The Elephant at War: From the Age of Cold Weapons to the 21st Century
In our minds, elephants seem to begentle and good-naturedexamples, and the somewhat smallerAsian elephant(Elephas maximus) in particular is known for its high intelligence and docile temperament. But history has played a little joke on us: the war elephants that once made the famously valiant Alexander the Great uneasy were none other than Asian elephants.
The seemingly gentle Asian elephant. Image: Scott Camazine / gettyimages.com
Giants on the Battlefield
In accounts of the Macedonians' grand campaign against the East, the extraordinary night of 331 BC is always mentioned: on the eve of the decisive battle with the Persian Empire, Alexander, who claimed the title of King of the World, was somewhat anxious and uneasy. Reconnaissance before the battle revealed that the enemy not only outnumbered them and was well equipped, but also held the advantage of terrain. Yet Alexander the Great seemed unconcerned about all this; what troubled him was that at the very front of the Persian formation there appeared15 fully armed elephants！
A painting depicting Persian war elephants at the Battle of Gaugamela. Modern historians generally believe, however, that the Persian war elephants of that time may not have been committed to actual combat. Image: Charles Le Brun / wikipedia
The seemingly gentle Asian elephant was used as a war elephant perhaps because, compared with the two more ferocious species of African elephants, the Asian elephantis easier to tame. In the ancient Indian epics, records of war elephants appear many times. Some even believe that the Persians learned the tactic of using war elephants from India.
Many civilizations pushed the power of elephants to the extreme; besides using them to charge enemy formations, some war elephants had blades fitted to their tusks, making them truly unstoppable. Image: Jeri Garbaccio / metmuseum.org
It is not hard to imagine, in an era that relied on cold weapons and formation-based combat, what kind of impact and shock a singleelephant charging at full speedcould produce against the enemy. Although in this famous Battle of Gaugamela the Persian war elephants were captured before they could be committed to battle, Alexander still keenly recognized their importance and deployed them in his campaigns a few years later. However, these war elephants did not bring the Macedonians any advantage, because their next opponent happened to be the civilization that first put elephants into warfare: India.
In the mid-18th century, Britain and France fought the Carnatic Wars over interests in South India, and war elephants still took part. Image: Paul Philippoteaux / wikipedia
Elephants in Ancient China
In fact, India was by no means the only one to first discover the military potential of the Asian elephant. In the distant East, the Chinese, skilled in warfare, also turned their eyes to this giant beast - in the early years of King Cheng of Zhou's reign, the remnants of the Yin-Shang rebelled, and "the Shang people drove elephants, wreaking havoc in the Eastern Yi," which caused no small trouble for the Duke of Zhou, Dan, who was sent to put down the rebellion. During China's Spring and Autumn period, when the State of Wu attacked Chu, the Chu army also deployed a"fire elephant formation"to defend against the enemy.
But strangely enough, although India and later the Mediterranean civilizations and the civilizations of the Indochinese Peninsula, also "beta testers" of war elephants, continued to use elephants for war into the modern era, China's war elephants gradually faded into oblivion, so much so that we can only ponder the majestic sight of elephants charging in formation on the Chu River and Han Border chessboard. What happened to China's elephants?
In fact, the answer is simple and straightforward: for Chinese civilization, our connection with elephants was too brief. As civilization gradually developed,the elephants had already drifted far away。
The Book of Songs mentions "four stallions, neatly matched, with ivory-tipped bows and fish-skin quivers"; "ivory-tipped" refers to bows decorated with ivory at both ends. Image: Hosoi Kou / "Illustrated Guide to the Names and Things of the Book of Songs"
During the Xia and Shang periods, elephants were still a common species in the Yellow River basin. In the oracle bone inscriptions unearthed at Yinxu, scenes of the Shang king hunting are frequently recorded - "Xinhai... captured ten elephants," "Yihai... captured seven elephants," "Xinmao... two elephants." In fact, excavations of sites from the Xia and Shang periods and earlier show that for a long time the Yellow River basin experienced a warm and humid period. At that time, there were still vast tracts of native bamboo forest in North China, and wild water buffalo, rhinoceroses and Asian elephants could safely overwinter there. The Shang people therefore had enough wild elephant resources to tame, and using them for military purposes was naturally quite normal.
Even more noteworthy is that the Shang dynasty's use of elephant resources was not limited to labor. At that time there was already a saying that "among the finest delicacies are the lips of the orangutan... and the "yue" of the shaggy elephant" Later, Lu Buwei interpreted "yue" as referring tothe elephant's trunk. This shows that our nation of great food lovers' habit of wanting to taste everything probably began to flourish with our Shang dynasty ancestors.
