Spain Trip #12: Barcelona: Park Ciutadella's Mammoth Mystery Solved!

While we were biking in Barcelona's Park Ciutadella we came across a large statue of a mammoth! It is life-sized for a young Mammoth. Being a fan of prehistoric animals and mammals, I (Rob) was fascinated by the Mammoth statue. I wanted to know why it was there. So, when we got home, I did some research to solve the mystery of why the Mammoth statue was there, and learned it had a double meaning. 


WHY A MAMMOTH?  Well, it turns out there's a scientific reason and a political reason. 

THE SCIENTIFIC REASON: In July 2009 a scientific paper was published explaining the remains of woolly mammoths have been found in southern Spain, proving that the chilly grip of the last Ice Age extended farther south than thought. The fossilized remains of at least four mature male mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) were found in a peat bog near the town of Padul in the Granada Basin. Carbon-dating estimates the animals lived between 35,000 and 25,700 years ago.Woolly mammoths eventually died out after the Ice Age, also called the Late Pleistocene, came to an end around 10,000 years ago.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2009-07-steppe-mammoths-roamed-southern-spain.html 

A woman works on the remains of woolly mammoth in southern Spain,

THE POLITICAL REASON FOR THE MAMMOTH: Newspapers and journals used images of the mammoth in Catalonia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, paying special attention to the visual power of descriptions, pictures and cartoons of this and other ancient species. As paleontology became a ‘public science,’ the extinct species gained status not least because it could be imbued with multiple meanings that moved between the scientific and public spheres. The visualizations of the animal contributed to metaphorically reinforcing and confronting ideas of political and social scope, like the notions of modernity and national identity, which were of great relevance in Barcelona at the turn of the century. - According to a paper by Laura Valls Plana, PhD Candidate at Centre d'Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain 

NEXT: Uncovering Barcelona's Central Market's Old Ruins!