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A painting of Hannibal and his army on the wall of the Capitoline Museum, Rome.

The truth about Hannibal’s route across the Alps

How exactly did the Carthaginian general and his elephants reach Italy? Scientists have got their hands dirty to come up with an answer

H aving battled their deadly rivals the Romans in Spain, in 218BC the Carthaginian army made a move that no one expected. Their commander Hannibal marched his troops, including cavalry and African war elephants, across a high pass in the Alps to strike at Rome itself from the north of the Italian peninsula. It was one of the greatest military feats in history.

The Romans had presumed that the Alps created a secure natural barrier against invasion of their homeland. They hadn’t reckoned with Hannibal’s boldness. In December he smashed apart the Roman forces in the north, assisted by his awesome elephants, the tanks of classical warfare. Many of the animals died of cold or disease the following winter, but Hannibal fought his way down through Italy . For 15 years he ravaged the land, killing or wounding over a million citizens but without taking Rome. But when he faced the Roman general Scipio Africanus at Zama in north Africa in 202BC, his strategic genius met its match. So ended the second Punic war, with Rome the victor.

Hannibal’s alpine crossing has been celebrated in myth, art and film. JMW Turner made high drama of it in 1812, a louring snowstorm sending the Carthaginians into wild disarray. The 1959 sword-and-sandals epic movie, with Victor Mature in the eponymous title role, made Hannibal’s “crazed elephant army” look more like the polite zoo creatures they obviously were.

The battles didn’t end with Scipio’s victory, though. Much ink, if not blood, has been spilled in furious arguments between historians over the precise route that Hannibal took across the Alps. The answer makes not a blind bit of difference to the historical outcome, but there’s clearly something about that image of elephants on snowy peaks that makes experts care deeply about where exactly they went.

An international team of scientists now thinks the puzzle is largely solved. Its leader, geomorphologist Bill Mahaney of York University in Toronto, began pondering the question almost two decades ago by looking at geographical and environmental references in the classical texts. He and his colleagues have just revealed surprising new evidence supporting their claim to have uncovered Hannibal’s path.

An illustration of Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants and horses.

The three Punic wars were a struggle for dominance of the Mediterranean region by the two great trading and military powers of the third and second centuries BC: Carthage and Rome. Carthage, a former Phoenician city-state in present-day Tunis, had an empire extending over most of the north African coast as well as the southern tip of Iberia. Rome was then still a republic, and the two states were locked in a power struggle apt to flare into open war, until the Romans annihilated Carthage in 146BC.

Hannibal, son of general Hamilcar who led troops in the first Punic war, gave Carthage its most glorious hour. He is ranked alongside Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and his nemesis Scipio as one of the greatest military strategists of the ancient world, and his alpine crossing plays a big part in that reputation. Most of what we know about it comes from the accounts given by the Roman writers Polybius (c200-118BC) and Livy (59BC-AD17). They make it sound truly harrowing.

As the Carthaginian army ascended from the Rhône valley in Gaul, they were harassed and attacked by mountain tribes who, knowing the territory, set ambushes, dropped boulders and generally wrought havoc. During the descent the Carthaginians were mostly unmolested, but now the mountains themselves threatened mortal danger. The Alps are steeper on the Italian side, and the path is narrow, hemmed in by precipices.

“Because of the snow and of the dangers of his route [Hannibal] lost nearly as many men as he had done on the ascent,” wrote Polybius. “Since neither the men nor the animals could be sure of their footing on account of the snow, any who stepped wide of the path or stumbled, overbalanced and fell down the precipices.”

At length they reached a spot where the path suddenly seemed impassable, as Livy describes it: “A narrow cliff falling away so sheer that even a light-armed soldier could hardly have got down it by feeling his way and clinging to such bushes and stumps as presented themselves.”

“The track was too narrow for the elephants or even the pack animals to pass,” writes Polybius. “At this point the soldiers once more lost their nerve and came close to despair.”

Hannibal tried a detour on the terrifying slopes to the side of the path, but the snow and mud were too slippery. So instead he set his troops to construct a road from the rubble, and after backbreaking labour he got the men, horses and mules down the slope and below the snowline. The elephants were another matter – it took three days to make a road wide enough. Finally, says Polybius, Hannibal “succeeded in getting his elephants across, but the animals were in a miserable condition from hunger”.

