Thomas Jefferson: Mammoth Obsessive

A colonist obsessed

We’ve covered how Thomas Jeffs was interested in everything. And we mean everything. But we were still surprised to discover Jefferson’s mammoth obsession. One doesn’t immediately think, founding father and mammoth. But one must remember TJeffs was a cut of different fabric.

As American paleontologist, professor, and author, Steve Brusatte writes:

One American colonist became obsessed with mammoths.

This is one of my favorite sentences ever written. The content — An American colonist’s bizarre obsession. And that Steven Brusatte resists announcing it’s Thomas Jefferson, hiding him behind the noun “colonist”. Let’s continue:

One American colonist became obsessed with mammoths. During the late 1700s, there was a lot on Thomas Jefferson’s mind-writing the Declaration of Independence, winning a Revolutionary War, preventing his new country from falling apart, running two of the most contentious presidential campaigns in American history, and raising (or at least producing) two families. Through it all, he kept thinking about mammoths. And writing about mammoths, begging people to send him mammoth bones, ordering generals to procure mammoth skeletons. In part, this was escapism. Jefferson loved nature, and, in his words, preferred “the tranquil pursuits of science” to the pugilism of politics.

Brusatte, Steven. The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us. Boston: Mariner Books, 2022. (see page 326)

Most would escape into drink or theater. Thomas Jefferson escaped into mammoths. And this wasn’t a side hobby, this man was ordering generals to hunt down mammoth skeletons.

But Steven Brusatte reveals, this obsession did have other motivations. Mainly debunking Comte de Buffon’s theory that North American climates spawned weak animal species and cold people. Thomas Jefferson wasn’t letting that shit stand! He fought back with mammoths:

But he had grander reasons, too. In a bestselling book, the noble French naturalist Comte de Buffon had presented his “Theory of American Degeneracy,” which held that the cool and wet climates of North America caused its animals to be “feeble” and its people to be “cold,” compared to the grandeur of the Old World. Hyper with patriotism, Jefferson saw the mammoth — an elephant larger than those of Africa and Asia! — as his ultimate comeback. It was proof that America was not a backwater, but a land of vitality, with a bright and industrious future.

Brusatte, Steven. The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us. Boston: Mariner Books, 2022. (see page 326)

Could you imagine today, a mammoth, a prehistoric creature of any kind, being used as a smack-talk comeback for international rhetoric?

Or a mammoth being a symbol of vitality?

Or having a president that cared at all about mammoths?