Category: Mastodons

Follow-Up on a "Holocene Mastodon" from Devil's Den, Florida

2/6/2016

I'm still catching up on a backlog of blog-related emails and comments that accumulated during those heady weeks of #Swordgate. I've never been great at promptly returning emails, and going to the mattresses for Swordgate made the problem worse. I apologize if I haven't gotten back to you yet. I hope to answer everything eventually.

Almost a year ago, I wrote this post about some purportedly late radiocarbon dates for mastodons and mammoths that are being used as "evidence" for the accuracy of the Book of Mormon (BOM). The BOM (Ether:16-19) describes elephants in the New World at what would have been about 2500 BC. The current scientific consensus, however, is that mastodons and mammoths did not survive in the Eastern Woodlands past about 9500 BC. While Mormon scholars continue to cling to a small suite of Holocene radiocarbon dates to argue for much later survivals, it's pretty clear that those anomalously young dates are probably attributable to either contamination, context/association problems, or both. I provided a table of five radiocarbon dates that seem to be embraced by Mormons not because they are good science, but because they remain the "best fit" to the Jaredite time period. No-one else takes those dates seriously. They're probably mistakes.

Radiocarbon dates put forward as evidence of late survival of mammoths and mastodons in eastern North America.

When I wrote the original post, I was unable to track down the primary sources for the Devil's Den mastodon. Dr. Eric Butler, a biologist at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, kindly found a copy of Martin and Webb's (1974) report and took a look at it. He provided a synopsis in a recent email. I'll summarize two main points:

Mastodon Remains. In a long list of fauna from Devil's Den, there is a single entry for Proboscideans: "2 vertebrae, a last cervical vertebrae and an anterior thoracic" from juvenile mastodons.

Dating and Associations. The age estimate of 7000-8000 BP pertains to an entire fossil assemblage, not just the mastodon remains. While it is not exactly clear how this age estimate was produced (this description sources an unpublished research paper by H. K. Brooks that purportedly references radiocarbon dates, but no specifics are provided), it seems that the young age is not generally accepted by paleontologists in Florida and elsewhere. An age of 7000-8000 BP for the entire Devil's Den assemblage would mean that horses (Equus), saber-toothed cats (Smilodon), giant ground sloths (Megalonyx), Florida spectacled bears (Tremarctos floridanus), and dire wolves (Canis dirus) were running around in Florida at about 6700-5700 BC. There is no other evidence, at archaeological sites or elsewhere, for those species surviving into the Middle Archaic period in Florida or anywhere else.

The long and short of it is that it appears there's good reason to view the late dates of Devil's Den fossil assemblage with significant skepticism. If it's good evidence for a late survival of mastodon, it's good evidence for a late survival of an entire "Pleistocene" fauna that has no precedent elsewhere. A simpler explanation is that the age estimate for the assemblage is not accurate. As Butler suggested in his email to me, this assemblage would seem to be a prime candidate for re-dating using modern AMS methods. I wrote the following in my original post:

"Continuing to uncritically employ a handful of young radiocarbon dates from the early decades of radiocarbon dating as support for the claim of elephants at 2500 BC is intellectually dishonest. Last time I checked, AMS dates were about $600 each (I also seem to recall that the price has recently dropped). If Mormons want to continue to use radiocarbon dating to evaluate the historical accuracy of the Book of Ether, I suggest that they have those “late surviving” mastodons re-dated. If they agree to pay for it, I would be happy to help attempt to locate the remains wherever they are curated and try to secure permission to have samples dated. It would be a nice way to resolve the ambiguity. We can publish the results. If there really were mastodons tromping around in the woodlands of Archaic eastern North America, I would like to know about it and so would a lot of other people. It's a win-win."

That offer still stands. If you're serious about resolving the issue of late-surviving Proboscideans, let's make it happen and re-date this material using modern methods and standards.

One final note to show you how these things fit together: Dr. John Sorenson, an advocate of late mammoth/mastodon survivals and one of the primary defenders of the historicity of the BOM, is a prominent advocate for pre-Columbian transoceanic contact in the Ancient Artifact Preservation Society, the hyperdiffusionist organization backing the "100 percent confirmed Roman sword from Nova Scotia" that turned out to be a piece of modern brass tourist kitsch. Maybe we should do a blood residue analysis on the sword and see if it was used to kill mastodons. Finally . . . it all makes sense!

Martin, R. A., and S. D. Webb. 1974. Late Pleistocene Mammals from the Devil's Den Fauna, Levy County. In Webb, S.D. (editor): Pleistocene Mammals of Florida, pp. 114-145. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.

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Questions about the Michigan Mammoth

10/8/2015

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The skull of a mammoth is hoisted from a muddy field near Chelsea, Michigan.

The story of a partial mammoth skeleton excavated from a field near Chelsea, Michigan last week made national and international news, showing up on media sites like Fox News, The Huffington Post, the BBC, the Washington Post, and CNN. Articles about the mammoth were posted all over the various archaeology-related groups I follow on Facebook, and I'm pretty sure #mammoth was trending for a while on Twitter.

