Indian Elephants around the Mediterranean
- Thread starter walmart
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Syrian Elephants were probably breeds from Indian Elephants gave to Seleucids kings. Giving that their prime raison d'être was being used militarily, you'd need to preserve as much as possible Seleucid warfare in the region (probably dealing with Parthians seems mendatory).
With an earlier extinction of the North African elephant (which is basically your regular African Elephant) which was more avaible but also less useful militarily, you could see Indo-Syrian elephants being more present in the southern Med. basin (in Egypt, Maghreb, etc.). But their vulnerability to military obsolesence makes me think that your best chance is to preserve their existence in Syria rather than other places, expanding elephant breeding beyond Persia proper.
Maybe one of the crazier Emperors has them shipped from India? Or Alexander the Great has them brought back to Babylon?
Albert.Nik
Banned
Sounds interesting! If Persia and Rome/Greece/Byzantines had a steady supply of elephants,what could have unfolded in the ATL?
Could they be breed for use in the Colosseum or other amphitheatres given there larger size then the North African elephants ?
They could have, but the Romans hamstrug all of the elephants in the dying days of the Seleucids as an act of sabotage and wiped them out to prevent their use against them. They seemed to survive well in the Royal parks before that.
Roman working elephants would be interesting. Maybe Indian tamers cone to the RE.
Elephants are wonderful animals, but they aren't really a domestic species. I once worked with a small travellling circus for three season, an during that time two elephants died. They lost no other animals. Practically all working elephants are born in the wild. Therefore, for them to become a Roman commonplace you would need to establish wild herds in Syria or elsewhere, and that would be a huge undertaking for which any payback would be decades in the future.
Elephants lived around the Mediterranean from Spain through north Africa all the way to Greece in Human times. The only reason they don't live there today is because people killed them all in the classical period. No reason Indian Elephants couldn't live there. But as JennyB said, elephants are not a domesticated animal. Even modern working elephants are tamed wild animals captured from the wilderness when young.
The easier POD is probably just having existing North African elephants not be hunted to extinction.
The easier POD is probably just having existing North African elephants not be hunted to extinction.
Indian elephants and North African elephants across minor Asia would be interesting. Would the Environment support their needs ? Maybe even small North African elephants in Mediterran Islands.
As far as I can tell, they were killed off long before classical times.
Edit: the European ones, I meant.
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If Wikipedia is to be trusted here, it appears that Indian elephants did in fact live in the Middle East until 100 BC.
Oops... Sorry. Of course the Syrian and North African elephants existed into classical times. I meant, but did not say, the European ones.