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History of
Man and Elephant
5000 – 11,000 BC : The first recorded observations
of African Elephants made by man are cave paintings in the Sahara
Desert.
1, 200 BC : In the tomb of Rhekmere at Thebes, a
painting depicts an elephant being led by an Indian Mahout.
331 BC : In the battle of Hydaspes, King Porus used 200 elephants
against Alexander's army. Alexander triumphed but acknowledged that
that the outcome had been a near thing.
300 BC : Ptolemy, the master of Egypt after Alexander,
was forced to capture and train African elephants after his supply
of Indian elephants was cut off.
285 BC : Ptolemy II established a settlement on the
Red Sea, Ptolemais Thermon, for the purpose of capturing and training
elephants for battle and hunting.
218 BC : Hannibal Barca annihilated the Roman army
by the use of elephants. These elephants came from the same stock
of Ptolemy’s but were later destroyed in his attempt to cross
the Alps. The Ptolemies continued to use war elephants until the Romans
became too powerful when they figured out how to kill war elephants,
and so they were no longer terribly useful for warfare.
200 BC - 100 BC : Elephants in Africa were eventually eradicated
completely. They were killed for their tusks in their thousands.
1900 : British and German governments put prohibitions
on hunting and game reserves were created.
1910 : King Leopold of Belgium started a school in
the then Belgian Congo to use African elephants in forestry and agriculture.
This survives to this day at Gangala na Bodio in The Democratic Republic
of Congo. |
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