Discovering the Mammoth: A Tale of Giants, Unicorns, Ivory, and the Birth of a New Science
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.71 (928 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1681774240 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 264 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-10-19 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
McKay has a Master’s in History from the University of Washington. Visit him at mammothtalesspot. A technical writer by trade, he is the "Mammoth Guy" by vocation, and his remarkable archival research, lively wit and passion for extinct proboscideans is well known to the scientific community. John J. . He lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where people appreciate a good mammoth
McKay’s story is not about ancient creatures, but about how humans approach the world’s mysteries.” - Publishers Weekly. “As John McKay vividly relates, the scientific saga of the mammoth began in the seventeenth century, when the evocative remains became pivotal to the evolution of vertebrate palaeontology.” - Nature“McKay masterfully weaves an intricate story of the events, politics, people, and scientific development associated with the ‘rediscovery’ of mammoths.” - Booklist“A well-organized history of science
How did Enlightenment thinkers overcome centuries of myth and misunderstanding to reconstruct an unknown animal? The journey to unravel that puzzle begins in the 1690s with the arrival of new type of ivory on the European market bearing the exotic name "mammoth." It ends during the Napoleonic Wars with the first recovery of a frozen mammoth. The path to figuring out the mammoth was traveled by merchants, diplomats, missionaries, cranky doctors, collectors of natural wonders, Swedish POWs, Peter the Great, Ben Franklin, the inventor of hot chocolate, and even one pirate. But how do you figure out what a mammoth is if you have no concept of extinction, ice ages, or fossils? Long after the last mammoth died and was no longer part of the human diet, it still played a role in human life. 8 pages of color illustrations. McKay brings together dozens of original documents and illustrations, some ignored for centuries, to show how this odd assortment of characters solved the mystery of the mammoth and, in doing so, created the science of paleontology. Cultures around the world interpreted the remains of mammoths through the lens of their own worldview and mythology. When the ancient Greeks saw deposits of giant fossils, they