What if American Prehistoric Megafauna survived? Pt. 1: Mastodon

 "What if"

Megafauna survived to modern times in North America (primarily USA)

Ah, the megafauna of the Ice Age, some of the most fascinating and even terrifying creatures that not only roamed, but also shared the Earth with us in recent times.  Then, suddenly, they died off, leaving us pretty clueless and digging up their bones to learn about and marvel at them.

However, when one learns about this wonderful animals, we sometimes ask these questions:


What if they did survived?

What if they didn't died out and survived along up to historical or even modern times?

What would the ecology would be like?

What would our relationship with the animals would be like?

What kind of impact would they have on our view of the world?


In this post series, I will be diving into what would happen if, somehow, the 13 Ice Age animals I have selected have survived whatever wiped them and have been able to survive to our times.

I will talk about the general facts of these animals, the reasons of why they went extinct, how they might've survived, their ecology, their relationship with and cultural effects on us (Native Tribes, European Colonies, and American History), and maybe their affects on the scientific views of the time.

=Alternate History (per species)=
-Intro & basics
-reasons for extinctions
-possibilities of surviving
-Ecological effects
-Native tribes
-European colonies
-American History
-Alternate scientific views


In this first of this series, I will be discussing about one of the more famous of the ice age giants.....

Mastodons

Perhaps one of the most popular animals when one thinks about the ice age is the Mastodon.

NO, not the band!

The American Mastodon (Mammut americianum), the other hairy elephant of Ice Age North America.
Disclaimer: There more than one species of mastodon on the Americas, but for the sole purpose of this idea, I will focus on the American Mastodon.

(newsdinosaur.com)

Here are some fast facts on the Mastodon:

• The American Mastodon had a range from Alaska to Honduras.
• It resembles a woolly mammoth in appearance (though not too closely related), thanks with it having a shaggy coat of fur.
• However, compared to a mammoth, it was more heavily muscled, had shorter legs, and it's body was longer.  One could say that it looked more like an Asian elephant with hair and long tusks.
• It stood at the height between 7 to 9 feet tall, weighing in between 8 to 12 tons, much like modern elephants. 
• It is primarily a browser, (with occasional grazing only during times of scarcity), mostly browsing in spruce forests in family groups (much like modern elephants).
• Mastodons have tusks that can occasionally reach a length of 15 feet (with males having larger and more curved tusks than the females), though not as dramatically curved as the mammoths.
• The word 'Mastodon' means "nipple teeth", more the structure of it's teeth that is designed chew on leaves, twigs, and branches.
• Due to them not colonizing South America, scientists believe that it is most likely due to that the mastodons are completely specialized in a particular plant that is only in North America (however, I believe that it is also because of competition with the stegomastodons or gomphotheres that roamed South America at the same time)
• It is believed that, like modern day elephants, females would live together in small family groups lead by a matriarch, whereas males would either live alone or in small bachelor groups.

Woolly Mammoth vs Mastodon
(brantfordexpositor.ca)

One of the things that we must discuss before speculating about what what if Mastodons survived to today is to understand what exactly wiped out the mastodon in the first place.  As any explanation for the extinction of ice age megafauna, this is one that is not a open-and-shut case.  The best and widely-accepted theory is that climate change changed the availability of spruce forests, and their extinction has been finalized with the over-hunting by early native americans.

Apparently, the best way to make sure that the mastodon would survive to the present day or to even historic times is that their favorite forests are still around and the over-hunting by humans.  Studies have shown that while it's favorite forests have reduced in range, the mastodon can adapt to that.

So, over-hunting by humans is definitely something that needs to go.

In order for that tradition to end, I would probably say that there need to be 50 year - 1 century absence needed to erase human hunting practices on mastodon.  How this could be possible is that either the mastodons disappear for a while and resurface after all of that OR that a disease would probably need to wipe out a bunch of tribes so that they would take a long time to pick themselves back up and probably drop mastodon hunting practices because they are not useful.  And as history has shown that when Native Americans were hit with European diseases, it killed off a lot of their tribes and with the absence of these tribes, the bison populations boomed like crazy, bringing in the large herds that have been seen in the 1800's.  It's reasonable to think that the same would happen here.

