Sunday, October 11, 2009

James Churchward & Woolly Mammoths

The recent news showing the frozen baby woolly mammoth reminded me that my great-grandfather's scrapbooks had articles about woolly mammoths.

In the collection of newspaper clippings that I have labeled as "Scrapbook 2", there are no less than five pages with articles on mammoths. I remember seeing a pamphlet where a private New York society club procured, shipped, prepared and served meat from a mammoth at a dinner. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find the pamphlet, but the fact that James Churchward had this brochure and collected the articles has me almost convinced that perhaps he attended this gala and actually consumed some of the ancient cadaver.





Click on picture for larger version.
Using the order in which they were scanned, the first was a 'photograph' of a man standing next to a 'mammoth' leg.





The second were comparison drawings of ancient mammoths, mastadons and today's elephants.





The next article shows a shovel-tusked Mastadon.
Click on picture for larger version.






Click on image for complete picture.
The next pertinent article was the continuation of the story behind the Buriat woman named Liuba Lattik (pictured left) that served woolly mammoth in her Inn.






Clink on image for complete picture.
This is the article where Russian Inspector Okuntsoff investigated a woman selling 'whale steaks' in far away Siberia. The 'whale steaks' turned out to be from a woolly mammoth that had been dead for thousands of years.



Whether or not James Churchward actually ate ancient mastadon or woolly mammoth meat, I'll probably never know. He was interested in pachyderms and maybe the addition of these scanned images will fuel further debate on whether or not modern man has used the opportunity to taste this ancient culinary oddity.

Jack Churchward
Clearwater, Florida