Side-view
photograph of the enigmatic Tiahuanaco elephant figurine (reproduced here on a
strictly non-commercial Free Use basis only; copyright holder currently unknown
to me, despite considerable efforts made to trace details)
They do say that
all good things come in threes. So, in the hope that you found interesting the
two previous hitherto-uninvestigated examples of putative cryptozoological
artefacts that I documented recently on ShukerNature (click here and here), there now follows a third one – and
this time hailing not from Africa but instead from
South
America.
Over the years,
there have been several well-publicised and often-republished accounts of
mysterious creatures allegedly sighted in various parts of the New World that supposedly
resembled the American mastodont Mammut americanum. This was a
very large, long-headed, long-tusked relative of modern-day elephants, but it
officially became extinct around 11,000 years ago.
Vintage
restoration of the American mastodont in life by Heinrich Harder (top) and
modern-day version (bottom) (public domain / © Dantheman9758/Wikipedia – CCBY-SA 3.0 licence)
None of these particular
reports, however, have withstood close cryptozoological scrutiny. But also on file
are a number of less familiar ones that may conceivably indicate – or not – the
late survival of mastodonts, or something quite like them. Of these latter
reports, there is one in particular that especially fascinates me, featuring as
it does an artefact that is very elegant but also very enigmatic – on account
of how little I have been able to discover concerning it. Consequently, I am
presenting herewith my investigation and findings concerning it, in the fervent
hope that bringing this remarkable item's very intriguing if decidedly abstruse
history to wider attention will assist in eliciting additional information.
The artefact in
question is a small black-ware pottery figurine of an instantly-recognisable
elephant, complete with a pair of large round flaring ears, four sturdy legs, a
downward-curving trunk, and a pair of short tusks. Yet it was unearthed at
Tiahuanaco (aka Tiwanaku), a pre-Columbian archaeological site near Lake
Titicaca in western Bolivia, South America, where all manner of items have been
found that originate from the once-mighty Tiahuanacan empire, which had existed
there from 300 AD to 1,000 AD.
Front-view
photograph of the enigmatic Tiahuanaco elephant figurine (reproduced here on a
strictly non-commercial Free Use basis only; copyright holder currently unknown
to me, despite considerable efforts made to trace details)
I first learnt
of this figurine from an online Russian forum called Laiforum, one of
whose members (with the user name Mehanoid) had posted there on 15 April 2016 an excellent side-view photograph of it
with a link to a Russian video on YouTube. When I accessed this video (currently still online - click here to view it),
I discovered that it had been uploaded on 7 April 2016 by an association called
ProtoHistory, and was a filmed lecture given by Russian historian Andrey Zhukov
to publicise his new book, Secrets of Ancient America (2016).
Just a few
seconds after the first 27 minutes of the video have played, two photos of the
elephant figurine are briefly screened. One is the side-view picture posted on Laiforum,
the other is a front-view shot. Moreover, the side-view picture is then
re-screened but this time revealing that it is actually part of a page from
what appears to be an article dealing with it, written in Spanish. Using a screen-shot
of this, I have been able to confirm that it is one of at least two pages
written in Spanish and illustrated with several other animal-themed Tiahuanacan
black-ware pottery figurines.
Screenshot
of the two above-noted pages from the unsourced Spanish article (reproduced
here on a strictly non-commercial Free Use basis only; copyright holder
currently unknown to me, despite considerable efforts made to trace details)
However, I have
not succeeded so far in obtaining any additional details concerning the article
itself – no author name, article title, periodical title, or date of
publication. Nevertheless, the text present just on these two pages is nothing
if not intriguing, because of the very unusual identity that is being
considered there in relation to the Tiahuanaco elephant figurine.
