> A second-century Roman mosaic of a war elephant in Tunisia
It is quite interesting to see that the depicted elephant has wrong proportions. This makes one wonder whether the artist who created that mosaic, ever saw an elephant himself.
Pure speculation, of course, but I would say so. The hump in the back; the small, high, tail; dominant forehead — those are all things missed by people who mis-draw elephants. I think this artist got them right, which is hard to do from description alone.
I’m very tempted to agree with you: people who draw from description draw unicorns after being told about rhinoceroses. We have a lot of medieval monks’ drawings of elephants by description and theirs look like tapir with a trumpet stuck in their nose. This is not a photo, of course but it mainly highlights the head, like any one would if they didn’t measured proportions carefully.
There has also been debate about which species of elephant Hannibal's forces used. Elsewhere, Hellenistic Greek forces used Asian elephants, but many believe Hannibal used North African elephants, a sub-species that was extirpated by the Romans. Their proportions might have been a little different than living elephants. It will be interesting to see if the bone can help settle this debate.
It's interesting because they don't monotonically get better over time. Some of the oldest depictions are pretty good, and there's some zaniness in the middle of the timeline
Might be a limitation of the medium. Mosaics are complicated.
This famous "skeleton" mosaic has the proportions wrong as well, even though the artist almost certainly saw some actual human skeletons, and definitely some living humans with their longer arms and smaller heads than depicted :)
The mosque-turned-cathedral is an interesting (and huge) piece of medieval architecture.
The Roman bridge is fascinating as well.
Plus, if you arrive in summer, you will learn what heat is. Córdoba is hot even for the standards of Spanish summers. Hence, interesting night life. Not just drunkards, normal families and everyone who barely survived the day and now has the opportunity to live and socialize outside.
It’s incredible that we’re still finding chemical or biological signatures from a logistics operation that happened over 2,000 years ago.
Whether it’s stable isotope analysis of the soil or unique pollen counts, the 'data' is still there in the ground. It really puts our modern digital 'archaeology' (trying to recover a file from a 10-year-old server) into perspective.
Related: "Single bone in Spain offers first direct evidence of Hannibal's war elephants" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46917005 06-feb-2026 40 comments
> A second-century Roman mosaic of a war elephant in Tunisia
It is quite interesting to see that the depicted elephant has wrong proportions. This makes one wonder whether the artist who created that mosaic, ever saw an elephant himself.
Pure speculation, of course, but I would say so. The hump in the back; the small, high, tail; dominant forehead — those are all things missed by people who mis-draw elephants. I think this artist got them right, which is hard to do from description alone.
I’m very tempted to agree with you: people who draw from description draw unicorns after being told about rhinoceroses. We have a lot of medieval monks’ drawings of elephants by description and theirs look like tapir with a trumpet stuck in their nose. This is not a photo, of course but it mainly highlights the head, like any one would if they didn’t measured proportions carefully.
There has also been debate about which species of elephant Hannibal's forces used. Elsewhere, Hellenistic Greek forces used Asian elephants, but many believe Hannibal used North African elephants, a sub-species that was extirpated by the Romans. Their proportions might have been a little different than living elephants. It will be interesting to see if the bone can help settle this debate.
This page showed up on HN years ago, someone gathered a bunch of art depicting elephants over time: https://uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/
It's interesting because they don't monotonically get better over time. Some of the oldest depictions are pretty good, and there's some zaniness in the middle of the timeline
Wrong to elephants today
Might be a limitation of the medium. Mosaics are complicated.
This famous "skeleton" mosaic has the proportions wrong as well, even though the artist almost certainly saw some actual human skeletons, and definitely some living humans with their longer arms and smaller heads than depicted :)
https://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Ha...
Everyone should visit Córdoba, Spain once in their life.
why?
The mosque-turned-cathedral is an interesting (and huge) piece of medieval architecture.
The Roman bridge is fascinating as well.
Plus, if you arrive in summer, you will learn what heat is. Córdoba is hot even for the standards of Spanish summers. Hence, interesting night life. Not just drunkards, normal families and everyone who barely survived the day and now has the opportunity to live and socialize outside.
original title: Archaeologists Unearthed a 2,200-Year-Old Bone. They Say It Could Be the First Direct Evidence of Hannibal’s Legendary War Elephants
At this rate, we're only a few years away from discovering evidence for Herodotus' giant ants.
The anthill garnet is mined by ants on a Navajo reservation.
https://columbiagemhouse.com/pages/anthill-garnet
https://myeldesign.com/blogs/journal/the-fabulous-story-of-a...
Peissel claimed that was marmots and totally real, didn't they?
It’s incredible that we’re still finding chemical or biological signatures from a logistics operation that happened over 2,000 years ago.
Whether it’s stable isotope analysis of the soil or unique pollen counts, the 'data' is still there in the ground. It really puts our modern digital 'archaeology' (trying to recover a file from a 10-year-old server) into perspective.
There are entire artists on my 2011 iTunes library that no longer exist online. The pace of data rot is genuinely hard to believe.
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