Where exactly Hannibal crossed the Alps was a point of contention even in the days of Polybius and Livy. Nineteenth-century historians argued about it, and even Napoleon weighed in. The controversy was still raging a hundred years later. Some authorities proposed a northerly path, past present-day Grenoble and through two passes over 2,000 metres high. Others argued for a southerly course across the Col de la Traversette – the highest road, reaching 3,000m above sea level. Or might the route have been some combination of the two, starting in the north, then weaving south and north again?

Victor Mature and Rita Gam in the 1959 film Hannibal.

The southern route was advocated in the 1950s-60s by Sir Gavin de Beer, director of the British Museum (natural history), who published no fewer than five books on the subject. He combed the classical texts and tried to tie them in to geographical evidence – for example, identifying Hannibal’s river crossings from the timings of floods. “All of us more or less follow de Beer’s footprint,” says Mahaney.

For Mahaney, it began as a hobby and become a labour of love. “I’ve read classical history since my ordeal getting through four years of Latin in high school,” he says. “I can still see my old Latin teacher pointing his long stick at me.”

He went looking for clues in the landscapes. Both Polybius and Livy mention that the impasse faced by Hannibal was created by fallen rocks. Polybius, who got his information firsthand by interviewing some of the survivors from Hannibal’s army, describes the rockfall in detail, saying that it consisted of two landslides: a recent one on top of older debris. In 2004 Mahaney found from field trips and aerial and satellite photography that, of the various passes along the proposed routes, only the Col de Traversette had enough large rockfalls above the snowline to account for such an obstruction.

There’s an old, steep track of rubble leading out of this pass – which might conceivably be based on the very one made by Hannibal’s engineers. What’s more, in 2010 Mahaney and co-workers found a two-layer rockfall in the pass that seemed a good match for that which Polybius mentioned. “No such deposit exists on the lee side of any of the other cols,” he says.

He suspects Hannibal did not intend to come this way, but was forced to avoid the lower cols to the north because of the hordes of Gauls massing there. “They were every bit Hannibal’s equal, and no doubt hungry to loot his baggage train,” Mahaney says.

The rockfall evidence was pretty suggestive. But could Mahaney and his team of geologists and biologists find anything more definitive? Since 2011 they’ve been looking in a peaty bog 2,580m up in the mountains, just below of the Col de la Traversette. It’s one of the few places where Hannibal’s army could have rested after crossing the col, being the only place in the vicinity with rich soil to support the vegetation needed for grazing horses and mules.

The researchers rolled up their sleeves and dug into the mire. What they found was mud. And more mud. Not very informative, you might think. But mud can encode secrets. Taking an army of tens of thousands, with horses and elephants, over the Alps would have left one heck of a mess. More than two millennia later, Mahaney might have found it.

The peaty material is mostly matted with decomposed plant fibres. But at a depth of about 40cm this carbon-based material becomes much more disturbed and compacted, being mixed up with finer-grained soil. This structure suggests that the bog became churned up when the layer was formed. That’s not seen in any other soils from alpine bogs, and isn’t easily explained by any natural phenomenon such as grazing sheep or the action of frost. But it’s just what you’d expect to see if an army with horses and elephants passed by – rather like the aftermath of a bad year at the Glastonbury festival. This soil can be radiocarbon-dated – and the age comes out almost spookily close to the date of 218BC attested by historical records as the time of Hannibal’s crossing.

Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the Roman general who defeated Hannibal at the battle of Zama in 202 BC.

The researchers then took samples of this disturbed mud back to the lab, where they used chemical techniques to identify some of its organic molecules. These included substances found in horse dung and the faeces of ruminants. There’s some of this stuff throughout the mire mud, but significantly more in the churned-up layer.

What’s more, this section also contained high levels of DNA found in a type of bacteria called clostridia, which are very common in the gut of horses (and humans). In other words, the layer of disturbed mud is full of crap (perhaps not so different from Glastonbury either). Aside from a passing army, it’s not easy to see where it might have come from – not many mammals live up here, except for a few sheep and some hardy marmots.

That’s not all. Microbiologists collaborating with the team think they might have found a distinctive horse tapeworm egg in the samples. “There is even the possibility of finding an elephant tapeworm egg,” says Mahaney’s long-term collaborator, microbiologist Chris Allen of Queen’s University Belfast. “This would really be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” It’s just a shame, he adds, that “the pot of gold is actually a layer of horse manure”. Evidence of elephants at the site would surely be a smoking gun, since you don’t find many of them wandering wild in the Alps.

