AHC: Chinese elephant army

there are theory that Borneo elephant is not native, but come frokm tame Javan elephant that send as gift to Sulu monarch.

i think elephant ineffectiveness is exaggerated, Roman insists several times in treaty that their former enemy disband their elephant force. besides if nothing else they will have use as logistics, they could drag massige amount of stuff.
Yet apart from having them serving as part of foederati forces,the Romans never bothered to adopt it as a part of their military.
 
The pale area shows range before the Bronze Age when the climate in Asia was a bit warmer and wetter than today even if not much.
..

The map shows the historical range from the dawn of time. The range is so large because they counted in the Mammoths....
 
The map shows the historical range from the dawn of time. The range is so large because they counted in the Mammoths....

No they didn't.

This is pure Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, Holocene range.

I can name some Middle Eastern and Chinese sites with remains if you still don't believe it.
 
The fact that elephants once extended to the Middle East was news to me. I imagined a herd of elephants peacefully bathing themselves in the Euphrates, perhaps near pre-Sumerian cities, and made myself sad :( the extiction of megafauna around the world is an ongoing process that humans by competition and outright hunting have accelerated inmensenly. In fact I believe that animals such as the Tiger and Lion once extended even farther than from we know, but by the time the first humans started registering them (like the Greeks in the case of the lion) they were in the way of extinction already.

I was about to propose elephants as work animals in China and other places, but they aren't that useful, while they're strong and smart, they take a LONG time to breed, and they're somewhat fragile, so it's not the best idea. They're used in India even today but never in mass scale projects.

I'll look for some more sources.
It would make sense as a source of Hannibal's elephants then
 
It would make sense as a source of Hannibal's elephants then

From what I've read, it was a subspecies of the African Elephant that lived in North Africa. Much like lions and bears in that region, they are now extinct.

The map shows the historical range from the dawn of time. The range is so large because they counted in the Mammoths....

Nope, mammoths were a related but different genus, the map only shows the Asian Elephant. Here's a map of the peak distribution of the Woolly Mammoth. Some mammoths actually survived well into human civilization, in 4500 BCE, but in remote inbred populations on islands in Siberia. AFAIK they did not extend to the warmer regions of China.
 
Last edited:

scholar

Banned
The map shows the historical range from the dawn of time. The range is so large because they counted in the Mammoths....
Mammoths wouldn't be in that range unless it was an ice age, and even then not much of the northern most parts of the China Portion.

1920px-Distribution_of_woolly_mammoth.png
 
there are theory that Borneo elephant is not native, but come frokm tame Javan elephant that send as gift to Sulu monarch.

And yet DNA tests show that Bornean elephants have ancient origins and deserve their subspecific name. Which means that, if they were indeed introduced to Borneo, they originally came from an area that has since lost its elephants, like Java or who knows, China itself. Either way they are a living treasure that deserves protection.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Who cares, it'd still be interesting to see the Chinese use them, especially against it enemies in the North who relied heavily on calvary, and horses of course tend to freak out around elephants. As for cost, this is China were talking about. I'm sure they are more than capable taking care of hundreds of elephants, regardless of the expense.

Also, curious as to why on the map the island of Java had elephants as did the northern tip of Borneo yet central and southern Borneo didn't? Guess the elephants didn't like the neighborhoods in those areas
elephants which were used in the hundreds in the classical west never managed to be a decisive arm in any battle.
 
Doesn't China historically rely on heavy infantry as a backbone of their army? I'm not sure they'd even think of using elephants.
 
Who cares, it'd still be interesting to see the Chinese use them, especially against it enemies in the North who relied heavily on calvary, and horses of course tend to freak out around elephants. As for cost, this is China were talking about. I'm sure they are more than capable taking care of hundreds of elephants, regardless of the expense.

Also, curious as to why on the map the island of Java had elephants as did the northern tip of Borneo yet central and southern Borneo didn't? Guess the elephants didn't like the neighborhoods in those areas

The Bornean elephants were deliberately introduced in the 16th C by the Sultanate of Sulu.
 
Top