Mammoths are amazing animals from the past of our world, mammoths were mammals from the elephant family, only much larger in size and covered with thick fur.
According to scientists, mammoths could reach 5.5 meters in height and weigh 15-17 tons! Can you imagine what amazing animals they are? No less amazing were the tusks of mammoths, they are truly huge, the largest tusk found in our country was 4.5 meters long, weighed 110 kg, and was almost twenty centimeters in diameter, the mammoth that wore this tusk was truly a giant even for those times.
In ancient times, due to sudden climate change and melting ice, the lands that served as the habitat of shaggy giants were flooded. The mammoths were cut off from the mainland by waters and were doomed to starvation. This was the case in northern Siberia, the part of the world where mammoths lived the most. It is here that today people find the remains of mammoths in huge quantities, and especially their amazing tusks.
Scientists have assessed the approximate reserves of mammoth tusks and came to the conclusion that there are still about 20 or 60 tons of this fossil material in the depths of our country. It is interesting that there are a lot of legends about mammoths among the local population, for example, the peoples of the north of Russia thought that mammoths live and roam underground, and they considered their tusks to be huge fangs. The name mammoths was given to the inhabitants of the north by Eggor, which literally means earthen deer. According to another legend, we owe rivers and streams to mammoths, because supposedly mammoths, in the era of the creation of our world, trampled the beds of rivers and streams on the earth.
In Siberia
Today, mining mammoth tusks is a special trade and quite hard work, because deposits of tusks are located in swamps and hard-to-reach places in the tundra.
Sometimes a prospector spends several hours or even days to extract one tusk! Tusk collectors have a custom; they always leave an offering in the form of coins or jewelry for spirits at the place where they found the fossil.
Unfortunately, these days, almost all found artifacts are sent abroad and find their place among Chinese connoisseurs, and 90% of mining in Siberia is carried out illegally.
Scientists are very worried about this situation, because a huge number of fossils are disappearing unnoticed, from which scientists could compile new data about the Earth’s past, such as climate, flora and much more.
But the huge price of mammoth tusks continues to attract illegal diggers. In Russia, on the black market, a mammoth bone costs twenty-five thousand rubles, but our neighbors in China already have twenty thousand dollars.
The fact is that such a type of folk art as bone carving is very popular in China, which, by the way, coincides with the traditional craft of the northern peoples of our country.
Since ancient times, Siberian carvers have been famous for their filigree art of mammoth tusk carving. Only today, carving in the north, unfortunately, is not as widespread as the extraction of tusks for the black market.
Mammoth tusks are different special properties, this is a very plastic and durable material, and also has a very beautiful texture. In terms of value and qualities, mammoth tusk is equal to pearls, corals or amber.
Folk art flourished in Siberia until the mid-20th century, but today it has almost died out; our carvers made beautiful figurines, combs, boxes and many other elegant and delicate products.
Mammoth ivory is unique not only for its properties, but also for its size, because you can create a very large carved composition.
It is a pity that our country is so thoughtlessly wasting the talents of people and its natural resources, obtained with such hard work.
A couple of months ago I was in Perm and visited there, and so, they told a lot and showed mammoth bones and tusks, and there I heard for the first time that there is a whole illegal industry - the search for mammoth tusks.
American photographer Amos Chapple spent three weeks in the company of “black archaeologists” who are searching for the remains of mammoths in the Siberian forests. These people spend the whole summer in forests and swamps, trying to find the remains of ancient animals and, most importantly, find their tusks. This activity is illegal, so diggers have to avoid encounters with police and environmental services, as well as put up with difficult living conditions in the forest. But all this is compensated by the high cost of tusks. On the black market, a 65-kilogram mammoth ivory can fetch $34,000. There have been cases where groups of diggers managed to earn about $100,000 in a week of searching.
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Let's see what it looks like:
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The tusks of ancient mammoths are extremely valuable for scientists and archaeologists, but for the most part, they disappear without a trace on the black market.
No one knows how many mammoths are imprisoned in the land of Siberia. As a rule, every discovery of the remains of an ancient animal causes a sensation in scientific circles. Scientists to this day have not given up hope of cloning an amazing animal, but, alas, the state of the biomaterial of the found “mineral resource” does not meet the standards required for such a procedure.
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Every year in Siberia, illegal miners are rescued from captivity permafrost several tons of tusks. Despite the hard physical labor and the illegality of the process, the game is worth the candle - for a kilogram of mammoth tusk you can earn somewhere between 20-25 thousand rubles. Moreover, the average weight of one tusk is about 50 kilograms.
Mammoth bone is so expensive because good qualities, far superior to the quality of ivory. Previously, carvers used found tusks to create combs, boxes, and sculptures. The material is very plastic, beautiful and durable. In China, sculptures carved from the bone of an ancient animal are highly valued. Usually, tusks from the black market are sent there.
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Since every year the tusks are gradually removed from the ground, there are fewer and fewer of them, and the work of the miners becomes more and more difficult. They can be located at the bottom of a swamp or river, or very deep underground and in ice. In addition, due to ancient superstitions, the indigenous peoples of the North have to sacrifice something to the local spirits in order to take the find without any consequences.
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There is a law on criminal liability for "black archaeologists". For illegal seizure of archaeological objects and evasion of the mandatory transfer of discovered artifacts to the state, they face up to six years in prison.
