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Single bone in Spain offers first direct evidence of Hannibal's war elephants

92 points by Archelaos 7 days ago | 40 comments

hinkley 2 days ago

Something often left out of fiction about war is how easily a moving army can overwhelm a local ecosystem, particularly if its supply lines sag. You might not even be their target, and yet you will be pillaged. No more easy hunting for you for years. No more quick trips for firewood, or tinder.

It stands to reason that if an occupying force doesn’t stay long in an area, and its animals die along the way, that the now destitute locals will take the “road kill” and scrounge every possible calorie from it. And marrow was a dish rather than something for soup stock up until the modern era. The Illiad basically won’t shut up about it.

So I have no doubt that every dead elephant anyone could find was 100% rendered down into food and leather by the beleaguered locals. And probably every cousin from one village over got told about the find too. (I suspect elephant leather would make amazing peasant shoes)

siofra 2 days ago

> Something often left out of fiction about war is how easily a moving army can overwhelm a local ecosystem, particularly if its supply lines sag. You might not even be their target, and yet you will be pillaged. No more easy hunting for you for years. No more quick trips for firewood, or tinder.

This is also why so many soldiers ended up dead outside of battle, and not from getting stabbed. Why Sun Tzu and Clauzewitz went on and on about logistics.

ManuelKiessling 2 days ago

Micro-nitpick: it‘s „Clausewitz“ with an „s“.

contingencies 2 days ago

While indeed an army marches on its stomach, it's easy to miss the fact that the entire field of operations research which now runs such modern marvels as international air transport and major data centers grew out of the field of logistics, which itself grew out of increasing complexity in once primitive military food logistics.

ahartmetz 13 hours ago

AFAIU, a few hundred years ago, supply lines barely even existed once the army had moved a couple hundred km on land. Humans or pack animals can only carry enough to feed themselves for that far. Living off the land was standard operating procedure.

Archelaos 2 days ago

Why should the army leave a dead elephant on the road? They would butcher it themselves and take the meat with them (and the tusks). The locals may have found some large bones for their living room decorations (and may be some skin, if they were lucky).

hinkley 7 hours ago

This is the first bone they’ve identified. That means no other bones were identified in the last 2200 years.

lukan 2 days ago

Because they might be in a hurry to reach that mountain pass before the snow comes. Or to meet other goals set by the general and if already stocked up on supplies, it would be quite a burden to also carry an extra elephant (which was likely also carrying things before it died).

Archelaos 2 days ago

Quite unlikely. For an army on the move, especially one that had to cover such a long distance, a considerable portion of the troops was assigned to procure provisions anyway.

Bret C. Devereaux has written a series of three blog posts on the topic of pre-modern army logistics that explains that in detail. See: https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-...

lukan 18 hours ago

Anything in particular in there, that says rather wait for a mountain pass to become unpassable, than leave some meat behind?

(I don't claim this is what happened, I claim a army sometimes has other needs and might have already all the food it can carry)

HPsquared 2 days ago

And perhaps it's not so good even if you are being "defended" by the hungry army! It kind of resembles when a monarch comes to visit a noble; you would need to spend a lot on them and their entourage.

RupertSalt 23 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartering_Acts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Amendment_to_the_United_...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/us-restauran...

https://www.foxnews.com/media/arizona-mexican-restaurant-swa...

rtpg 2 days ago

Highly recommend the Age of Napoleon podcast, which has some good long sections about military logistics on this point during its earlier episodes on Napoleon's early career. Really helps to visualize the nuts and bolts of moving a bunch of soldiers around even across relatively small distances.

hinkley 21 hours ago

Napoleon tendered a prize to anyone who could figure out how to make shelf stable food for his armies. One of the first major milestones in canned food was someone claiming that prize, but he used metal cans (no lining) and so the food wasn’t really edible, although it did in fact not spoil.

ahmedfromtunis 2 days ago

> You might not even be their target, and yet you will be pillaged.

Isn't this how Rome was sacked way back when it was just a city among many others in the Italian peninsula? If I recall correctly, this was a wake-up call for the city to start working on protecting itself adequately.

RupertSalt 23 hours ago

In 2008, I visited Manresa in Catalonia.

An uncited passage in Wikipedia explains how the French Troops, defeated during their Napoleonic Invasion (1808), burned and demolished Manresa on retreat, and the villagers simply rebuilt the buildings from the same rubble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manresa

I can attest that many buildings downtown are definitely rubble-y.