Well, those are my ideas on how it could anyway.  Now let's speculate.

(bbc.co.uk)

With the mastodon surviving, I would say that the possible historical-modern ranges would be at the southern, Great Lakes region, and eastern United States, since these forested areas are the range where mastodon fossils are found and the forests that mastodons like are in those general areas.  With the available plants and the weather, it is quite possible that the mastodons will have seasonal migrations to other regions.

Their ecological niches would be the top browsers of those regions, over-towering the moose and possible keep trees trimmed to make the forest floor more open for other plants species.  And possibly, much like the African elephants in the savannas, they might make more clearings in forests by consuming saplings and pushing over large trees.  Their presence would be needed for a more prosperous life for certain species of plants, such as the wild squash.

Ranges of Columbian Mammoths and American Mastodon in Ice Age
(medium.com)

With the native americans loosing their mastodon hunting practices, how would their views on the mastodon be like?

Well, while they might have stories about hunting the mastodon, they would still probably go after them in times of scarce resources and extremes (especially since those tribes would have agriculture by then).  They might hunt them to have some meat stored for winter and would have occasional scavenged them.  But while they would hunted them, the mastodons would've been revered and respected by Native americans, much like the moose and bison were respected as well.

But, even if it would revered and respected, it would become a burden to the native tribes, just like how elephants in both Africa and Asia are in conflict with humans.  Basically, they would raid their crops and bulls that are in musth (an annual time that an elephant bull's testosterone levels go up and the animal become extremely aggressive, like rut in deer bucks) would attack people.

Along with meat, the native tribes would use the mastodon's body for other things as well.  They would use their hides for clothes/tents, fat for oils, bones for fuel, and ivory for tools and jewelry.

While there would be issues between the native tribes and mastodons for generations, they might be in peace with each other and be okay with.  However, from the other side of the Atlantic, lies a people that will be the one to command the animal's destiny when they arrive......

Mastodon near a Puritan Colony
(Illustrated and Permissioned by TyrannoNinja from DeviantArt)

When systematic European colonization of the Americas begun in 1492, it brought the mastodon in contact and, later, conflict, with the Europeans.  When Europeans come back to contact with the mastodon (the first would be the Spanish in the southern states, then the British and French in the Eastern and Great Lakes states), they would first tell their European brethren about them and there will be naturalists and early zoologists would be interested in this new species of elephant.  And, on the topic of the European scientific interest of the mastodon, it would be possible that the mastodon would not be called a "Mastodon".  They got that name because of their teeth that were discovered in our timeline, spiky and nippy instead of flat and grind like a modern elephant (Mastodon means "Nipple Tooth").  Instead, I believe it would most likely be called the "Mammut", which is the predecessor name of "Mammoth".  The origin of the name came from the what the natives of Siberia call the frozen carcasses of woolly mammoths they've found in the permafrost.  So, I would imagine that the mastodon would be commonly called the "American Elephant", "Atlantic Elephant", "Eastern Elephant" (will be discussed why in a later article), or, incorrectly, the"American Mammoth".

While the scientists would see the mastodon as a scientific curiosity, european colonists would find them to be annoyingly dangerous pests; primarily for they would be raiding crops, pillaging storages in winter, musth issues from the bulls.  I could imagine that those early colonists, like the pilgrims, would fine to be nightmares, like the horrifying giants in old european fairytales.  What would make them more dangerous was that the muskets that they would have might be great for deer and smaller game, but would be useless for fighting or killing off a fully-grown mastodon (but it might scare it or make it really mad).  There probably be tales and songs about a mastodon or a whole herd terrorizing these colonies.