There's no doubt the unearthing of the mammoth captured the public's attention -- the extent of the press coverage demonstrates that pretty clearly. The images of the enormous, tusked skull being hoisted out of the ground are hard to beat for drama. But I know from conversations and comments that I saw online that many archaeologists have questions about the excavation that go beyond the "gee whiz" factor that the press and the nonprofessional public love. I'm probably going to get some flack for writing this post, but I'm going to write it anyway and give voice to some of those questions.

Full disclosure: I met Dr. Dan Fisher when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, and I know several of the archaeologists who were involved with excavating the mammoth.

Fisher has spent decades building a case that Ice Age humans in the Great Lakes were hunting mastodons and mammoths, butchering their remains, and storing pieces of the animals underwater to retrieve later. His argument is based on a pattern of partial skeletons (some with cutmarks) found in wet settings with artifacts suggesting the carcass locations were marked. He has done experiments to show that meat can be kept edible for long periods of time by submerging it in cold water. Formal stone tools (such as scrapers and projectile points) are not found at these "sub-aqueous caching" sites, and given the nature of what's being proposed there really isn't any reason to expect that they would be. I haven't read all of his papers carefully, but my general impression is that the case is a good one. And it's interesting. Here is a (somewhat dated) summary article from Mammoth Trumpet that lays out the main points.

Fisher thinks that the Chelsea mammoth unearthed in Michigan last week, like many other sets of remains he has considered, was probably butchered and stored underwater. The following paragraphs are from the University of Michigan press release:

"The team's working hypothesis is that ancient humans placed the mammoth remains in a pond for storage. Caching mammoth meat in ponds for later use is a strategy that Fisher said he has encountered at other sites in the region.
   Evidence supporting that idea includes three basketball-sized boulders recovered next to the mammoth remains. The boulders may have been used to anchor the carcass in a pond.
   The researchers also recovered a small stone flake that may have been used as a cutting tool next to one of the tusks. And the neck vertebrae were not scattered randomly, as is normally the case following a natural death, but were arrayed in their correct anatomical sequence, as if someone had "chopped a big chunk out of the body and placed it in the pond for storage," Fisher said."

So the key pieces of evidence are: big rocks next to the remains; stone flake; articulated neck vertebrae. Check, check, and check. In my opinion, that all seems to make sense. Even better if the tell-tale cutmarks are present where Fisher expects to find them.

It's not the working hypothesis I'm worried about, however, but whether the information produced by the excavation in Chelsea is going to be sufficient to really evaluate that hypothesis. I think what bothered many archaeologists about the Chelsea mammoth excavation is what we saw (or didn't see) in the stills and videos from the single day of excavation.

Yes, they excavated an entire mammoth from 8-10' underground in a single day.

A day.

I once spent at least two days excavating the burial of small dog.

The news articles explain that the Chelsea mammoth was excavated in a single day because that's all the time that was available (the following is from the Washington Post):

"After establishing that [the landowner and farmer] Bristle could only spare one day for the mammoth extraction, Fisher and his team went into overdrive. On Thursday they were deep in the muck, doing their best to carefully document and extract the bones at top speed.
   “We don’t just want to pull the bones and tug everything out of the dirt,” Fisher explained. “ We want to get the context for how everything was placed at the site.”
   There are a few things that make this particular mammoth exciting: It’s a very complete skeleton (although it is missing its hind limbs, feet and some other assorted parts), compared with most of the mammoths found in Michigan and surrounding areas. And because it has been carefully extracted by paleontologists, the bone has the potential to be studied much more thoroughly than those that are haphazardly pulled out of the ground.
"We'll have the potential to say way more about this specimen,” because of the careful excavation, Fisher said."

I wasn't there and I don't know the whole story, but I can tell you that in archaeology the combination of "carefully document" and "top speed" is a tough one to pull off. As in many technical pursuits, you can't typically find a strategy that optimizes all three corners of the "good, fast, cheap" triangle.

Non-archaeologists may be impressed (or dismayed) by how much time we can spend picking away at things in the field, drawing maps, filling out logs, arguing over sediments, writing notes, taking photographs, etc. But the fact is that we're not just wasting time: details matter when you're trying to understand what you're taking apart. The working hypothesis is that the Chelsea mammoth site was the product of human behavior, so, yes, context and associations matter a great deal when you're trying to understand how the site was created. Archaeological work, ideally, is careful and thorough enough to let you more-or-less put the site back together in a virtual fashion based on the information you collect as you take it apart. Excavation is destruction, and you don't get a do-over.

It's hard for me to put aside my feelings about the importance of control and details and get super excited about raising the skull out of the ground when I look at the images from the Chelsea mammoth excavation. In the video clips I saw, it looked like an incredibly sloppy, irregular operation. I know that I saw only what TV cameras and news photographers chose to show me, but I saw no evidence of how spatial control was being maintained (no grid? no total station for electronic mapping?), and no hint of the existence of a level of care that I would normally associate with professional archaeology. Was there a screen? How about a profile wall? I really don't know. I've seen WWF mud wrestling matches that looked more controlled than what I saw in some of the images from that excavation.