Meanwhile, Mahaney hopes, if he can find the funding, to mount a radar survey of the entire mire and other mires nearby to search for items dropped by the passing army. “My sniffer tells me some will turn up,” he says – “coins, belt buckles, sabres, you name it.”

Unless they do, other experts may reserve judgment. Patrick Hunt, an archaeologist who leads the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project, which has been investigating Hannibal’s route since 1994, says that the answer to the puzzle “remains hauntingly elusive”. It’s all too easy, he says, for fellow experts to adduce evidence for their favoured route – his team argues for a more northerly path – but until the same methods and rigour are brought to bear on all the alternatives, none can be ruled out. All the same, he adds, Mahaney is one of the best geo-archaeologists working on the question. “He continues to be a trailblazer in the field,” says Hunt, “and I’d love to collaborate with him, because he’s asking excellent questions.”

If Mahaney can secure firm evidence – such as chemical or microbial fingerprints of elephant faeces – it would be the culmination of a personal quest. “The Hannibal enigma appealed to me for the sheer effort of getting the army across the mountains,” he says. “I have been in the field for long times with 100 people, and I can tell you it can be pandemonium. How Hannibal managed to get thousands of men, horses and mules, and 37 elephants over the Alps is one magnificent feat.”

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 9, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

Carthaginian general and political leader Hannibal (247 - 183 BC) riding a horse

In 219 B.C., Hannibal of Carthage led an attack on Saguntum, an independent city allied with Rome, which sparked the outbreak of the Second Punic War. He then marched his massive army across the Pyrenees and Alps into central Italy in what would be remembered as one of the most famous campaigns in history. After a string of victories, the most notable coming at Cannae in 216 B.C., Hannibal had gained a foothold in southern Italy, but declined to mount an attack on Rome itself. The Romans rebounded, however, driving the Carthaginians out of Spain and launching an invasion of North Africa. In 203 B.C., Hannibal abandoned the struggle in Italy to defend North Africa, and he suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of Publius Cornelius Scipio at Zama the following year. Though the treaty concluding the Second Punic War put an end to Carthage’s status as an imperial power, Hannibal continued to pursue his lifelong dream of destroying Rome up until his death in 183 B.C.

Hannibal’s Early Life and Attack on Saguntum

Hannibal was born in 247 B.C. in North Africa. Polybius and Livy, whose histories of Rome are the main Latin sources regarding his life, claimed that Hannibal’s father, the great Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, brought his son to Spain (a region he had begun to conquer around 237 B.C.) at a young age. Hamilcar died in 229 B.C. and was succeeded by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who made the young Hannibal an officer in the Carthaginian army. In 221 B.C., Hasdrubal was assassinated, and the army unanimously chose the 26-year-old Hannibal to command Carthage’s empire in Spain. Hannibal swiftly consolidated control in the region from the seaport base of Cartagena (New Carthage); he also married a Spanish princess.

Did you know? According to Polybius and Livy, Hannibal's father Hamilcar Barca made the 9-year-old Hannibal dip his hand in blood and swear an oath of hatred against Rome.

In 219 B.C., Hannibal led a Carthaginian attack on Saguntum, an independent city in the middle of the eastern Spanish coast that had shown aggression against nearby Carthaginian towns. According to the treaty that ended the First Punic War, the Ebro River was the northernmost border of Carthage’s influence in Spain; though Saguntum was south of the Ebro, it was allied with Rome, which saw Hannibal’s attack as an act of war. Carthaginian forces besieged Saguntum for eight months before the city fell. Although Rome demanded Hannibal’s surrender, he refused, instead making plans for the invasion of Italy that would mark the beginning of Second Punic War.

Hannibal’s Invasion of Italy

Leaving his brother, also named Hasdrubal, to protect Carthage’s interests in Spain and North Africa, Hannibal assembled a massive army, including (according to Polybius’ probably exaggerated figures) as many as 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry and nearly 40 elephants. The march that followed–which covered some 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) through the Pyrenees, across the Rhone River and the snowcapped Alps, and finally into central Italy–would be remembered as one of the most famous campaigns in history. With his forces depleted by the harsh Alpine crossing, Hannibal met the powerful army of the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio on the plains west of the Ticino River. Hannibal’s cavalry prevailed, and Scipio was seriously wounded in the battle.

