The World Before the Deluge

by Louis Figuier

The aboriginal natives of North America called the Mastodon the father of the ox. A French officer named Fabri wrote thus to Buffon in 1748. The natives of Canada and Louisiana, where these remains are abundant, speak of the Mastodon as a fantastic creature which mingles in all their traditions and in their ancient national songs. Here is one of these songs, which Fabri heard in Canada: “When the great Manitou descended to the earth, in order to satisfy himself that the creatures he had created were happy, he interrogated all the animals. The bison replied that he would be quite contented with his fate in the grassy meadows, where the grass reached his belly, if he were not also compelled to keep his eyes constantly turned towards the mountains to catch the first sight of the father of oxen, as he descended, with fury, to devour him and his companions.”

The Cheyenne Indians have a tradition that these great animals lived in former times, conjointly with a race of men whose size was proportionate to their own, but that the Great Being destroyed both by repeated strokes of his terrible thunderbolts.

The native Indians of Virginia had another legend. As these gigantic Elephants destroyed all other animals specially created to supply the wants of the Indians, God, the thunderer, destroyed them; a single one only succeeded in escaping. It was “the great male, which presented its head to the thunderbolts and shook them off as they fell; but being at length wounded in the side, he took to flight towards the great lakes, where he remains hidden to this day.” All these simple fictions prove, at least, that the Mastodon has lived upon the earth at some not very distant period. We shall see, in fact, that it was contemporaneous with the Mammoth, which, it is now supposed, may have been co-existent with the earlier races of mankind, or only preceded a little the appearance of man.

Buffon, as we have said, gave to this great fossil animal the name of the Elephant of the Ohio; it has also been called the Mammoth of the Ohio. In England it was received with astonishment. Dr. Hunter showed clearly enough, from the thigh-bone and the teeth, that it was no Elephant; but having heard of the existence of the Siberian Mammoth, he at once came to the conclusion that they were bones of that animal. He then declared the teeth to be carnivorous, and the idea of a carnivorous elephant became one of the wonders of the day. Cuvier at once dissipated the clouds of doubt which surrounded the subject, pointing out the osteological differences between the several species, and giving to the American animal the appropriate name of Mastodon (from μαστος, a teat, and οδους, a tooth), or teat-like-toothed animal.

Many bones of the Mastodon have been found in America since that time, but remains are rarely met with in Europe, except as fragments—as the portion of a jaw-bone discovered in the Red Crag near Norwich, which Professor Owen has named Mastodon angustidens. It was even thought, for a long time, with Cuvier, that the Mastodon belonged exclusively to the New World; but the discovery of many of the bones mixed with those of the Mammoth, (Elephas primigenius) has dispelled that opinion. Bones of Mastodon have been found in great numbers in the Val d’Arno. In 1858 a magnificent skeleton was discovered at Turin.

The form of the teeth of the Mastodon shows that it fed, like the Elephant, on the roots and succulent parts of vegetables; and this is confirmed by the curious discovery made in America by Barton. It lived, no doubt, on the banks of rivers and on moist and marshy lands. Besides the great Mastodon of which we have spoken, there existed a Mastodon one-third smaller than the Elephant, and which inhabited nearly all Europe.

There are some curious historical facts in connection with the remains of the Mastodon which ought not to be passed over in silence. On the 11th of January, 1613, the workmen in a sand-pit situated near the Castle of Chaumont, in Dauphiny, between the cities of Montricourt and Saint-Antoine, on the left bank of the Rhône, found some bones, many of which were broken up by them. These bones belonged to some great fossil Mammal, but the existence of such animals was at that time wholly unknown. Informed of the discovery, a country surgeon named Mazuyer purchased the bones, and gave out that he had himself discovered them in a tomb, thirty feet long by fifteen broad, built of bricks, upon which he found the inscription Teutobocchus Rex. He added that, in the same tomb, he found half a hundred medals bearing the effigy of Marius. This Teutobocchus was a barbarian king, who invaded Gaul at the head of the Cimbri, and who was vanquished near Aquæ Sextiæ (Aix in Provence) by Marius, who carried him to Rome to grace his triumphal procession. In the notice which he published in confirmation of this story, Mazuyer reminded the public that, according to the testimony of Roman authors, the head of the Teuton king exceeded in dimensions all the trophies borne upon the lances in the triumph. The skeleton which he exhibited was five-and-twenty feet in length and ten broad.

Mazuyer showed the skeleton of the pretended Teutobocchus in all the cities of France and Germany, and also to Louis XIII., who took great interest in contemplating this marvel. It gave rise to a long controversy, or rather an interminable dispute, in which the anatomist Riolan distinguished himself—arguing against Habicot, a physician, whose name is all but forgotten. Riolan attempted to prove that the bones of the pretended king were those of an Elephant. Numerous pamphlets were exchanged by the two adversaries, in support of their respective opinions. We learn also from Gassendi, that a Jesuit of Tournon, named Jacques Tissot, was the author of the notice published by Mazuyer. Gassendi also proves that the pretended medals of Marius were forgeries, on the ground that they bore Gothic characters. It seems very strange that these bones, which are still preserved in the cases of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, where anybody may see them, should ever have been mistaken, for a single moment, for human remains. The skeleton of Teutobocchus remained at Bordeaux till 1832, when it was sent to the Museum of Natural History in Paris, where M. de Blainville declared that it belonged to a Mastodon.