"Whale bone is also a source of an 'ivory', of sorts, IIRC."
<cetacean pedantic mode>
Whale bone is something a bit different: It's the baleen plates from the
gobs of baleen whales. They use it to filter plankton (Right Whales), Krill
and fish (Rorquals and Humpbacks) out of the water and crustaceans out of
the silt on the sea bed (Gray Whales). It's a bit like the stuff your
fingernails are made out of.
If you want the source of genuine Cetacean ivory, look no further than the toothed whales. Trouble is, you can only get about as much ivory out of a Sperm Whale (Physeter Catadon) as you can from an elephant. </cetacean pedantic mode>
He goes on:
"Now, what is the mythic connection between whales (air breathing water
creatures), elephants (inhabitants of hot and humid lands),
mammoths/mastodons (inhabitants of cold and dry(?) lands)and walruses?"
JR Trotsky esq would probably better placed to answer this. (If he already has, sorry, but the list server decided to drop 6 digests in one go, how can one survive this sort of heady entertainment?)
Walruses and Cetaceans are both "air breathing water creatures", the only difference is that Walruses (and other pinnipedians) have to clamber out of the water to give birth. All intelligent sea beings are descended from Tholaina and an unnamed air spirit. Tholaina is a descendant of Hykim, which gives Pinnipedians and Cetaceans a tenuous mythical link to land beasts.
Have a gawp at Missing Lands for the nearest thing to an official statement on this!
Cheers,
Ash
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