If you think I'm being too picky, I invite you to compare and contrast what you see in the images from the Chelsea mammoth excavation with this mammoth excavation in Kansas, or this one in Mexico,or the multiple seasons of work that took place on the Schaefer mammoth site in Wisconsin, or this short 2008 paper about the excavation of mastodons from wet sites in New York. Those examples are far more typical of what a professional excavation of a human-associated mammoth site generally looks like. These things are generally not unearthed during the course of single day for a reason: you lose information. A story about a mastodon being excavated by amateurs and volunteers in Virginia describes what might be considered a "normal" procedure:

"Scans produced by ground-penetrating radar have shown that bone-size objects are waiting about five feet down. Four feet of soil will be dug out using heavy equipment, then the last foot will be carefully removed by hand."

Why the rush to remove the Chelsea mammoth in just a single day? I don't really know the answer to that. The news stories report that the farmer "could only spare one day for the mammoth extraction," but they don't say what would have happened if the mammoth had not been removed during that single day. Was this some kind of "now or never" situation that justified quickly yanking the bones out of the field? Was the mammoth going to be destroyed if it was left in place? Was it going to turn into a pumpkin if it wasn't out of the ground by Thursday at midnight?

Maybe leaving the mammoth in the ground until it could be carefully excavated in the spring (or a year or two down the road) really wasn't an option. Maybe whatever plan there was for drainage was actually going to totally destroy the site and there was no way to simply avoid the mammoth until arrangements could be made to do what has been done in the past for similar finds: use probes or geophysics to delimit the bone scatter, use heavy equipment to strip off the overburden, and then treat the remains as an archaeological site using standard excavation methods. Maybe the single day, salvage-style excavation really was the best option. I honestly don't know.

What I do know, however, is that I'll be surprised if the manner in which the Chelsea mammoth was excavated has no adverse impacts on how the analysis and interpretation of the remains are regarded by archaeologists in the Midwest and elsewhere. The nature of Clovis and pre-Clovis occupations in the Great Lakes is still controversial, and I'm concerned that the potential of the Chelsea mammoth to contribute important information to the debate has been lessened by the speed and style of the excavation. It's hard to look at those pictures of the excavation, know that it was all done in one day, and not wonder what would have been different if more time and care had been taken.

I know from social media that I'm not the only one asking the "why" and "what if" questions about the Chelsea mammoth excavation, but I am the one writing them down and I'll be the one to take the heat for them. I probably won't make any new friends with this post. I may even get told that I'm out of line. That's fine. Calling me names won't make the questions go away, and I've been called names plenty of times. I think the discovery is exciting, and I hope my "outsider" impressions of the excavation are incorrect. I look forward to reading the published results.

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Antediluvian Air Pressure: An 1831 Letter Explaining Mastodons and Giants

3/6/2015

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When I was doing some background reading for my post on mastodons and Mormons, I came across a letter by Felix Pascalis published in The Evening Post (August 19, 1831). Pascalis (1762-1833), a physician born and trained in France, moved to the United States in the 1790s. He is most well-known for his work on yellow fever.

The letter, entitled “The Antideluvian Bones at the American Museum,” is an example of a scientifically-trained individual trying to accommodate the accumulating fossil evidence from North America within a biblical framework. After describing some of the fossil creatures (which he assures the reader are real and related to modern animals), he considers how such large creatures might have existed:

    “We confess that the existence of those gigantic and antideluvian bones encounter in our minds no objection nor difficulty, but that of explaining by what law of nature a land animal could have existed and grown to the size of sixty feet in length and twenty five feet in heighth.
    Those animals which are under our observation, and man himself, are subject to a law that generally, and with few exceptions, detain within certain limits their size and growth; and that is unquestionably the atmospheric pressure externally, and that which underbalances it in the organs of respiration.
    This is the power which regulates circulation, and without it the transport of the matter necessary to compose and extend the body and limbs to a certain proportion. Hence we know that cetaceous animals of an extraordinary size can exist in abundance under the double pressure of the ocean and the atmosphere.
     If the size, therefore, of the human race, and of that brute creation, originates from the pressure of about 2220 lbs. weight upon each square foot surface, the size of the Mastodon, or of any other mammoth animal, must have required an atmosphere three times heavier than it is at present. By what cause this change has taken place in the elementary orbit which surrounds our planet, it is beyond our power and philosophy to explain, unless we say that at the antideluvian period, and when the human race were giants, the waters above had not yet been separated and completely thrown down on the surface of the earth. But this theory would not comport with the prosperous condition of the human race before the deluge, when they were promised the long life of 120 years, and to be blessed with all the fruits of the earth, when for their corruptions at last they deserved to be exterminated by the flood.—(Gen. 4, 5, 6.
    We would rather admit, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the presence of a planet which has since been split by a comet into four parts, viz: Pallas, Juno, Vesta and Ceres, which have been scattered about, and so much diminished the weight of the atmosphere, that no longer giants or mastedons or mammoths are to be seen. FELIX PASCALIS.”

I would be very surprised if Pascalis was the first to propose that the pre-Flood earth had a higher atmospheric pressure. The idea is certainly still alive today: differences in the atmosphere of the pre-Flood earth (higher oxygen content, higher barometric pressure, etc.) are commonly hypothesized by Young Earth Creationists to explain the larger size of pre-Flood plants, animals, and humans, as well as the longer lifespans of pre-Flood humans discussed in Genesis.

