Chapter 1: Introduction and background information
At the 26th of November 2001 paleontologist Dr. Gusel Danukalova, Cenozoic Stratigraphy Laboratory, Institute of Geology, Ufa Scientific Center, Academy of Sciences, at Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia, in the southern Ural Mountains, asked me in her e-mail letter: „Why have your materials not been published in the volume of the 1st international congress ‚The World of Elephants“?
In this volume I would like to answer now this question, as far as this is possible. It was like this:
The Organising Secretariat of the Congress “The World of Elephants” in Rome, Italy, wrote to me at the beginning of the year 2001 or a little sooner and invited me to attend The World of Elephants, 1st International Congress, in Rome, October 16th-20th 2001. It also asked me to prepare talks (articles). That is, talks, which I would hold then at this 1st International Congress in Rome. These talks would then also be published in the book, The World of Elephants. Proceedings of the 1st International Congress.
I prepared then two talks (articles) and sent them to the Organising Secretariat of the Congress ‘The World of Elephants” in Rome, to Silvia Valbonesi.
The first talk was entitled “Southern Mammoth, Climate, and Nutrition”. This talk I wanted to give on Wednesday, October 17th, 2001, at the Oral Session B: Pliocene and early Pleistocene sites with Proboscidean remains”. Jeheskel (Hezy) Shoshani", Department of Biological Sciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA, was its chairman. This talk is about the first mammoths entering Eurasia from Africa, the ecology and nutrition of the Southern Mammoth (Southern Elephant) at the Early Pleistocene.
The second talk, which I wanted to give at this congress „The World of Elephants“ in Rome, has the title, “Mammoth Fauna, Climate, Plant-Cover and Nutrition”. I wanted to give there on Friday, October 19th 2001, at the Oral Session B4: The Late Pleistocene Elephants, Mammoths and Mastodonts: sites and environment, Part 3. Megafaunal extinction, with emphasis on Elephants, Mammoths and Mastodonts. Chair: G. Ficcarelli and A.J. Stuart. This talk is about the Woolly Mammoth at the Late Pleistocene and its nutrition.
On the 19th of March 2001, Jeheskel (Hezy) Shoshani then sent me an e-mail. In it he asked me to submit still another talk (article). I should also hold it at his session, at the 7th of October, of which he was the chairman.
So I prepared a third talk (article). It has the title “The Southern Mammoth and the Bering Land Bridge” and sent it to the Organising Secretariat of the Congress “The World of Elephants” at Rome. It deals with Eurasia’s Southern Mammoth (Southern Elephant), its adaptation to a warm climate, and the problems, which it would face then, if it tried to cross the Bering Land Bridge at the height of an Ice Age, when sea level was more then 100 meters lower than now.
Some time later, Silvia Valbonesi wrote to me on behalf of the Organising Secretariat of the Congress “The World of Elephants”, in Rome, that all the talks (articles), which had been sent there, were of a high quality.
A few months later, Silvia Valbonesi wrote me another e-mail. She informed me in it on behalf of the Organising Committee, that all three talks (articles), which I had submitted to the Organising Committee in Rome, had been rejected. This meant, that I was not allowed to hold these three talks at the Congress “The World of Elephants” in Rome, on Wednesday the 17th of October and on Friday the 19th of October 2001.
I then sent an e-mail to Silvia Valbonesi, asking her, why the Organising Committee had rejected all of my three talks? Because I wanted to find out: What was the reason? Why have they done this? - But I have not received any reply on this. They have not given me any reason for this at all until now. I am still waiting for an answer.
The Scientific Committee of The World of Elephants 1st International Congress in Rome, Italy, from the 16th-20th of October 2001 was made up of the following persons:
L. Agenbroad, Department of Geology, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, USA
A.P. Anzidei, Ministero per I Beini e le Attività Culturali, Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma.
O. Bar-Yosef, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, USA
G. Bosinski, Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Universität Köln, Germany
J. Cinq-Mars, Canadian Museum of Civilisation, Hull, Canada
N. Conard, Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Universität Tübingen, Germany
C. Gamble, Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK
S. Gaudzinski, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Neuwied, Germany
G. Haynes, Anthropology Department, University of Nevada, Reno, USA
Th. van Kolfschoten , Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, The Netherlands
A. Lister, Department of Biology, University College, London, UK
M. Otte, Secrétaire général du XIV Congrès UISPP, Université de Liège, Belgium
C. Peretto, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Italy
M. Piperno, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità, Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Italy
W. Roebroeks, Institute of Prehistory, Leiden University, The Netherlands
B. Sala, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Italy
M. Santonja, Museo de Salamanca, Spain
J. Shoshani, Department of Biological Sciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA
A.N. Tikhonov, Zoological Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia
E. Turner, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Neuwied, Germany
I have put now these three talks (articles) into this file of my new homepage www.hanskrause.de, entitled “Mammoth Fauna 10: The World of Elephants”. In them I have only changed the letter-type of the headings of the different chapters and paragraphs from Times New Roman to Arial. And I have put the headings into a separate line, so that it will be easier to read the text. And I have replaced here my old Internet address with my new one. In this way I want to enable all the scientists, who attended the Congress “The World of Elephants” in Rome from the 16th to 20th 2001, to read them, to evaluate the reasons and the evidence for themselves. And in this way I would also like to answer the question, which Gusel Danukalova at Ufa, in the Southern Ural Mountains, has asked my on the 26th of November 2001: “Why have your materials not been published in the volume of the 1st international congress ‘The world of Elephants’”?
It might be, because some persons find it hard, to admit their mistakes, especially, if they have to do this openly, at an international conference. Some of them might find it hard to admit, that their assumed adaptation of the mammoth to an arctic climate is not science, only science fiction.
Reconstruction of the Steppe elephant (Mammuthus trogontherii). From: W. von Königswald, Die Säugetiere des süddeutschen Pleistozäns, in: Urgeschichte in Baden-Württemberg, H. Müller-Beck (Hrg.), (1989:188) Fig. 93.