On Allen’s left, a cutting wind scythes across a row of rock needles and down to the valley on the Italian side, nearly 10,000 feet below. If Allen can link the DNA to a horse that comes only from Africa or Spain, he’ll be satisfied that he’s on the right track. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment and Iâll reply as soon as possible. And now, staring into the mists of antiquity, he imagines a scene that may have unfolded here 2,235 years ago: the Carthaginian general Hannibal mustering his downcast troops during their brazen invasion of the Roman Republic at the start of the Second Punic War.
The strategy suggested by Fabius after the Battle of Trasimene was again put into operation: to defend the cities loyal to Rome; to try to recover, where opportunity offered, those cities that had fallen to Hannibal; never to enter battle when the enemy offered it but rather to keep the Carthaginians alert in every theatre of war. By examining sediment from two cores and a trench—mostly soil matted with decomposed plant fiber—Allen and his crew have identified genetic materials that contain high concentrations of DNA fragments from Clostridia, bacteria that typically make up only 2 or 3 percent of peat microbes, but more than 70 percent of those found in the gut of horses. He toyed with the idea of becoming a paratrooper and then a train driver before deciding that “a career in science would be cool.” His earliest memories of scientific endeavor include designing a burglar alarm for his bedroom (age 6), leaving homemade stink bombs on his neighbor’s doorstep (age 8) and “looking at bits of unpleasant things” under the microscope (age 9).
The problem of determining the exact location of the camp is compounded by the fact that the name of the pass was either not known to Polybius and his sources or it was thought not sufficiently important to provide to mostly Roman readers. This also supports historical accounts by the Greek historian Polybius, who lived from around 200 B.C. The compressed Romans were butchered by Hannibal’s army. Until now, no solid archaeological evidence has been forthcoming. In Alps and Elephants, the first of several books that the evolutionary embryologist wrote on Hannibal, he displayed something of the Kon-Tiki spirit with the claim that he’d personally inspected the topography. Absorbed in a fragile trance, Allen studies a knot of tadpoles wiggling in a marshy puddle. Many boots have been worn out in determining the alpine pass through which tens of thousands of foot soldiers and cavalrymen, thousands of horses and mules, and, famously, 37 African battle elephants tramped. (Image credit: Lion Television/an All3Media company). We are a member of the Russell Group, combining excellence in research and education with a student-centred ethos.
Maximilian Otto Bismarck Caspari, in his article in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910-1911), praises Hannibal in these words: of poison, self-administered—his alternative to being apprehended and paraded in chains through the streets of Rome. He was living in exile near present-day Istanbul when Roman legionaries tracked him down. In a recent PBS episode of Secrets of the Dead: Hannibal in the Alps our copy of Hannibal’s coin with an elephant on the reverse was used during the telling of the story.
“All I can say is that scientists get really emotionally connected to what they are doing. What we do know is that in the end, Hannibal, the Carthaginian army and their allies killed more than 500,000 people and destroyed 400 towns â but lost the war.
“But first we’d need permits from the French government. Hoping that the sight of rampaging elephants would scare the enemy, he assembled his animal train and headed east. Hannibal, however, did not march on Rome but spent the winter of 216–215 in Capua, which declared its loyalty to Hannibal, possibly with the hope of being made Rome’s equal. The accompanying cartoon depicted him holding an enormous roll of toilet paper. Alas, the Romans pulled an upset victory and eventually Carthage not only lost its claims to Corsica and Sardinia, but was left saddled with a debt, which the Barcas helped to pay off by establishing a Carthaginian empire in silver-rich Spain. Yet Hannibal did. “Ever since that article appeared, people all over the world have been mailing me fecal samples,” Allen says. The bed of excrement also contained unusual levels of bile acids and fatty compounds found in the digestive tracts of horses and ruminants. [What's the Difference Between Asian and African Elephants?]. Rockslides made travel on the narrow track hazardous, and the army was held up for most of a day while it was made passable for the pack animals and elephants. His troops were sent out to cut … Sign up here if you want to get the Weekly Chart as a newsletter. “I’m only kidding!”. Reinforcements from Carthage were few. In an artist's rendering, Hannibal's army engages in a skirmish during their Alps crossing. The vexed question is one of those problems on the borderline of history and geography that are fascinating and perhaps insoluble. Until now, no solid archaeological evidence has been forthcoming. Wouldn’t it be something if, on this spot, he marshaled his forces and inspired them to succeed against the odds?” In the spirit of Hannibal, scientists have taken a novel approach to a thorny problem. The climb to the Col de la Traversette, the alleged route of Hannibal’s crossing. Walbank certainly thought so. He wasn’t some Roman consul sitting behind the troops. The past year, I have also been busy creating the Mountain layer for our locator maps, so this week I wanted to make a map where the mountains play an important part. Visit our corporate site. This crossing point was first proposed over a half century ago by the biologist and polymath Sir Gavin de Beer, but has not previously been widely accepted by the academic community. At last Allen says, “Our purpose here is to try to strengthen the pool of scientific data. Cookie Policy
The Romans declared war on Carthage again in 218 B.C., by which time Hamilcar had been killed in battle and Hannibal was in charge of the army. "Secrets of the Dead: Hannibal in the Alps" airs April 10 at 8 p.m. EDT on PBS (check local listings) and is available to stream on April 11 via pbs.org/secrets and PBS apps. “Specialized organic biomarkers bound up in a highly convoluted and bioturbated bed constitute an unusual anomaly in a histosol comprised of fibric and hemist horizons that are usually expected to display horizontal bedding.”. For over two thousand years, historians, statesmen and academics have argued about the route Hannibal took across the Alps.
