What Animal Did Hannibal Use To Cross The Alps
H aving battled their deadly rivals the Romans in Spain, in 218BC the Carthaginian army made a motion that no one expected. Their commander Hannibal marched his troops, including cavalry and African war elephants, across a high laissez passer in the Alps to strike at Rome itself from the northward of the Italian peninsula. It was ane of the greatest military feats in history.
The Romans had presumed that the Alps created a secure natural barrier against invasion of their homeland. They hadn't reckoned with Hannibal's boldness. In December he smashed apart the Roman forces in the north, assisted by his awesome elephants, the tanks of classical warfare. Many of the animals died of cold or disease the post-obit winter, but Hannibal fought his way downward through Italian republic. For 15 years he ravaged the state, killing or wounding over a one thousand thousand citizens but without taking Rome. But when he faced the Roman full general Scipio Africanus at Zama in north Africa in 202BC, his strategic genius met its match. So concluded the second Punic war, with Rome the victor.
Hannibal's alpine crossing has been celebrated in myth, art and film. JMW Turner made high drama of it in 1812, a louring snowstorm sending the Carthaginians into wild disarray. The 1959 sword-and-sandals epic movie, with Victor Mature in the eponymous championship role, fabricated Hannibal's "crazed elephant army" look more than like the polite zoo creatures they manifestly were.
The battles didn't end with Scipio'southward victory, though. Much ink, if non claret, has been spilled in furious arguments between historians over the precise route that Hannibal took across the Alps. The reply makes not a blind bit of difference to the historical consequence, but at that place's clearly something about that image of elephants on snowy peaks that makes experts care securely about where exactly they went.
An international team of scientists at present thinks the puzzle is largely solved. Its leader, geomorphologist Bill Mahaney of York University in Toronto, began pondering the question almost two decades agone by looking at geographical and environmental references in the classical texts. He and his colleagues have just revealed surprising new testify supporting their claim to have uncovered Hannibal'south path.
The three Punic wars were a struggle for dominance of the Mediterranean region by the two great trading and military powers of the third and second centuries BC: Carthage and Rome. Carthage, a former Phoenician metropolis-state in present-24-hour interval Tunis, had an empire extending over most of the north African coast also as the southern tip of Iberia. Rome was and then nevertheless a republic, and the two states were locked in a power struggle apt to flare into open state of war, until the Romans annihilated Carthage in 146BC.
Hannibal, son of full general Hamilcar who led troops in the first Punic war, gave Carthage its most glorious hour. He is ranked aslope Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and his nemesis Scipio as ane of the greatest war machine strategists of the ancient world, and his alpine crossing plays a large part in that reputation. Most of what we know nearly it comes from the accounts given by the Roman writers Polybius (c200-118BC) and Livy (59BC-AD17). They make information technology sound truly harrowing.
As the Carthaginian army ascended from the Rhône valley in Gaul, they were harassed and attacked by mountain tribes who, knowing the territory, set ambushes, dropped boulders and generally wrought havoc. During the descent the Carthaginians were mostly unmolested, but at present the mountains themselves threatened mortal danger. The Alps are steeper on the Italian side, and the path is narrow, hemmed in past precipices.
"Considering of the snowfall and of the dangers of his route [Hannibal] lost nearly as many men as he had done on the ascent," wrote Polybius. "Since neither the men nor the animals could be sure of their ground on account of the snow, any who stepped wide of the path or stumbled, overbalanced and savage down the precipices."
At length they reached a spot where the path suddenly seemed impassable, as Livy describes information technology: "A narrow cliff falling away and then sheer that even a low-cal-armed soldier could inappreciably accept got downwardly it past feeling his way and clinging to such bushes and stumps equally presented themselves."
"The track was too narrow for the elephants or fifty-fifty the pack animals to pass," writes Polybius. "At this point the soldiers once again lost their nerve and came close to despair."
Hannibal tried a detour on the terrifying slopes to the side of the path, but the snow and mud were too glace. So instead he set his troops to construct a road from the rubble, and later on backbreaking labour he got the men, horses and mules down the slope and below the snowline. The elephants were another matter – it took three days to brand a route wide enough. Finally, says Polybius, Hannibal "succeeded in getting his elephants across, but the animals were in a miserable status from hunger".
Where exactly Hannibal crossed the Alps was a point of contention even in the days of Polybius and Livy. Nineteenth-century historians argued about it, and even Napoleon weighed in. The controversy was all the same raging a hundred years later. Some authorities proposed a northerly path, past present-day Grenoble and through two passes over 2,000 metres loftier. Others argued for a southerly course across the Col de la Traversette – the highest road, reaching 3,000m to a higher place bounding main level. Or might the route have been some combination of the two, starting in the north, so weaving south and north over again?
The southern route was advocated in the 1950s-60s by Sir Gavin de Beer, director of the British Museum (natural history), who published no fewer than 5 books on the bailiwick. He combed the classical texts and tried to tie them in to geographical evidence – for example, identifying Hannibal'south river crossings from the timings of floods. "All of us more or less follow de Beer's footprint," says Mahaney.
For Mahaney, it began as a hobby and become a labour of love. "I've read classical history since my ordeal getting through iv years of Latin in high school," he says. "I can still see my onetime Latin teacher pointing his long stick at me."