Late in 218 B.C., the Carthaginians again defeated the Romans on the left bank of the Trebia River, a victory that earned Hannibal the support of allies including the Gauls and Ligurians. By the spring of 217 B.C., he had advanced to the Arno River, where despite a victory at Lake Trasimene he declined to lead his exhausted forces against Rome itself. In the summer of the following year, 16 Roman legions–close to 80,000 soldiers, an army said to be twice the size of Hannibal’s–confronted the Carthaginians near the town of Cannae. While the Roman general Varro massed his infantry in the center with his cavalry on each wing–a classic military formation–Hannibal maintained a relatively weak center but strong infantry and cavalry forces at the flanks. When the Romans advanced, the Carthaginians were able to hold their center and win the struggle at the sides, enveloping the enemy and cutting off the possibility of retreat by sending a cavalry charge across the rear.

From Victory to Defeat

The Roman defeat at Cannae stunned much of southern Italy, and many of Rome’s allies and colonies defected to the Carthaginian side. Under the leadership of Scipio’s son-in-law, also named Publius Cornelius Scipio, and his fellow general Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Romans soon began to rally. In southern Italy, Fabius used cautious tactics to gradually push back against Hannibal’s forces, and had regained a considerable amount of ground by 209 B.C. In northern Italy in 208 B.C., Roman forces defeated an army of reinforcements led by Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal, who had crossed the Alps in an attempt to come to Hannibal’s aid.

Meanwhile, the younger Scipio drew on Rome’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of manpower to launch an attack on New Carthage and drive the Carthaginians out of Spain. He then invaded North Africa, forcing Hannibal to withdraw his troops from southern Italy in 203 B.C. in order to defend his home state. The following year, Hannibal met Scipio’s forces on the battlefield near Zama, some 120 kilometers from Carthage. This time it was the Romans (with the help of their North African allies, the Numidians) who enveloped and smothered the Carthaginians, killing some 20,000 soldiers at a loss of only 1,500 of their own men. In honor of his great victory, Scipio was given the name Africanus.

Hannibal’s Postwar Life and Death

In the peace agreement that ended the Second Punic War, Carthage was allowed to keep only its territory in North Africa but lost its overseas empire permanently. It was also forced to surrender its fleet and pay a large indemnity in silver, and to agree never again to re-arm or declare war without permission from Rome. Hannibal, who escaped with his life from the crushing defeat at Zama and still harbored a desire to defeat Rome, retained his military title despite accusations that he had botched the conduct of the war. In addition, he was made a civil magistrate in the government of Carthage.

According to Livy, Hannibal fled to the Syrian court at Ephesus after his opponents within the Carthaginian nobility denounced him to the Romans for encouraging Antiochus III of Syria to take up arms against Rome. When Rome later defeated Antiochus, one of the peace terms called for the surrender of Hannibal; to avoid this fate, he may have fled to Crete or taken up arms with rebel forces in Armenia. He later served King Prusias of Bithynia in another unsuccessful war against the Roman ally King Eumenes II of Pergamum. At some point during this conflict, the Romans again demanded the surrender of Hannibal. Finding himself unable to escape, he killed himself by taking poison in the Bithynian village of Libyssa, probably around 183 B.C.

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Illustrating The Second Punic War - Hannibal's Route of Invasion, 3rd Century BC

Credits Courtesy of the United States Military Academy Department of History.

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The Ancient Battlefield That Launched the Legend of Hannibal

Two years before the Carthaginian general crossed the Alps, he won a decisive victory at the Battle of the Tagus

Alex Fox

Correspondent

Hannibal crossing the Alps

The legend of Carthaginian general Hannibal —famed for leading some 30,000 soldiers and 37 elephants across the Alps into Italy during the Second Punic War —had to start somewhere. And now, researchers think they may know where.

As Manuel P. Villatoro reports for Spanish newspaper ABC , an interdisciplinary team says it has found the long-sought-after site of Hannibal’s first major victory: the 220 B.C. Battle of the Tagus .

Due to mismatched accounts by classical historians Polybius and Livy , as well as scant archaeological evidence, historians have debated the battle’s exact location for more than 200 years. Previously proposed sites include Toledo, Talavera de la Reina, Aranjuez, Colmenar de Oreja and Fuentidueña, reports Vicente G. Olaya for Spanish newspaper El País .

