I have spoke to many Persons, who averred to me for the greatest Truth, that beyond the Beresova, they saw such Beasts in Caves of the high Mountains there, which are monstrous according to their Description, being four or five Ells high, and about three Fathoms long, of a greyish Coat, a long Head, and a very broad Forehead, on both sides of which just above the Eyes, they say, stand the foresaid Horns, which it can move, and lay cross-ways over each other. In walking it is said to be able to stretch it self to a great Length, and also to contract it self into a short Compass. Its Legs are, as to Bigness, like those of a Bear. Notwithstanding these Accounts, one does not know how far to rely on them, for that Nation do not trouble themselves about exact Enquiries of that Nature . . .
The real avalanche of new information didn’t begin to arrive until two years after Müller’s little book was published. In September 1721, peace was finally concluded between Russia and Sweden with the signing of the Treaty of Nystad. The Swedish prisoners were free to go home, but this would take some time. Travel in Russia was a very primitive affair, and Peter left the former prisoners to their own devices, providing them with very little help beyond traveling papers. It took months for them to find out that the war was over and even longer to leave the country, since they were expected to pay their own way. Some took as long as two years to get home. The expedition that had been captured by the Djungars didn’t return until 1733.
At the December 14, 1722, meeting of the Royal Swedish Literary and Scientific Society held in Uppsala, Erik Benzelius, one of the society’s founders, exhibited a drawing that had been sent to him by Baron Leonard Kagg, an officer just returned from Tobolsk. The drawing shows an animal with a cow-like body, long horns twisted around each other, a lion’s tail, and large feet with long, curved claws. It is reclining in a manner similar to Scythian and other Inner Asian animal art. Kagg wrote that the drawing, labeled “Behemoth” and “Mehemot,” was of a mammoth. The drawing came with the following description written on the back:
The length of this animal, called Behemot, is 50 Russian ells [117 feet]; the height is not known, but a rib being 5 arshin long [or 11.7 feet], it may be estimated. The greatest diameter of the horn is half of an arshin [14 inches], the length slightly above four; the grinders like a square brick; the foreleg from the shoulder to the knee 1 ¾ arshin long [4 feet], and at the narrowest part a quarter in diameter. The hole in which the marrow lies is so big that a fist may be inserted, otherwise the legs bear no proportion to the body, being rather short. The heathens living by the River Obi state that they have seen them floating in this river as big as a “struus,” i.e. a vessel which the Russians use. This animal lives in the earth, and dies as soon as it comes into the air.
This was not the society’s first encounter with the mammoth. The minutes of the meeting indicate they were already familiar with “Capt. Müller’s account of the Ostiaks” and descriptions by several other returning officers. Kagg’s drawing should have added to their knowledge and answered their questions. Instead, it confused them and created new questions. It was generally accepted as a law of nature than no animal had both horns and claws. Based on reports that bones and ivory of the mammoth were usually found on riverbanks and near the Arctic Ocean, Olaus Rudbeck and Peter Martin thought that the animal might be a siödiur—a sea monster—and not a land animal. By now, they heard the animal called mehemot, mamant, mammut, and Behemoth. Which was correct? Could the name shed some light on the nature of the animal? Many theologians of the time were of the opinion that the biblical Behemoth was a hippo (they still are). Not knowing very much about hippos, some members wondered if the Siberian animal was a hippo. The meeting adjourned with a resolution to write to Baron Kagg for additional information.
