[greek enemies] Early Chartaginian army\'s

[PMBardunias]

It seems apparent that the Asian elephants possessed "great size and strength" in comparison to their African counterparts. I'd suggest that the smaller "jungle" elephant may well be being used. The larger ("bush") elephants will have had to come from south of the tropical area of Africa (the savanah lands they now inhabit). Perhaps the Ptolemies were procuring the larger of those equatorial “jungle” elephants.

Its unlikely that they used a jungle variety because they type located north of the Sahara at the time they were catching them were surely not jungle types. I need to make careful distinction that I am not talking about the classic african "bush" elephant of safari fame, which is the subspecies Loxodonta africanis, but populations of cyclotis that do not live in jungle. I was suprised upon looking into this that the small "cyclotis" all of which are from jungle, may be different subspecies all together. The Cyclotis, which the Troglodytic elephants might have been, that are found in central africa, but from more opened areas- areas more like what would have been seen in North Africa and probably the Red Sea coast back then- are only a foot or two shorter and about 500 lbs lighter than the Asians.

This leads me to a few possible conclusions:

1) For some reason the largest Cyclotis were not used or unmanageable.
2) The elephants used at Raphia just happened to be smaller- perhaps more females or younger. Even big young elephants will often quail at older bulls. Any of us older guys who has ever had the pleasure of facing down a teenaged punk know how this works.
3) The Asians were themselves bigger- there are some real big Asian elephants in Nepal, perhpas there were in the NW as well. Domestication and hunting might have played a role in this. Modern asian elephants are far more likely to be tuskless for example because we keep shooting all the males with big tusks. Also we tend to think that we make animals bigger when we domesticate them, but in fact Cows, pigs and dogs are all smaller- and dummer- than Aurochs, boars, and wolves. Smaller is more manageable.