- published: 28 Aug 2015
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A war elephant was an elephant trained and guided by humans for combat. Their main use was to charge the enemy, trampling them and breaking their ranks. A division of war elephants is known as elephantry. They were first employed in India, the practice spreading out across south-east Asia and westwards into the Mediterranean. Their most famous use in the West was by the Greek general Pyrrhus of Epirus and in great numbers by the armies of Carthage, especially under Hannibal.
In the Mediterranean, improved tactics reduced the value of the elephant in battle, while their availability in the wild also decreased. In the east, where supplies of animals were greater and the terrain ideal, it was the advent of cannon that finally concluded the use of the combat elephant at the end of the 19th century, limiting them thereafter to engineering and labour roles.
The first elephant species to be tamed was the Asian Elephant, for use in agriculture. Elephant taming - not full domestication, as they were still captured in the wild, rather than being bred in captivity - may have begun in any of three different places. The oldest evidence comes from the Indus Valley Civilization, aroundly roughly 4500BC. Archaeological evidence for the presence of wild elephants in the Yellow River valley during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BC) of China may suggest that they also used elephants in warfare. The wild elephant populations of Mesopotamia and China declined quickly because of deforestation and human overpopulation: by c. 850 BC the Mesopotamian elephants were extinct, and by c. 500 BC the Chinese elephants were seriously reduced in numbers and limited to areas well south of the Yellow River.
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Oh it takes my life away
To think of her as gone
Now I’m running down the maze
And I’m finding only war
Blowing down the flame
To catch the burning wind
Now I’m running out of steam
Now watch this man collapse
You said you wanted a better life
And you will tell me what you find
And then I’ll stay the whole night through
And I’ll turn from sad to blue
Yes I’m choking after you (?)
Yeah I’m choking after you
Wish you’d think of me
The way I think of you
Well I find it hard to breathe
Cause now I know the truth
So what good would fingers be
If it weren’t for diamond rings?
Now I know you’re leaving me
And I know that I’m no king
And you said you wanted a better life
And you will tell me oh what you find
And then I stay the whole night through
And I turn from sad to blue
Yeah I’m choking after you
Miss, I’m choking now, do you?
(Go ahead now, tell them all about it)
So what good would fingers be
If it weren’t for diamond rings?
Now I know you’re leaving me
And I know that I’m no king