Olaus Rudbeck was open to two possibilities about the mammoth. Looking at Kagg’s drawing and the description on the back, he could see a possible connection in the siödiur legend. But, looking at other reports that described elephant-like features in the mammoth, he saw another possibility, one he inherited from his father. The elder Olaus Rudbeck arrived on the scene just as Sweden’s power peaked. Many intellectuals felt the kingdom needed a suitably glorious past to match its glorious present. France could point to Charlemagne, England could point to Arthur, Italy could point to the Romans, and Scotland could point to the Picts who stopped the Roman Empire. Even the Greeks, languishing under Turkish domination, could claim to be the very fountain of Western civilization. Swedish history went back a few centuries and then fizzled out. No one was particularly impressed with pagan Vikings at the time. When Rudbeck arrived at Uppsala University, the primary effort to fill this lacuna was being made through linguistics. Like Gorp did with Dutch in the previous century, a circle around Georg Stiernheilm was trying to prove that Swedish was the original language of Eden and Noah and that all languages were derived from it. Also, as with Gorp, their proof consisted mainly of tortured etymological comparisons with Hebrew. Rudbeck happily accepted this theory and made a glorious addition to it. At some point in the 1690s, he took a good look at the landscape around Uppsala and was amazed to realize that it exactly matched Plato’s description of Atlantis. Later, a nephew would be equally amazed to discover Troy in southern Sweden. This was the intellectual atmosphere in which the younger Rudbeck was raised.
The younger Rudbeck’s linguistic theory was a tiny bit better grounded than Stiernheilm’s. In 1695, he made a trip into Finland and Lapland to study natural resources and became acquainted with the languages there. About the same time he considered the mammoth problem, he reversed the cause and effect relationship linking the northern languages and Hebrew. Rather than Hebrew being the descendant of Swedish, he proposed Hebrew as the source of Finnish and related languages. According to the canonical books of the Old Testament, after the division of Solomon’s kingdom, the Assyrian Empire attacked and annexed the northern kingdom, carrying off the ten tribes that had inhabited it. From there, they vanish from history. In the Apocryphal book 2 Esdras, the ten captive tribes were allowed to leave and migrated eastward through the land of Arzareth, beyond the bounds of the known world. Renaissance mapmakers placed Arzareth in Ukraine or South Russia and scattered the tribes around northern Eurasia. Rudbeck learned from Captain Tabbert that Finnish, Lapp, and Estonian were related to other languages that extended across northern Europe deep into Siberia. He determined that these must be the ten lost tribes. From these diverse theories, Rudbeck concluded that the lost tribes used elephants as beasts of burden on their migrations into the most extreme north. Once there, being suited to a warmer climate, their herds of elephants eventually died, leaving only their bones.
When the society returned after the New Year, they once again took up the question of the mammoth. Martin reported that he had carefully examined the works of zoology, but could not find an animal like the one in Kagg’s drawing though, in his opinion, it most resembled the Nile hippopotamus. The image of a hippo that he referred to is found in Hiob Ludolf’s Historica Aethiopica. It is indeed a fierce and dangerous looking animal. Benzelius announced that Lieutenant Colonel Peter Schönström, Charles XII’s secretary was bringing a mammoth tooth from Siberia and would bring it to the society when he arrived. Johan Malmström had a letter from the highly respected linguist Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeld copied into the minutes. He was of the opinion that “mammoth” could be derived from “Behemoth” using sound linguistic principles. When he was younger, Sparwenfeld spent four years in Moscow studying the Russian language. While there, he had acquired a piece of mammoth ivory. He reported that it was exactly the same as elephant ivory. This did not conflict with his Behemoth statement; Sparwenfeld was of the opinion that the word “Behemoth” referred to the elephant and not to the hippo.
In February, Benzelius journeyed to Stockholm to attend a session of parliament. While there he was able to meet with Baron Kagg in person and ask the society members questions. Unfortunately, most of the answers were “I don’t know.” Kagg explained that he wasn’t t
he one who made the drawing; it had been given to him by another officer in Tobolsk. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it had been Captain Tabbert. The society would have to wait a bit longer to settle the mystery of the drawing. When the war ended, Captain Tabbert was deep in Siberia and by the beginning of 1723 he had only made it as far as Moscow on his return voyage. As something of a consolation prize, Benzelius was able to acquire another mammoth tooth. This one came from Gustaf Adolf Clodt von Jürgenburg, who had earlier sent the society a collection of Scythian antiquities gathered during his time in Russia.
