Elephant Mystery at Ancient Syrian Battle Solved
African elephants at Mole National Park in Ghana.
Credit: Patrick Bennett

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 11:40 a.m. E.T. on Jan. 24.



That, in turn, discounts an ancient Greek account of how a battle between two warring empires played out, with one side's elephants refusing to fight and running away, the scientists report in the January issue of the journal of Heredity. [10 Epic Battles That Changed the Course of History]

Ancient battle


The elephants were the "ace in the hole," able to trample the enemy and sow terror with their massive size.

"Elephants were considered the tanks of the time, until eventually the Romans figured out how to defeat war elephants," in later times, said study co-author Alfred Roca, an animal scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Antiochus had easy access to Asian elephants from India, but Ptolemy didn't. Instead, he set up outposts in what is now modern-day Eritrea to get African elephants.

Unfortunately, that strategy didn't work out so well: According to Polybius' account, the African elephants turned tail and ran when they saw how gigantic the Asian elephants were. Ptolemy, however, was able to recover due to missteps by Antiochus and eventually won the battle.

African elephants



"We showed using pretty much every genetic marker, that they were savanna elephants," Roca told LiveScience. "This was contrary to some speculation that there may be forest elephants present in that part of the world."

The team also found that there were just 100 to 200 African elephants left in isolated pockets in Eritrea, which could make them susceptible to inbreeding in the future.

Ancient myths


In other ancient documents, "There were these ancient semi-mythical accounts of India, and they claimed that India had the biggest elephants in the world," Roca said.

Polybius, who wasn't actually at the battle, likely read those accounts and surmised the Asian elephants' bigger size caused their opponents to panic.


Editor's Note: This article was corrected to note that there are 100 to 200 African, not Asian elephants in Eritrea.
