Los Angeles herald., 1909-12-26
GRAVES OF BIG
ANIMALS FOUND
BODIES OF MAMM0THS, ARE
REVEALED IN ASIA
TONS OF BONES ARE DUG UP
AND SOLD
Ivory from Elephants Long Ago Dead
is Recovered, but Is Too Brittle
to Find Favor in West
ern Markets
Especial to The Herald

sank n shaft, cxcavatcd cutting or
drove a tunnel on the Yorkshire mooiS
and fclls, and bones and tuskS Of by
gone elephants were disturbed, We
should come TO the conclusion that
many ages ago elephants must have
been extremely abundant in Yorkshire,
and for some reason or other had be
come extinct. with this explanation
most Of us would rest content, and no
further interest would be taken IN the
matter, except from business point OF
view. ivory would be almost as cheap
as bone. and billiard balls would be
about half crown apiece.
Now. not in one single country, puL
all over the northern coast line oil the
vast continent of Asia TINS is WnaI
actually does occur. There the remains
of the mammoth. the great northern
elephant. exist i'm almost incredible pro
fusion For many years people nave
come to the conclusion above indicated,
and most have rested content there
with. The commercial interest, indeed
has not been overlooked. For instance,
10000 pounds weight Of mammoth
ivory was sold in one year in the mid
die Of the last century, and a lew years
later no fewer than 1900 tusks were I'M
ported into London. The ivory, now
ever. is too brittle TO find favor in west
Russia and China.
or a dead and gone world, the NAM
moth is most interesting, and not only
because at that time the trunk-bearlng
tusked animals were undoubtedly lords
and masters Of the earth. They seem
to have sWarmed. All over the vast
Furopasion continent they roamed AT
will, safe and unassailable. Man OF
the stone age could not with his primi-
INT
trihing injury on these monsters; the
only creature that could have a chance
with them was the great saber-toothed
tiger. All over North America and on
the plains of Argentine we find the re-
mains Of the great brutes, only tnere
the mastodon represented the victorious
race. We meet the mammoth in North
Africa, and in this connection we come
across a very interesting point. The
Arabic for 'iyory" is today mehemoth'
Anyone can understand how easily the
initial M might be corrupted INTO
ar" "a cold in the head would do it,,
and there we have the Behemoth of
Job, an elephant, not hippopotamus'
as is generally conjectured, or If the
original word be contracted mehemoth
readily becomes mammoth.
But where the mammoth is so su-
nremely instructive is that, on the day
of his death, or almost immedlately
afterward, he was frozen in and has
been preserved, just as he perished, up
to this day. There we can see hlm'
his great pre-Adamite eyes cleaning
duly in their sockets, his thick, Wooly
coat. with it's covering of long, black
hair and its shaggy name, Just as ne
was thousands and thousands OF years
ago, His flesh is still fresh-wolves
and foxes feast on it. his bones are
still fresh. and there is quite small
trade i'm mammoth gelatin; his fat is
still fresh, II is used for fuel IN sam
chatka to this day; and, oddest of all,
the food in his stomach is sometimes
found quite fresh, showing that he
must have been cut off suddenly, as 1t
WERE in his prime.
Now the only way of accounting Tor
this swift, complete. worldwide de-
struction is some stupendous catastro-
phe. OF what nature? 1t could not
have been fire, for that would have re-
duced everything to ashes; it could not
have been ice, which always used TO
be invoked to explain primeval phe-
for that would have crushed
homes and tusks to powder. We nave
the cleW in the soil In which these re-
mains are found. 1t is invariably
water deposit. Incontestably and in
controyertibly the mammoth and his
wolves, hyenas, nip
etc, were overwhelmed by
a vast food or by series of floods
Man perished, too. Side by side with
the brute creation we find his bones
and flint instruments, always in water
borne soil, and a curious evidence OF
his existence at the time is rude en-
craving of a mammoth on a mammoth
tusk.
The more one looks into the evidence
the more conclusive it appears. In
southern Europe, and even among the
Mendip hills, we come across recesses
in the hills full of the bones of animals
Of this age. Clearly almost to demon
stration they had sought refuge on the
hill tops from the rising flood of waters
that was to engulf them, much as sail
ors swarm up the rigging of sinking
ship.
These changes must have been ac-
rompanied by tremendous earthquakes,
and it is almost certain that many of
the victims of the great drowning
out" perished through the earth sub
siding rather than through the waters
rising. Again. the waves must have
been of inconceiVable volume. We
have seen what a volcano can do when
it comes into conflict with the sea,
when i'm 1888 Krakatoa hurled back
the inrushing Indian ocean in one vast
billow that swept away almost in a
moment 10000 human beings, and tray
aled right around the world from Su-
matra to the coasts of England. 1t Is
vain to imagine what the scale of such
waves must have been while these gi-
gantic globe changes were in progress.
To return to the mammoth; what
was he doing in Siberia? How could
he live there? Northern Siberia is the
most rigorous climate in the habitable
world. The soil never thaws there to
depth of more than three feet, and is
frozen downward for at least 400 feet.
There is not enought food there to keep
a single mammoth, and they were
there in their millions. The eXplana-
ton is probably something as follows:
In those times the continent of Asia
extended much farther up into the
polar basin, and the climate of Siberia
was far milder than 1t is today. 1t
was a region of vast forests inhabited
by roaming herds of these gigantic
beasts. We have strong evidence that
this was so. In the first place 1t is
indicated by the fact that bits of wood
and branches and trunks are found be-
side the carcasses, and also in masti-
Gated condition between their teeth,
and even in their stomachs. Secondly,
MANY of the islands to the north of
Asia are simple vast mammoth char
mel houses, the same testimony to the
existence of contemporary forests be-
ing present.
So great beasts lived and moved
1nttI the aDDointed daV arrived In