Prior to its
connection to North America when the isthmus of Panama was formed
around 3 million years ago, South America had been an
island continent for millions of years, just like Australia. And, again
just like Australia, during that
vast time period its mammalian contingent had given rise to several entirely
new, unique lineages, especially among its ungulates. But due to convergent
evolution, outwardly they came to look very like the respective ungulates
elsewhere in the world whose ecological niches they were occupying in South America. Chief among
these Neotropical impersonators were the horse-like and camel-like litopterns,
plus the ox-like and hippopotamus-like notoungulates.
Less familiar
but no less distinctive, however, were the pyrotheres ('fire beasts', so-named
because the first documented fossil specimens had been excavated from an
ancient volcanic ashfall). In their most famous representative, Pyrotherium
romeroi of Argentina, the nasal trunk, long head, general body shape, and
overall size (up to 10 ft long and
standing 5 ft at the
shoulder) rendered it more than a little like a mastodont, or even a very big
tapir - both groups, incidentally, actually occurring first in North America,
not reaching South America prior to the isthmus of Panama, thus enabling
pyrotheres to occupy their niches here.
Modern
restoration of the likely appearance in life of Pyrotherium romeroi (©
DiBGD/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)
Moreover,
certain reconstructions of their likely appearance in life have given various
large pyrotheres a somewhat pachydermesque form, complete with large ears,
sizeable tusks, and a fairy long trunk. Could it be, therefore, as speculated
in the Spanish article containing its two photos, that the Tiahuanaco elephant
figurine was actually not an elephant at all but instead a late-surviving
pyrothere?
Unfortunately,
whereas certain litopterns and notoungulates are indeed known from documented fossil
remains to have survived to at least as recently as the Pleistocene's close
just over 11,000 years ago, the youngest pyrothere fossils currently on record
are over 20 million years old, dating back to the Oligocene. Moreover, even the
most proboscidean-inspired pyrothere restorations are still far less
elephant-like and much more mastodont-like than the Tiahuanacan figurine, so it
seems prudent to assume that the latter does indeed represent an elephant
rather than a pyrothere.
Modern
restoration of the likely appearance in life of Astrapotherium (© Dmitry
Bogdanov/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)
Worth noting
here, incidentally, is that South America was once home to yet another
taxonomic group of vaguely proboscidean ungulates – the astrapotheres
('lightning beasts'), which ultimately died out around 12 million years ago
during the mid-Miocene epoch.
Their most
famous representative was Astrapotherium, which was slightly smaller
than the pyrothere Pyrotherium, but, as with the latter beast, may have
looked somewhat mastodont-like or even tapir-reminiscent in life, courtesy of
its elongated head, nasal trunk, and tusks (very long in certain other
astrapotheres, particularly Colombia's snorkel-trunked, short-legged,
long-bodied Granastropotherium snorki). However, its ears were only
small, and it certainly would not have resembled the mystifying Tiahuanaco
elephant figurine.
Modern
restoration of the likely appearance in life of Granastropotherium snorki
(© Rextron/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)
Of course,
assuming that the latter figurine is indeed a depiction of a true elephant (and
it certainly looks like one, albeit a somewhat short-trunked individual), as
opposed to a pyrothere, astropothere, or mastodont, the inevitable question
requiring an answer is how can its origin at Tiahuanaco be explained?
Might it simply be
a recently-created fake, therefore, as has already been postulated by many
authors with regard to the depictions of comparably out-of-place and/or
anachronistic animals depicted upon the highly controversial Ica stones of Peru
and via the equally contentious Acámbaro figurines of Mexico? Or could its
existence constitute evidence of pre-Columbian trading and visitations by
Libyans and other travellers from the Old World, as has been
repeatedly proposed down through the years by a number of researchers and
chroniclers?
Clearly, the
very perplexing Tiahuanaco elephant figurine deserves a detailed study, and I would be very
grateful to any readers who can offer me further information concerning it,
including its current whereabouts plus the name and date of the periodical in
which the Spanish article discussing it appeared.
This
ShukerNature blog article is excerpted from my newly-published mega-book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.
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