Holocene Mastodon extinctions

[another specialist]

noisi said:

Hi !

Maybe You all know this link, its about the Cuvierionus - Mastodon:

www.editorialbitacora.com/bitacora/mesoamerica/elefantes.htm

[another specialist]

carlos said:

Extraordinary find Noisi.

Archeoogical evidence of the existence of Mastodon elephants not only in the Holocene but even in historical (Maya) time in Mesoamerica!!!

Worth starting a new thread on that topic.

This is the english version of the link posted by you:

www.editorialbitacora.com/bitacora/mesoamerica/elephants.htm

[another specialist]

I copied and pasted entrys here and started a new thread for you Noisi.

[Deleted]

... for me

Sorry, I have not enough time at the moment.

[another specialist]

My pleasure mate - its for everyone to add to - just thought it was worth having a separate thread.

[Carlos]

A very relevant bit from the absolutely interesting site found by Noisi:

In a series of monuments and inscriptions not only found in different archaeological sites of Mesoamerica that give testimony, exist one had exact knowledge from the existence of similar animals to the elephant, but rather it played an important role in the cultures simbology like the Mayan ones or even some older ones still, and not only, as it assigns the officially accepted history, a simple prey of the earliest stages in the Americas colonization on the part of paleoindians.

In the picture of the left that shows the enigmatic and polemic B Stela of Copán, where the arrow indicates one of the two figures that represent "elephants " clearly and perfectly carved on the rock.

At right show a drawing of the aspect that presented at little time of being "discovered", where the details of the "elephant" can be appreciated together with the proportions regarding human and implicitly its use (properly tamed?) as load beast. Notice you the presence in other side a semidestroyed elephantine form of the symmetrical figure.

[another specialist]

Recent Survival Of The Elephant In The Americas

Mayan "elephant motif".
Elephants were supposed to have disappeared from the America about 10,000 years ago as the Ice Ages waned. This date is another of those "consensus" scientific facts that no one dares challenge if he or she wishes to get published or win research grants. Although this subject remains "closed off" in normal scientific intercourse, there remain tantalizing hints that elephants roamed the Americas until very recently - perhaps even a few hundred years ago!

The following snippets are culled from two articles written by G. Carter, Texas A&M, now emeritus, but always heretical:


Numerous folk memories of the elephamt were retained by American Indians.

A mastadon was killed, cooked, and eaten by humans in Ecuador circa 1500 BC.

Indians told Thomas Jefferson that elephants could still be seen in the region of the Great Lakes.

In Florida, a cache of extinct animals, including elephants, was carbon-dated at 2000 BP.

Elephant heads are prominent in art and sculpture from Mexico, Central American, and northern South America.
(Carter, George F.; "A Note on the Elephant in America," and "The Mammoth in American Epigraphy," Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 18:90 and 18:213, 1989.)



www.science-frontiers.com/sf068/sf068b07.htm

[another specialist]

Donald A. Mackenzie and other scholars, however, are of definite opinion that the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians were familiar with Indian mythology and cite in support close parallels in details. For instance, the history of the Mayan elephant symbol cannot be traced in the local tradition, whereas it was a prominent religious symbol in India. The African elephant has larger ears. It is the profile of the Indian elephant, its tusk and lower lip, the form of its ear, as well as its turbaned rider with his ankus, which is found in Meso-American models. Whilst the African elephant was of little religious significance, it had been tamed in India and associated with religious practices since the early days.

www.veda.harekrsna.cz/connections/Americas.php

[kk1]

That's cool I thinik I once read about there being cave drawings in northern SA of mastadons. I always thought it odd that mastadons couldn't have survived the ice age in tropical America since they did in tropical Asia and Africa. My theory is that as in temperate areas a lack of a disease that kept human populations in check, like malaria allowed for a much greater human population and thus more hunting of megafauna. Just as the modern control of malaria in the past 100 years has allowed for population explosions in tropical Africa and Asia and the endangerment of most of those regions megafauna which up unitl 100 years ago enjoyed healthy populations.

[another specialist]

Very interesting kk1 and so true

[Deleted]

Hi !

A suggestion:

May it be that these mastodons have been held in captivity - like the elephants in Asia ? And may it be that these mastodons did 'help' to build all these giant temples.

On the picture above You see a man that seem to stroke the mastodon's head - maybe some kind of mastodon-mahoot ?

[Carlos]

Yes, that's exactly what the image in that Copan stela strongly suggest!

The Maya city of Copan (in today's Honduras) was founded around year 1500 BC and was definitively abandoned the year 900, six hundred years before the modern discovery of America by Europeans.

I don't know the exact datation of that particular stela but it talks about a very recent presence of mastodon elephants in Mesoamerica.

[another specialist]

Yes i agree with the possibility of domesticated/ kept in captivity mastodons just like in Asia and may well of help build all this pyramid like temples.

Has any one found any other images of carvings depicting elephants in south america?

