This is a lockback pocketknife from Santa Fe Stoneworks that has a fossilized woolly mammoth bone handle. The handles are sourced from Siberia, and are generally 10,000 – 15,000 years old.
Due to the nature of the fossilized bones used for the handles, no two knives are ever quite the same. The patterning and colors can vary, and the team at Santa Fe Stoneworks are careful to point this out when ordering. The upside is that your knife will be totally unique.
This is the damascus steel version of the same model, as you can see the blade has the characteristic wavy pattern caused by the steel being folded repeatedly with carbon as it’s forged.
Interestingly, woolly mammoth bones have been used by humans for tens of thousands of years for building everything from primitive huts and other dwellings to ornate carvings, daggers, spears, arrow tips, and even ancient boomerangs.
Both Neanderthals and modern humans hunted wooly mammoth during the ice age, and on the vast snow covered plains that contained no trees, the giant mammoth bones provided a critical building and craft material.
Interestingly, although the wooly mammoth populations died out on mainland Europe and Asia by approximately 10,000 years ago, there were still isolated populations on remote islands that survived well into the beginnings of human civilization.
St. Paul Island, Alaska had mammoth as recently as 5,600 years ago, and Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean has a population until 4,000 years ago – surviving until hundreds of years after the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. This isolated population was eventually wiped out not by humans or a changing climate, but by a shrinking gene pool.
The process of wooly mammoth de-extinction is now well underway, with teams of scientists around the world working on bringing the colossal creatures back from ancient history, and possibly, into a zoo near you. There’s plenty of intact mammoth DNA to work with, and the current plan is to create the first fetuses and then implant them into female African elephants – the mammoth’s closest living relative.
The Santa Fe Stoneworks Woolly Mammoth Bone Handle Knife
These knives from Santa Fe Stoneworks are all made by hand, and they’re often made to order. This specific model is called the Fossilized Woolly Mammoth Bone Collection 3″ Lockback, it’s a long name but it does tell you everything you need to know about the knife.
This is the Kershaw pocketknife, it’s a different model but has the same mammoth bone handle as the other knives in the series.
It’s a lockback stainless steel pocketknife with a 2 1/4 inch blade, and it measures in at 3 inches when closed. You can choose from either a single or double sided handle, the single side is $105 USD and the double is $157.50.
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