Hannibal Crosses The Carpathians
Posted on 01/20/2014 6:06:44 PM PST by lbryce
On a whim, I recently posted the image below of the frog riding the beetle irreverently entitling it as Hannibal Crossing the Carpathians.
Hannibal Crosses The Carpathians
While it was obviously posted in jest, several comments appeared in scholarly discussion of the use of elephants in war, having come across this article thought it might be of interest.
Please take note any establishment, organization involved in science will inevitably be a left-wing liberal tool, certainly so, a group with the tagline, where science meets society.
War Elephant Myths Debunked by DNA
The Institute for Genomic Biology
Where Science Meets Society
Through DNA analysis, Illinois researchers have disproved years of rumors and hearsay surrounding the ancient Battle of Raphia, the only known battle between Asian and African elephants.
“What everyone thinks about war elephants is wrong,” said Alfred Roca, a Professor of Animal Sciences and member of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the research published in the Journal of Heredity.
After Alexander the Great’s premature death, his vast kingdom was divided among his generals. “Being generals, they spent the next three several centuries fighting over the land in-between,” Roca said.
The Battle took place in 217 B.C. between Ptolemy IV, the King of Egypt, and Antiochus III the Great, the King of the Seleucid kingdom that reached from modern-day Turkey to Pakistan.
First author Adam Brandt, left, shown with Professor of Animal Sciences and IGB member Alfred Roca.
According to historical records, Antiochus’s ancestor traded vast areas of land for 500 Asian elephants whereas Ptolemy established trading posts for war elephants in what is now Eritrea, a country with the northern-most population of elephants in East Africa.
In the Battle of Raphia, Ptolemy had 73 African war elephants and Antiochus had 102 Asian war elephants, according to Polybius, a Greek historian who described the battle at least 70 years later.
“A few of Ptolemy’s elephants ventured too close with those of the enemy, and now the men in the towers on the back of these beasts made a gallant fight of it, striking with their pikes at close quarters and wounding each other, while the elephants themselves fought still better, putting forth their whole strength and meeting forehead to forehead,” said Polybius in The Histories.
“Ptolemy's elephants, however, declined the combat, as is the habit of African elephants; for unable to stand the smell and the trumpeting of the [Asian] elephants, and terrified, I suppose, also by their great size and strength, they at once turn tail and take to flight before they get near them.”
Over the years, there has been a lot of speculation about Polybius’s account.
“Until well into the 19th century, the ancient accounts were taken as fact by all modern natural historians and scientists,” said Neal Benjamin, an Illinois veterinary student who studies elephant taxonomy and ancient literature with Roca. “After the scramble for Africa by European nations, more specimens became available and it became clearer that African elephants were mostly larger than Asian elephants. At this point, speculation began about why the African elephants in the Polybius account might have been smaller. One scientist, Paules Deraniyagala, even suggested that they might even have been an extinct smaller subspecies.”
In 1948, Sir William Gowers reasoned that Ptolemy must have fought with forest elephants that fled from larger Asian elephants, as Polybius described. Since then, the idea has been cited and re-cited in many papers.
Until now, the main question remained: Did Ptolemy employ African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) or African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the Battle or Raphia?
“Using three different markers, we established that the Eritrean elephants are actually savanna elephants,” said Adam Brandt, a doctoral candidate in Roca’s laboratory and first author of the paper. “Their DNA was very similar to neighboring populations of East African savanna elephants but with very low genetic diversity, which was expected for such a small, isolated population.”
The markers also revealed that these Eritrean elephants have no genetic ties to forest or Asian elephants, as other authorities have suggested.
For mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), the genetic information is passed from mother to offspring, and is not transmitted by males. Female elephants stay with their natal herd while the males disperse to mate with different populations. Thus, the mtDNA would be a telltale sign of whether there had been forest or Asian elephants in the Eritrean population at one time.
“In some sense, mtDNA is the ideal marker because it not only tells you what's there now, but it’s an indication of what had been there in the past because it doesn't really get replaced even when the species changes,” Roca said. “The most convincing evidence is the lack of mtDNA from forest elephants in Eritrea.”
Roca and Brandt hope their findings will aid conservation efforts.
“We have confirmed that this population is isolated and may be inbred,” Brandt said. “This population will require habitat restoration and preservation to minimize the possibility of human conflict. That’s really the issue—not having a place to go.”
