Posted on 03/26/2008 5:00:22 PM PDT by BGHater
NOVY URENGOI, Russia: As Viktor Seliverstov works in his makeshift studio in this hardscrabble Siberian town he is enveloped in a cloud of ivory dust. His electric carving tool whirrs over the milky surface of teeth and tusks, as he whittles them into key fobs, knife handles and scrimshaw figurines.
But these are not whale bones or walrus tusks he is working on. The ivory in this part of the world comes from the remains of extinct woolly mammoths, as they emerge from the tundra where they have been frozen for thousands of years. It is a traditional Russian business that had all but gone extinct itself during the Soviet period but is flourishing now.
"A lot of people find ivory and don't know what to do with it," Seliverstov said of the residents of this town, where more than a few closets and old barns have a tusk or two in them.
Seliverstov recently paid $500 for about seven kilograms, or 16 pounds, of mammoth ivory from a family that had stashed it in a barn for years before realizing its value.
The trade, bolstered recently by global warming, which has melted the tundra and exposed more frozen remains, is not only legal but actually endorsed by conservationists. They note somewhat grudgingly that while the survival of elephants may be in question, it is already too late for mammoths. Mammoth ivory from Siberia, they say, meets some of the Asian demand for illegal elephant ivory and its trade should be encouraged.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
I've been bragging for years over the 7,000 year old cypress wood I have. (I'll shut up now, lol)
Also, I saw the movie 10,000 BC last night...I guess it was reasonable, barely.
Cain’t argue with that.
OTOH, during the last century in Sudan there were tribes that hunted elephants on horseback. They used broadswords to hamstring the elephants. This sounds to me like perhaps the most extreme sport ever invented.
Not sure (W.B.) how to detect fake mammoth ivory. Blam, it’s neat of course, but it depends on how the instrument plays and sounds. :’)
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Thanks Wildbill and Blam. And thanks Blam for the one-sentence review of the movie 10,000 B.C. |
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· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
Earth In Upheaval. Immanuel Velikovsky.
> Stuart Spector Designs has just completed a bass, the NS-30K BC that will utilize what is believed to be the oldest wood ever used in the construction of a musical instrument...
It would be interesting to see what this artisan could do with Swamp Kauri, a beautiful wood that is extracted from New Zealand swamps. It is often 100,000 year or more old, and when dried can be worked exactly like modern Kauri.
Because it is full of a very fine resin — it is like amber — kauri wood does not rot.
Lots of 19th c billiard balls as well.
BS. These mammoth tusks have been "emerging" for the last 200 years, long before 'global warming' and the blamed "industrial era" ever became popular terms.
The fact is, these 'woolly mammoths, rhino's and other animals which were flash frozen about 4000 years ago once lived in a tropical paradise which is proven by the lush tropical vegetation that is emerging along with these frozen mammoths and found in their stomachs.
The simple facts one can conclude from these specimens is that not only is "global warming" a farce, the frozen north isn't supposed to be frozen, it's supposed to be lush and green. These weren't arctic animals which survived in the cold, (elephants cannot survive in an arctic climate) woolly mammoths are not not fur bearing, they are simply hairy elephants whose hair has no insulating value whatsoever. The amount of vegitation and fresh water needed for survival is simply not available in an arctic climate, and their trunks, like regular hairless elephants, are very sensitive to sub zero temps. exposure to those temps would kill them.
The discovery of these frozen in time mammoths, which is nothing new, many complete specimens were discovered in the early 19th century. They show that these animals were suddenly and rapidly buried inder snow and ice, so rapid that many are discovered with lush tropical vegitation still in they mouths. The ice age was very sudden.
What is happening now is this last ice age is still receeding, a perfectly natural and unstoppable event. That is, unless the same thing which triggered that ice age occurs again, in which case all of North America will once again be covered with a giant ice sheet.
What 'felled" the mammoths, Rhinos, fox, tigers etc. was rapid freezing and burial under hundreds of feet of ice and snow. As some samples show (complete bodies with still edible meat in some cases) they were crushed by this ice while they were grazing on tropical vegetation. They were killed by a catastrophic event. Since no human bodies have ever been found in the regions these animals are found, it's not very likely that there were any human settlements in the area at the time.
It's likely that human settlement came much later as the ice receded.
I agree.
It’s like saying that the rocks I keep turning up year after year after year in my garden are emerging due to global warming.
The start offering better $$$$ for the data. Socialist scientists make me sick.
I have mammoth or mastedon ivory.
want some?
It is good for jewelry or knife handles
Sorting mammoth tusks at an ivory auction yard in Siberia about 1920. Ivory mining has been continuous since Roman days and surely represents many thousands of buried mammoths.
MOSCOW The frozen carcass of a baby woolly mammoth has been unearthed in a remote northern Siberian region, a discovery scientists said Wednesday could help in climate change studies.
The 4-foot gray-and-brown carcass, believed to be between 40,000 and 10,000 years old, was discovered in May by a reindeer herder in the subarctic Yamal-Nenets region.
It has its trunk and eyes virtually intact and even some fur remaining, said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Zoological Institute.
Mammoth fossils.
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