The tale of the Woolly Mammoth is a case in point. Who has not read accounts in the textbooks of these creatures that managed to eke out an existence in the frozen northern climes of the northern circumpolar region? Sometimes the texts are accompanied by illustrations of the creature being harrassed by early man. Perhaps he is shown trapped in a pit as hunters are finishing him off with spears and rocks. What is wrong with this picture (and the accompanying text)? Plenty:

1. There is, first of all, a misreading of evidence in order to protect an assumption. The assumption: The regions where the mammoth remains were found were always pretty much the cold, sparsely vegetated biomes that they are now. (Most of the frozen mammoth discoveries to date have been uncovered well north of the 60th parallel in Siberia and Alaska; a large percentage of those in Siberia were found north of 70 degrees latitude). The evolutionary tenet of uniformitarianism strongly influences many scientists to make this false assumption about the mammoth's climate.

2. The second false assumption grows out of the first: If the region that the mammoths were found in was always arctic in nature then the creatures must have adapted to suit the climate in order to survive. This is where the mammoth, contrary to the evidence, gets "woolly". (In truth, however, the wool does not go over the mammoths, but over the eyes of people who should know better - well, I'm getting ahead of myself).

The assumptions reexamined (and some evidence ignored by many) lead to a different, startling conclusion.

These points raised above have some serious flaws, however. As we cross-examine these we find that a different picture emerges of these elephants of the North. Based on the evidence, we can confidently affirm that the fate of these creatures points to a more profound and awesome event than is found in most textbooks.

1. There is strong evidence that the "frozen north" was not always frozen (and it may not always have been "north" - but that is for a different article). Some of this evidence was hidden away in the stomachs of the mammoths themselves. The last meal of the Berezovka mammoth - found north of the Arctic Circle- consisted of "twenty-four pounds of undigested vegetation". (Brown p. 113) This stomachful was found to include over forty types of plants and mosses, some no longer found in these northern regions. Many of these plants are found in much more temperate climes. Other animals were found with undigested beans, beanpods and buttercup seeds in their mouths and stomachs. Also, buried in the same deposits with many of these mammoths were fruit (plum) trees as well as mammals associated with more temperate regions; tigers, horses, rhinoceroses and others. (We never read about "woolly rhinoceroses", yet there have been at least seven authenticated rhinoceros findings north of the 60th parallel in Siberia (Brown pp.108-109)). The very fact that animals the size of mammoths could survive in a given location requires an ample supply of food. Any child who has gone to a zoo (and every elephant trainer) knows that an elephant takes in a lot of food daily: a typical wild elephant eats over 300 pounds of food a day. Question: Where would that much edible vegetation be found for the mammoths to eat in the frozen regions that they supposedly lived in? Think about it: this alone surely means that these creatures flourished in a much more temperate clime.

2. The teaching that these mammoths were woolly needs to be rethought, as well. What is the basis for this "fact" of wooliness? The evidence? No. To be sure, the mammoths, in common with all elephants, had hair. But there is no proof here of special adaptation. Those animals equipped to survive in the colder latitudes (musk oxen, polar bears and arctic foxes, for instance) have two advantages that the mammals of more temperate regions (mammoths included) lack: oil glands and special erector muscles. The oil glands and erector muscles work together to insulate the animal from the bitter cold. These features are essential for survival in the very cold regions. All arctic mammals seem to have these two attributes in varying degrees (Brown pp.110). (Our frozen friends were left out in the cold here.) Artists who depict long, coarse fur on mammoths do so, not because of the evidence before them, but because of the current preconceptions about these creatures.

3. One fact very often ignored by books and articles about woolly mammoths is the manner of their deaths. Many of them died instantly, some with unchewed food in their mouths. With undigested food in their stomachs. These clues, and the fact that their flesh, in some cases, was suddenly frozen so as to preserve the meat to be eaten by dogs millenia later speaks of a cataclysm of astonishing quickness and magnitude. These hapless creatures did not die of old age or of some local mishap, but of some worldwide event.

What did they die of? Only a global flood (and all of the accompanying phenomena - some of it related in Genesis 7 and 8 of the Bible) can account for the manner of the death of the mammoths.
It is certainly not fashionable to treat the Bible seriously as an aid to understanding what happened many ages ago. But it speaks forcefully, not of imagined "ice ages", but of a judgement of God called the "Flood". The story of that event is written in the Book. And the evidence of that greatest of cataclysms is all around us...if we can just learn to "unlearn" what we were taught and begin to see the world around us with new eyes.


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hits since August 30, 1998.

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