He went looking for clues in the landscapes. Both Polybius and Livy mention that the impasse faced by Hannibal was created past fallen rocks. Polybius, who got his information firsthand past interviewing some of the survivors from Hannibal'southward ground forces, describes the rockfall in detail, saying that information technology consisted of two landslides: a contempo 1 on peak of older droppings. In 2004 Mahaney found from field trips and aerial and satellite photography that, of the various passes forth the proposed routes, only the Col de Traversette had enough big rockfalls above the snowline to account for such an obstruction.
There'southward an old, steep track of rubble leading out of this laissez passer – which might feasibly be based on the very i fabricated by Hannibal's engineers. What'due south more, in 2010 Mahaney and co-workers found a 2-layer rockfall in the pass that seemed a good match for that which Polybius mentioned. "No such deposit exists on the lee side of any of the other cols," he says.
He suspects Hannibal did not intend to come this way, but was forced to avert the lower cols to the north considering of the hordes of Gauls massing in that location. "They were equally Hannibal'south equal, and no doubt hungry to loot his baggage train," Mahaney says.
The rockfall evidence was pretty suggestive. Just could Mahaney and his team of geologists and biologists find anything more definitive? Since 2011 they've been looking in a peaty bog two,580m up in the mountains, merely below of the Col de la Traversette. Information technology's one of the few places where Hannibal's army could have rested after crossing the col, beingness the but identify in the vicinity with rich soil to back up the vegetation needed for grazing horses and mules.
The researchers rolled up their sleeves and dug into the mire. What they constitute was mud. And more mud. Not very informative, yous might think. But mud can encode secrets. Taking an ground forces of tens of thousands, with horses and elephants, over the Alps would take left one heck of a mess. More ii millennia later, Mahaney might have found it.
The peaty material is mostly matted with decomposed plant fibres. But at a depth of about 40cm this carbon-based textile becomes much more disturbed and compacted, being mixed up with finer-grained soil. This structure suggests that the bog became churned up when the layer was formed. That'southward not seen in whatsoever other soils from alpine bogs, and isn't easily explained past any natural phenomenon such as grazing sheep or the activity of frost. Merely information technology'due south simply what y'all'd look to see if an regular army with horses and elephants passed by – rather like the aftermath of a bad year at the Glastonbury festival. This soil tin exist radiocarbon-dated – and the age comes out almost spookily close to the date of 218BC attested by historical records as the time of Hannibal's crossing.
The researchers then took samples of this disturbed mud back to the lab, where they used chemical techniques to identify some of its organic molecules. These included substances institute in horse dung and the faeces of ruminants. There's some of this stuff throughout the mire mud, but significantly more in the churned-up layer.
What'southward more than, this section also contained loftier levels of Deoxyribonucleic acid institute in a type of bacteria called clostridia, which are very common in the gut of horses (and humans). In other words, the layer of disturbed mud is full of crap (perhaps not so different from Glastonbury either). Aside from a passing ground forces, it'south not piece of cake to see where information technology might take come up from – not many mammals alive upwards here, except for a few sheep and some hardy marmots.
That's not all. Microbiologists collaborating with the squad think they might take found a distinctive horse tapeworm egg in the samples. "At that place is fifty-fifty the possibility of finding an elephant tapeworm egg," says Mahaney'due south long-term collaborator, microbiologist Chris Allen of Queen's University Belfast. "This would really exist the pot of gold at the cease of the rainbow." It's only a shame, he adds, that "the pot of aureate is really a layer of horse manure". Evidence of elephants at the site would surely be a smoking gun, since you don't find many of them wandering wild in the Alps.
Meanwhile, Mahaney hopes, if he tin can find the funding, to mount a radar survey of the unabridged mire and other mires nearby to search for items dropped past the passing regular army. "My sniffer tells me some will plough up," he says – "coins, chugalug buckles, sabres, you lot proper noun information technology."
Unless they do, other experts may reserve judgment. Patrick Hunt, an archeologist who leads the Stanford Alpine Archæology Project, which has been investigating Hannibal'due south route since 1994, says that the respond to the puzzle "remains hauntingly elusive". Information technology'southward all too easy, he says, for fellow experts to adduce evidence for their favoured route – his team argues for a more northerly path – simply until the aforementioned methods and rigour are brought to bear on all the alternatives, none can be ruled out. All the same, he adds, Mahaney is i of the best geo-archaeologists working on the question. "He continues to be a trailblazer in the field," says Chase, "and I'd dear to interact with him, because he'due south asking first-class questions."
If Mahaney tin can secure firm show – such as chemic or microbial fingerprints of elephant faeces – it would be the culmination of a personal quest. "The Hannibal enigma appealed to me for the sheer attempt of getting the ground forces across the mountains," he says. "I take been in the field for long times with 100 people, and I tin can tell you it can exist pandemonium. How Hannibal managed to get thousands of men, horses and mules, and 37 elephants over the Alps is i magnificent feat."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/03/where-muck-hannibals-elephants-alps-italy-bill-mahaney-york-university-toronto#:~:text=Their%20commander%20Hannibal%20marched%20his,greatest%20military%20feats%20in%20history.
Posted by: geehatratilis1993.blogspot.com
0 Response to "What Animal Did Hannibal Use To Cross The Alps"
Post a Comment