“The law “On Subsoil” says that it is forbidden (to dig), but “black archaeologists” - there is already such a term in science - “bomb”, especially in the north. There was no order with archeology either, the responsibility was minimal, responsibility for paleontology no at all. Even during the construction of objects, archaeological conclusions are mandatory, but paleontological ones are not, everything is at the discretion of the owner.
There are a lot of cases of looting in Siberia. There is a sales market, it is established. You can go to the Internet, enter “I’ll buy a treasury sword”, “I’ll buy mammoth tusks” - and a bunch of offers will come up. And nine out of 10 it will be without any documents. Products and skeletons are very expensive. And even then they make documents, legalize them, and sell them to museums.
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A banal example is the Krasnoyarsk Kurya in the Teguldetsky district of the Tomsk region. There, for several years in a row, there was an intensified robbery by “black paleontologists” of the location of mammoths, which, as it later turned out, was combined with archaeological finds.
There are hundreds of thousands square meters were dug up to extract mammoth bones. They dug even in winter. What came across in parallel - evidence of the Paleolithic era (stones, processed bones) - was destroyed and lost. And it seems like, according to the descriptions of the local population, there were outbreaks of charcoal ancient people. Everything is destroyed irrevocably. This is a typical example of a large scale.
Therefore, the same tightening of the law must be introduced in relation to paleontology. Many archaeological sites contain animal bones, and vice versa. Paleontological and archaeological objects need to be “combined.”
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But what I still don’t understand is how they know where to wash, and especially into the depths of the slope. They burnt and wash away all the slopes along the river, especially since the tusks are often in the depths.
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Hundreds of men in mud-stained clothes are using water pumps to erode permafrost along distant rivers in northern Siberia. They are bitten by mosquitoes and persecuted by the authorities, but the reward may be unexpected wealth - or bankruptcy.
On a twilight summer night, a boat glides along an overflowing river in northern Siberia. Due to erosion, the high bank at the bend of the river has collapsed, exposing a layer of permafrost that is beginning to melt. Such a coastal slope - a ravine - is considered a very good place for searching.
“This hill fed us well last year. Now we want to get inside it from the other side,” says the Yakut boatman. By civilian profession, he is a surgeon at the district hospital, but he spends his summer vacation here, on this distant river.
Two men in high waders and camouflage uniforms stand on the shore. Hoses are visible right next to the water. Small gasoline-powered pumps lift water into caves carved into the steep bank.
The boat is heading towards the shore. We are shown finds: ancient bones of small mammals. The seekers are attacked by a cloud of mosquitoes. They say that working in these latitudes literally requires blood, sweat and tears.
We found ourselves in a camp of people engaged in washing out a layer of permafrost to search for mammoth bones. There are nine such camps on this small river alone.
In Yakutia, the largest subject of Russia, several hundred such camps appear every summer. A new gold rush has begun in Yakutia, but instead of gold they are looking for old bones.
Context
Where God froze his fingers
Helsingin Sanomat 05/06/2017Finns are mastering Yakut cuisine
Helsingin Sanomat 04/04/2017A little about another Siberia
Helsingin Sanomat 03/08/2017Siberia quickly gets used to the cold
Helsingin Sanomat 31.12.2016Mammoth bones are found in North America, Europe and even Finland. However, in the permafrost of Siberia, bones in good condition the most preserved. Here the ground is frozen hundreds of meters deep, and in the summer it thaws only one or two meters from the surface.
In Yakutia, there are especially many remains of animals whose age is 10-50 thousand years. And we're not just talking about skeletons. The permafrost has completely preserved mummified animals and their biological tissues: skin, wool, internal organs, blood vessels, blood cells, muscles and reddish meat.
However, only powerful mammoth tusks are of economic value. They can weigh about one hundred kilograms and exceed two meters in length. With their help, the mammoth defended itself and obtained food from under the snow cover.
People need them for completely different purposes.
We climb the slope to a section of burnt-out forest, where we find a real tent settlement - large tents with stoves, a dining tent and even a sauna tent. More than ten men should be accommodated here.
Those who come are greeted by the head of the group, Old man named Bulka. He is a businessman, engaged in trade. Bulka is a calm and thoughtful person. He would happily spend time in nature without mammoths. He duck hunts and fishes in the spring, elk hunts in the fall, and then ice fishing season begins.
Bulka's family moved to Yakutsk. And he himself is attracted by life in the northern taiga.
“Honestly, I don’t know what I would do in the city.”
Bulka is a little worried that a journalist has come to the camp. Washing out mammoth bones from permafrost is a complex issue for Yakutia.
One day, while mining mammoth bones, a man was shot and killed. One of the searchers died during the dive, and there have been cases of disappearances of bone seekers on the Arctic islands.
This means numerous police raids throughout Yakutia. The searchers' vehicles and their tools are confiscated and they are given heavy fines.
And although collecting bones from nature is legal, not all methods are legal. No one wants to tell outsiders about good mining sites.
“It would be better if you didn’t write anything about pumps,” Bulka asks.
A long time ago, about 15 thousand years ago, everything here looked completely different.
