At the same time, sharecropping became the new standard for agriculture in the South – which shifted towards less workers per property and smaller farms in general. Former slaves – now freedmen - need work the numerous plantations in the Charleston area – chiefly in what is now called the famous Ashley River Plantation District (where our apartment is located) – have mostly survived the war, but the labor force for the crops is no longer working “for free”, leaving the plantations in a bit of a financial crisis. Unfortunately, as with many early discoveries, we don’t really know the whereabouts of these specimens!įast forward to 1865: General Lee surrenders at Appomattox, the Civil War ends, and the reconstruction era begins (or, begins in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation). This identification of mammoth teeth by African slaves is now known to represent the first anatomically informed identification of vertebrate fossils in North America. These teeth, and others from eastern North America and Europe would eventually be recognized in the 1790s and early 19 th century as representing mammoths.

Later in the 18 th century, this discovery and others led Cuvier to propose that since 1) teeth of this type of elephant from North America did not match Asian or African elephants, and 2) owing to their gigantic size, explorers were unlikely to discover any further extant species of elephants (he was right), the teeth had to belong to a species no longer existing – leading Cuvier to propose the concept of extinction in a now-famous 1796 lecture. Cuvier specifically noted that the African slaves correctly identified the teeth prior to Europeans in North America. These findings were reported by English botanist Mark Catesby, and many years later (1806) an account of the discovery was published in French by none other than Baron Georges Cuvier. These African slaves, speculated to be from Angola or Congo, unanimously identified these teeth as belonging to modern elephants they were familiar with prior to becoming enslaved. About 10 miles due west of downtown Charleston (Charlestown at the time) African slaves discovered fossil teeth in the ground at a Plantation called Stono (it’s unclear to me exactly where this is or was, and if it is the same location as the “Stono Rebellion” slave revolt 14 years later).

Let’s rewind the clock a little bit to 1725.

Rocks pebbles and sand rar file