IT’S entirely appropriate that we celebrated World Elephant Day on August 12, they’ve been around a long time and they are the biggest land creature alive today.
They have also, sadly, become big news in that their very existence is threatened by human greed for their ivory.
A little about elephants. They started their long evolutionary path to true elephanthood in the order of mammals known as Proboscidea perhaps 55-million years ago in North Africa, but would have been recognisable by 40-million years ago as palaeomastodons.
Their distribution remained in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia until perhaps 25-million years ago, when they spread virtually worldwide, except for the Arctic and Australasia.
They evolved along many different lines, but the Ice Ages appeared to have intervened, leaving us with our now two familiar species, the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) at about 10,000 years ago, when their current distribution ranges were also established.
Man’s association with elephants, apart from hunting them of course, began possibly as long ago as 5 000, but certainly at least 3 000 years ago, in India.
From then on the elephant occupies a prominent place in the art, literature and religions of Asian countries from Mesopotamia in the west, through India, Sri Lanka, Burma and South East Asia to China in the east.
That is as far as the Asian elephant is concerned. When it comes to the African elephant, despite what is still said and believed about the African elephant there is historical evidence that they were being tamed in the Nile Valley as early as Ancient Egyptian times.
Today, however, working elephants as such are limited to Asian countries, where they are also vital in a religious and ceremonial sense. In Africa their working role is that of a safari vehicle.
The elephant became an integral part of the Hindu religion, but they are also revered in the Buddhist countries of South East Asia.
They became vital and much-loved components of ceremonies and still are throughout their Asian range.
They became, and again, still are, working animals (they are still a common sight on the country roads and on the streets of Indian cities) and they are still found in working situations through India and much of South East Asia.
They are also well-known as war elephants, particularly in Indian history.
But what about the African elephant as a war machine? One can but think of the great Carthaginian general, Hannibal, who led his army from the Iberian peninsula across the Alps onto the plains of Italy in 218 BC to challenge mighty Rome herself, and with him he had 50 war elephants. Surely they were African elephants?
Man clearly has a very special relationship with the elephant, which makes today’s headlines all the more depressing.
It’s a pity we don’t all feel the same way about them. Remember World Elephant Day. Cheers!
Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Elephants, Consultant: Dr.S.K. Eltringham, Salamander Books, London, 1991, and Everyman’s Encyclopaedia, J.M. Dent, London, 1950.
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