I still remember the first time I saw a wooly mammoth, towering over me in the American Museum of Natural History. It was amazing to think that these creatures were still roaming the Arctic tundra while the Egyptians were building their pyramids at Giza. In fact, the only thing more surprising than how recently these giants walked the earth is how soon they might walk it again.
Colossal Biosciences is a biotech company that hopes to resurrect the wooly mammoth in the next few years. Using advanced genetic engineering, Colossal believes it can reassemble the mammoth genome, grow a live embryo, and implant it in an elephant that will give birth to the first wooly mammoth in millennia.
It sounds like a science fiction story, and for now it is, but Colossal is convinced that the project is not only possible but necessary. According to their website, scientists estimate that the planet is currently losing 150 species per day, and there is no way to know the broader ecological impact of this loss. De-extinction projects like this one (Colossal is also hoping to resurrect the Dodo bird) might be our only chance to reverse the trend.
When I first read about this project, I felt worried—not just because I've seen Jurassic Park, but because I've seen modern consumerism. As long as our relationship with the living world remains essentially exploitative, the new mammoths will have a very short shelf-life indeed. Colossal can resurrect all the species it likes, but unless it resurrects a corresponding reverence for life itself, it's only a matter of time before we get mammoth burgers.
Much of western culture seems to have lost the connection to nature that was once our universal inheritance. The Jewish sages emphasized not only the utility and interconnectedness of the living world but also its inherent moral value. Each creature taught them some transformative ethical lesson or served as the basis for a profound experience of awe. To my surprise, even the mammoth finds its place in Jewish wisdom.
The first rabbi to write about the wooly mammoth was Yisrael Lipschitz (1782-1860). Known as one of the primary commentators on the Mishnah, the foundational text of Jewish law, Lipschitz was also deeply fascinated by the natural world. In a wide-ranging essay tackling various areas of philosophy and theology, he briefly shifts his focus to some of the archeological discoveries of his time. Amidst his discussion of iguanodon and megalosaurus, he mentions a massive creature found deep in the earth near Baltimore and various parts of Europe: “And they have given this species the name mammoth.”
Rabbi Lipschitz's essay was not motivated by an academic or even an ecological interest. He was simply amazed by the strange beauty of the world in which he lived; a world that archeology had suddenly made vaster and more ancient. His excitement at these discoveries leaps off the page, as does his curiosity about what significance they hold for mankind.
Charles Darwin was a contemporary of Lipschitz, and he too was motivated by a profound sense of awe and curiosity. Eventually famous for his On the Origin of Species, Darwin's theory of evolution offered a straightforward, mechanistic explanation for the stunning diversity of life on earth. Though he ultimately moved away from his religious upbringing, Darwin's relationship with religion was more complex than is commonly appreciated, and his early writings on nature are deeply spiritual. But Darwin himself was acutely aware of how his mechanistic theory had affected his own experience of the natural world:
In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, 'it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.' I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.
Darwin goes on to compare himself to a colorblind man. He simply cannot see the color that others insist is present. For the father of evolutionary theory, the living world had become a machine—fascinating, even beautiful, but no longer wondrous or meaningful. And without a sense of wonder or meaning, nature is easily reduced to a commodity.
Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks eloquently conveys how our relationship to the environment must be grounded in a sense of wonder and a recognition of our ability to shape the environment itself:
Few passages have had a deeper influence on Western civilisation than the first chapter of Bereishit with its momentous vision of the universe coming into being as the work of God. Humankind, the last and greatest of creations, is given dominion over nature: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.’ There is a sense of wonder here, and more explicitly in Psalm 8, at the smallness yet uniqueness of humankind, vulnerable but also unique in his ability to shape the environment…
Colossal Biosciences hopes to send a herd of mammoths back to the tundra where they will help to restore ecological balance. Personally, I'm excited to live in a world with mammoths again. But resurrecting the mammoth while 150 species disappear daily is kind of like restoring an ancient manuscript while a library burns down behind you. Until we appreciate nature as the book of wisdom that it truly is, we will not have a world that any species can call home.
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