Elephant civilization?
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Oh, I dunno, man, we ain't primates and we made it to the top.
I assume you're not being literal here (since we plainly are primates).
Anyways definitely check out the Fithp as there is strong indication that they are descended from "alien elephants" - the book was written at a time when "popular science" was strong on parallel evolution
The males will still have traits - periodic musth, solitary behavior after puberty, etc. - that aren't well suited to civilized life. The females also mature earlier and would be better cultural transmitters.
I think the default assumption is that the *elephants would retain their ancestors' behavioral traits unless there's a good evolutionary reason for them not to do so.
Fair point. Two mutations, then, a million or so years apart? Both of them would be useful enough that they'd probably sweep through the species quickly. Or else the language mutation could be the only one, and the *elephants would have to deal with having only two pseudo-digits.
Also a fair point. Upon checking, the mammoths actually seem to be closer to Asian elephants than the African elephants are, so they'd probably be behaviorally similar to modern elephants. It's the mastodons that speciated during the Miocene and are part of a separate family; they'd be the ones, if any, who are behaviorally different.
If the *elephants ever develop large settlements, noise pollution (or vibration pollution) might be more of an issue than it is for humans.
There are varying claims on that - some have argued that elephant vibrations can travel up to 20 miles in the ground (as opposed to ~6 miles for airborne calls) while others argue that the range is no more than two miles. The *elephants will certainly be able to communicate over a wider range than humans, but it isn't certain that they'd be able to communicate across the entire range of a tribe, or that the seismic communications would be of more than a general nature (I imagine there would be a lot of "noise" interference, although I haven't read the literature).
DirtyCommie once started a TL about sapient mammoth inhabiting North America: https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...d.php?t=200427
Sadly, the TL looks to be dead
Missed that one, will have to check it out!
That's kind of what I'm thinking too -- foot nomads rather than horse nomads, possibly with some central "memory-place" to which the tribe returns every year.
There's been some discussion of agricultural settlements, but as I said up front, I think that would be a much bigger leap for *elephants than for humans. For one thing, humans needed agriculture to control their food supply, while elephants can eat grasses and leaves that grow wild in sufficient quantities for agriculture to be unnecessary. Add to that the elephants' high calorie requirements - it would take 20 to 35 times as much agricultural land to support an elephant as it takes to support a human - and the difficulty of making agricultural tools with a trunk, and settled agriculture seems like a low-probability invention.
I actually wonder if the *elephants' agriculture might begin with trees - pruning fruit and nut trees, removing competing plant life, planting new trees elsewhere on the tribal range, etc. This could be done fairly easily without complex tools, and it's also compatible with nomadic life as long as they visit the groves a couple of times a year. They'd become what Jared calls "hunter-gardeners" (or in their case grazer-gardeners) rather than true farmers. Maybe they'd make the leap to legumes or root vegetables from there, but it would be a very different kind of agriculture that requires major changes in lifestyle, so I'm far from certain.
I also doubt they'd get the idea of domestication. They don't need animals for hunting because they're herbivores, they don't need draft animals because they're stronger than anything they might domesticate, and I can't really think of any other reason for them to make that leap. I'm guessing that grazer-gardener tribes at an Upper Paleolithic level of technology - albeit possibly with some anomalies such as writing - are what we'd get.
I would say Dolphins are about equal. They have a disadvantage when it comes to gripping, but they consume more protein for neural growth and they have more latent creativity which is more important than intelligence necessarily.
I don't question the intelligence, communication ability, or social abilities of dolphins (or other cetacians for that matter), but "civilization" typically implies some level of technology - which requires an ability to manipulate the environment and make tools. Also, a technological civilization really requires at some point the ablity to harness fire - something dolphins could never do for obvious reasons.
Possibly being more heavily cultured will gradually breed a male who is less dominated by musth? Too, an adult bull who added his labour to the cows' is good for the herd, and more likely to breed.
I find the idea of them cultivating orchards very convincing. Could they perhaps alter the behaviour of their tick birds enough to call it domestication? And, just possibly, some sort of night sentinel; especially later, if they engage in violent (even if just against property) intra-species competition.
In addition to what Zoomar said, elephants have very altruistic and cooperative behavior patterns (including cooperative problem-solving) that are well suited to developing a civilization.
I'm also not sure that elephant creativity has ever been tested in the way that dolphin creativity has. The elephants' capacity for innovative problem-solving, and apparently for empathy, does suggest some ability to imagine.
