The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [355]
A woolly mammoth developed several sets of large grinding molars throughout its span of some seventy years, usually six to a side both upper and lower. Each tooth weighed about eight pounds and was especially adapted to grinding coarse grasses. The surface was made up of many extremely hard, thin, parallel ridges—plates of dentine covered with enamel—and had higher crowns and more ridges than the teeth of any other of its species, before or since. Mammoths were primarily grass eaters. The shreds of bark that they tore from trees, particularly in winter, the spring forbs, and the occasional leaves, branches, and small trees, were only incidental to their main diet of tough fibrous grass.
The earliest and smallest grinders were formed near the front of each jaw, and the rest grew in behind and moved forward in a steady progression during the animal’s life, with only one or two teeth in use at any one time. As hard as it was, the important grinding surface wore down as it moved toward the front, and the roots dissolved. Finally the last thin useless fragments of tooth were dropped as the new ones moved into place.
The final teeth were in use by age fifty, and when they were nearly gone, the old gray-hair could not chew the tough grass any more. Softer leaves and plants could still be eaten, spring plants, but in other seasons they were not available. In desperation, the undernourished elder often left the herd, searching for greener pastures, but found only death. The herd knew when the end was close, and it wasn’t uncommon to see them sharing the elder’s last days.
The other mammoths were as protective of the dying as they were of newborns, and they gathered around trying to make the fallen one get up. When all was over, they buried the dead ancestor under piles of dirt, grass, leaves, or snow. Mammoths were even known to bury other dead animals, including humans.
Ayla and Jondalar and their four-legged traveling companions found their way getting steeper and more difficult when they left behind the lowland and the mammoths. They were approaching a gorge. A foot of the ancient massif of the north had stretched too far south and was split by the dividing waters of the river. They climbed higher as the river rushed through the narrow defile, moving too fast to freeze but carrying with it ice floes from quieter sections farther west. It was strange to see moving water after so much ice. In front of the high-peaked ramparts to the south were mesas, massiflike hills topped with extensive plateaus, carrying thick stands of conifers, their branches sprinkled with snow. The thin limbs of deciduous trees and brush were etched in white from a coating of freezing rain, which accentuated each twig and branch, captivating Ayla with their winter beauty.
The altitude continued to increase, the lowlands between the ridges never dipping quite as low as the preceding ones. The air was cold, crisp, and clear, and even when it was cloudy, no snow fell. Precipitation decreased as winter deepened. The only moisture in the air was the warm breath expelled by humans and animals.
The river of ice became smaller each time they passed a frozen tributary valley. At the west end of the lowland was another gorge. They climbed the rocky ridge, and when they reached the highest place, they looked ahead and stopped, awed by the sight. Ahead the river had split again. The travelers didn’t know it was the last time that it would divide into the branches and channels that had characterized its progress across the flat plains over which it had flowed for so much of its length. The gorge just before the lowlands curved sharply as it gathered the separate channels into one, causing a furious whirlpool that carried ice and floating debris into its depths, before disgorging it in a gush farther downstream, where it rapidly refroze.
They stopped at the highest