Pascalis’ letter is interesting because it was an attempt to construct a systemic, natural explanation for both why both pre-Flood animals (of which fossil evidence was accumulating) and humans could have been be bigger (i.e., giants). I don’t understand how the asteroids (interpreted as fragments of a planet) would have diminished earth’s atmosphere or how that fits in with the Flood – I’m sure there’s more to that story. The four asteroids Pascalis mentions were first discovered in the early 1800s. The presence of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was not identified until later.

Pascalis' letter is a change from just a few decades earlier. Prior to the 1800s, the kind of direct evidence that Pascalis considered (fossil bones) was routinely interpreted as the remains of giant humans (see this post about Cotton Mather). In the absence of a concept of extinction, such an interpretation was logical: what else could the bones be but those of giants, since no other unknown creatures are mentioned in the Bible? Ironically, once mastodon bones were recognized for what they were, the actual physical remains that seemed to be proof of the existence of giant humans were no longer directly relevant. But wait, yes they were -- as shown by Pascalis’ letter, the impressive size of the mastodon bones could be used to build an argument for why pre-Flood humans (for which there then was no direct evidence) could, like the mastodon, also be large.

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The Elephants of Ether: Mormons and the Mastodon Problem

2/27/2015

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One of the interesting things about doing “research by blog” is that you can get almost instant, unanticipated contributions of information from anyone who reads what you’ve posted. As a result of this post exploring two examples of the idea that “Mound Builders” and mastodons co-existed, I became aware of the interest that Mormons have taken in mastodons. As soon as I wrote the post, Jason Colavito and Brad Lepper each made me aware of the 1839 story Behemoth: A Legend of the Mound Builders by Cornelius Matthews. Behemoth told the tale of the quest of a pre-Native American race (the "Mound-Builders") to slay a giant mastodon. From there I was led to mentions of elephants in the Book of Mormon (BOM) through this site.

The BOM mentions elephants in the following passages from Ether (9:16-19), referring to the experience of the Jaredites entering the New World around 2500 BC:

“And the Lord began again to take the curse from off the land, and the house of Emer did prosper exceedingly under the reign of Emer; and in the space of sixty and two years they had become exceedingly strong, insomuch that they became exceedingly rich—Having all manner of fruit, and of grain, and of silks, and of fine linen, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things; And also all manner of cattle, of oxen, and cows, and of sheep, and of swine, and of goats, and also many other kinds of animals which were useful for the food of man. And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms.”

The clear statement about the existence of elephants in the New World at 2500 BC is one of many details in the BOM that critics have questioned and Mormons have defended. As data and scholarly opinions have changed, the Mormon argument has also changed. In the mid 1800s, the idea that mastodons had co-existed with the “Mound Builders” in eastern North America was not uncommon. Currently, however, you would be hard-pressed to find a single non-Mormon scholar who thinks that mastodons survived until anywhere near 2500 BC (a more reasonable estimate would be about 9500 BC). As an archaeologist who works in the Eastern Woodlands, I can tell you that I am not aware of any serious, recent scholarly work that tries to understand the role of mastodons in middle or late Holocene (i.e., post-8000 BC) Native American cultures. Why? Because there is no good evidence that they existed that late into prehistory.

That change in scientific opinion about the timing of mastodon extinction was the result of accumulated paleontological and archaeological knowledge and the development of radiometric dating techniques that allow chronology to be understood in absolute terms (i.e., in terms of real calendar dates). The current Mormon argument for elephants at 2500 BC hinges on just a handful of anomalously late mastodon radiocarbon dates that were obtained in the early decades of radiocarbon dating, before the effects of sample contamination were understood and before procedures were developed to mitigate those effects. By continuing to rely on those dates, Mormon apologists and scholars are clinging to 60-year-old "facts" that they must know are probably in error.

I will discuss the radiocarbon dates further below. But first let’s put the story of mastodons, Mormons, and “Mound Builders” in America in some historical context. Why? Because it’s interesting!

Illustration of the Peale mastodon.

The first and perhaps the most famous early encounter between science, religion, and mastodons in America was Cotton Mather’s (early 1700s) interpretation of mastodon bones unearthed in New York as the remains of an Antediluvian giant. African slaves in South Carolina, familiar with the anatomy of elephants, correctly identified mammoth teeth unearthed in 1725 as those of an elephant rather than a human giant (see this post by Adrienne Mayor). As more and more fossils were discovered, naturalists refined their understanding of mastodons, mammoths, and their relationships to living elephants. The American mastodon (Mammut americanum) was formally named and described as a taxon in the 1790s. The Peale mastodon, a relatively complete skeleton from New York, was excavated, illustrated, and displayed in 1801. As encapsulated in this article, the large mastodons, with all their implications of power and size, became a part of the emerging identity of the young United States.

