Might be a dumb question, but for the most part have all War Elephants been Asian? I caught a blurb the other day on some show about failed attempts to use African elephants for same. If War Elephants were predominately Asian then, how did Hannibal get any? Back then did the Asian elephants’ range extend pretty close to north Africa or did he import them? Any info would be appreciated. ;j
Cheers!
BA
According to [http://www.unep-wcmc.org/species/data/species_sheets/indeleph.htm~main]this](http://www.unep-wcmc.org/index.html?[url) page on the World Conservation Monitoring Centre site:
Syria and Iraq would be considered “pretty close” to North Africa these days, might be close enough for Hannibal to have obtained Asian elephants without too much difficulty.
There’s a lot of debate about exactly what species of Elephant Hannibal actually used. The idea that he used Asiatic Elephans is very much aminority one and without much support. The most likely explanation is that he used a North African elephants, a species that was later exterminated to feed the colloseums of Rome.
It is likely Hannibal had both African forest elephants and Asian elephants, but not African savannah elephants. African forest elephants and African savannah elephants used to be considered varieties of the same species, but I believe they are now usually classed as separate species. The savannah elephant is Loxodonta africana and the smaller forest elephant is L. cyclotis. According to some references I’ve seen, in Hannibal’s time, the forest elephant roamed wild in North Africa, but now they are confined to Sub-Saharan Africa. These forest elephants apparently constituted the bulk of Carthage’s elephants.
The Asian species is Elephas maximus. In ancient times it was found wild as far west as Syria. The Egyptians occasionally captured or imported elephants (and their trainers) from Syria. The Carthaginians may have bought some or received some as gifts from the Egyptians. The best evidence that at least some Syrian elephants were used in Hannibal’s Italian campaign was the name of the last surviver among the elephants that crossed the Alps with Hannibal in the first wave. The name was “Surus” which means “the Syrian”.
By the way, Hannibal was not the first general to use elephants in Italy. The Greek invader Pyrrhus used the Asian species there about 60 years before Hannibal.
There’s still a lot of debate about hwthere the North African elephant was the same species as the forest elephant. Evidence suggests that it was in fact a ofurth and now extinct species of elephant.
Presumably African elephants.