I kept repeating a quote from Charles Darwin, “In the long history of human kind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” Source: White Memorial Newsletter author (2021)

A challenge? Face it.

Find humanity in artists, creators, writers, authors. Interviewers. Movies. Libraries. Museums.

The stored collected knowledge of life is manure of fields to grow more. (Sorry, but that is meant in a very positive way, as in enriching mind, body, soul.) Outdoors we go. (Questions bubble up. Why doesn’t poison ivy grow under lilacs? Still think of the cellulose structure of one stalk of a sunflower–as packing material. Shown by another inquisitive mind clad in a life form, related. If matter and energy cannot be lost, only transformed–where are we before life and where to we all go afterwards? The spark?)

Walk to think, find joy in life. A canine companion is a boon; best to exercise her and in doing so, spark connections, questions. C’mon leg, stay with me. Here we go.

The mastodon in Farmington, Connecticut, USA–before lines and boundaries drawn. In a peat bog, waiting.

Our Connecticut State Archaeologist tells it best:

Connecticut at the End of the Last Ice Age: The Farmington Mastodon and First Human Settlers
By Dr. Sarah P. Sportman, Connecticut State Archaeologist (Editor’s note: This should be a stand-alone booklet; one in a series for state archaeologist past and present.)

In the late summer of 1913, a group of Italian workmen digging a trench to drain a swamp on the Hill-Stead estate in Farmington encountered a set of massive, well-preserved bones (Figure 1).

Linked back to original PDF.

The Farmington or Pope mastodon, as it came to be known, was not the first specimen found in Connecticut. In 1828, two mastodon finds were reported in the state: the first, reportedly found in Sharon, is lost to history and the second was a mastodon molar discovered near Cheshire during construction of the Farmington Canal. A few years later in 1833, excavation of a canal in New Britain replete mastodon vertebra. In 1852 another more complete mastodon skeleton, this one including a few limb bones, ribs, and teeth, was recovered in New Britain. The
mastodon found at Hill-Stead in 1913 was by far the most intact. Only a few of the small foot and leg bones, the caudal or tail vertebrae, and one tusk were missing. The mastodon skeleton appeared to have suffered only minor disturbance in the thousands of years it lay buried in the bog.

Much of the skeleton was found in its natural anatomical arrangement, although a scattering of individual bones and one tusk were found several feet away (Figure 3; Schuchert and Hull 1914), possibly separated from the carcass by scavenging animals or geological processes.

Following the excavation, the Farmington mastodon bones were taken to the Yale Peabody Museum for conservation. For the next several decades, the mastodon was stored in a variety of loca-
tions including Avon Old Farms School, the Connecticut Geological and Natura History Survey, and Yale. In 1979 the mastodon was finally put on display at the
American Indian Archaeological Institute (now the Institute for American Indian Studies (IAIS) in Washington (Figure 4), Connecticut, but in 1989, it was disassembled and sent to the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History at the University of Connecticut.

The remains lay in the bottom of a peatbog at the base of Farmington Mountain(Figure 2).

Allen B. Cook, the estate’s Superintendent, quickly recognized the significance of the find and alerted his employer, Ms. Theodate Pope. She arranged to have specialists from Yale, led by the paleontologist Charles Schuchert, come to Hill-Stead to examine and excavate the bones.

The scientists identified the remains as an American mastodon (Mammut Americaus, and as the excavations progressed, it was clear that it was a remarkably complete skeleton (Schuchert and Hull 1914).

Hugh Gibb, a Peabody Museum preparator, directed the careful excavation of the mastodon with the assistance of museum staff and five of the laborers involved in the initial find.

Figure 2: Topographic map showing the approximate location of the mastodon find.
In 2015, the mastodon was once again put on display at IAIS. That year, the late Connecticut State Archaeologist Brian Jones arranged to have the Farmington mastodon directly radiocarbon dated using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). The results indicated that the mastodon lived between 14,870 and 14,210 years before present (BP) (Boulanger and
Jones 2016). A fragment from the 1852 New Britain mastodon was also recently dated, returning a date range of 13,100–12,984 years BP (Boulanger 2015).

The presence of mastodons in Connecticut more than 14,000 years ago provides information about the local environment and has important implications regarding earliest possible human habitation of our area. Based on dated skeletal remains from New York and New England, mastodons arrived in our region on the heels of the boreal forests (Fiedel et al 2019). Following the retreat of the glaciers between 17 and 18,000 years ago, the environment began to change, with especially rapid environmental shifts between 15 and 11,000 years ago. A warming
event known as the Bøllering-Allerød interstadial, which occurred near the end of the last glacial period (around 14,600 BP), facilitated the expansion of boreal forest
vegetation into the northeastern U.S.

Figure 3 (linked back to original source): Drawing of the mastodon bones as they were found in 1913,from Schuchert and Lull 1914. Continued on page 3
IMG_1571

Stories are everywhere, waiting to be written into life. People doing amazing things, facing challenges, a way forward. Don’t let the parasites stop or slow you. After an accident (now five years), unable to speak well, walk up stairs, other issues–one step. Eat, sleep, work, pay bills.

Some reminders: Be aware of ticks (use all precautions including for your dog–and do a through check afterwards); bears have been seen on the property (small wonder as it is paradise), so use common sense and stay alert.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated. Another related story is linked here.