Insanity 2 days ago

This month I read "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10133950-carthage-must-b...), which dives deep into Hannibal's war against Rome (and the other punic wars).

I highly recommend reading about what happened from the Carthaginian perspective instead of the typical Roman perspective.

There's also some elaboration on the usage of elephants, the feasibility of of this, and how ultimately ineffective it was for war. (It was great for scaring the enemy, but the issue is they indiscriminately hurt both armies).

Starman_Jones 2 days ago

Worth noting that these would have been North African elephants, a now-extinct subspecies. It is not as tall as the modern African elephant - 2.5m at the shoulder, as compared to 3 to 3.5m for African elephants. A large warhorse might measure 1.5m tall, for comparison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_elephant

Mordisquitos 2 days ago

It is my understanding that Asian elephants are easier to tame by humans than African elephants, which is evident just by seeing how elephants are used in parts of Asia and how they are used (not) in Africa. Also circus elephants, when they were still common, would always be Asian elephants and not African ones. The reason I'm pointing this out is that I wonder whether the North African subspecies was more amenable to taming than still extant subspecies of the African elephant.

wahern 2 days ago

There are multiple species of African elephants, and the North African elephant may yet turn out to be related if not identical to one of the others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_elephant#Taxonom... The African forest elephant is of similar size, and it would be interesting if the forest elephant is indeed more easily trained.

rightbyte 2 days ago

> A large warhorse might measure 1.5m tall, for comparison.

By sadle hight not at ear top hight, right?

Starman_Jones 2 days ago

Correct :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_%28unit%29

jacquesm 2 days ago

Shoulder height.

metalman 2 days ago

ears will be at 8' or above on a real tank

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant

mentions hannibals last surviving elephant by name

drewnoakes 2 days ago

I highly recommend "The Fall of Civilisations" podcast's episode on this topic. it's such an epic story and the narrator builds such a rich picture of the times and events.

https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2023/04/11/%F0%9F%90%...

drewnoakes 2 days ago

There's also a video version of the episode on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6dbdVhVSat8

dkislyuk 2 days ago

The Paul Cooper production is great. The Rest Is History also just finished a long series (spread out in three seasons, starting on episode 421) on the Punic wars, similarly well done.

drewnoakes 3 hours ago

That's wonderful, thanks. I've just about finished all of The Fall of Civilisations and am already feeling a sense of loss. I'm sure I'll listen to them again, but am happy to hear recommendations of other great history content.

jimnotgym 2 days ago

Hannibal loved it when a plan came together.

The latter years of his life must have been very disappointing

awesome_dude 2 days ago

I ain't gettin' on no plane Hannibal!

cco 24 hours ago

Hmm, does this change our understanding of the route Hannibal took?

I've always seen pictures like the one on this Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal%27s_crossing_of_the_A...) where his army landed in Cartagena and then marched East.

But this article mentions the bone was found in Cordoba which is West by a few hundred miles and pretty far inland.

dzink 2 days ago

After interacting with some Asian elephants with handlers recently this makes a lot more sense. Even if he used North African elephants - they can hike up and down mountains and rough terrain easily with stability. I’m assuming they could pull equipment and even potentially be armed and armored. They are incredible creatures.

AdmiralAsshat 2 days ago

Terror Lake salutes Hannibal crossing the alps

L2007W 2 days ago

Herodotus wrote of fire breathing ants in Egypt.

RupertSalt 2 days ago

He was referring to his mother’s sisters.

Misinterpreted all the time. Very similar terms in the Greek sources.

keeganpoppen 2 days ago

score yet another win for the stories of antiquity being more right than wrong.

bluGill 2 days ago

I don't think anyone doubted the story. The details might be questionable, but the basics that he tried to fight with elephants is highly likely. We have plenty of sources for War Elephants in his time, so the idea that he didn't have them would be the larger surprise if someone could prove that.

awesome_dude 23 hours ago

> but the basics that he tried to fight with elephants is highly likely. We have plenty of sources for War Elephants in his time, so the idea that he didn't have them would be the larger surprise if someone could prove that.

Just to add to your point: Many many cultures have used elephants in their armies, so the only real bone of contention (oh god I do love my puns) would have been that Hannibal was using them on the European continent.

SketchySeaBeast 2 days ago

I think it would be more accurate to say "based upon true events".

arduanika 2 days ago

It's more like, the surviving written histories and the archaeological record are each giving us only a part of the real truth. It's as if they're both grasping in the dark at two different parts of the same elephant.