Captain Tabbert was Philipp Johann Tabbert von Strahlenberg from Swedish Pomerania, a province in Germany that had been conquered during the Thirty Years War. In 1695, he and two of his brothers joined the Swedish army. During the war, the Tabbert brothers rose quickly through the ranks, driven by their education and intelligence. Philipp went from fortification engineer, to quartermaster, to captain of a signal regiment. In 1707, citing valor in combat, Charles ennobled all three brothers with the name Strahlenberg. It is by this name that we’ll refer to him from here on. Phillipp Strahlenberg and his brother Peter were both at the Battle of Poltava. Peter was with the king’s escort and escaped while Phillipp was captured and eventually ended up in Tobolsk. Like Witsen before him, he became fascinated with the country and set about learning everything he could. Tobolsk was an ideal place to do this. As the capital and main city of Siberia, it was the center of trade and the destination for bureaucratic reports. Phillipp Strahlenberg interviewed everyone he could. When Swedish officers were sent out of the district on various tasks, he had them collect data for him. By the time the war was over, Strahlenberg had collated a comparative lexicon of thirty-two Asian languages. He collected rubbings of ancient petroglyphs, samples of Inner Asian alphabets, and drawings of native costumes. He drew a map of Siberia and Central Asia that was more accurate than anything published in a generation. He was one of the first Westerners to describe shamanic rituals and the first to describe the psychoactive properties of magic mushrooms (Amanita muscaria). He wrote a short encyclopedia of the economy and curiosities of Siberia.
During the summer of 1720, a gloomy German doctor named Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt arrived in Tobolsk on a mission from the tsar to conduct a survey of medicinal plants and resources in Siberia. His written instructions also directed him to gather “all the curiosities to be found in the region of Siberia, including objects of antiquity, pagan idols, [and] large mammoth bones.” Messerschmidt spent the winter in Tobolsk preparing for the expedition and gathering information from the locals. By the end of the winter, he had come to regard Strahlenberg as an indispensable intellectual companion and gained permission for him to accompany him on his travels as his assistant. During the year the two spent on the road, Strahlenberg and Messerschmidt actively investigated the mammoth question. They gathered mammoth bones in addition to the valuable ivory. No doubt, they discussed their ideas about the beast while they were on the road. It was Strahlenberg’s bad luck that the one time he could have seen mammoth remains in situ, he and Messerschmidt were traveling separately and only the doctor was able to examine the site. In May, 1722, they arrived in Krasnoyarsk where Strahlenberg learned that the war was over and he was free to leave Russia. Messerschmidt entrusted him with the notes and samples that they had collected so far, asking him to deliver them to the university in Moscow. He also gave him two mammoth’s teeth that he asked him to send to his friend and colleague Johann Philipp Breyne in Danzig. With that Strahlenberg turned west on the trip home that would take him more than a year to complete and Messerschmidt headed east and deeper into Siberia.
Strahlenberg arrived in Stockholm in June 1723 and was immediately invited to dinner with the society. Strahlenberg dazzled the members of the society with tales of “strange ice caves, about all sorts of unfamiliar fruits and trees, petrifications, reindeer, mountain goats, elk, and deer on the Yenisey, Tomski and several other rivers, and of Ostiaks on the Obi River, who said they ‘come from a country-called Suomi-roll, which could be none other than Finland.’” If he talked about mammoths, it was not recorded in the minutes of the society. Perhaps mammoths are the petrifactions mentioned. Perhaps he talked about them along with the other animals along the great rivers.
Though the society’s minutes failed to record anything, Strahlenberg’s thoughts on the mammoth are not lost to us. He was given housing with his regiment and, once settled in, began organizing all the materials he had collected for publication. Many looked forward to his book. When John Bell, a Scotsman on a mission to China for the tsar, passed through Tobolsk in 1719 he wrote in his diary “Captain Tabar, a Swedish officer was at this time writing a history of Siberia. He was a gentleman capable for such a performance, and if it shall ever be published, it cannot fail of giving great satisfaction to the curious.” But it would be seven years before the book finally saw the light of day as Strahlenberg met with repeated setbacks. His original plan had been to organize the book around his map, as had Magnus and Witsen. The first draft of the map that he drew in Tobolsk was stolen. The second draft was confiscated by Governor Gargarin. Strahlenberg was reunited with this map on his way out of Russia but had to sell it for traveling money. While organizing his book, several maps were printed in Europe that were based on his two earlier maps. Strahlenberg postponed his book while he gathered new information to make a better map.
