The politics of Mastodon

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All the material provided here will be supplemental to that provided in class. I will use this venue to provide some more in depth information, to provide links to research papers and other items of interest. Important notices about the class will always be posted on the main Bio1B website.

If you read any foreign press it is easy to find out what the rest of the world thinks of America. Whether people love America or, let's just say, 'less-than-love' America, I think the one thing they would all agree on is that America, as a nation, has no small amount of self esteem.

So it is perhaps surpising to look back a couple of hundred years, to the period shortly after the American Revolution, when the world had a very different opinion of America.

From the Wikipedia entry on the French naturalist Comte de Buffon:
'Besides his many brilliant insights he is also known for expounding the theory that nature in the New World was inferior to that of Eurasia. He argued that the Americas were lacking in large and powerful creatures, and that even the people were far less virile than their European counter parts. He ascribed this to the marsh odours and dense forests of the continent.'

In this context the discovery of a Mastodon near Newburgh, N.Y. in 1801 had both scientific and political implications. Although this was not the first Mastodon to be discovered in America this one was excavated by Charles Willson Peale and his son Rembrandt (who did the drawing above) who were friends with Thomas Jefferson.

From the Treasures of the American Philosophical Society entry on Peale's Mastodon.
'The mastodon was proof that America could and would sustain large and vigorous life forms, perhaps even larger and more vigorous than Europe. Best of all, it was clear that the mastodon was unique to North America, a symbol of the antiquity of our continent and exemplar of the new nation. Jefferson may well have had the Peales' mastodon in mind when he enjoined Lewis and Clark to scour the western landscape for mastodons, living or dead.'