Siberia was not covered with coniferous forests, as it is now. There was a plain overgrown with grass, a tundra-steppe. The winters were colder than today, and the summers were longer and warmer. There was an ice age in Europe at the time, but there was no ice cover in northern Siberia. Rivers flowed here, thanks to which the soil became fertile.
Then the crown of nature was not man, but the mammoth - a relative of the elephant, known for its long hair, which weighed more than five tons and reached a height of more than three meters.
Mammoths roamed in herds, led by females. Adult males moved alone or in small groups.
An adult mammoth ate up to 400 kilograms of plants per day. The herds really needed pastures, especially in winter, when they had to look for food under the snow.
Over several millennia, mammoths adapted to the northern climate. In addition to long hair, they had a large layer of fat, their ears and tail were smaller than those of elephants, which reduced heat loss. The mammoth's trunk had a kind of expanding sleeve that made it possible to warm the trunk in cold weather.
Mammoths had one big drawback: they reproduced very slowly. The female's gestation period lasted two years, and she could only give birth once every three to five years. If the cub then died, it was a real disaster.
However, mammoths coped with harsh conditions and lived over a large area until something happened about 12 thousand years ago. Their lives became more difficult and they eventually disappeared.
It is impossible to write about the current “mammoth fever” without mentioning pumps—despite the request.
For a long time, mammoth bones were simply taken out of the ground. Bones are still exposed on the thawing steep banks of rivers and seas, worn away by erosion. This summer, one man found a tusk near the river - right on a slope overgrown with grass.
You can also dive for tusks, since they also lie at the bottom of reservoirs and rivers in the permafrost region. In Yakutsk, almost everyone who masters diving dreams of finding a mammoth tusk.
Pumps are the only weapon with which you can quickly get to the layer of icy ground. It is not possible to dig into permafrost. And cutting or exploding this layer can damage the bones.
Andrei, the only Russian in the group, placed a thick fire hose on a support to direct the stream of water directly to the shore. A pump located downstream pumps water.
The pump has been running for a day, and the cavity has gradually begun to form. Thus, washing the shore with water, the searchers move deeper and deeper, ten meters a day. In three days a real cave is formed.
Then you need to determine the desired height and, if necessary, direct the jet up or down. Andrey says that it is very important to study the color of the soil.
“Below is blue slurry, above is the level of grass where mammoths walked,” he explains.
There is one “but” in using pumps. It is forbidden. The fine for such activity is only about 15 euros, but the official can also confiscate the pump and vehicles.
Soil erosion has an impact on the environment. Banks collapse, rivers become muddy, and this can have a negative impact on the number of fish.
This impact is minor and transitory compared to, for example, oil production, and a flood can pollute water bodies more than a few pumps.
At least that's what tusk seekers think.
The “veteran” of this river is a gray-haired gentleman named Innocent. He settled down here with a friend, somewhat apart from the others.
Innokenty puts on a long, dirty cloak and goes to show off his achievements. Time to look inside the permafrost.
The cave on the shore has partially collapsed and is so small that we have to crawl. Then vaults several meters high open up before us. From them there are winding corridors, the walls of which are covered with ice, and at the end there is flickering daylight.
We hope there is still enough soil on top. The cave probably does not meet all the safety requirements if tusk hunters had any.
Innocent crosses a watery area where the water rises to his knees and points at the walls with a flashlight. Here and there white bones protrude, the most beautiful of which resemble corals.
Finding something requires a trained eye. Only a small piece of tusk may appear.
However, Innocent is interested not only in expensive finds. After leaving the cave he shows us thoracic vertebrae, the ribs and jaw of a young mammoth, in which all six molars are well preserved, looking like millstones with wavy stripes. Innocent can easily be called an amateur paleontologist. Paleontology is the science that studies prehistoric life.
A real scientist, an employee of the Academy of Sciences of Yakutia Stanislav Kolesov, who is fond of playing the recorder and is writing a dissertation on paleontology about bison, also came to the river.
A bison was discovered in the ceiling of another cave, and Kolesov and I set off to explore this place.
We enter the cave and see that the “ceiling” has melted, and the remains of the bison have fallen down with clods of earth. Kolesov carefully examines the pile of earth and removes a piece of skin and other remains from it. A bison tusk protrudes from the nearby wall. When Kolesov begins to pull him out, a full skull with teeth is exposed.
However, the mammoth was not the only inhabitant of the “mammoth steppe”, but only the most famous. Along with the mammoths, the entire world in which they lived disappeared. Permafrost has preserved to this day the entire flora and fauna of the ancient ecosystem, and it is this integrity that researchers want to study.
Siberian bison disappeared around the same time as mammoths. The third largest tundra herbivore was the woolly rhinoceros, which resembled the modern rhinoceros, but, like a mammoth, grew thick hair. Among others, musk ox, saiga and the now extinct Lena horse grazed in the steppe.
A couple of years ago, Yakutia was shocked by a paleontological sensation: two mummified cave lion cubs were discovered in one of the rivers in the very north. In the spring they were exhibited at the Natural History Museum in Vienna
The exhibition was organized by Finnish curator Heikki Lahelma, who also helped organize mammoth exhibitions in Finland.
Researcher Kolesnikov collects everything: he is interested in plants, and he puts round mammoth feces in a plastic bag. He was especially struck by the well-preserved body of a mouse that Innocent found.