The idea that species could go extinct was still relatively new in the late 1700s. (The absence of the idea of extinction was an important component of why the bones of extinct animals had so often been interpreted as the remains of ancient giants - what else could they be?). The idea of extinction was apparently not one that Thomas Jefferson subscribed to. Consequently, he was convinced that mammoths and mastodons should still be alive in the western part of the continent. In Notes of the State of Virginia (1785:55), Jefferson wrote:

“The bones of the mammoth, which have been found in America, are as large as those found in the old world. It may be asked, why I insert the mammoth, as if it still existed? I ask in return why I should omit it, as if it did not exist? Such is the economy of Nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken. To add to this, the traditionary testimony of the Indians, that this animal still exists in the Northern and Western parts of America, would be adding the light of a taper to that of the meridian sun. Those parts still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us, or by others for us. He may as well exist there now, as he did formerly, where we find his bones.”

Notice also Jefferson's plea for recognition of the vigor and size of the North American fauna, of which the mammoth and mastodon were a part. He fully expected that living examples could be found and add to the argument for the grandeur of a young nation. As President of the United States, Jefferson instructed Lewis and Clark to look for mastodons and mammoths during their Corps of Discovery Expedition (1804-1806). After they found none, he ordered excavations at the productive fossil site of Big Bone Lick in Kentucky in 1807 (see A Discourse on the Character and Services of Thomas Jefferson by Samuel Latham Mitchill, 1826, pages 29-30), retrieving mastodon fossils to send to Europe.

More than just a scientific curiosity, mastodons and mammoths were participants in American culture in the early 1800s. The earliest use of the term “mastodon” that I located in a newspaper dates to 1810. Several mastodons were unearthed in New York in the 1810s and 1820s, and those finds were reported in newspapers. The data below show a rapid increase in the appearance of "mastodon" in books (many of them scientific/technical) in the 1820s. Newspapers from this time period also contain numerous advertisements for living elephants exhibited by traveling circuses. My point is that knowledge of both living elephants and their extinct relatives was being widely disseminated when the BOM was published in 1830. Extinct elephants were becoming part of an emerging American identity.

Google Ngram results for "mastodon."

Illustration of the Wisconsin "Elephant Mound" from MacLean's "Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man" (1880).

As the possibility that the animals could still be alive somewhere on the continent evaporated with continued Euroamerican exploration of the American west and more widespread acceptance of the idea of extinction, the debate in the mid-1800s shifted to whether humans and extinct elephants had ever co-existed. Were mastodons and mammoths Antediluvian beasts that had perished in the Flood, or did prehistoric peoples in North America interact with them? As described by John Patterson MacLean in his book Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man (1880, pages 74-82), evidence that humans and mastodons had overlapped in time included mastodon bones associated with projectile points, mastodon bones that had been burned, mastodon bones associated with pottery, engravings of elephants on Mayan stonework, the presence of mastodon remains stratigraphically above sediments containing basketry, the “Elephant Mound” in Wisconsin, and Native American oral traditions that described elephant-like creatures.

In the same year as MacLean’s book, Frederick Larkin’s Ancient Man in America was published, describing his theory that the “Mound Builders” had domesticated the mastodon as a beast of burden and for warfare. Larkin also used the elephant-shaped effigy mound in Wisconsin as evidence. A few years later (1885), Charles Putnam published his volume on the elephant pipes of Iowa, widely thought to be fraudulent.

Mormons embraced the array of evidence in the late 1800s that seemed to support the contemporaneity of humans and mastodons in the New World. The 1908 Book of Mormon Talks, written by Hyrum O. Smith, addresses the 1857 critique of Mormonism offered by John Hyde’s Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs:

“Papa.--We certainly can not blamed for considering this as conclusive evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon account, and rejecting the dogmatic statement of Mr. Hyde that “the elephant is not a native of America and never was its inhabitant.” We have not only found that the elephant was here, but that other large animals of the elephant or mastodon species were here, and that they were here at the same time that man was. These larger animals that are called “cureloms and cumoms” in the Book of Mormon were evidently of the mastodon or elephant type for which there were not names in English, hence their names were transferred to the book just as the Jaredites called them. There is one more point which we wish to establish before we leave this subject. You will notice that the last part of the quotation which Harry has read from Ether says, “And there were elephants, and cureloms, and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants, and cureloms and cumoms.” This certainly signifies that they used these large animals for beasts of burden, and strange to say, we have something to sustain this statement also. Ethel, you may read from page 75 of the Archaeological Committee’s report the opinion of Mr. Frederick Larkin, M.D.:” (pages 141-142)

In the book, Ethel goes on to read Larkin’s self-proclaimed “visionary” statement about the domestication of the mastodon by the “Mound Builders.” Papa gladly accepts Larkin’s conclusion, but chides him for claiming something as “new” which of course had been revealed in an inspired way decades earlier in the BOM.

In the early 1900s, then, the defense of the elephants of Ether was based on a constellation of data points (Central American engravings, apparent associations of mastodons with human tools, fraudulent pipes, an amorphous earthen mound that looks like an elephant if you squint) that suggested the contemporaneity between elephants and the complex societies of the Americas. Larkin’s statement about the domestication of the mastodon was welcomed because the language of the BOM “certainly signifies that they used these large animals for beasts of burden.”

Investigations at the Folsom site in the 1920s cemented the case for all interested parties that humans and extinct Pleistocene animals had co-existed in North America. Excavations at Blackwater Draw in the early 1930s conclusively demonstrated an association between mammoth bones and distinctive Clovis projectile points. The debate about the co-existence of humans and extinct proboscideans was over.