Maybe if the cows start selecting for such traits...
Some of the modern literature suggests that elephants regard tick birds as pests rather than symbiotes, and that the birds may do more harm than good. With that said, an *elephant might get the idea of training the birds to eat ticks in a way that isn't as damaging to their hosts.
Sentinel animals are a definite possibility. I'd thought of guard dogs (which, as meat-eaters, wouldn't compete with the *elephants for food) but discounted them because dogs would never be able to fight off an attack by rival elephants; however, using canines or birds as an early-warning system makes sense.
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Thanks, I had no idea of that.
Actually, might a small-insect-eating primate be easier to train? And it could keep away unwanted tick birds at the same time. (Or am I finding too attractive the idea of an elephant enjoying her evening meal with a row of bush babies along her back?)
An animal with sensitive hearing isn't going to want bush babies. Those things make an unholy racket.
Actually, I WAS being literal.
Anyway, wasn't "Footfall" released in 1986?
Wow. That actually makes perfect sense, J.E.; you explained things better than I ever could.
More reasonable, yes. My taste leans toward a single change and then a gradual shift in various traits, but an elephant society that was already starting to use tools would indeed be fertile ground for a third-grip mutation.
Intriguing.
Flooring.
Structures could be designed for privacy by, say, raising a densely woven frame of long-narrow saplings on a platform of close-spaced logs. It'd be a decades' work without thumbs, but it should be possible to support elephants' weight, and it would transmit sound fairly well through the floor weave and dramatically muffle transmission to and from the ground below. It'd help to cake clay to the frame, but they'd just knock it off if they really walked around on it.
The different sound transmission of different soils, across rivers, after rain, et cetera would also have vast cultural significance.
Once they start relying more on their brains, there's going to be a consistent selective pressure to minimize overall body size and maximize protein intake. I wouldn't be surprised if accidental ingestion of insects becomes quite deliberate. Though obviously it'd take a lot of insects all at once to be worth the effort. Herbivores can process meat quite effectively. That's how Mad Cow disease started, after all. And while that's not the most ringing of endorsements.... The elephant group that's stamping birds's eggs or carrion leftovers into its normal fare would have an enormous nutritional advantage over its neighbors.
There are hypotheses out there that suggest Neolithic farming was a response to greater societal complexity directed toward spiritual ends. The structures in Kurdistan, for example, that are often cited as the "historical Eden" depict a hunter-gatherer's paradise. But the amount of labor required to build them must have severely taxed that very environment, and required tremendous organization to feed. Since that's almost precisely the date and region where we made the first use of wheat, barley, sheep, and goats.... People naturally get to thinking.
Whether or not that happened historically, the principle is not unsound. I could see your elephants going through roughly that process somewhere between 1mya and 2-3myfn. Mobilizing food intake to build a religious monument, and realizing by the time they finish that their old way of life is no longer sustainable there and they need the new methods to survive.
Still and all, unless and until they really cut down on their nutritional needs or breed/find some incredibly nutrient-rich food source I expect they'll be effectively "trapped" in the early Neolithic.
Are there any better options? A personal grooming/pest control domesticate seems too cool to pass up, if there's any plausible way to do it.
I'm trying to imagine how the seismic component of *elephant language would work. At distance, it would probably be tribe-to-tribe or tribe-to-individual communication rather than individual-to-individual, because the footfall of an individual *elephant would be drowned out by intervening vibrations from other *elephants, animals and natural events. I wonder if that part of the language might come to resemble dancing, with one seismic pattern to warn off intruders, another to summon solitary males back to the herd, a third to send news of natural disasters, etc. Tribal "dances" might also be used to share celebrations or life-cycle events with other tribes - essentially letting all the *elephants within seismic range know of a particular tribe's joys and sorrows.
At close range, individual-to-individual communication would be possible - each *elephant in a tribe would know the others' distinctive seismic "voices" in the same way that a dog or cat can distinguish its master's footfall from those of other people who might walk up the stairs. This mode might not be used for intimate communication (given that everyone else in the village or tribal encampment could "hear" what is said) but could be the equivalent of shouting across a crowded room.
Would there be an aesthetic or race-memory component - the sound of vibrations on a particular soil being associated with a place of importance to the tribe, or the sound of footfalls after rain (or at other times) as a sort of music?
