5 ms·
A Siberian mammoth tusk gold rush
- ofrzeta 7y agoRelated, more and better pics: https://www.boredpanda.com/mammoth-tusk-hunting-russia/ https://www.boredpanda.com/mammoth-tusk-hunting-russia/
- kabouseng 7y agoAnd copyright infringed.
- wooger 7y agoWired have the cheek to ask you to turn off your ad blocker 'to fund their journalism' too!
- trymas 7y agoArticle from original author: https://www.rferl.org/a/the-mammoth-pirates/27939865.html https://www.rferl.org/a/the-mammoth-pirates/27939865.html
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agoDisturbing destruction of archeology. Indirectly (?) funded by our insatiable lust for cheap Chinese products.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI don't see how "our" lust for cheap Chinese products is related to their demand for ivory trinkets.
- mirimir 7y agoIt makes pretty knife handles.
- ehecatl 7y agoAnd chess pieces: https://www.houseofstaunton.co.uk/chess-pieces/mammoth-ivory-chess-pieces/the-mammoth-ivory-collector-series-luxury-chess-pieces-4-4-king.html https://www.houseofstaunton.co.uk/chess-pieces/mammoth-ivory...
- mirimir 7y agoI guess. But they're just black and white. So do they dye and bleach them? Damn expensive, too.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoAnd inlays on furniture, firearms, some instruments, and anything else that's already expensive and made in part from wood.
- kirstenbirgit 7y agoThis is so disturbing. Soil that have been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years is just now thawing. Worrying.
- Permit 7y agoI think you’re off by an order of magnitude. Mammoths were around as recently as 4,000 years ago. For reference that’s about when the Egyptian pyramids were being built.
- tempguy9999 7y agoHis point was soil thawing, not the timespan of mammoths.
- ejolto 7y agoI think the GP meant "If the soil has been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years, how does it contain mammoths that lived < 10000 years ago". Either the permafrost is younger than "hundreds of thousands of years" or the mammoths are older than 4000 years. Mammoths lived from 5 million to 4000 years ago, so it could be either. Edit: after some research it looks like both are right. Some permafrost in Yukon formed 700 000 years ago, some permafrost formed during the last ice age 10 000 years ago, some formed in the little ice age 400-150 years ago. That's not a complete list but you get the point.
- lawlessone 7y ago> so it could be either. or both
- ejolto 7y agoYou're right, it's both.
- tempguy9999 7y agoIt's a good question. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost "In areas not overlain by ice, [permafrost] exists beneath a layer of soil, rock or sediment, which freezes and thaws annually and is called the "active layer". [...] Active layer thickness varies with the season, but is 0.3 to 4 meters thick (shallow along the Arctic coast; deep in southern Siberia and the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau)" So I guess the freeze/thaw may allow heavier object to sink in over time, and there may be rivers, earth movement (related to permafrost, or unrelated - like landslides- (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost#Landforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost#Landforms for examples), and other processes that deposit earth. I don't know though. BTW stunning picture of block of ice in permafrost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Permafrost_-_Massive_buried_ice_%28blue%29.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Permafrost_-_Massive_buri... It looks like the mcGuffin for a horror/sci-fi film.
- mirimir 7y agoThis has been going on for over a decade. And it's not just China. The ban on ivory is the driver.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoThe demand for ivory is the driver, the ban wouldn't be necessary if elephants weren't poached (and are being poached) to extinction.
- mirimir 7y agoYes, totally. But the driver for this is arguably the ban. From what I've heard, people weren't using much mammoth ivory before the ban. However, permafrost thawing due to climate change has certainly made it easier to dig up. It is sad, though, that the availability of mammoth ivory complicates enforcement of the ivory ban. Ideally, it could reduce demand for elephant etc ivory. I'm sure that C-14 dating would work, but it's still expensive.
- tjr225 7y ago> But the driver for this is arguably the ban. I would argue that the driver is shortsighted humans who create demand for both ivory and mammoth tusks.
- mirimir 7y agoWhat's shortsighted about using mammoth tusks? It's not like they contribute to climate change. Or that the mammoths are alive to need them. I mean, would you rather that they just rotted?
- tempguy9999 7y agoI've seen these pics before and have noted that, given tusks are teeth and have a large amount of phosphorus in them, surely these buried tusks must have extracted then locked up an enormous amount of bio-available phosphorus which must(?) have seriously limited that plant nutrient. Any thoughts from biologists?
- lawlessone 7y ago>Everything they left behind – mammoth skulls and bones – was consumed by the elements. that's a shame.
- bloogsy 7y agoGrim and disturbing for multiple reasons. It's deeply scary to me that the permafrost is melting like this and it also makes for uneasy reading to see that interesting archaeological finds are being sold off to make trinkets or simply left to deteriorate if they have no value. We're burning the world and then scrabbling around to sell the ashes.
- turk73 7y agoWhat did you expect from a bunch of drunk Russians?
- leguminous 7y agoThe article focuses on China, but people in America are buying some of this stuff, too. Some (mostly boutique) American guitar manufacturers offer mammoth ivory parts. It's kind of depressing how many ethically challenging materials are used in musical instruments and how little buyers seem to care about it. Or rather, how little buyers seem to care about the ethical problems--exotic (and often endangered) materials are seen as highly desirable.
- wooger 7y agoIt's almost as if to accumulate the wealth to afford a musical instrument made of exotic ivory parts (with no effect on sound) requires a certain lack of ethics in the first place.
- jolmg 7y agoThis reminds me of this tangentially related movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_(2009_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_(2009_film)