Those Who Advanced, the Elephants That Receded
It cannot be avoided that during the Shang dynasty, the climate of the Central Plains had already begun to change, and winter temperatures in the Yellow River basin were no longer sufficient to support the survival of cold-sensitive creatures such as elephants and rhinoceroses. By the Warring States period, Han Feizi wrote that "people rarely see live elephants," indicating that in the Central Plains at that time wild elephants may not have been completely extinct, but were already very rare. Population growth and agricultural development also led to the reclamation of large amounts of habitat, and China's elephant herds graduallyreceded to the Huai River area。
Of the two factors, human activity and climate change, which had a greater impact on the distribution of elephants within China? It must be acknowledged that climate change was an important long-term cause, but its effects seem far less rapid than those of the former.
A typical example is that during the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, because years of warfare led to population decline and agricultural recession, the area of secondary forest in the Central Plains expanded again. The Asian elephant population in the Huai River basin not only stopped declining but even showed momentum toward spreading northward. It was recorded at the time that "in the twelfth month of the first year of Chengsheng (552 AD)... there were several hundred wild elephants in Huainan, damaging people's houses." That several hundred wild elephants could appear at the end of deep winter shows that the environment at that time could still support elephant herds. But this sentence also reflects theintense human-elephant conflict。
China's ancient forests were extremely abundant. Image: Fan Baomin / "Journal of Beijing Forestry University" (2001)
By the High Tang, Central Plains civilization once again entered a period of stable growth, and active agricultural activity once again compressed the wild elephants' habitat. In the second year of Zhenyuan (786 AD), the rebel Li Xilie captured a wild elephant in Tangzhou. Since wild elephants had already become extremely rare north of the Yangtze River at that time, Li Xilie was overjoyed, thinking it was anauspicious sign- in the fourth month of that same year, he was poisoned to death by his subordinates.
In the Tang dynasty, however, whether among the common people or the royal court, elephants were by no means unfamiliar: the open and inclusive Tang attracted tribute from many surrounding small states, and among the tributes from the southern states there was no shortage oftamed elephants. The state most fond of sending elephants as tribute was probably Lin yi, in what is now central Vietnam. Records show that Lin yi sent envoys to the Tang a total of 33 times, and 12 of those missions brought elephants, with the largest single delivery exceeding 20.
Logically, since wild elephants were still distributed in the southern regions of the Tang dynasty, one would think the court would not think much of these tributes. In fact, that was not the case: the elephants sent by Lin yi were not only obedient and well-behaved but alsogood at dancing, and deeply loved by Tang rulers.
A Tang dynasty statue of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva riding a white elephant (left). Image: Handan Museum
Lin yi had a long history of taming elephants, but for them elephants were not merely playthings: within their country "no punishments were established; those guilty of crimes were made to be trampled by elephants," and militarily they possessed a huge corps of war elephants. When fighting against the Liu Song of the Southern Dynasties and the Sui dynasty, they used war elephants on a large scale. So would the Tang dynasty therefore reintroduce war elephants? A piece of indirect evidence seems to answer this question: in the eighth year of Emperor Xuanzong's Kaiyuan era, the state of South Tianzhu once requested the Great Tang to support it with war elephants and troops to fight against the Arabs and the Tibetans. One can imagine that at this time the Tang dynasty's war elephants must have been quite substantial, otherwise how could it support foreign states?
Elephant execution was a form of punishment practiced for a very long time in South and Southeast Asia. In Tang descriptions of the states of the Indochinese Peninsula, it is accurately recorded that they "had criminals trampled by elephants." Image: MilkyWei / wikipedia
In the early years of the Northern Song, the climate briefly warmed again, and wild elephants, which had once shrunk back to the Yangtze River basin, occasionally reappeared near the Huai River and even farther north. Unfortunately, this was only a brieflast flicker of life. After the Jingkang Incident, large numbers of Central Plains people moved south to escape the flames of war, and for the first time China's north-south population ratio reversed. As the population moved south, wild elephant habitat gradually disappeared and fragmented, and the country's wild elephants rapidly shrank back to Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi, and the Yunnan-Guizhou region.
Thispattern of humans advancing and elephants retreatingcontinued all the way into the Ming and Qing periods. By modern times, China's elephant herds appeared only sporadically in southern Yunnan. Modern research suggests that the surviving Asian elephants in Yunnan are not the same subspecies as the Asian elephants that once lived in the Central Plains, and that this subspecies, temporarily namedthe Chinese elephant, had become completely extinct by the Ming and Qing period at the latest.