Interesting - I hadn't realized that intelligent herbivores could become omnivores by choice, and this certainly seems like a plausible development. Why do you think there would be selection for small body size, though? In a Paleolithic or Neolithic society, physical strength would still be at a premium for work and defense, and the large males would still have an advantage in competing for mates. Wouldn't improved nutrition lead to bigger *elephants, as it has done to humans during the last century?
Also, if the *elephants start with birds' eggs and carrion leftovers, they may eventually proceed to raising the birds and hunting the game animals themselves.
Sounds very reasonable. Another AH.com member, Serebryakov, has pointed out elsewhere that elephants are seed distributors with substantial effect on their environments. He suggests that the *elephants might start controlling this process consciously - i.e., noticing that seeds grow better if distributed in certain places and at certain times, and making sure to leave them where they'll grow best. If combined with tree management as I suggested above, this would result in a rudimentary system of "agriculture" in which the *elephants (a) plant and sporadically cultivate trees (or maybe cultivate and optimize extant trees without planting them), and (b) "plant" legumes and root vegetables but do not cultivate them. Maybe, over hundreds of generations, this could lead to actual cultivation of vegetables and then to settled life, if given an impetus like what you describe.
And from there, who knows? Bronze Age *elephants would be almost unbelievably cool.
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wolf_brother
Banned
If I might step in here and offer my own two cents, of the species of our genus that was extant roughly ~0.2 MA, H. sapiens sapiens was generally physically smaller than its contemporaries (excluding dwarf species such as H. floresiensis) - however it compensated for this by being *smarter than any potential rival.
Also, as you state yourself, improved nuturtion has lead to larger humans in the past half-century or so from the Green Revolution - but that's even less than a blink of the cosmic eye in evolutionary terms. We're talking about a gradual change over millions of years. As more and more energy is forced towards the brain by selective evolutionary pressures, there is going to be an equal drive to discard excess mass. You're sentient African elephants will likely end up somewhere between the size of Loxodonta cyclotis and Elephas maximus.
Oh, I dunno, man, we ain't primates and we made it to the top.
Actually, I WAS being literal.
I didn't realize you were non-human. Heck I thought everyone on this board was H.sapiens, even.Hmmm, fair point - so smaller than Loxodonta africana, but still the biggest dudes on the savanna.
Also, on a completely different subject (but apropos of my previous comment), another reason for elephants to develop "dance" as a method of communication is to distinguish the seismic vibrations they generate from those created by natural events or non-sentient animals. The distant tribes would know that rhythmic vibrations are communicative while the non-rhythmic ones are noise.
With all this talk of noise, I can't help but to think that if these elephants achieve modern civilization, playing music loud enough to annoy the neighbors will be considered a felony.
Bad music will be punishable by death-though of course, tastes differ on that. So nations will rise based on a preference for wind vs. percussion instruments, and crusades launched against elephant nations that use the ultimate, most terrible weapon: the boy band.
Bad music will be punishable by death-though of course, tastes differ on that. So nations will rise based on a preference for wind vs. percussion instruments, and crusades launched against elephant nations that use the ultimate, most terrible weapon: the boy band.
wolf_brother
Banned
Actually, I have a query along these lines. Are you posting that your, for lack of a better term, Loxodonta sapiens being the only sentient elephants to evolve ITTL, or only the successful ones that go on to develop civilization? I ask because IOTL up until fairly recently evolutionary speaking H. sapiens shared the planet with at least five other species of humans, all of which we know used stone tools, mastery of fire, etc., and very likely all had some form a rudimentary language, tribal culture, etc. So if we set up the POD far enough back to allow enough time for the environmental & evolutionary pressures to reach the conclusion you're reaching for we're likely looking at a mutation in L. atlantica, if not even earlier, which means that ITTL's L. africana pharaoensis and L. cyclotis should both also be primitive sapient elephants with rudimentary Stone Age technology and cultural traits.
As an aside, I'm wondering if, based upon my skimming of Wikipedia, if the Asian elephants might not be a better bet for you're goal of sentient elephants. It appears that they already have much more developed brains than their African counterparts IOTL if I'm reading things correctly.
Finally, this thread makes me want to take up Spore again
I know there was some discussion far back about them not being able to communicate vocally, thought the first part of this article might help that
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/3-bizarre-ways-animals-have-learned-to-speak-like-humans/
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/3-bizarre-ways-animals-have-learned-to-speak-like-humans/