Another part of the book was to be a translation of a Tatar chronicle that he and Peter Schönström had worked together on. In 1726, this translation was published anonymously in Leiden. Schönström assumed Strahlenberg had betrayed him and the two never spoke again. Strahlenberg returned to his collections to find other materials to make the book worthwhile. When Das Nord-und Ostlische Theil von Europa und Asia was published in 1730, it consisted of the map with some comments, his linguistic materials, a history of Russia and its leading families, and the little encyclopedia of trade. In the last part, we find a four-page entry for “Mamatowa Kost, which the Germans call Mamot’s Bones or Teeth.”
Strahlenberg uses the word “mammoth” to describe the whole animal, not just the ivory. He begins by repeating many of the points made by the others. The bones and teeth of mammoths are found in the spring when the floods wash them out of riverbanks. The teeth can be made into anything ivory can. He is sure that it is real ivory and not a product of the earth. With his interest in languages, it’s no surprise that he goes into the etymology of the name. Strahlenberg is sure the name derives from Behemoth by way of the Arabic form mehemot. Mehemot, he explains, is sometimes used as an adjective to describe something large. Arab merchants arriving northern Asia and seeing the gigantic remains of an unknown animal called the bones and teeth mehemot. The Tatars naturally adopted the word thinking it was a proper name. In turn, the Russians arrived in Siberia, learned the name from the Tatars and corrupted it into mammoth. Having satisfied himself as to the origin of the name, he finally addresses the real question: what kind of animal was the mammoth? “But this is not so readily answered,” he admits.
Strahlenberg rejects out of hand the idea that the bones could have come from an amphibious animal living in and near rivers. He admits that he, like so many others, once thought they were the bones of elephants washed into Siberia during the Deluge but, having learned more, no longer believes that. The size, proportions, and curve of the tusks are all wrong for elephants. In support of this he repeats a story told to him by an “ancient Painter, one Remessow.” Several years earlier, Remessow and a group of companions discovered a skeleton between the towns of Tara and Tomsk in southern Siberia. The skeleton was “thirty-six Russian Ells long [88 feet], lying on one Side; and the Distance between the Ribs on one Side, and the other, was so great, that he, standing upright, on the Concavity of one Rib, could not quite reach the inner Surface of the opposite Rib with a pretty long Battle-Axe which he held in his Hand.” For Strahlenberg, the only remaining possibility was that the mammoth was some kind of sea
creature similar to a narwhal. He gives as his reasons the facts that most mammoth bones are found on river banks and that they become more plentiful the closer you get to the Arctic Ocean. He repeats stories of whales swimming up rivers during the flood and getting stranded. To account for mammoth bones found farther from the sea he says that perhaps before the Deluge the Arctic Ocean extended further inland. He offers this conclusion as the only possible solution, but it’s not one he’s happy with. He mentions that there are narwhal tusks in the Danish Kunstkammer and suggests that someone compare them to a mammoth tusk. He finishes by saying, “Should any one else hereafter, account better for these Appearances, I shall willingly retract my Opinion.”
Strahlenberg did not include an illustration of the mammoth in his book, but it’s clear that the whale-like creature he had in mind is nothing like the mammoth we know and nothing like Kagg’s drawing, either. In his book, he makes no mention of legs, claws, or fangs. In the nine years between when he left Kagg in Tobolsk and when he published, Strahlenberg had plenty of time to revise his opinions. He mentions having read Müller’s account and that of Lorenz Lange, the secretary on Bell’s mission to China. However, I think he was not the artist. Kagg’s drawing and the description accompanying it do not match. The drawing is of an animal about twice as long as it is tall with claws and fangs and horns fantastically twined around each other. The horns are about half the length of the body. The description says the animal is ten times as long as it is tall. It does not mention claws or fangs, and the horns are slightly less than its height. The entwined nature of the horns isn’t mentioned. The drawing bears some resemblance to Müller’s description in proportion, and the twisted horns might be an attempt represent the movable horns, which he says can “lay cross-ways over each other.”
Discovering the Mammoth Page 12
