The Dead American Giants

For most of western civilization’s history, giant animals have always been exotic, alien, denizens of an almost mythical world. In the glory days of Rome coliseum-goers were awed by the sight of massive living creatures with tusks like siege weapons–elephants–battling against ferocious lions in events so bloody and so spectacular that their accounts remain in writing two thousand years later. I remember in my childhood reading books about Africa and being fascinated by the same traits–elephants, giraffes, Siberian tigers, all unlike any of the local wildlife in my native Montana.

The really interesting thing, though, is that it wasn’t always that way. Just twelve thousand years ago, the north american continent was swarming with giant animals to rival anything ever seen in a Roman coliseum. Great woolly mammoths roamed the northern reaches of the continent, heavier than modern Asian elephants, with great curved tusks sixteen feet long. Sabertooth tigers hunted the plains, preying on bison, deer, and even the mammoths–at over seven feet long and nearly 900 pounds, they were some of the heaviest cats to ever walk the earth.  Packs of dire wolves (canis dirus) hunted deer and giant elk in the forests, each one over five feet in length and weighing around 200 pounds (about the size of a modern English mastiff, and over twice the size of the average modern timber wolf).

And then the giant animals you wouldn’t expect. The giant ground sloth was larger than an African bull elephant, weighing in at over five tons and able to pull foliage from trees 17 feet and higher. Giant camels–yes, camels–twelve feet high. Armadillos the size of refrigerators. Beavers weighing 450 pounds and more. The Glyptodon, which mostly kept itself to South America, and looked a bit like a VW bug if VW bugs came equipped with shorty, stubby legs and long, mace-like tails tipped with bone spikes.

The one thing all of these creatures had in common as that they all died out over the same (relatively) brief period of time–12,000 to 10,000 BC, in what is now called the Quaternary extinction event. A few reasons have been put forward for this event, including climate change and large mammal epidemics, but the one that seems to have the most support is … drumroll … we did it. In a classic case of foreign species introduction, the extinction of dozens of north American species coincides with the arrival of the first humans in North America via the Bering land bridge. Surely, the giant animals must have thought, this hairless little ape poses no threat. Seconds later, the hairless ape and his friends threw their spears, and the giant animals came tumbling down.

Now, we’re several civilizations too late for any guilt and wringing of hands, so instead try to imagine yourself in the position of those first few migrating clans. The world would have been new and mystical, full of gods and hidden spirits. Something–religion, herd movement–drove you and your family north, always north, along a seemingly unending coastline. Generations pass over your long migration, children are born, old people die, perhaps passing down the stories of your long ago homeland, where it was warm, and mythic tales of disaster–perhaps a melting ice age flood–that drove you from it.

You pass herds of strange creatures with great singular horns protruding from their brows, and the greatest warriors in your tribe are those who manage to bring one down single-handedly. The horn of this beast, ground, is said to cure a number of ailments.

Finally, you reach a frigidly cold region where the sun almost never shines warmly and, suddenly, the land branches out to the east. Your tribe’s wise men know that you cannot continue into the cold forever. The shaman consults the spirits. You press on. You are at first terrified by enormous bears, 2500 pounds and more, with long, loping gaits and dagger-like teeth. There is no greater glory for a hunter than to kill one  of these, and the greatest men of your tribe wear their teeth on necklaces.

As you move south in this new land, you begin to see other fantastical creatures–great shaggy beasts with curving tusks and long trunks. You develop a new technology–the atlatl. With this piece of wood you can throw a spear accurately at ranges well over a hundred yards. When a tribe’s hunters all work together to bring down a great mammoth, the beast’s roars seem to echo into time itself, and by the light of the fire and the feast that night, the tribe’s old men immortalize the hunt with ochre paintings on cave walls.

This–the hunt, against what must have seemed vastly stacked odds, was not about resource depletion, species extinction, or any of the other concepts we’re so comfortable with now that we have tamed nature. This was about survival, and more than that, proving oneself worthy to live in a dangerous world. This was about glory. We may learn from the lessons of this age and steward today’s species wisely, but it might be useful sometimes to stop thinking about green power and conservation and imagine for a moment the light of fire on the wall, the smell of roasting meat, and somewhere out in the dark cold night, the terrifying and godlike scream of a sabertooth.