Comparative figure showing the articular facets of the elephant third carpal. Credit: Agustín López and Rafael Martínez
Archaeologists excavating a site in Córdoba, Spain, have identified a small elephant bone in a layer dating to the era of the Punic Wars.
The bone is modest in size—about as large as a baseball—and could fit in the palm of a hand. Even so, it may represent one of the few possible archaeological links in Western Europe to the war elephants used by Carthaginian armies in their long, windy march against Rome.
Ancient sources describe these animals as both psychological weapons and battlefield tools, capable of disrupting enemy formations and reshaping tactics. The most enduring image is Hannibal’s march with elephants across the Alps, a story repeated for more than two thousand years.
As the authors of the new study put it, “The use of elephants as ‘war machines’ on European soil during the Punic Wars left a profound mark on Western art, literature, and culture—a legacy passed down through classical accounts to later authors.”
Yet most evidence for these animals still comes from texts and imagery rather than bones.
The Elephant in Spanish Carthage
The roughly baseball-sized bone unearthed in Spain initially perplexed scientists because it came from no native animal. Credit: Agustín López and Rafael Martínez
The bone came from Colina de los Quemados, a hill site identified with the pre-Roman oppidum of Corduba near modern Córdoba. In 2020, a rescue excavation carried out ahead of hospital construction exposed an Iron Age industrial zone—ovens, walls and a street—sealed in places by destruction and collapse.
Within that same destruction layer, archaeologists also found roughly a dozen stone spheres, about 11 centimeters across, consistent with ammunition for ancient catapults, as well as a heavy bolt point from a torsion-powered weapon. Coins and ceramics dated the episode to the third century B.C., when Carthage and Rome were fighting for control of Iberia during the Second Punic War.
Then came the bone, found beneath a laterally collapsed adobe wall. The researchers identified it as a carpal bone from an elephant’s right forefoot—the wrist of the foreleg. Their anatomical comparisons pointed specifically to the right third carpal, also known as the os magnum or capitatum.
Carthaginian war elephants engage Roman infantry at the Battle of Zama (202 BC). Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
However, the bone was too poorly preserved for DNA or protein analysis, which could have helped identify the species. The researchers tried radiocarbon dating anyway; collagen failed, so they dated the mineral fraction instead—a less reliable method sometimes used when collagen is absent. The results placed the bone broadly between the fourth and third centuries B.C.
Rafael Martínez Sánchez, the study’s first author, told Live Science, “[Until now] there has been no direct archaeological testimony for the use of these animals.” He added that the bone “could prove to be a landmark.”
Evidence, Caution, and Context
The researchers also found spherical stones that they think were ammunition for a Carthaginian catapult. Credit: Agustín López and Rafael Martínez
A single bone cannot carry the whole weight of Hannibal’s legend. Even the researchers urge caution about the story people will want to tell. They stress that this elephant likely was not one of the “legendary specimens” that crossed the Alps with Hannibal. For his march, much of the “evidence” has been indirect: churned soils and chemical traces at a high Alpine pass proposed as part of his route.
Instead, the bone points to the day-to-day reality of war in Iberia. The Córdoba bone surfaced alongside battlefield debris—catapult stones, weapon parts, and coins—suggesting violence nearby.
“Archaeologically, the destruction level documented at Colina de los Quemados fits well within an emerging pattern of events associated with the Second Punic War, some of which are attested in literary sources and others which are not, encompassing both siege warfare and open battlefield contexts,” the authors wrote.
Some also entertain the possibility that someone might have carried the bone as a trophy or keepsake. The study authors, however, argue that this kind of bone is an unlikely prize. In their view, short carpal bones are “neither particularly attractive, nor a useful material in craftmanship,” and they do not fit well as trade goods.
Archaeologists routinely find imported ivory, luxury trade that reached Iberia millennia earlier, but actual elephant skeletons from antiquity are exceptionally rare outside of Africa.
The researchers end on a careful note that still acknowledges the find’s pull: “The carpal of the elephant from Colina de los Quemados in Cordoba (Spain) may constitute one of the scarce instances of direct evidence on the use of these animals during Classical Antiquity, not only in the Iberian Peninsula but also in Western Europe.”
The findings were reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.