Archaeologists Unearthed a 2,200-Year-Old Bone. They Say It Could Be the First Direct Evidence of Hannibal’s Legendary War Elephants
20th February 2026
In 2019, archaeologists unearthed a strange bone alongside a trove of ancient catapult projectiles in Córdoba, Spain. According to a study published this month in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, the bone may be from one of Hannibal’s war elephants, which the Carthaginian general used against Romans in the Second Punic War.
The bone “could prove to be a landmark,” lead author Rafael Martínez Sánchez, an archaeologist at the University of Cordoba, tells Live Science’s Tom Metcalfe. Until now, “there has been no direct archaeological testimony for the use of these animals.”
The dig was conducted ahead of construction for a medical facility on the Colina de los Quemados archaeological site. Archaeologists documented evidence of occupation at the site across hundreds of years beginning around the Late Bronze Age. However, their most intriguing discoveries date to the late Iron Age.
One thing about which I am curious, and which I have never seen discussed, is how they got the elephants across the Pillars of Hercules into Europe. It wasn’t as if the Carthaginians had LSTs.