The new study arrived at its suggested location by combining battle accounts from antiquity with modern analysis of the shape and flow of the Tagus River and its surrounding landscape. Per the paper, the researchers suggest the site of the Battle of the Tagus is between the cities of Driebes and Illana in Spain’s Guadalajara province.

Hannibal mounted his infamous invasion of Italy during the Second Punic War against Rome, which spanned 218 B.C. to 201 B.C. But two years before he took on Rome, the Carthaginian general fought a pivotal battle closer to home.

Polybius and Livy tell of the 27-year-old Hannibal’s army being ambushed as it returned to its base in Qart Hadasht, located in modern-day Cartagena, after defeating the Vettones tribe and conquering Helmática, near the modern city of Salamanca in northwest Spain. As Isambard Wilkinson notes for the Times , the general’s 25,000 soldiers and 40 war elephants are said to have faced a force of 100,000 Iberians from the Carpetani, Vettone and Olcade tribes near the Tagus River.

The tactical details of the battle foreshadowed the young general’s prowess as a commander. With his troops outnumbered four to one, Hannibal moved to avoid fighting out in the open, preventing what would have likely been a bloodbath.

When the Carthaginian army fled to the opposite side of the Tagus, the Iberians followed in hot pursuit, no doubt thinking they had the smaller army on the run. In actuality, Hannibal had led them into a trap that neutralized their superior numbers.

The Carthaginians funneled the Iberian tribes into narrow crossings where the river’s swift waters were shallow enough to ford on foot. To prevent any alternative crossings, Hannibal’s army also fortified the riverbank. The Iberians were forced to cross via the natural fords, where they were easy targets for Hannibal’s cavalry. Others lost their footing and drowned in the river; those who managed to cross successfully were met by the Carthaginian infantry and its squadron of war elephants .

Despite the element of surprise, the Iberian tribes proved to be no match for Hannibal’s tactical genius. The authors of the new research arrived at the stunning victory’s proposed location by taking historical, geographical and geological factors into account, per the Times .

First, the researchers determined the fastest overland route Hannibal’s forces could have used to reach their destination in modern-day Cartagena. The route the team identified crossed the Tagus near Driebes, which, incidentally, would place the battle close to a known settlement of the Carpentani tribe.

“The decision to attack Hannibal there was made by the Carpetanis, who knew the environment well and which also gave them leadership within the coalition with Vettones and Olcades,” Emilio Gamo Pazos , lead author of the study and an archaeologist at Spain’s National Museum of Roman Art , tells El País .

Next came the question of the river. Geologists on the team suggest that, given the local geology, it’s plausible the same fords used in the battle are present today, according to El País . This framing allowed the team to zero in on the remnants of a rectangular structure they hypothesize could have been part of Hannibal’s fortifications.

Dovetailing with this potential vestige of the fortifications is the nearby hill of El Jardin, which would have afforded the general an elevated position from which to orchestrate the battle.

To cement their initial findings, the researchers tell El País that they intend to conduct follow-up archaeological studies aimed at identifying more definitive signs of the Carthaginian army—including elephant bones.

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Alex Fox

Alex Fox | | READ MORE

Alex Fox is a freelance science journalist based in California. He has written for the  New York Times, National Geographic,  Science ,  Nature and other outlets . You can find him at  Alexfoxscience.com .

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Hannibal was a Carthaginian general who fought against the Roman Republic during the Second Punic War (219 B.C.E. to 203 B.C.E.).

Anthropology, Archaeology, Social Studies, World History

Carthage Merchants

This illustration depicts merchants in Carthage doing a lively business buying and selling wine, pottery glass trinkets, and precious metals.

National Geographic Creative

This illustration depicts merchants in Carthage doing a lively business buying and selling wine, pottery glass trinkets, and precious metals.

Hannibal was born in 247 B.C.E. in Carthage, a powerful city in North Africa that was a threat to the Roman Republic in the Mediterranean. Hannibal’s father, a Carthaginian general, made his son swear everlasting hostility to Rome. Hannibal kept his oath and devoted his life to defeating Rome.

A successful officer in Carthage’s army, Hannibal was proclaimed its leader when he was only 26. In 219 B.C.E., Hannibal led his army to attack Saguntum, a city in the middle of the eastern Spanish coast. Saguntum, however, was an ally of Rome, so Hannibal’s attack and siege on the city led Roman Senate to declare war on Carthage.

