Monday, June 22, 2009

Carthaginian Elephants



Some Carthaginian elephants trudge along the route looking for a guy named Hannibal and some Alps to cross.
  
These elephants were a different and smaller (and also now extinct) breed to the modern day African elephant.  They were driven by Numidian (black tribesmen) while the lighter-skinned Carthaginians (who were originally descended from the Phoenicians) provided the soldiers who rode in the tower on the elephant's back. 

Hannibal of Carthage took a bunch of these animals across the Alps into Italy when he started the Second Punic War, but they didn't survive long, and weren't replaced. (Carthage was located in Northern Africa, across the bay from modern day Tunis.)

Note the differences between these and the Indian elephants of a previous post.      

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