John Ranking

John Ranking was an English merchant and amateur historian who published a variety of alternative historical hypotheses, particularly regarding elephants, their place in human history, and in the fossil record, and in specific arguing that mammoth remains were the product of Roman and Mongol use of elephants in war and in violent sport, and, further, that the Mongols conquered the pre-Incan Americas, establishing the Inca dynasty under Kublai Khan's son, who became known as Manco Cápac, and these Mongols brought with them elephants into the New World.

Identity

The background of John Ranking is presently unknown to us, but we do find one lead by following a path through the Oxford periodical Notes and Queries: in the issue of 18 January 1896, a reader, E. I. Carlyle, asks after information on Ranking's life; this query received a response, some fourteen and a half years later in the issue of 30 July 1910, from a George Ranking, Lieut.-Col., who offered to provide the information asked. Lt. Col. Ranking was George Spiers Alexander Ranking (1852-1934), surgical physician and educator who had been active in British India, the author of several books on the Urdu and Persian languages; George Ranking's grandfather was one John Jackson Ranking (1759-1830).

Selected Bibliography

Books

• Ranking, John (1826), Historical Researches on the Wars and Sports of the Mongols and Romans; in Which Elephants and Wild Beasts Were Employed or Slain, and the Remarkable Local Agreement of History With the Remains of Such Animals Found in Europe and Siberia, London: Longman & Co., https://archive.org/details/historicalresear00rank_0 
• Ranking, John (1827), Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez, and Talomeco, in the Thirteenth Century by the Mongols, Accompanied With Elephants: and the Local Agreement of History and Tradition, With the Remains of Elephants and Mastodontes, Found in the New World, London: Longman & Co. 

Articles

• Ranking, John (Jan. 1828), "Remarks on the Ruins at Palenque, in Guatemala, and on the Origin of the American Indians", Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and Art (London: Royal Institution of Great Britain): 135-154, http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1822-pg2.htm#QJ28-135 
• Ranking, John (Apr. 1828), "Remarks on the Ruins at Palenque, in Guatemala, and on the Origin of the American Indians, II", Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and Art (London: Royal Institution of Great Britain): 323-371, http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1822-pg2.htm#QJ28-323 
• Ranking, John (Oct. 1828), "Remarks on the Discovery of some Fossil Bones in France", Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and Art (London: Royal Institution of Great Britain) 25: 267-274, https://books.google.com/books?id=PC5GAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA267 
• Ranking, John (Dec. 1828), "Remarks on some Remains of Elephants, lately found on the American Shore in Behring's Straits", Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and Art (London: Royal Institution of Great Britain) 25: 334-341, https://books.google.com/books?id=PC5GAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA334