was widely accepted. Elsewhere in Europe, travellers returning from Siberia spread the story that the bones belonged to huge monsters that lived on mud and blood. In many cases, myths are more colourful than contemporary scientific explanations. In the case of the woolly mammoth, the facts are every bit as thrilling as the legends.