【歴史的発見】ハンニバルの「象の軍団」ついに実証へ？初の直接的な証拠を発見か

カルタゴの名将ハンニバルがアルプス越えで率いたとされる伝説の「戦象」。これまで決定的な物証に欠けていましたが、考古学者たちがついにその存在を裏付ける世界初の直接的な証拠を発見した可能性があると報じられています。歴史の定説を塗り替える、科学的にも非常に興味深い大発見となりそうです。

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.

Related: "Single bone in Spain offers first direct evidence of Hannibal's war elephants" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46917005 (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.

Everyone should visit Córdoba, Spain once in their life.

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.