Mammoth Elephants and the Bible
Dateline, Wednesday evening, TV3 presented a brief item
about a mammoth elephant, which was found deep in the northern hemisphere,
where permafrost holds the land in an icy grip. As I recall, the corpse was
discovered in the
The assumption was
made, during the program, that the elephant was 11,000 years old and lived
contemporaneously with humans. This latter statement is verified by human
artefacts depicting mammoths (such as the Amerindian cave paintings), but the
former statement is based on the theory that there have been many Ice Ages. As
far as the evidence is concerned, there is proof that there was only one.
It is also assumed
that mammoths have become extinct, yet there have been sightings in the Eastern
Ural mountains and
The TV item showed
the preserved mammoth remains contained in a single block of frozen soil, with
the tusks poking out one end, then the scientists began their forensic work,
using hair-dryers, to slowly examine every detail of the block.
The mammoths have
long presented a mystery. It has been estimated that about 25,000 of these huge
creatures were killed by sudden freezing, or some disaster. One specimen, in
Berezovka, has been reported as still standing up, with undigested food still
in its mouth, but most specimens are mangled and broken.
The usual question
is “How did they die so quickly?” Was it a sudden drop in temperature? A flood?
How could the land be lush and green one day, supporting huge herds of
herbivores, then suddenly frozen and hostile the next?
One explanation is
called ‘Crustal Displacement’, a theory once advocated by Einstein. This theory
proposes that at various times in the past the ice caps have built up
irregularly, causing a sudden shift of the whole mantle, due to centrifugal
forces caused by the spin of the earth, at which time the whole crust, or outer
‘skin’ of the earth has moved a few degrees – like the skin of an orange
slipping without tearing.
The landmass which
was once nearer the equator and thus warmer, suddenly shifts to the pole and
freezes – so the theory goes.
Personally I cannot
accept this, because of two reasons. The first reason is because the Bible says
several times that the earth is “established or “fixed”, that is firmly
anchored. The second reason is because the Bible chronology does not allow
sufficient time for crustal displacement to occur, nor does it allow for more
than one Ice Age. If we follow the Bible, there is simply not enough time for
all the theories to happen.
However, if we
approach the mammoth question from the evolutionary point of view, we must
include vast ages of time, in which almost anything can happen, but the
Biblical perspective narrows the time-span down to a few thousand years. These
tow views are mutually antagonistic.
One Biblical approach to the mystery of the frozen mammoths involves the
global flood, described in Genesis. According to this account, water descended
from above the earth, and burst upwards from below the land. This upward-moving
source of water would have been warmer, perhaps also consisting of volcanic
steam and molten rock. In this way the oceans would have risen in temperature.
Now contrary to
what most people seem to think, the best way (or so I have read) to achieve an
Ice Age is not to cool the earth. All this would produce is a frozen earth. The
so-called ‘nuclear winter’, even if it were possible, would simply cause the
whole planet to chill out. The most likely way to produce an Ice Age is to warm
the oceans. This would produce greater evaporation, which would then
precipitate in the form of snow. Within a hundred or so years vast areas of the
colder regions of the earth would be blanketed in snow and ice and glaciers
would begin to flow.
As I see it, after
a century or so immediately after the (Biblical) global flood subsided, a rapid
Ice Age ensued, freezing the north and south poles and covering much of
Gradually the
oceans cooled again and the precipitation eased, while the sun’s warmth began
to have a greater effect, thawing the land, but leaving Siberia and northern
If we accept the
Biblical explanation for the death of the mammoths, we can logically answer the
question about their origin.
Originally God may
have created only one basic elephant, with the genetic potential to produce all
the different varieties we have recorded up to today. In the same way God could
have created a single pair of cats or dogs, from which we have bred some
amazing varieties, due to their inherent gene potential. This would have
reduced greatly the number of land animal pairs which Noah needed to house for
the duration of the flood, and it provides a logical explanation for the fact
that many similar types of animal can successfully interbreed.
But getting back to
the TV program, what we were told about the mammoths (and this is something I
think everyone will agree on) is that a huge number of strong, healthy
creatures were destroyed quickly and suddenly, along with their habitat. This
catastrophic event flies in the face of those scientists who maintain that the
history of the world has not been marked by any sudden changes. The frozen
mammoths are a testimony to past disasters, and possibly a warning to us today
not to become complacent.
If it has happened
once, it could happen again.