The advent of radiocarbon dating in the early 1950s changed the game of understanding time in prehistoric North America, allowing the ages of organic remains to be estimated in absolute terms (i.e., in calendar years). Almost immediately, the archaeological chronology of North America lengthened significantly as archaeologists were able, for the first time, to understand how much time was really represented by the remains they could observe. Paleontology benefited also, as many fossil remains could be directly dated.

Radiocarbon dates initially seemed to provide support for the idea that mastodons had survived late into prehistory, consistent with the statement in the Book of Ether. As Mormon publications and websites are fond of pointing out, radiocarbon age estimates from mastodons include several mid-Holocene dates that suggest mastodons and the Jaredites could have overlapped. A 2012 paper by John Sorenson in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture (volume 1, page 99) reads:

“Mastodon remains have been dated by radiocarbon to around 5000 BC in Florida, around the Great Lakes to 4000 BC, in the Mississippi Valley to near 3300 BC, perhaps to near 100 BC near St. Petersburg, Florida (“low terminal [C-14] dates for the mastodon indicate . . . lingering survival in isolated areas”), and at sites in Alaska and Utah dating around 5000 BC. In the Book of Mormon, mention of elephants occurs in a single verse, in the Jaredite account (“There were elephants,” Ether 9:19), dated in the third millennium BC, after which the record is silent (indicating spot extinction?).”

The website "Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon" repeats some of those dates, as does this website.

As someone who works on Paleoindian period archaeology in eastern North America, I was surprised to see the suggestion that radiocarbon dates indicated the survival of the mastodon into the mid-Holocene. The youngest radiocarbon dates for mastodon of which I was aware are around 10,000-9500 BC (see Woodman and Athfeld 2009). And I've never heard of a single mastodon bone being recovered from a context that suggested any interaction with Archaic peoples.

Fortunately, Sorenson’s paper provides some references so we can have a look at these purportedly late dates. Here are the radiocarbon dates I could find that apparently form the basis of the Mormon claim of a late survival of mastodons in eastern North America:

I was unable to find the 1975 Wenner-Grenn report that Sorensen references for the claim of mastodons in the Great Lakes at 4000 BC (related to the work of Warren Wittry), but I wonder if that date isn’t related to M-347 above (a 4000 BC mastodon date from Lapeer County, Michigan, reported by Crane and Griffin in 1959).

I was also unable to find a specific date associated with the mastodon from Devil’s Den, Florida, and couldn't find a copy of Martin and Webb (1974) online. Kurten and Anderson (1980:365) reference “unpublished C-14 data” from Martin and Webb (1974) and give an age range of 8000-7000 BP (i.e., about 5000 BC, uncalibrated).

For the other dates, a few things are worth noting. The M-138 date (the “Richmond Mastodon” from Noble County, Indiana) is from charcoal, not the mastodon itself. The association between the charcoal and the mastodon is highly suspect, as the excavation that produced both the mastodon and the charcoal was actually performed in the 1930s (see Williams 1957:365, 368). The excavators thought that the charcoal and some corner-notched projectile points were associated with the mastodon, but it seems more likely they they are actually from a later Late Archaic component that was not directly associated with the mastodon remains. Williams (1957: 368) states that there was a second radiocarbon date from the site that was about twice as old.

The M-67 and M-347 dates, obtained in the 1950s from tusk material, could easily have been contaminated by more recent organic matter (see below). They are most likely far too young.

The L-211 date, like the M-138 date, was apparently obtained from charcoal recovered from an excavation decades earlier. Further, the deposits were unconsolidated and may have contained a jumble of redeposited material (in other words, the charcoal may have had nothing to do with the mastodon bones) (Hester 1960:65).

The alert reader will notice that four out of the five dates in the table above are in the very early years of radiocabon dating (the 1950s), and the fifth is from the 1970s. Why does that matter? Because, as in all science, there have been developments in the methods, practice, and theory of radiocarbon dating since it was first operationalized in 1947. Radiocarbon dating is incredibly important tool for understanding the past, and considerable effort has gone into improving it. One aspect of improving the reliability and accuracy of radiocarbon dating was dealing with problems of sample contamination. Early on, it was realized that radiocarbon dates on bone were often far too young because the samples were often contaminated with more recent carbon.
Here is a summary of the history of advancements in radiocarbon dating bone. Here is another.

The evolution of thought in the scholarly literature about the extinction of mastodons is connected to developments in radiocarbon dating and the refinement of techniques for removing contamination. The 1957 paper by Williams referenced above, often cited by Mormons, argues for the presence of mastodons in eastern North America after 8000 BC, with extinction around 5000 BC. Because of a lack of archaeological associations between mastodon remains and the Archaic peoples with whom they would have been contemporary, however, Williams discussed the possibility of a problem with dating techniques. In other words, the late dates appeared somewhat anomalous even in 1957 because there was no good direct evidence of interactions between mastodons and the Archaic peoples that would have shared the continent with them between 8000 and 5000 BC. All of the radiocarbon dates on bone that Williams utilized would have been subject to contamination by younger carbon, resulting in age estimates that skewed too young.

