Imagine how the land where Prague sits today might have looked in prehistoric times. The Bohemian terrain was most likely lush, marshlike and pristine. Beasts of prey roamed its vast plains, foraging for sustenance. Among these creatures towered colossal woolly mammoths — elephantine animals with long, dangerously sharp tusks and flaming tempers to match. They traveled in herds, menacing in their potential to wreak chaos and havoc.

But these prehistoric pachyderms also kept our closest ancestors alive. Mammoths provided early hunters with fatty oil for warmth, stores of food and the sport of the hunt.

"The museum was interested in doing a project that would debunk the commonly held but incorrect belief that 25,000 years ago there were no people around, just monkeys swinging from branches eating bananas," says Blanka Kreibichová, project manager for the exhibit. "In fact, nothing could be further from the truth."

The exhibit opened Wednesday evening, Oct. 10, to a packed house of onlookers who were entertained by a local world music troupe, TiTiDaDe. The troupe started things off with a searing percussive set, complete with a trio of dervishlike dancers clad in period costumes gyrating to the band's primal rhythms, much to the delight of the assembled crowd. The audience included no less than two government ministers plus officials from Mammoth Hunter's two lead sponsors, Česká spořitelna and Český rozhlas.

Private support for the exhibit was critical. The National Museum is literally crumbling in places, and ongoing repairs and renovations will cost an estimated 4.5 billion Kč ($200.4 million). The perennial need to arrest the building's natural wear and tear nearly deep-sixed the Mammoth Hunters exhibit.

"Money that was to have funded our installation was siphoned off to repair this place," says Kreibichová. "I really have to hand it to our construction team, and especially our foreman, who completed the various works you now see within just a month on an extremely tight budget."

That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, according to Kreibichová. "Actually, not having as much money as we initially anticipated was probably the best thing to happen to this project," she says. "Instead, we were all running on adrenaline and enthusiasm for almost half a year."

Overcoming obstacles

The exhibition takes many of its cues from the renowned 1957 novel Mammoth Hunters by Eduard Štorch, and a 1985 adaptation of the same name by Jean M. Auel. "Considering how infrequently people read books these days, the museum's board of directors decided it would be a great idea to find a way to somehow bring people back to their innocent childhoods," Kreibichová says. "Like how Štorch's descriptions of these ancient times inspire people's imaginations. We felt that if the exhibit could actually get people reading again, or at the very least pull them away from the high technology that controls them — like the Internet, mobile phones, BlackBerrys and television — then we'd have achieved most of our objectives."

Behind the scenes, Mammoth Hunters marked some significant achievements at the museum as well, starting with the team that created the exhibit.

"The natural sciences and history departments of the museum decided that the time had come to work together on a joint project," Kreibichová says. "It had come to a point where we had a wealth of talented people at our disposal who we weren't succeeding in getting the most out of, mostly due to budgetary constraints. Because we couldn't pay these amazing people, we were losing them to more lucrative opportunities. And, as a result, so was the entire city."

Mammoth Hunters also marks the first time Kreibichová was charged with putting together a project this size. From the outset, she faced some significant obstacles.

The initial plan had been for Prague's National Museum to collaborate with Russia's National Museum in Moscow to co-exhibit various Mammoth Hunters installations. Due mostly to the budget restrictions imposed by the need for repairs, the budding Czech-Russian scientific partnership was vastly curtailed. Sadly, Kreibichová's woolly replica won't be making its way east. But Kreibichová is grateful that the exhibit came together at all.

"We really have to thank our sponsors," she says. "They came through for us at the 11th hour. We can't thank them enough, and Praguers will be impressed by what we've managed to assemble with almost no money."

While the museum's bold cross-cultural plans didn't play out as planned, the future for collaborative activities with other European Union museums and institutions is expected to proceed apace, according to Kreibichová. Prior to Mammoth Hunters, she was involved in three pan-European projects featuring anywhere from 300 to 1,000 prehistoric items. Two of the cooperative exhibits were shown in Italy and one in France, spreading the growing movement within the Czech Republic to prove its mettle on the European archaeological scene.

Was all the effort on Mammoth Hunters worth the final result?