Fire up your imagination, and buckle your seat belt. Archaeologist Breck Parkman is sweeping us back 18,000 years to the peak of the last Ice Age.
Deep winter had frozen so much ocean water into glaciers that sea levels dropped by 400 feet. The “California Serengeti,” as Parkman christened it, stretched from Monterey to Mendocino. This vast fertile plain, thatched with grasses and tree-lined streams, “was probably the most spectacular place in the world for wildlife. Think of thousands of animals moving together, living together, feeding together, sometimes feeding on each other. It would have blown our minds.”
Some of the beasts were recognizable ancestors of contemporary animals—but super-sized. The Giant Beaver stood about five feet tall on its hind legs; the Giant Sloth measured nine feet long and weighed up to 1,500 pounds. The 4,000-pound Longhorn Bison–“as big as a Volkswagen or even bigger,” Parkman observes—sported horns that spanned seven feet from tip to tip. In wet seasons the hungry herbivores grazed in inland valleys. But when grass and sedge dried in the summer heat, they migrated to the fog-moistened coastal plains.
Fast and ferocious predators posed a constant threat. With a lightning pounce, a saber-toothed cat could sink its curved, eleven-inch canine teeth into the throat of its prey. The short-faced bear, twelve feet tall and 1,500 pounds, loped over large distances on its powerful hind legs. What did it eat? “Anything it desired,” Parkman quips.
Towering above these “megafauna” were the Columbian Mammoths, named for Christopher Columbus in 1857. Among the largest animals to tromp upon the planet, they measured 14 feet at the shoulder and weighed as much as ten tons, with curved 16-foot-long tusks that they used to forage, dig for water and battle rivals.
In the millennia after the Glacial Maximum, the earth gradually warmed, and the rising ocean inundated much of the California Serengeti. The populations of most Ice Age mega-fauna dwindled into extinction. The reasons? Paleo-archaeologists cite climate change, disappearing habitats, disease and hunting by early humans.
Although they died off about 11,000 years ago, Columbia Mammoths left traces that endure until today. In 2001 Parkman recognized a striking pattern on Sonoma boulders similar to the markings of elephants in East Africa. Unable to sweat, these savannah dwellers cool off by wallowing in shallow ponds and rubbing against large rocks—smoothing and buffing their rough surfaces over time.
The mammoths of the California Serengeti may have engaged in a similar form of self-grooming. A mud bath followed by a vigorous rub would have soothed skin irritation caused by ticks, lice and other pests. Over the eons, as countless creatures the size of school buses pressed their massive forms against the boulders, their tusks gouged deep scratches while the friction of their movements polished swatches of stone to a bright, glassy sheen.
The first time I touched these ancient rubbings, I felt transported to a long-vanished, awe-inspiring world. Yet little else remains of the magnificent mammoths of the California Serengeti. And I wondered: What of us will endure? What tracings will bear witness to our stay on the planet?
Learning about the past could help answer these questions, says Parkman: “By seeing what once was, we can more easily see what is and what could be—and we can make wiser decisions for future generations. Otherwise, we run the risk of following in the footsteps of the Columbian Mammoths.”
Breck Parkman, who served for decades as a senior archaeologist with California State Parks, offers an in-depth voyage to the past by a virtual time machine in this presentation sponsored by the Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods and this talk for the Sonoma Land Trust.
A recording of our webinar on The Battle of Bodega Head is now available on the Stewards of the Coast channel on YouTube .