Brandt said that future conservation efforts could even establish a connecting habitat between the Eritrean population and their closest relatives, the East African savanna elephants, to provide an influx of genetic diversity. But, he admits, that’s a “pretty lofty ambition.”
Still, there’s hope.
“From what I read, the Eritrean government is pretty committed to conservation,” Roca said. “They are planning to establish a large number of wildlife conservation areas, and one of the things at the top of their list is the elephants.”
The paper “The Elephants of Gash-Barka, Eritrea: Nuclear and Mitochondrial Genetic Patterns” was published in the Journal of Heredity and is available online.
This research was supported by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, a government agency that is committed to protecting, preserving, and enhancing the world’s diverse wildlife and their habitats. The late Jeheskel Shoshani, an evolutionary biologist and world-renowned elephant specialist, was instrumental in this research.
I hit post before finishing my thought. Bleh. So if the elephant population can change (smaller tusks) in such a short time, there’s no reason to think that a similar change regarding size couldn’t also take place.
There are stories in India that the elephants here used to be bigger than they are now.
That was just another one of their catchphrases.
IIRC one of them found a Zippo lighter with ‘Malmorg in Plano’ inscribed on it and so they incorporated into their act. It was a phrase of mystery, no one knew if Malmorg was a man, a company, if Plano TX was where he/it was located. Great stuff.
Oh, and further, Asian elephants now are bred specifically (when they are deliberately bred) for utility in farming and forestry, which would tend to require a smaller, more “nimble” elephant that is also more tractable. A large war elephant would not have the temperament to move logs all day, and would be more difficult to restrain and would have a harder time navigating the dense forests of Asia. So on top of most of the big war elephants possibly having been all but wiped out in battles, those that were left were probably not bred back into the population due to their now-undesirable tendencies.
I’d bet I could have Asian war elephants that towered over even Savannah elephants within three or four generations again, if I tried.
Some links I found- haven’t played them yet so they’ll be a surprise to me as well.
http://firesigntheatre.com/media/audvid/sfi1.mp3
http://firesigntheatre.com/media/audvid/sfi7.mp3
http://firesigntheatre.com/media/audvid/sfi22.mp3
http://firesigntheatre.com/media/audvid/sfi23.mp3
http://firesigntheatre.com/media/audvid/sfi27.mp3
I'll enjoy checking those out.
Heh, my first thought was oliphants, as well!
I thought this was going to be en explanation for the total lack of a spine in the GOP.
Hannibal took Ibizan Hounds with him.
/irrelevant interjection
:)
Would you like one of my cyanide capsules?
And tell my wife I loved her.
Not sure about the following anecdotal story’s veracity, but here goes- attended a motivational seminar with Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, and Captain Gerald Coffey?/Coffee? who was a VN POW. Brian Tracy spoke on how an elephant is trained. In it’s youth, a large rope is attached to one of it’s legs. Try as it might, it cannot break free, tugging, pulling, sounding, etc. Over and over it tries. Day after day after day, until finally giving up. Then it is easy to restrain the animal with a rope for it has been conditioned to believe that it can never escape from it’s captivity as long as the rope is attached to it’s leg. In maturity, the elephant can easily escape captivity due to it’s enormous size and strength, but it does not do so for it has been convinced otherwise. Of course, the reason Brian Tracy tells the story, is to knock people out of their conditioned beliefs that keep them held in captivity by their own thoughts, which is akin to the rope, ever so small, tethered (likewise) to the large and powerful elephant.
Is she named Laura, by chance?
;D
Everyone?
Good points.
antelope freeway 1/64th mile
We have lived our lives in vain!!
Guys, look, that title will never sell. Now, Lurid Elephant Sex And Death In The African Savannah, THAT's got best-seller written all over it.
Scientists.
turning tail and running from smaller, weaker enemies because they made a shrill noise is the GOPe calling card
Excellent!
Thapsus was fought between Caesar and the Optimates, who opposed his dictatorship. The Optimates fled to Africa and Caesar followed them. The war elephants were in the Optimate army, which lost the battle. Caesar got some elephants to panic by raining arrows on them, after which the elephants trampled their own troops. They looked fearsome to infantry, but really didn’t add much to the Roman way of war.
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