According to him, the work of a paleontologist in the rugged and large Yakutia would not be possible without the help of tusk seekers, who are practically illegal.
Research organizations in Russia do not have the funds for large expeditions, and they cannot create such a large-scale network as mammoth hunters.
“Without them, only a fraction of all valuable finds would have been discovered. There is no information about most of the finds. Finders do not risk reporting them for fear that the finds will be confiscated or the finders themselves will be sent to prison,” says Kolesov.
It's about about an unusual scientific collaboration: men working in the forest become valuable colleagues for researchers.
The most valuable finds are stored in the freezers of the laboratory of the Academy of Sciences and the University in Yakutsk. There, for example, is the 36,000-year-old baby mammoth Yuka, who became a particularly valuable find thanks to her preserved brain.
The treasure of the mammoth research laboratory is the trunk, which is now stored in a freezer at minus 87 degrees. This rare trunk of an adult mammoth was discovered in 2014 on the Arctic Small Lyakhovsky Island.
More and more information is being learned from animal remains. Level of research based on isotopes of different chemical elements, develops very quickly, and thanks to it you can learn about the ancient climate, vegetation and animal diet.
The age of the finds is determined using radiocarbon dating.
The age of animals is determined by their teeth: for example, a mammoth grew six teeth during its life, and when one was completely worn down, it began to use the next one.
The most interesting thing is if the animal has preserved biological tissues. They can be distinguished on tomography. Sex can be determined by bones, wool, and, for example, by preserved mammary glands. The contents of the stomach and feces can reveal information about the animal's diet, for example by examining preserved microbes and pollen.
Researching the cause of death for an animal 12 thousand years old is also routine.
Fractures and tissue damage may indicate an accident; an empty stomach may indicate starvation. Traces of aquatic plants can be found in the esophagus of a drowned animal; a mammoth trapped in a hole could have inhaled soil.
Dead animals can often be found in the same place. For example, in the Berelekh mammoth cemetery, the bones of 150 mammoths were recovered. How all the bodies ended up in one place is a mystery.
And while science makes its discoveries, men in soiled clothes carry hoses into the caves.
The rhythm of the camp is quite unusual. The pumps start running around noon.
The meal break is often long. Most often on the table are canned meat and pasta. These men, eroding the ground in search of bones, have no time for hunting and fishing.
At night, the electric engine knocks, and in the tent where food is prepared, people watch movies until late. They don't drink alcohol. In the morning they sleep for a long time.
The activity could be optimized, but, on the other hand, this is not the Protestant idea of intensive work, but a trade in which decisive role It's not the hours of work that play, but skill and luck.
The Bonewashers are local or have some connection to the area. There are representatives here different professions: truck drivers, horse riders, specialist computer technology, salesman and doctor.
In winter, Andrey drives his truck for thousands of kilometers along a long winter road along rivers and swamps. During the summer, he becomes a jack-of-all-trades who fixes gadgets and becomes a cave scout. This time he took his son with him to the camp.
The second truck driver, Sasha, shows us a broom made from horsehair and an amulet that his daughter decorated with glass beads. If he finds the tusk, he will leave these talismans in the cave.
And although the remains of mammoths are constantly found in the permafrost of Yakutia, the Yakuts usually avoid them. The religion of the Yakuts, closely connected with nature, forbids them to touch the bones of people and animals, since they belong to the spirits of the earth.
Nowadays, this issue can be resolved by leaving the spirits something instead of bones.
The explanation for why the banks of a small Yakut river are all caves, and hundreds of men spend the summer suffering mosquito bites, can be found in China and strange laws regarding the economy.
The Chinese bought mammoth bones from Siberia back in the 19th century. On old photograph The river ship is waiting for a luxurious cargo - tusks.
Now Chinese buyers arrive directly to Yakutsk, where local intermediaries resell their goods. In 2017, 70 tons of tusks were exported from Yakutia to China.
In China, tusks are needed as raw materials for the work of carvers. Chinese masters make them very beautiful jewelry- depicting, for example, the Great Wall of China or episodes from the history of the country. We are talking about an entire profession with centuries-old traditions.
So far, the peak of the mammoth bone mining business was 2015, when a thousand euros were paid per kilogram of ivory. Now the price has more than doubled. And yet, even one discovered tusk makes it difficult summer job worth it.
Those who manage to find rhino horn are even luckier: a kilogram of such horn costs at least three thousand euros. According to rumors, one group located near the river allegedly found a rhinoceros horn and has already sold it, but these are all rumors. Usually they don’t even tell their “colleagues” about their findings.
However, the future of such a business still does not seem meaningless.
A year and a half ago, China's State Council made a decision that could raise prices even higher. After years of international pressure, China has banned ivory imports. The ban came into force at the end of the year.
Until then, China had the world's largest ivory market and provided profits for ruthless poachers in Africa's poorest countries.
And in Central Asia The elephant population has dropped to one-third in one decade, so elephants may face the same fate as mammoths.
Elephant tusks in China are used for the same purpose as mammoth tusks. If the export of elephant tusks to China weakens, only the export of mammoth bones can replace it. Good news for Bulka, Andrey and Innokenty.
