Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization

by Graham Hancock

Once again, some mysterious factor appears to have been at work in bringing about these mass extinctions. With their woolly coats and thick skins, mammoths are generally considered adapted to cold weather, and we are not surprised to come across their remains in Siberia. Harder to explain is the fact that human beings perished alongside them,15 as well as many other animals that in no sense can be described as cold-adapted species: The northern Siberian plains supported vast numbers of rhinoceroses, antelope, horses, bison, and other herbivorous creatures, while a variety of carnivores, including the sabertooth cat, preyed upon them.… Like the mammoths, these other animals ranged to the extreme north of Siberia, to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and yet further north to the Lyakhov and New Siberian Islands, only a very short distance from the North Pole.16 Researchers have confirmed that of the thirty-four animal species living in Siberia prior to the catastrophes of the eleventh millennium BC – including Ossip’s mammoth, giant deer, cave hyena and cave lions – no less than twenty-eight were adapted only to temperate conditions.17 In this context, one of the most puzzling aspects of the extinctions, which runs quite contrary to what today’s geographical and climatic conditions lead us to expect, is that the farther north one goes, the more the mammoth and other remains increase in number.18 Indeed some of the New Siberian Islands, well within the Arctic Circle, were descr...