I am a geek with too many books
Jan. 5th, 2005 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutNot that the above is news to anyone I know, but here is further proof:
Lately, I have been wondering about Hannibal's elephants, the ones he used to invade the Italian peninsula and challenge Rome. I'd always been told they were African elephants, but I'd also always been told that African elephants are untrainable. Meanwhile, Asiatic elephants were known to be used in warfare from before Hannibal's time. So was this just a mistake, a thinko (Hannibal is African, elephants are African, therefore Hannibal's elephants are African), or was something else going on?
I didn't need to leave the house to find the answer.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
imnotandrei will remember the book's title better than I will, since technically it's his book, but it's something like Techniques of Ancient Warfare. According to it, Hannibal's elephants were indeed African in origin, but they were "African forest elephants," smaller and more northernly than the better-known African bush elephants, who are indeed more or less untrainable. Hannibal and, before him, the Ptolmaic kings of Egypt, relied on these elephants because there was a trade embargo on Asiatic elephants.
Anyway, the convergence of the fact that this question, of all things, was really bugging me, and the fact that I had the resources in my house to answer it, marks me out as some serious slab o' geek.
And I haven't even mentioned my ongoing fascination with unusual domesticated animals in general. (Which sometimes devolves into paying work, such as my upcoming Asimov's story. I recently described myself in reference to said story as "just a poor girl obsessed with cloning and pastel house pets.")
Another elephant fact: both Asiatic and forest African war elephants were captured in the wild and trained from there; there were no breeding stocks of elephants for warfare purposes.
New nagging elephant question: are there still African forest elephants, or are they extinct?
Lately, I have been wondering about Hannibal's elephants, the ones he used to invade the Italian peninsula and challenge Rome. I'd always been told they were African elephants, but I'd also always been told that African elephants are untrainable. Meanwhile, Asiatic elephants were known to be used in warfare from before Hannibal's time. So was this just a mistake, a thinko (Hannibal is African, elephants are African, therefore Hannibal's elephants are African), or was something else going on?
I didn't need to leave the house to find the answer.
imnotandrei will remember the book's title better than I will, since technically it's his book, but it's something like Techniques of Ancient Warfare. According to it, Hannibal's elephants were indeed African in origin, but they were "African forest elephants," smaller and more northernly than the better-known African bush elephants, who are indeed more or less untrainable. Hannibal and, before him, the Ptolmaic kings of Egypt, relied on these elephants because there was a trade embargo on Asiatic elephants.Anyway, the convergence of the fact that this question, of all things, was really bugging me, and the fact that I had the resources in my house to answer it, marks me out as some serious slab o' geek.
And I haven't even mentioned my ongoing fascination with unusual domesticated animals in general. (Which sometimes devolves into paying work, such as my upcoming Asimov's story. I recently described myself in reference to said story as "just a poor girl obsessed with cloning and pastel house pets.")
Another elephant fact: both Asiatic and forest African war elephants were captured in the wild and trained from there; there were no breeding stocks of elephants for warfare purposes.
New nagging elephant question: are there still African forest elephants, or are they extinct?
