Bone Could Be First Evidence of Hannibal’s Legendary War Elephants
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The one fact that everybody knows about Hannibal is that he used elephants in his war against the Romans 2,200 years ago. Now, archaeologists may have found the first direct evidence of these famous beasts.
In 2019, archaeologists unearthed a strange bone alongside a trove of ancient catapult projectiles in Córdoba, Spain. According to a study published this month in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, the bone may be from one of Hannibal’s war elephants, which the Carthaginian general used against Romans in the Second Punic War.
The bone “could prove to be a landmark,” lead author Rafael Martínez Sánchez told Live Science. Until now, “there has been no direct archaeological testimony for the use of these animals.”
Along with stone artillery and coins, researchers unearthed a “short, cube-shaped bone,” measuring nearly four inches long. Eventually, they determined that the bone likely came from the right leg of an African or Asian elephant. In 2023, Martínez Sánchez told El Pais: “It could belong to the period of the Punic Wars. It could be the first of Hannibal’s elephants to be discovered. We can’t know for sure, but it was certainly a sizable beast.”
Since then, researchers have continued studying the bone, but as it is poorly preserved, DNA and protein analyses have proved inconclusive. The species of elephant also remains unconfirmed. However, after recent radiocarbon testing, researchers were able to conclude that the elephant died between the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. and this timeline aligns with the Second Punic War, which occurred in the third century B.C.E. This conflict was part of the series of wars between Rome and Carthage, an ancient city in modern-day Tunisia.
Despite the historical record - most notably by the Greek historian Polybius, who provided the most reliable, analytical account - archaeologists had never found skeletal remains of elephants connected to the Punic Wars. Until the Córdoba bone. The researchers say that this bone didn’t come from “one of the mythical specimens Hannibal took across the Alps” because those elephants never returned to Spain.
The word 'Punic' derives from the word 'Phoenician' (phoinix in Greek or punicus in Latin), and refers to the citizens of Carthage, who were descended from the Phoenicians.