But Allen believes the project has all sorts of implications for environmental DNA, the study of telltale plant and animal genetic materials collected from soil and other substrates. Hannibal's crossing of the Alps in 218 BC was a major event during the Second Punic War (218 - 201 BC), and an accomplishment that is regarded … The most obvious route for Hannibal to have taken through the Alps is called the Col du Clapier, known in antiquity as the Way of Hercules, historian and archaeologist Eve MacDonald, a lecturer in ancient history at Cardiff University in the U.K., told Live Science.
Crossing the Alps. |. “He did something that nobody had even imagined doing. In 218 B.C., when the crossing took place, the powerful nations of Carthage and Rome were at each other's throats. He’s too discerning.”, He was delighted last year when the Belfast Telegraph headlined a front-page feature about his research team: QUEEN’S DUNG BOFFINS GET TO BOTTOM OF HANNIBAL ALPS RIDDLE IN PIECE OF 2000-YEAR-OLD POO. Three possible routes match the descriptions by both Polybius and Livy: Col de la Traversette is considered the most probable route. As you might have anticipated, there’s no clear consensus on whether Hasdrubal took the exact same path, so finding an elephant tapeworm wouldn’t definitively prove the route was Hannibal’s. Polybius makes it clear that the summit itself must have been high enough for snow drifts to persist from the previous winter; along with the other criteria extrapolated from Polybius, that suggests a summit elevation of at least 8,000 feet (2,400 metres). To his right, Mount Viso—the twin-peaked colossus—looms against a bowl-blue sky. Since Allen’s conclusions at times rest on the slippery slopes of conjecture, what they add up to is open to considerable interpretation. At Datawrapper, Iâm responsible for the maps you can find in our choropleth and symbol map editor. Much ink has been spilled in pinpointing the route of Hannibal’s improbable five-month, thousand-mile trek from Catalonia across the Pyrenees, through the Languedoc to the banks of the Rhone, and then over the Alps to the plains of Italy. An artist's rendering shows Hannibal's long and dangerous route through the Alps. Still, Allen is tickled by the prospect of exhuming a tapeworm from elephant dung during his next field-research trip, on the Italian side of the Traversette. As pale as paper and nearly as thin, the 50-year-old microbiologist has spent the better part of this midsummer morning climbing the narrow mountain pass that lies at the border southeast of Grenoble in France and southwest of Turin in Italy. War elephants depicted in Hannibal Barca crossing the Rhône, by Henri Motte, 1878 . This article is a selection from the July/August issue of Smithsonian magazine. The charts in our newsletter will not be interactive, but apart from that, you'll get the entire Weekly Chart article. The Carthaginian troops were either too worn to clinch their victories and march on Rome, or Hannibal considered the city to be too well fortified. He is a frequent contributor to Smithsonian. There are no fewer than a dozen rival theories advanced by a rich confusion of academics, antiquarians and statesmen who contradict one another and sometimes themselves. You will receive a verification email shortly.
Conceivably. Determined to see Carthage restored to its former glory, Hamilcar made his eldest son, Hannibal, swear lifelong enmity to the republic. The true story of Carthaginian general Hannibal crossing the alps- with 40,000 men, 9,000 cavalry & 37 elephants- is revealed thanks to extraordinary new discoveries. We can say, in retrospect, that these events ultimately shaped the future Roman Republic, eventually with Caesar morphing into the Empire, and therefore into European civilisation as we know it. “Everything has been guesswork based on readings of the classical texts.” He believes that he and his team of collaborators—led by Canadian geomorphologist Bill Mahaney—recently unearthed the first compelling clues, thanks to a massive patty of ancientmanure. Hasdrubal was killed in the battle, and his severed head was delivered to Hannibal’s camp; that reportedly led Hannibal to lament, “There lies the fate of Carthage.” His last hope of making a recovery in central Italy thus dashed, Hannibal concentrated his forces in Bruttium, where with the help of his remaining allies he was able to resist Roman pressure for four more years. (“Boffin,” Allen kindly explains, is British slang for a scientist with technical expertise.)
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