While the mastodons might harass the colonists, karma would perhaps hit them back hard because like elephants, mastodons possess ivory tusks and, since the ivory trade has been around since the 14th century, some or a lot of the colonists would probably try to hunt the mastodons for their ivory to get into the ivory trade (along with possibly hunting for meat for desperate times).  And as the centuries move on, weapons improve, and populations grow, the persecution of the mastodon will grow immensely for their ivory (possibly making America a big exporter of ivory), to protect their crops, and for sportsmanship.  As this goes on, there would no doubt be regional extinctions throughout the mastodon's range and there will be fewer places where the mastodon could be safe and be able to roam.  One of the few places where I think the mastodon would be able to be at is in the Southern states , and/or the Great Lakes states, because both regions still have large areas where large herbivores could still roam in, though in small numbers though.  And, with the persecution for their ivory, I could imagine that populations of mastodons would loose the genes for tusks or large ones, making the population becoming tusk-less or having very small tusks (very much as it is happening in elephants in Africa and Asia).  Along with hunting, habitat destruction would definitely diminish their numbers, since it would limit their food resources.

However, there are some areas that the mastodons might be able to be at that they haven't been to in the fossil record and that would be at Isle Royale in Lake Superior and the island of Cuba south of Florida.  I would theorize that the mastodons would be there because their relatives (mammoths and elephants) have swam towards islands and established themselves like that, even becoming dwarves themselves.  So, I could imagine that mastodons would swim (or in the case of Isle Royale during winter, walk there on the ice) to those islands and establish populations there.  Perhaps Christopher Columbus would see and report mastodons when he arrives there in 1492.  On Isle Royale in Lake Superior, the island is large enough to support from 500 to 2500 moose, so it would be able to support a fair amount of mastodons there as well, especially since it would reach browsing heights that moose couldn't. 

While there would be people hunting them for their ivory or to protect their crops, I can also imagine that there would be people that would try to 'domesticate' them, just like how we have with elephants.

If mastodons were anything like elephants in the psychological level, I would say that they would be able to be 'domesticated' and trained like elephants.  But, since there would most likely be no history of them being tamed and trained throughout their history, I would imagine that they probably be considered untrainable or poor animals to train (much like how African elephants are seen).  But, if they could be able to tame mastodons (probably by hiring mahouts and elephant tamers from Asia), they would either make them perform for circuses or make them work in planation farms or logging industries.  It could be possible that in the pre-French-and-Indian War days, the tamed mastodon would be seen as the 'organic tractor' of the day, much as the tamed elephants are seen as the village tractors in Asian villages.

There is an interesting possibility for the mastodon would be that it might actually become the symbol of this alternate timeline's Republican Party, instead of the elephant.  In our timeline, the elephant became the party's symbol because  in 1860, the elephant was used as a symbol of  power and strength during Lincoln's election campaign in an Illinois newspaper (though it is debatable).  Then, a man named Thomas Nast illustrated it in a magazine in 1874.  In this context, I can definitely imagine that the mastodon would taking that image instead of a regular elephant, since an mastodon would the same symbol of power as an elephant is.  Also, with the possibly of mastodons be tamed used for hard labor, it would make a positive image of the republican party as hard workers for the community.

Would this image be of a Republican Mastodon instead of Elephant?
(Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

I can actually imagine during political or election-related parades, a tamed mastodon would be walking down the road wearing the party's flag or the star-spangled banner.  And maybe, just maybe, this image of the mastodon might actually be able to help preserve it's species, much as how the bald eagle's role as a national bird helped it become preserved as well.




Up Next Soon:  The Mammoths

References

 "About The Project: Overview". The Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale. Retrieved April 11, 2015.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1525/aa.1934.36.1.02a00060/asset/aa.1934.36.1.02a00060.pdf;jsessionid=CCA26D870A3D865B5ED9920FDD67F2D2.f01t01?v=1&t=jayakcke&s=ba4d8566ef77851891e70c7616a36b3d41049a86

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/american-elephant-myths.html

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.03163/epdf

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/why-democrats-are-donkeys-republicans-are-elephants-artsy/index.html

Mann, C. C. (2009). Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491. Simon and Schuster.

https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/endangered_species/elephants/asian_elephants/areas/issues/elephant_human_conflict/

https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/50675026/j.1365-3008.2000.00092.x20161202-17108-1te3i2m.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DAfrican_elephants_and_humans_in_conflict.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20191229%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20191229T034905Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=e7c530dd3ab0cf2dd123f076d97af1e7a43bfbff4410e5de3ebea6b2adec1e57

https://www.thoughtco.com/ivory-trade-in-africa-43350

https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-republican-and-democratic-parties-get-their-animal-symbols