It is better to use the bones of a dead mammoth as a material for jewelry than the bones of an elephant. In the same way, the horn of the woolly rhinoceros replaces in the market the horn of a rhinoceros killed in Africa.
According to researcher Kolesov, at the current pace of searches, mammoth tusks will last for another two thousand years.
Did the “people of the forests” get rich from tusk mining?
Bulka is rich, but he says that he made good money back in the 90s retail trade. He is resting in South-East Asia and builds a church at his own expense.
Valentin, a younger man, says that last year he built a house with this money. Here in the north it is neither easy nor cheap, since the logs must be floated down a river a thousand kilometers away.
The farthest “cave” is being washed out by farmer Oleg, who lives in Central Yakutia. This shy man has twenty horses and the same number of cows on his farm. His wife, who works in a hospital, earns about 130 euros a month.
Oleg says that last year, with money from the sale of mined mammoth bones, he bought an old Toyota Camry “to take the children to school.” Previously, this road was covered by sleighs.
“I bought the children clothes for school and good phones so that they would not be ashamed. I want to leave them a decent fortune."
Oleg probably has some kind of stash.
Last year was particularly good for the group: they harvested 200 kilograms of tusks between the seven of them. The income was ten thousand euros per person.
From this money the necessary amount was immediately allocated for this year's expedition. In three months, 30 thousand liters of fuel are consumed, and one pump can cost a thousand euros.
Some residents of Yakutia earn a lot from tusks. Like a young man from Yakutsk who hires a hundred “bone hunters” every summer. With this money he bought his own gold mine.
In addition to selling tusks, he also made a lot of money by renting out entire mammoths on his property for exhibitions. Ticket sales for Japan's most famous mammoth exhibition are said to have brought in nearly ten million euros.
However, his business is now facing difficulties. The Vladivostok border service confiscated most of the tusks sent to China. According to the man, the export permits were in order, but officials did not agree with this.
For science, of course, the most important question is the cause of the extinction of mammoths.
For a long time it was believed that mammoths became extinct no later than ten thousand years ago. Then, in the Arctic Ocean on Wrangel Island, the remains of a population of mammoths were discovered, the youngest individuals of which died approximately 3.5 thousand years ago. They were noticeable smaller in size: Being in isolation, the view has changed.
The last mammoths could have been exterminated by humans. Human remains dating back to the same time were also discovered on Wrangel Island.
When mammoths began to be studied 200 years ago, it was suggested that they could have died out in Siberia from the cold. Now another scientific version has been put forward: climate warming killed the mammoths and the company. Rainfall increased, and forest, tundra, swamps and moss took over part of the steppe, which resembled a dry savannah. The snow cover increased and made it difficult to find food. The mammoth died of starvation due to the disappearance of pastures.
According to some researchers, humans are still at least partially responsible for the disappearance of mammoths. For example, this is what the world-famous ecologist Sergei Zimov, who works in the north of Yakutia, believes.
“The mammoth survived in various conditions. Why did all the large animals disappear from everywhere just when man began to populate new territories or invent new weapons? - he reasons.
The men who erode the banks of rivers in northern Yakutia are also interested in ancient man. They have a question for paleontologist Kolesov, which he cannot answer:
“Why are there bones of mammoths, bison and rhinoceroses here, but there is not a trace of a person from that time?”
Why human remains older than five thousand years were not discovered in the north of Yakutia is a mystery.
Russia is a country of mysteries. Anything can happen to the business of selling mammoth bones in the coming years.
Now, by Russian standards, this is not “very illegal.” The most democratic situation in Russia often resembles anarchy, and this is exactly the case with mammoths. Now anyone can start collecting tusks.
Officially, the collector must pay a tax, but he must obtain a license. Intermediaries have to pay VAT, and exporters need to obtain an export permit.
The Duma is considering a bill according to which ancient bones can be equated to natural resources, comparable to oil. This could lead to a system in which “deposits” are distributed through tenders.
It is likely that the licenses will be received not by ordinary men, but by friends of influential officials. Locals will be able to get to the mining site only as company employees - and only if they are lucky.
In the spring of 2018, large groups of mammoth bone seekers organized two protests in Yakutsk against regulation of this area. In Yakutia, there is an organization that defends the interests of collectors of animal remains from the times of megafauna, which wants to equate the collection of bones with other trades of northern indigenous peoples - reindeer breeding, hunting and berry picking. They should be free to engage in this trade.
“At least five thousand people in Yakutia earn their living by searching for tusks, but they are illegal,” says Boris Borisov, a spokesman for the organization.
With the help of laws, it is also necessary to resolve the issue of using pumps and returning river banks to their original state.
And then something happens that everyone who stopped at the river feared.
Nature conservation inspector Sleptsov goes with his assistants on a boat from the regional center for an inspection.
The bone seekers received information about the inspection the other day. During the night, most of the teams collected their belongings and left the shore by boat, waiting for the situation to return to normal.
Some teams still decide to stay.
A large-scale camouflage operation begins. The pumps are packed into boats and taken to shelter. When the inspectors' boat arrives in the river the next day, there is no longer a single pump. The “washers” of bones inform each other about Sleptsov’s movements via radio communication.
The inspector's boat lands on a shore dotted with caves. The “Washers” and Sleptsov know each other, but Sleptsov plays the role of a stern official.
