Posted on 02/18/2018 8:40:47 AM PST by mairdie
How Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with 30,000 soldiers was even harder than first thought as researchers find he took a perilous route on a narrow bridle path 9,500ft above sea level
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Soil containing traces of horse manure has been carbon dated to 218BC, the time of HannibalÂs crossing, and shows that he took the Col de la Traversette, a narrow bridle path 9,500ft above sea level that links the Guil Valley in France with the Po Valley in Italy.
Previous speculation that he took this direct route had been discounted because of its sheer difficulty, with gradients as steep as 1:3.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Thanks mairdie.
Thanks, that’s quite a compliment!
:^)
great find, good article. thanks
Maybe I missed something, but it seems to me that the article says they found horse dung on a bridle path, and therefore Hannibal took that route.
Wouldn’t one expect horse dung on a bridle path whether or not Hannibal had passed? How do they know it belongs to horses that belonged to Hannibal?
I wondered about that, too. The only thing I can think is that they found a LOT of the horse dung that carbon dated to the right time.
BTW, had Hannibal managed to get all his elephants across the Alps, he'd have had his ass handed to him earlier, and/or would have ended up feeding elephant meat to his troops just to keep them alive, which is probably what he did with those which survived the crossing. He is easily the most overrated ancient war leader.
Hannibal's Elephant Army - The New Evidence [couchtripper]
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