A 1968 paper by A. Dreimanis summarized 28 available radiocarbon dates for mastodons, throwing out many of the early dates and suggesting that extinction was underway by 10,000 years ago. Dreimanis did not throw out the dates arbitrarily, but because of issues of contamination that were becoming better understood and unclear relationships between what was dated (e.g., plant material) and the target of the date (the mastodon). The paper by Hester (1960) also discusses some of the same problematic dates. By the 1960s, it was recognized that contamination by recent humic acids may make dates on bone collagen too young. Bone samples were especially susceptible to contamination by more recent organic materials, complete removal of which was difficult for the sample sizes that were required.

The advent of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating in the 1980s allowed smaller samples to be used to produce age estimates, permitting improved pretreatment procedures to remove contaminants from bone prior to dating (see this 1992 paper). This improved both the accuracy and precision of radiocarbon dates on bone, which are now typically performed only on collagen (protein) extracted from the bone, rather than the mineral component (hydroxyapatite). Here is an explanation on the Beta Analytic website.

In the present (the early 21st century) all scientists that I’m aware of support the idea that mastodon extinction was associated with the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The young (e.g., 8000-1000 BC) dates obtained from mastodons in the first decades of radiocarbon dating have not been duplicated (with the possible exception of very recent date from another Michigan mastodon) since procedures for removing contaminants were refined. Now a “young” date on a mastodon is one that post-dates 10,500 RCYBP (as above). There are good reasons why scientists don’t use those anomalous dates from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: they are not discarded simply because they don’t fit our expectations, but because there are logical, well-understood reasons to strongly suspect they don’t reflect the actual age of the bones. And those dates exist in a vacuum of other compelling evidence to suggest that populations of mastodons really survived that long into the Holocene.

So while radiocarbon dating and science have continued to move forward and refine our understanding of the demise of the mastodons, the Mormons seem to prefer to stop time during the early days of radiocarbon dating, when anomalously young dates on bone were not uncommon. Based on what we know now, those anomalously young dates are probably attributable to either contamination, context/association problems, or both. They are embraced by Mormons not because they are good science, but because they remain the "best fit" to the Jaredite time period. No-one else takes those dates seriously, and it isn't because they're trying to undermine the BOM. It's because there isn't any reason to take them seriously: they are probably mistakes.

As the scientific evidence against a 2500 BC population of mastodons in eastern North America mounted, the Mormon interpretation of the elephants of Ether also changed. Gone now is any argument that humans had domesticated mastodons, as so confidently asserted by Hyrum O. Smith in 1908. Again from the website "Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon:"

“Moroni then lists the animals that were "useful unto man," including horses, asses, and the elephants, cureloms, and cumoms. But it is very interesting that there is a difference in the way they are listed. They "had horses and asses," implying possession of domesticated animals, but "there were elephants, cureloms, and cumoms" (Ether 9:19). This hints that these last mentioned animals existed in the land and were useful to them, but were not domesticated.”

Many Mormon websites also cite as support for the late survival of mastodons evidence of the co-existence of humans and mastodons. Co-existence and late (i.e., 2500 BC) co-existence are not the same thing. The fact that humans and mastodons co-existed has zero bearing on the argument of when they coexisted. There is abundant evidence that humans and mastodons did interact in North America during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and that fact is not in dispute. What is in dispute in the late survival of those creatures claimed by Mormons. Of that there is no good evidence. Once radiocarbon data allowed prehistoric time in eastern North America to be unfurled, it became clear that there was a large time gap between the heyday of the mastodons the purported arrival of the Jaredites. That time gap grew as radiocarbon dating procedures improved to deal with the systematic error produced by contamination problems.

Continuing to uncritically employ a handful of young radiocarbon dates from the early decades of radiocarbon dating as support for the claim of elephants at 2500 BC is intellectually dishonest. Last time I checked, AMS dates were about $600 each (I also seem to recall that the price has recently dropped). If Mormons want to continue to use radiocarbon dating to evaluate the historical accuracy of the Book of Ether, I suggest that they have those “late surviving” mastodons re-dated. If they agree to pay for it, I would be happy to help attempt to locate the remains wherever they are curated and try to secure permission to have samples dated. It would be a nice way to resolve the ambiguity. We can publish the results. If there really were mastodons tromping around in the woodlands of Archaic eastern North America, I would like to know about it and so would a lot of other people. It's a win-win.
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References for unlinked literature:

Crane, H. R. 1956. University of Michigan Radiocarbon Dates I. Science 124(3224): 664-672.

Crane, H. R., and J. B. Griffin. 1959. University of Michigan Radiocarbon Dates IV. American Journal of Science Radiocarbon Supplement 1: 173-198.

Hester, Jim J. 1960. Late Pleistocene Extinction and Radiocarbon Dating. American Antiquity 26(1):58-77.

Kurten, B., and E. Anderson. 1980. Pleistocene Mammals of North America. New York: Columbia University Press.

Martin, R. A., and S. D. Webb. 1974. Late Pleistocene Mammals from the Devil's Den Fauna, Levy County. In Webb, S.D. (editor): Pleistocene Mammals of Florida, pp. 114-145. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.

Williams, Stephen. 1957. The Island 35 Mastodon: Its Bearing on the Age of Archaic Cultures in the East. American Antiquity 22:359-372.

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Cotton Mather: America's First Nephilim Enthusiast

2/26/2015

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The case of Cotton Mather (1663-1728) misinterpreting mastodon bones unearthed in Claverack, New York, as the remains of an ancient giant is commonly supplied as an illustration of how even learned individuals could make that mistake in the days when the Bible provided the primary framework by which to understand the natural world (here is one example, here is another).

Mather was not the only one to make this mistake, of course: there are many examples that pre- and post-date him. What is interesting about the Mather case is that his prodigious writings on the subject provide context as to why the idea of finding giants was so attractive. In my opinion, the appeal of giants to Mather in 1705 was much the same as it is for many Nephilim enthusiasts today.

Mather was a Puritan minister who wrote extensively about science and religion and was vigorously involved in both. Working on another post, I was interested to learn that a large, previously unpublished work written by Mather during the period 1693-1728 had become available in 2010. The book, entitled Biblia Americana, has been printed in 6 volumes with over 4,500 pages. It is the earliest comprehensive Bible commentary written in North America, containing the thoughts of Mather on a huge variety of topics related to the intersection of science and religion. The first volume alone (Biblia Americana: Genesis) costs $200, which is well out of my price range. Luckily, however, I found some sections related to Mather’s thoughts on giants reproduced and discussed in a couple of publications made available by one of the editors (Reiner Smolinksi) as pdfs.

I’m going to reproduce several passages that I think are good illustrations of Mather’s thinking about giants. These are from the annotated version of Biblia Americana that I found here. I’ll keep the emphases (italics and capitalization) as it is provided.

The first quote (pages 582-583 in the publication, section 185r) is a question and answer about whether there is physical evidence of giants that proves the Old Testament to be true, therefore refuting atheism:

“Q. Concerning the Dayes before the Flood, the glorious Historian ha’s told us; There were GIANTS on the Earth, in those Dayes. Could any undoubted Ruines and Remains of those GIANTS, be found under the Earth, among the other subterraneous Curiosities, in our Dayes, it would be an Illustrious Confirmation of the Mosaic History, and an Admirable Obturation on the Mouth of Atheism?

A. Then let the Inquisitive Part of Mankind, know that the Bones of those who were certainly some of the Antediluvian GIANTS, have been found under the Earth, in these later Ages. Below the Strata of Earth, which the Flood left on the Surface of it, in the other Haemisphere, such enormous Bones have been found, as all skill in Anatomy must pronounce to belong unto Humane Bodies, & could belong to none but Giants, in Comparison of whom, Og, and Goliath, and all the Sons of Anak, must hardly be so much as Pygmies. But that AMERICA too, as tis but agreeable, may throw something, to the Treasures of the BIBLIA AMERICANA, I will surprise you, with telling you, That the Men who were able to have Turned the World upside down, came hither also; [How! No Man alive can tell!] And the Bones, probably of the Antediluvian GIANTS, have here been met withal.”

Mather's answer to his own question is a resounding "yes!" This is a clear statement of Mather's belief that the remains of pre-Flood giants could be found in North America, supporting the idea that biblical narrative was accurate. As discussed in the footnotes to the section of the text quoted above, the interpretation of mastodon bones as the bones of pre-Flood giants neatly resolved the problem of how to account for fossil remains that didn’t appear to be those of any other creature mentioned in the Old Testament.

Mather spends several paragraphs discussing what the giants actually were, remarking on what the term “Nephilim” might mean (pages 584-585 in the publication, section 185r):

“I will not go to trouble you, with the Opinions of the Ancients, who suppose the Original of those Giants, to be, The Sons of God coming in unto the Daughters of Men; and that the Sons of God, were Angels, or Divels; to which the Name of, Nephilim, which may signify, Fallen Ones, agrees well enough: . . .
An Extremity of Incredulity, ha’s led some to think, That the Antediluvian Giants were but Metaphorical Ones; That they were Giants for Quality only, and not for Quantity.”

In Mather's discussion, we can see two of the core elements that characterize the worldview of Nephilim enthusiasts today:

Hard evidence of giants proves the Bible is true, therefore showing alternatives (whether atheism or Darwinian evolution) to be false;

The term “giant” in the Bible was not used metaphorically, but rather to denote an actual human-like creature of large size (and possibly of supernatural origin?);
Biblical giants should be found in the New World as well as the Old Word.

And there is another important point of similarity between Mather's interest in finding biblical giants and the approach taken by today’s Nephilim enthusiasts. We all know how the story of Mather's giant bones ends: the bones were later shown to be those of a mastodon. His enthusiastic acceptance of the “proof” that giants existed was conditioned by his pre-supposition that they of course must exist (because they were mentioned in the Bible). Looking for evidence to support a foregone conclusion, Mather accepted as proof something that was nothing of the sort.

Modern Nephilim enthusiasts routinely commit this same error, presenting as “proof” anything that fits with the Nephilim worldview.

Not much has really changed in 300 years. It would be funny, except that it’s not.