“Look what you've done to the river bank! You destroyed it! It’s all in caves!” — he approaches the nearest cave, slips and falls into the mud. Nobody dares to laugh.
We move to the tent camp to chat over a cup of tea. There Sleptsov hints that this check was only a warning. He needs to do this because officials demand it. He could draw up an examination report, but he does not. According to him, a commission will come to the district next week high level, the Minister of Environment of the Republic and, perhaps, even Il Darkhan himself. There are rumors that a special group from the operational department will be sent from the capital.
“Get out of here,” he advises.
During this conversation, Bulka was a true example of a businessman ready to cooperate. When Sleptsov leaves, he is upset.
“It’s unfair that they made criminals out of us. We would like to prepare all the papers so that there are no ambiguities.”
Others choose stronger expressions. The men joke that they should write on Sleptsov’s fence that the house is for sale. Or pour sugar into the tank of his motorboat.
The men decide to move the camp to the upper reaches of the river.
The river there is so shallow that it is impossible to cross by boat. And the “washers” have a tracked vehicle.
The tank-like device makes its way through the thickets and mercilessly fells the fist-thick larches growing on the road. Strictly speaking, such vehicles cannot be driven here.
It takes several days to dismantle the camp, move pumps, tents and people. The boats are hidden in the middle of the swamp.
Simultaneously with the relocation operation, leaching begins in the new location.
The most incredible thing is that the last chapter of the history of mammoths has not yet been written.
In 2014, the head of the laboratory “Mammoth Museum named after P.A. Lazarev" in Yakutsk Semyon Grigoriev became famous when he promised Vladimir Putin, who came on a visit, that the mammoth would still be able to be cloned and resurrected. True, Grigoriev disagrees with journalists about whether he actually promised this.
He is famous for his successful cloning of dogs and for lying in 2005 that he was able to clone a human embryo.
Last winter, Hwang came to Yakutsk, and not empty-handed: he presented three cloned dogs. When representatives of the host country asked if he could clone a Yakut Laika next time, he kept his promise: two identical Laikas were later sent to Yakutia.
However, cloning a mammoth may be too much of a task even for magician Hwang.
For cloning to succeed, we need to find out the mammoth genome. This will only work if an intact DNA sample is found in the permafrost - which has not yet been discovered.
In order for a DNA sample to be preserved, it must freeze immediately. However, the animals first died and then slowly froze to death. The animal's body may have thawed several times. At the same time, body fluid could destroy the cellular system when frozen.
However, it is not only Hwang from South Korea who wants to revive the mammoth.
Japanese researchers dreamed of finding frozen mammoth sperm and recreating the animal through artificial insemination.
Perhaps the most realistic project belongs to Harvard University professor George Church. He is looking for a mammoth genotype in order to purposefully introduce it into an elephant embryo and thus create something between a mammoth and an elephant, a “woolly elephant.”
Church dreams of the world hearing about the joyful “family event” in two years.
Meanwhile, the morale of the seekers near the deep river declines.
“If only we could find at least one rhinoceros horn, we could just continue on our way home,” Andrey sighs during a tea break.
The group has been searching for a month, but the large tusks have not been found. This torments men.
Dreams of getting rich are associated with hunting for mammoths, but the reality turns out to be completely different. Instead of easy money, there is hard work ahead, which may be fruitless. Most of these people prowling around Yakutia will be forced to return home empty-handed. In the worst case, they face bankruptcy.
Finding mammoth bones is like a lottery. Everything will turn out as Bayanai, the Yakut spirit of the forests, decides.
The neighboring group was luckier.
Slava came here in May on a snowmobile from the nearest village, which is 175 kilometers away. He managed to wash a real labyrinth in the high bank and found two tusks. He has already resold them.
Slava’s neighbor, Vasily, also came here on a snowmobile.
Finally Vasily shows the “correct” tusk. He's huge. The big man picks it up and can barely carry it on his shoulders.
Vasily is going to spend the money he earns on new equipment for his hunting hut. It's already there solar panels, satellite dish and large plasma TV. Now he wants to put up a new main building.
These men invest their money in ideas like these. Wealth is primarily visible in weapons, snowmobiles and boats.
Vasily throws a cracked piece of tusk into the fire, which is not suitable for sale.
“This is how we feed the fire.”
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The turnover of ivory is carefully controlled, so mammoth tusks are now in special demand - primarily for export to China. A new type of gold rush has brought back to life one of the most ancient professions - mammoth hunters. Dollar millionaires suddenly appeared in remote, impoverished villages in Russia.
The mammoth tusk seekers allowed our journalist Amos Chapple to visit one of their camps on the condition that he would not reveal their names or locations. The reasons are obvious: the mining methods are illegal, and the searchers themselves are either hiding from police patrols or in an alcoholic stupor.
Woolly mammoths, extinct relatives of modern elephants, are believed to have lived in Siberia about 400,000 years ago. Now this is a permafrost area: thanks to a thick layer of ice underground, mammoth skeletons have been preserved for thousands of years. To reach the buried treasure, hunters must break up a layer of ice with water pumped from a nearby river - a process that can take months. But the tusk can be sold to the Chinese for about 35 thousand dollars (about 2 million rubles) - and this is a justified risk for residents of cities with an average salary of less than 500 dollars (28 thousand rubles).
