Woolly Mammoths: The Lost Worlds and Global Histories of an Extinct Species

Join the History department in welcoming Dr. Rebecca Woods from UofT!

Abstract: Despite having gone extinct thousands of years before recorded history, woolly mammoths occupy a prominent position in cultural consciousness. For centuries they have proved “good to think with,” crystalizing scientific and popular debates about extinction, evolution, the Earth’s climate, and climate history. A poster species for extinction, woolly mammoths were foregrounded in emergent ideas about the evolution of Homo sapiens in the early twentieth century. In today’s moment of climate anxiety, they front controversial de-extinction efforts. Throughout, the role of the Indigenous peoples of the circumpolar Arctic have been crucial to knowledge-making about woolly mammoths. Their labor and expertise was essential to understanding the species, whose long evolutionary history is hard fought, hard won, and ever-changing.