Who has not heard of the expression ‘As Dead as the Dodo’, the expression used to signify a final, irreversible ending, inspired by the life of the legendary big bird who lived on the island of Mauritius, was seen, slaughtered and eaten by visiting Dutch sailors, famished from their long solitary journey across the Monsoon covered waters of the Indian Ocean. We have all heard of the Dodo. Lewis Caroll included a Dodo in the Wonderland Alice visited, so it must have been a species which excited quite some interest despite or because of its extinct status at the time. Our research has uncovered extraordinary tales around the legend of the Dodo. Read on...

As is common knowledge, it was the Dutch sailors who first brought the presence of this bird to the attention of the world. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC demanded that written and pictorial records be kept of all sea journeys. These records often included shipping routes, safe harbours, places where refurbishment of goods and shipment could be found. They also include topographical details of the landscape and sometimes artists were made to accompany the fleet so as to draw the flora and the fauna encountered. It is thanks to those artists that we have the first and probably only sketches of the Dodo, scientifically known as the Raphus Cucullatus. The first descriptions of the bird speaks of it being ‘large birds, with winds as large as a pigeon/ The sailors noted the large stomach which could provide substantial meal for the famished and travel weary sailors.

As logic would have it, the first thought of the sailors was food. History sitting back comfortably in snug twenty-first century homes can judge them, but who can imagine the psychological and physical conditions of the sailors who encountered these animals after long sea journeys on vast stretches of unchartered waters, before the advent of the GPS and telecommunication services, through which today’s brood of sailors can connect and understand their position in relation to the known spaces of human habitation.

Other than the Dutch sailors two rare instances of encounters with the live Dodo bird have been recorded in the annals of history. Peter Mundy, a British trader, travelling with the East India company kept his journals where he mentions seeing Dodos in Surat in 1628. He notes that emperor Jahangir had two captive Dodo birds in his menagerie.

Another unusual encounter was by a British theologian and Historian Sir Hamon L’Estrange who encountered a living Dodo on the streets of London while taking a night walk with friends. The latter episode is mentioned in the first scientific monograph on the Dodo written by Strickland and Melville in 1848 and according to them they take this as proof that the specimens of the Dodo actually reached Europe alive, before our memory of them dwindled down to seeing stuffed specimen in the Natural History Museum.

Recently excavations in the Mare Aux Songes, in the South East of Mauritius uncovered some fossil remains. But the first excavations took place around the year 1865. It was only in 1866 that it became possible to describe the Dodo scientifically for the first time with the discovery of fossil material.

A first scientific monograph was published by Hugh Strickland and Alexander Melville in 1848. Scientfiic interest in procuring specimens of the dead bird increased after this. A priest called George Clark, Master of the Diocesan School at Mahebourg spent many years looking for specimens of the birds. It was sugarcane workers who brought to his attention the bones they found in Mare aux Songes, on the estate Mon Desert, near what is now Plaisance airport.. According to historians, such was the frenzy for acquiring the complete skeletons of the dead bird that the Natural History Museum purchased one by one all the bones that would make up the full skeleton.

But there was human drama to follow.

The bones of the Dodo became both the focus of rivalry in trade and academic publications as several well known scientist of the day rushed to add their name to the discovery of the legendary animal. Of these was one Richard Owen who was a comparative anatomist at the British Museum and was eager to associate his name with the Dodo. On the other side was the figure of Alfred Newton who was to become the first Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge University based on his work on the Dodo bones. However, none of these scientists were present on the island. They relied on the services of George Clark, the schoolmaster who had both a personal and pecuniary interest in selling bones to both parties as they became available. One can only imagine the silent rivalries by way of long distance courier between these two. But it seems Alfred Newton had privileged access to information transpiring in the remote South Sea island through his brother Edward Norton, who was appointed colonial administrator to Mauritius between 1859 to 1877. The tale of academic rivalry going through the byway of the son of Charles Myllus former Registrar of Slaves in Mauritius and later administrator of the Seychelles. A fascinating tale emerges worthy of a Dickensian mystery. But one thing is for certain, through the Dodo trail those scattered islands in the middle of the Southern Seas can definitely make it to the pages of history beyond what is officially known through conventional history.

And by way of a final surprise to end this article, queue this for an unexpected presence of the Dodo bird. It seems that there is a dodo sculpted into one of the pillars of Goblekli Tepe, the Neolithic archaeological site discovered in the 1990s which researchers say date way back before known history, predating oldest known civilisations. And on one of the pillars of Gobekli Tepe we can see a carving of a Dodo, see for yourself.

The photo below comes from the book by Andrew Collins and Graham Hancock ‘Gobekli Tepe : Genesis of the Gods’, published in 2014. The authors express their surprise at discovering a bird who is believed to have lived and died in Mauritius carved on the pillars of this mysterious ancient monument. The two carvings of the Dodo in the photo below can be seen on pillar 18 in enclosure D of Gobekli Tepe.

The ramifications of this are huge across time and space. Is it possible that our posthumously famous extinct Dodo might have existed before the continental drifts which split the original unified land mass of the earth.