Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Archeologist in you?, July 9, 2000
This is a documentary. If you do not like the pace of a documentary, you won't like "Raising the Mammoth". It is NOT a feature film filled with special effects. The basic outline of the film is the inner workings of an archeologist whose dream is fulfilled in the frigid arctic as he battles the elements to 'raise' a Mammoth. The film is very 'real' about the human condition and our struggles to do extraordinary things, like chipping a prehistoric elephant out from 15 feet of solid, arctic ice. This is a GREAT documentary which reveals not only how a scientist must approach certain obstacles, but also how important inner personal relationships can be in dealing with indigenous cultures - such as the tribes which inhabit the vast, icy wastelands. It is truly amazing when they find and capture a preserved Mammoth, you will be amazed. The DVD has great features.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
For well-informed die-hard Pachyderm fans only, October 19, 2001
Raising the Mammoth is a two-hour Discovery Channel documentary about an expedition to Siberia to remove a complete mammoth body frozen for twenty thousand years. The project was completed in one ten-thousandth of the time the creature lay undisturbed; bad weather closed in and caused delays of a year. Partly fascinating, partly annoying, mostly informative but not altogether so, Raising the Mammoth seeks to inspire and awe us and sometimes stretches the point in order to do so. It tries too hard to become a drama, and doesn't focus enough on getting the scientific issues right. A few examples will prove my point. The first concerns the difficulty in removing the block of permafrost that encased the mammoth. It is hard to believe that the scientists involved would have left to chance the matter of whether or not the block was too large to be lifted by the helicopter at hand, as was portrayed. Surely calculations giving them some reasonable hope of success were in hand or some other method of removal would have been pursued, but the last-minute suspense was played to the hilt like a Bruce Willis thriller. At one point we are told that the Siberian Woolly Mammoth stood twice the height of a man and weighed as much as 10 elephants. Almost immediately following we are told that the Columbian Mammoth, prospering in the milder climates of North America, was the largest of mammoth species and stood twice the height of a man and weighed as much as 10 elephants. Which is true? How could the largest of the mammoth species be the same size and weight as a lesser member? And why were we repeatedly treated to truly substandard animations of mammoths that surely did nothing to "bring them to life"? Most bothersome to me were the glossing of various significant mammoth theories--mention was made that Man may have played a part in the extinction of the mammoth, but there was no discussion of how. The documentary implied that Early man, hunting with spears in groups and picking off an occasional weakened mammoth would cause an extinction, but surely this isn't the case. (In fact, modern research shows rabbit to be the most common meat in early man's diet.) But the hunting of entire herds, through burning plains and driving animals over cliffs, is a known tactic that could have lead to an ultimate devastation. This strategy is never mentioned or shown, but instead we are treated to repeated pictures of a single adult mammoth killed by one or two brave hunters with spears. But what I regret most of all is that the documentary closed without showing us any more of the mammoth than a block of permafrost with tusks (the tusks had been removed originally but were put back in place, sticking out of the block like some Cubist elephant; we are told this was out of respect for the creature but I have to believe production values played an equal part) and a patch of reddish-brown hair the size of a throw rug. Presumably the production deadline closed before the Mammoth was removed, but I was left feeling only slightly more satisfied than when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's "secret" vault and found only an empty glass bottle and a few scraps of trash.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Once in a lifetime event that shouldn't be missed, July 1, 2000
This isn't an epic show, but it is an epic discovery. Mammoths have been raised before, but never in a sophisticated manner like this that keeps them preserved. Perhaps a little tedious for young restless viewers who just want to see a real "live" mammoth, this show covers everything... the horrible frigid conditions in which the scientists prepared to locate and raise the animal, technology used, local native peoples, and right down to the DNA. These scientists use everything from the biggest helicopter on earth to a simple hair dryer to do their work... to actually see the tufts of hair protruding from the ice is breath taking, and hearing the scientist describe the smell of the still intact animal can really put goose bumps on you. They discuss the real (a la "Jurassic Park") possibility of creating a real Wooly Mammoth clone, using a modern elephant as a surrogate mother... and the second best option, an actual hybrid of the prehistoric animal and an African or Asian elepahnt. Can you imagine? This a great show for classrooms, home-schoolers and anyone who loves animals, science and the allure of prehistoric animals. Not just the old dried-up bones, but the entire animal... right there in suspended animation... an incredible sight to behold.
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