ISBN: 9780226264530

Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilizati… Mehr…

Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China—kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory—all of them tending toward the elephant’s extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war.             Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity—and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India’s environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests.  Digital Content>E-books>Nature & Wildlife>Animals>Animals, University of Chicago Press Digital >16<

ISBN: 9780226264530

Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, an… Mehr…

Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China—kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory—all of them tending toward the elephant's extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity—and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India's environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests. An Environmental History University of Chicago Press World History 9780226264226, 9780226264363 DE,GB,US,ES,IT,FR,MX English History, The University of Chicago Press<

ISBN: 9780226264530

Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizationsâ??such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, … Mehr…

Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizationsâ??such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and Chinaâ??kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivoryâ??all of them tending toward the elephantâ??s extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the westâ??where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquityâ??and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of Indiaâ??s environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests. History, eBooks.com<

ISBN: 9780226264530

University of Chicago Press World History ,9780226264363 UK,GB,DE,ES,FR,IT,US,CA,MX,AU,NZ 20150803 English History, The University of Chicago Press

2015, ISBN: 9780226264530

An Environmental History, eBooks, eBook Download (EPUB), [PU: University of Chicago Press], University of Chicago Press, 2015