However, this is not a pleasant stroll for guaranteed money. The men leave their families and travel across rugged terrain, where they must battle hordes of mosquitoes and evade police who can ticket them or send them to jail. To survive this ordeal, they drink a lot of vodka and cheap beer, which leads to frequent fights. Perhaps worst of all is the impact their actions have on the environment: wastewater from the excavated permafrost flows back into the surrounding rivers and pollutes the stream.
Because the sale of ivory is now tightly controlled, China has to make do with "ethical" tusks from extinct mammoths. Every summer, seekers venture into the wilderness in hopes of striking it rich. I gained access to where groups of men illegally hunt the remains of the vanished giants from Siberia - but only on the condition that I would not reveal the names of the people or the exact locations of the shooting.
A bend in a river dotted with the remains of mammoths. From the nearest village you need to travel four hours by motor boat.
One paleontologist told me that once there was most likely a swamp here - prehistoric animals drowned in it.
Treasure hunters pump water out of the river using fire pumps - they prefer devices from the Tohatsu company.
Then they dump this water next to the river.
Some dig deep, long tunnels underground. The walls are as soft as the soil in the garden.
Other prospectors carve huge caves in the permafrost.
Someone is hollowing out channels right in top layer soil.
And they all hope to find it - a perfectly preserved mammoth tusk. For a kilogram of this they give 520 dollars.
Under Yakutia lies a huge layer of frozen soil.
In soil at normal temperatures, bones decompose within 10 years. But permafrost can preserve tusks and bones like this for tens of thousands of years, making Yakutia a mecca for mammoth hunters.
I photographed this 65-kilogram tusk a few minutes after it was pulled out of the frozen ground. It sold for $34,000. The two men who found it found three more tusks this week, one of which weighed as much as 72 kilograms.
Successful hunters rejoice in future profits. In eight days they earned about 100 thousand dollars.
This is a lot of money for a region with an average salary of $500 a month, but it doesn’t always buy a happy ending. The photo shows a memorial to two young hunters who found more than $100,000 worth of treasure, had a lot of fun, and then swam drunk upstream. The boat capsized and they drowned.
IN hometown Hunters are paid in cash for freshly dug tusks by elusive “agents.” These trophies were wrapped in plastic bags and sent by plane to Yakutsk, from where they will fly to China. The cargo was covered with a tarpaulin. When I picked it up, the flight attendant yelled at me, and immediately after taking this photo she came up to me and knocked the camera out of my hands.
Here you can find not only the remains of mammoths. This is the skull of a bison that once lived on the Siberian plains.
And this skull, adapted for a teapot stand, belonged to a woolly rhinoceros, which became extinct between 8 and 14 thousand years ago.
Another rhinoceros skull, in last time who saw the sun at least 11 thousand years ago. The man who found him said: when you find a skull, the horn is usually somewhere nearby, 15-20 meters away.
This rhino horn weighing 2.4 kilograms was sold for 14 thousand dollars. Most likely, it will end up in Vietnam, where it will be ground into powder and sold as medicine.
Raw horn feels like driftwood and smells like dog. In Vietnam, the powder from such a horn is believed to cure cancer, so there it will literally cost more than gold.
However, most seekers will waste the entire summer working hard in the dirt and will only lose their money.
It takes tons of fuel to run the pumps, and most crews only find useless bones like these. Paleontologist Valery Plotnikov, familiar with this camp, estimates the number of successful seekers at 20-30%: “This is very sad. Many of them take out bank loans for the expedition.”
To save on the trip, this young hunter made a pump from the engine of a Buran snowmobile.
When frost hits, he will reinstall the engine on the snowmobile.
Most of these men will spend the entire summer away from home and family.
In dark tents, seekers relax playing cards or watching short popular videos or porn on their phones.
This seeker wrote a letter to his wife and handed it over to a group of comrades setting off for the city. Here is her answer - and this is the first news from her wife in a week.
This cut of venison is a rare luxury. People usually eat stewed meat and noodles here. Two searchers said that once, “when necessary,” they ate dog meat. They said it smelled like lard.
Mosquitoes are a nuisance here almost all the time. Only on the coldest mornings can you rest for an hour or two.
IN warm weather some men dress more like beekeepers than like people doing hard work.
When hunters have alcohol, the situation gets out of control. These searchers went to the city to replenish supplies, and halfway back they got terribly drunk. Soon after this photo was taken, the fun ended.
The men crashed into the bank at high speed. At three o'clock in the morning, rescuers found them unconscious in a boat with half-submerged equipment. Not far from this place, two searchers drowned in 2015.
The next day the drinking continues. Usually, when there is alcohol in the camp, they drink it all at once. The next day the men sleep off and then return to work.
The devastated land is a clear result of the methods used by tusk hunters, but Yakutia's water system has it even worse. The water that the searchers pump out returns to the river, filling it with silt.
Fish disappeared in the river near our fishing site - searchers no longer take fishing rods with them.
A message comes that the “green patrol” is approaching - a boat with environmental inspectors and police officers. In an instant, the entire valley freezes, the men hide in the bushes. This guard stands on a hill and radios that an unknown boat is passing through the area where work is underway.
The fine for illegally harvesting mammoth tusks is only $45. But if the seeker is caught three times, there is a more serious punishment.
