The camp of the prospectors is illegal. The prospectors themselves are hiding from a police chase and drunk to the point of exhaustion.
Active searches of mammoth tusks began when fishermen noticed some sticking out of the ground large bones near their village. It turned out that buyers were ready to pay for them a lot.
Extraction. The skeletons of a mammoth ideally preserved there, because this is the area of permafrost. There are a lot of mammoth bones, but easily accessible are over now. So people needed to developed new methods to extract bones.
New method of extraction of mammoth tusks. Before the hunters of mammoths used a special pointy stick to pierce the ground. Now they use the water pumps to wash it.
Help of permafrost. In that place the soil is not very dense. We can assume that in ancient times there were swamps and prehistoric animals drowned there.
The prospectors take the whole hill and use water to wash out bones. There are still a lot of mammoth tusks, because permafrost is a huge mud iceberg, which is located underneath the top layer of soil.
Rich booty wouldn’t have been possible if the soil would be warm. In warm soil the bones of a mammoth would not have been preserved. But in the permafrost, they can be stored for thousands of years.
Earnings. 65-pound Tusk, shown in the photo, was just dug out of the earth. After that it was sold for 34 thousand dollars. Two prospectors who had been working there for a week found three more of these tusks.
Profit. The prospectors didn’t want to tell how much they earn, but it should be about 100 thousand dollars a week.
The Yakuts are the main prospectors in this business. Their salary in their hometown is not less than 20 thousand rubles, but for the tusks they got huge amount of cash, without any taxes.
Exports. In China ivory is a commodity that demonstrates the status of the owner. Bone carving of a mammoth, which is on display in Hong Kong, cost at least $ 1 million.
Not only mammoths. Some prospectors found an additional way of earning. This skull belongs to the woolly Rhino – a species which died out many years ago.
Exports of skulls. The age of this skull is approximately the same as the age of mammoths – 11 thousand years. Prospectors say that the horn is usually located 20 meters from a scull. The skull of the rhinoceros is exclusive product for Vietnam. Vietnamese people believe that powder of such sculls has healing properties.
Rhino horn can be sold on the black market for about 15 thousand dollars. In Vietnam people believe that Rhino horn can cure cancer.
Losses. But for most of the diggers the summer, which they spent in the permafrost, will result in losses. Most prospectors don’t find anything but spend about 5 tons of fuel. Only 20% of people, who work there, find something significant.
Loans. Many of the prospectors take Bank loans to buy a snap. Many of them remove the engine from a snowmobile, and reworks it into the water pump.
The life of prospectors. Men who came to work spend all summer away from home and family. They live in dark tents, playing cards or watching videos on their phones. They eat canned meat and noodles. There are a lot of mosquitoes so they can bite the person all over the face like bees.
Alcohol makes life of prospectors harder. These prospectors crashed into the shore at full speed and slept like that. Many of them drown in a state of alcoholic intoxication.
Damage to the environment of the Earth. Prospectors work makes cause a real damage. Consequences for the water system of Yakutia are more devastating than it seems to be. There is not more fish in rivers near elaboration.