The distribution range of the Asian elephant. Light red is the historical range, dark red is the current range. Image: Semhur / wikimedia
Can My Ivory Be Saved?
However, in contrast to the continuing decline of China's wild Asian elephants,domestic demand for elephant products kept rising。
Whether in the East or the West, the use of ivory has a long history. According to records, we Chinese may have used ivory for as long as 7000 years, and among the "hundred crafts and eight materials" of the Zhou dynasty, ivory craftsmen and ivory materials already occupied an important place. After the introduction of Buddhism, the association of elephants with the Buddha and many bodhisattvas made them even more a symbol ofthe sacred and noble, which pushed the Chinese admiration for ivory products to its peak: wealthy families used household items carved and polished from ivory (chopsticks, seals), important court officials used ivory hu tablets, and ivory carved crafts and religious items were regarded as treasures.
Exquisite ivory carved crafts. Image: disappearingelephants.com
After wild elephant resources gradually dried up, from the Song dynasty onward China alreadyimported large amounts of ivoryto meet demand. At the same time, the countries of South and Southeast Asia and Japan, deeply influenced by Buddhist culture, also craved ivory resources.
However, because elephants have long growth and reproductive cycles and reproduce very slowly in the wild,elephants have never been domesticated, and because human activity reduced their habitat, Asian elephant populations shrank rapidly. By 1973, their numbers had fallen to a dangerous level. As one of the first endangered wild animal species, it was listed in Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which stipulated that from 1973 onward there would be acomplete banon international trade in Asian elephant products, including ivory. But as a result, strong market demand shifted the source of ivory toAfrican elephants, which had not yet been listed in that appendix. The result was that the populations of both species of African elephants also fell rapidly, and they soon entered CITES Appendix 1.
Ivory is better left on the elephant. Image: caa-auction.com
Of course, such bans place no restraint on illegal poachers. Onlyby tackling the problem at the source of demandcan the harm caused by the ivory trade be effectively curbed. In 2015, China and the United States jointly announced that the two countries would suspend ivory imports. This was a positive signal: China was oncethe world's largestlegal ivory consumer market and the largest illegal ivory consumer market, and the United States was the second-largest illegal ivory consumer market. The announcement by the two countries of a complete ban on the ivory consumer market would play a huge role in curbing illegal poaching and ivory smuggling. Unfortunately, this consensus remained in effect for only one year before the United States restarted ivory imports.
China's ban on ivory imports had a certain effect, but legal domestic ivory trade was still ongoing, and large quantities of ivory from illegal sources were mixed into it. Subsequently, on December 31, 2017, China announceda complete ban on all ivory trade, a move praised by all sides.
In countries like Thailand, which still has relatively large wild Asian elephant resources, ivory products can still be easily bought today, because domestic trade in each country is barely controlled by CITES. In addition, many countries continue to capture large numbers of baby elephants from the wild to tame them, subduing them with sticks, hooks and hunger, and then using them forperformance or labor。
Behind elephant performances lies cruel torment of elephants. Image: zghjmx.com
These oppressed elephants sometimes injure people. You may still remember that last December, a Chinese tour group riding elephants in Thailand suffered 1 death and 2 injuries.
For the elephants, and for ourselves as well,please refuse elephant performances。
Besides riding elephants and watching elephant performances, there are plenty of other ways to learn about elephants. Image: World Animal Protection
Thehuman-elephant conflictalready recorded in our country's ancient texts has, in today's era when Asian elephant habitat has been extremely compressed, become an ever-present norm - in the existing distribution areas of Asian elephants, including China's Xishuangbanna, tragedies often occur in which elephant herds destroy farmland and houses and are then retaliated against by farmers.
In West Bengal, India, after a group of people threw burning tar balls at a mother Asian elephant and her calf, the two hurriedly fled the scene. Image: Biplab Hazra / The Nature InFocus Photography Awards 2017
Looking quietly at the image above, I cannot help falling into painful reflection: on the long road along which Asian elephants and humans have walked together, they have either played the role of the fearsomewar machineor becomea symbol of the Buddha, but whichever image they took, they should never have ended up in their present predicament, should they?
Asian elephants walking on a road in a Thai reserve. Image: Khunkay / wikipedia
The glorious story of the Asian elephant is over, and no matter how much we regret it, we probably cannot reverse this fact. But the story still needs to be told - telling history may no longer matter for history itself, but for the future it is crucially important.
This is the 222nd article of the fourth year of Species Calendar, from Species Calendar author @A Man Wandering.
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