One seeker told me, “I know this is bad, but what can I do? I don’t have a job, but I have a lot of children.”
The number of searchers in Yakutia, which is eight times larger in area than Germany, is growing every year. On this 120-kilometer stretch of one of the rivers alone there are three search camps. And the more people in neighboring towns talk about the opportunity to suddenly get rich, the faster this business will grow.
About 10 thousand years ago, Northern Siberia was inhabited by shaggy giants called mammoths. A now extinct genus of mammals suffered due to rising temperatures at the end of the last ice age, as a result of which their habitat was flooded and reduced.
The animals were imprisoned on isolated islands, from where there was no chance of returning to the mainland. Some populations confined to these landmass in eastern and northern Siberia lingered and became extinct around 3,700 years ago.
The remains of mammoths, in particular their tusks, today have the status of the most common fossil finds in the Siberian regions. According to scientists, reserves of this ancient material in Russia reach hundreds of thousands of tons, and annual production amounts to several tens (20-60) tons. Considering the volumes of mined relics, one can only imagine the enormous number of mammoths that lived on these lands in those distant times. The famous record-breaking tusks curled in a spiral for 4-4.5 meters, their weight was 100-110 kg, and their diameter was 18-19 cm.
The indigenous peoples of the northern regions, who previously often encountered tusks washed by spring waters, believed that giant animals moved underground, exposing only their huge “fangs” above its surface. They called them Eggor, i.e. earthen deer. According to other legends, mammoths lived at the beginning of creation. Due to their enormous weight, they constantly sank chest-deep into the ground. In the paths created by mammoths, riverbeds and streams were formed, which ultimately led to complete flooding (there is a legend that during the biblical flood, animals wanted to escape to Noah's Ark, but couldn’t fit there). For some time the animals swam across the endless waters, but the birds landing on their tusks doomed them to death.
Throughout the European part of Russia and Siberia, until the middle of the 20th century, the folk art of bone carving actively flourished. Local carvers produced combs, boxes, miniature sculptures and accessories exclusively from mammoth tusks. This material is very beautiful, flexible and durable, although it is somewhat difficult to process. Its hardness is equal to such materials as pearls, amber and coral. Mammoth bones are easily processed with a chisel, acquiring a magnificent mesh pattern, and thanks to large sizes Almost any sculptural shape can be made from them.
Mammoth tusks are returned from the permafrost through the hard work of seekers. Their extraction is quite difficult, since ancient material is often hidden in swampy places, at the bottom of rivers, and in the tundra. Often tusks are found along the banks of streams, lakes and ravines. To extract one artifact, the miner requires from several hours to several days of continuous excavation. Before taking the material they find, tusk hunters throw silver jewelry or colored balls into the dug hole as an offering to local spirits.
Today, almost all extraction of mammoth tusks in the vastness of Siberia is illegal, and about 90% of the resulting “jewels” ultimately end up in China, where it is highly revered ancient tradition ivory carvings. The rapid increase in demand is causing some concern among researchers because it is leading to the loss of valuable data on the animals that lived on this earth, whose tusks contain information about climate, food and environment. There may still be millions or more mammoth tusks trapped in Siberian permafrost, but finding them is becoming increasingly difficult every year. Currently, the cost of a kilogram of high-quality mammoth bones on the black market is about 25 thousand rubles, and in antique stores in China the price of one skillfully carved tusk can reach a million dollars.
Appeared in Yakutia the new kind"gold rush" Only prospectors at the local “mine” mine not for gold, but for mammoth tusks. It turns out that ancient bones are in great demand in many countries around the world, and potential buyers are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for these fossils. How is tusk mining done and is it legal?
A camp somewhere far away in the tundra, a fire, a tent and earth dug up length and breadth - this is what it is like, the harsh life of Yakut miners. Today, the extraction of mammoth ivory in the Republic of Sakha is very profitable business. For example, the weight of a woolly rhinoceros horn reaches 5 kg, and 1 kg of it costs at least 450 thousand rubles (price from resellers). The demand for such minerals is great. The bones of Siberian mammoths are taken to the USA, Germany, South Korea, Vietnam. But the largest flow goes to China. The Chinese are buying tusks right in the villages. This is how millionaires, and even dollar ones, appeared in remote Yakut villages. The miners claim that they work under a license. It can actually be obtained from local authorities. In essence, this is a subsoil use license. The problem is that this area is not regulated at all at the federal level.
Boris Kokotov, member of the Expert Council of the State Duma Committee on natural resources and environmental management says that the problem is that mammoth tusks are not included in the list of mineral resources. Therefore, the issue of treating mammoth tusks as minerals and the corresponding consequences of such an attitude cannot be fully felt by those who illegally mine them. Another question is how this production will affect the ecosystem. Miners use powerful hydrants and wash away a large number of permafrost. It often happens that these remains are found along the banks of water bodies. Naturally, such erosion leads to the collapse of the banks of reservoirs, and naturally, the hydrology of the reservoir changes.
It is estimated that between 140 and 185 thousand tons of mammoth bone are concentrated within the land part of the North Yakut bone province alone. And in total, up to 70% of its world reserves are concentrated in Yakutia. A virtually inexhaustible “gold mine” for tusk hunters...