Really old poop

May 8, 2016 8:53 PM

We don't know where exactly Hannibal crossed the Alps with his elephants. Scientists are trying to figure out, through DNA analysis of very old dung.
posted by Chrysostom (18 comments total)

I have never gotten this. How the hell do you take animals from the grasslands of the tropics or sub-tropics (aka really warm places) and expect them to navigate snow capped mountains?

And I'm not even considering just how massive the daily vegetation requirement is for something as huge as an elephant. And what happened to them? Why didn't elephants establish a population in Europe?

(If you're suspecting that I didn't RTFA, you are correct. It's merely because this does not, has never, and will never compute to me. I'm calling urban legend on this one.)
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 10:36 PM on May 8, 2016

All bar 1 of the elephants were of a now extinct smaller subspecies of the African elephant, about which little is known. It still does seem like the sort of thing that shouldn't have been possible, especially if you look at photos of the terrain over col de la Traversette, which is just a shade below 3000m.
posted by protorp at 10:59 PM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Given we have multiple independent written sources from Polybius and Livy, I don't think it can be written off as an "urban legend". Of course, I expect you'd have to read those as well, which could be quite the problem.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:28 PM on May 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

And what happened to them? Why didn't elephants establish a population in Europe?

The Romans were big fans of seeing anything remotely exotic carved up in the Colloseum.
posted by wotsac at 11:35 PM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I got the idea that elephants weren't even that effective in ancient warfare, but there were those who were obsessed with the dream.
posted by thelonius at 12:06 AM on May 9, 2016

I have never gotten this. How the hell do you take animals from the grasslands of the tropics or sub-tropics (aka really warm places) and expect them to navigate snow capped mountains?

By bringing a bunch of elephants along to work on the trail?
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:30 AM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

The always-excellent BBC Inside Science had a short piece (19 mins in) on this (apologies if geoblocked) outlining what they're up to, if you don't want to RTFA.
posted by firesine at 12:46 AM on May 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

All I know is that I crossed the Alps in a 10 year old Volvo estate and a modern road with tunnels. Good luck to Dumbo.
posted by C.A.S. at 1:53 AM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I like to think there was an element of typically arrogant Carthaginian defiance in it, meant to shatter Roman confidence.

"Come on, no one's getting soldiers over the Alps."

"Soldiers? I'll bring fucking elephants."
posted by Segundus at 3:01 AM on May 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

I'm picturing something similar to the news footage I've seen of the flooding in Houston, where this guy in an SUV tries to drive through a flooded underpass and has to be rescued by the camera crew, only instead of water it's snow and instead of an underpass it's a mountain pass and instead of an SUV it's elephants. Maybe after the third elephant falls trumpeting into the abyss, Hannibal is going, "Well, OK, maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all. But we can't go back."
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:46 AM on May 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Claudius brought elephants to invade Britain. His came by sea, up the Rhone, down the Rhine. Very impressive, esp. if one has never seen an elephant.
posted by BWA at 5:44 AM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I thought they were good against cavalry, that they freaked the horses?
posted by Meatbomb at 6:38 AM on May 9, 2016

I know I'd freak if I met an elephant in the Alps.
posted by dominik at 6:44 AM on May 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Well, sure you'd freak out, dominik. This is what happens when you meet a stranger in the alps.
posted by The Gaffer at 8:08 AM on May 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

I thought they were good against cavalry, that they freaked the horses?

Yes, but this was countered easily by acclimating war horses to elephants.
posted by thelonius at 8:13 AM on May 9, 2016

(And there's the censored Big Lebowski reference I was waiting for...)
posted by jillithd at 8:14 AM on May 9, 2016

I got the idea that elephants weren't even that effective in ancient warfare, but there were those who were obsessed with the dream.

By Hannibal's era, the end is in sight for elephant-oriented military tech. Elephants are expensive and unreliable, and on a bad day they might accidentally trample your own troops. But yea, on a good day they can make quite a vivid impression on an enemy that haven't encountered them before.

Hannibal's army had actually lost most of it's elephants by the time of The Battle of Cannae, but they did pay for themselves by then by making a significant impact in some of the ambushes and other battles leading to Cannae.

There's always a book for the curious: The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic by Robert L. O'Connell. He has an interesting interpretation of The Punic Wars, in his view the disgraced veteran Legionnaires of Cannae were instrumental in finally defeating Carthage.
posted by ovvl at 11:58 AM on May 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

The real question is their efficacy in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:17 PM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]