[Carlos]

Another indication of recent elphants somwhere in America. It is found in this site

www.jrmooneyham.com/pamer2ref.html

(I wonder if that Mammoth was in fact a Mastodon, which seems more likely to me)

Approximately 1,500 BC: a Chinese expedition seems to record a trip to North America (and an encounter with a mammoth)
-- World History, page 552, The 1996 World Almanac and Book of Facts, World Alamanac Books
The Chinese document Shun- Hai Ching seems to describe a violent encounter with a mammoth

-- A MAMMOTH TALE! from Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies ["http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/"] #62, MAR-APR 1989 by William R. Corliss, citing C.F. Eckhardt; "Prehistoric Explorers of the West?" National Tombstone Epitaph, p.17, October 1988. Cr. H.J. Hanson

[Carlos]

From the same site:

Approximately 1 AD: Elephants may only now be going extinct in Florida and Central and South America
Clues to late survival of elephants and their relatives in the Americas continue to appear, such as in the oral histories and art and sculpture of native americans, reports to a Revolution-era US president, and younger than expected fossil remains in some areas.
-- RECENT SURVIVAL OF THE ELEPHANT IN THE AMERICAS From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies ["http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/"] #68, MAR-APR 1990 by William R. Corliss, citing George F Carter; "A Note on the Elephant in America," and "The Mammoth in American Epigraphy," Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 18:90 and 18:213, 1989

[Carlos]

From the list of Epigraphic Writings compiled by Barry Fell between 1974 - 1993 , as shown in the site:

www.equinox-project.com/indexfell.htm

An elephant petroglyph in Glen Canyon, Colorado. ESOP 8 (2) 1980: 161.

(a collection of itriguing references, some of which I'd like to lay my hands on)

[sordes]

I´ve also a picture of a very elephant-like statue which was made my the Maya,- perhaps also mastodonts?

[another specialist]

BIPEDIA 16.6
SOME IDEAS ON THE POSSIBLE OCCURRENCE OF TRUE ELEPHANTS IN THE AMERICAS UNTIL AS LATE AS THE AGE OF DISCOVERY
BY HORST FRIEDRICH
Première publication : mars 1998, mise en ligne : lundi 30 juin 2003


There have been speculations that, apart from mammoths and mastodons, true elephants may have existed in the Americas, e.g. contemporaneous with the Maya civilization, and even perhaps as late as the European "Age of Discovery" ( which, for the Europeans, indeed it was ).

The famous "Ingram Report" ( 1 ) is often mentioned in this respect. Ingram had been a British sailor, who in 1568 was set ashore on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and from there travelled, by foot, towards the Nortwest, until he reached the Atlantic coast, where he was taken on board of a French ship. He reported having seen, in the country he traversed, "elephants", as well as another "monstrous beast" which may, or not, refer to a mastodon.

Similar stories were, it is alleged, reported by certain Indian chiefs to the "Great White Father", when they visited the US president in Washington. This would give a date, for these elephant stories, of shortly before or after 1800 AD. According to the famous cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, mammoths and/or mastodons survived in North America at least until the 18th century, particularly in Alaska ( 2 ).

Of course there is the very real possibility that we have, in said stories, only a collection of confused or mistaken "identifications", that Ingram, or the Indian chiefs, failed to recognize the difference between elephants, mammoths and mastodons.

Be that as it may, the question could rightly be asked : if true elephants really were present in the Americas, if the Mayan sculptors really wanted to depict elephants ( and not mammoths or mastodons ), and if Ingram and the Indian chiefs really meant elephants, would that, in itself, be proof that said American ( true ) elephants were indigenous to the Americas ? Couldn’t they rather have been imported ?

This may sound like a rather wild idea to some. But the idea is not so "wild" as it may seem, after all. Variants of the so-called "elephant tablet", on which ( it seems ) a true elephant is depicted, have been found in Peru as well as in the enigmatic "Burrows Cave" in North America, and the inscription thereon has been deciphered by Kurt Schildmann, a German linguist, as a version of the Sanskrit script and language of ancient India ( 3 ).

We must not forget that the ancient civilizations of India, and South East Asia generally, were in possession of large ocean-going fleets with enormous vessels, easily capable to transport ( supposedly young ) elephants to distant countries, The very old and very intimate interconnections between South East Asia and the Americas have by now been proved ad nauseam. So, there is nothing intrinsically absurd in the idea of ships from southern India, Kambodja or Java bringing, presumably as presents, young elephants to rulers of distant countries like Peru or Mexico. From where they might have found their way, also as presents, to the former advanced civilization ( "mound builders" ) on the territory of what is today the United States of America ( 4 ).

According to the late ( former Harvard professor for marine biology ) Barry Fell, "knowledge of elephants was brought to the New World by voyagers from both east and west ( 5 ). I would propose that, at least with respect to the west, i.e. the Pacific, it was not only the knowledge but the real animals as well. That African vessels arrived at the American coasts ( which doubtless they did on more than one occasion ) with African ( even young ) elephants on board, I would rather been inclined to doubt for several reasons, Above all the African, Black civilizations didn’t possess, it seems, ships of such proportions as did the South East Asian civilizations.




(1) David INGRAM : Land Travels 1568-1569 from the Rio Minas in the Gulf of Mexico to Cape Breton in Acadia. Reprint El Paso 1947.
(2) Bernard HEUVELMANS : Annotated Checklist of Cryptozoology. Cryptozoology, 5 : 1-26, Tucson 1986.
(3) Kurt SCHILDMANN : Zwei Weltsensationen. Efodon Synesis, 23, 1997.
(4) Roger G. KENNEDY : Die vergessenen Vorfahren. Die Wieder entdeckung der indianischen Hochkulturen Nordamerikas. Munic 1996.
(5) Barry FELL : America B.C. New York 1976 (p. 184).

cerbi.ldi5.com/article.php3?id_article=75

[another specialist]

sordes said:

I´ve also a picture of a very elephant-like statue which was made my the Maya,- perhaps also mastodonts?

Sordes could you please upload it for us all to see.

if you are unable you can always send it to me and i'll upload it for you.

[another specialist]

also same info but in pdf file form here

cerbi.ldi5.com/IMG/_article_PDF/article_75.pdf