Hannibal’s physical bravery and outstanding leadership skills created great loyalty among his troops. He assembled a massive army of 90,000 foot soldiers, a cavalry of 12,000, and at least 37 war elephants to march on Rome. Roman armies blocked the coastal route to Rome. Hannibal, determined to succeed, decided to march his men and elephants over the Alps in an amazing military campaign. The trip was difficult, and Hannibal lost many troops, as well as some elephants. Nevertheless, Hannibal’s army penetrated the Italian peninsula and advanced slowly on Rome, spending the next 15 years fighting with Roman armies before having to retreat to Carthage.

After Hannibal’s retreat, Rome and Carthage engaged in a final battle, known as the Battle of Zama in 202 B.C.E. It was a decisive Roman victory and soon after, Carthage sued for peace. The terms of the peace negatively affected Carthaginians. They permanently lost their overseas empire and were also forced to surrender their fleet. Hannibal was very unhappy with this and strongly resented Rome. Hannibal spent the next few years participating in politics but ended up fleeing Carthage because his opponents denounced him to Rome for violating the terms of their peace treaty. Facing capture by the Roman army, Hannibal took his own life around 183 B.C.E.

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hannibal journey map

On Hannibal's Trail: The clues are in the geology

by Erin Wayman Thursday, January 5, 2012

hannibal journey map

The Col du Clapier-Savine Coche with Turin (upper left) off in the distance. Edward Boenig, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic

Standing at the summit of one of the Alps' tallest mountain passes in the fall of 218 B.C., Hannibal peered into enemy territory: Italy’s Po River Valley. The panorama was reassuring. Hannibal’s plan — a sneak attack of the Romans on their own soil — was at last within reach. As his army trudged along a snow-covered path, Hannibal, Carthage’s greatest military leader, used the sight of Italy to encourage his ailing troops to keep going.

They needed the encouragement.

For about five months, the army, initially consisting of at least 25,000 foot soldiers, 12,000 cavalrymen, thousands of pack animals and 37 elephants, had marched through what is now Spain and France before ascending Europe’s greatest mountain range. In the Alps, the army had suffered attacks by mountain tribesmen, weakening the massive force. In addition to the unfriendly locals, the soldiers had to contend with the Alps' high-altitude climate. Many of the soldiers, largely mercenaries from North Africa and Spain, had probably never seen snow before.

The soldiers who survived the steep descent into Italy helped Hannibal defeat the Romans in several key battles, and spent more than a decade in Italy engaging Roman forces. But the Romans were winning the war across the Mediterranean, so Hannibal eventually returned to Carthage. Hannibal’s military genius was not enough to save his homeland, however, and in 202 B.C., Carthage admitted defeat and gave Rome the victory to end the Second Punic War.

Despite Carthage’s defeat, historians have lauded Hannibal’s march through the Alps as one of the greatest tactical operations in military history. More than 2,000 years later, historians are still trying to figure out how the Carthaginian hero managed the feat; in particular, historians are still pondering the exact route Hannibal forged through the mountains.

Ancient Greek and Roman historians left clues to Hannibal’s route, but these texts lack the names of key landmarks along Hannibal’s journey. But where history has faltered, science may be able to fill in the gaps. Geoscientists are now lending their expertise in reading the terrain to match ancient descriptions of the landscape with their locations in the Alps. Science is indeed the best hope historians have of uncovering Hannibal’s alpine path, says Patrick Hunt, an archaeologist at Stanford University in California who has been studying Hannibal’s route since 1994.

Hunt is not alone in this pursuit. Bill Mahaney, a geologist and professor emeritus at York University in Toronto, Canada, has also been retracing Hannibal’s footsteps for the past decade. Hunt and Mahaney have come to vastly different conclusions on where Hannibal marched through the Alps, but they agree on one thing: The true test of their work will be the discovery of Punic burials, Carthaginian coins or some other artifact that could only have been left behind by Hannibal’s army on its way to Italy.

Hannibal’s march

In 247 B.C., Hannibal was born in Carthage, a North African civilization in present-day Tunisia founded by Phoenicians more than 500 years earlier. Hannibal was born near the end of the First Punic War, in which Carthage lost its claims to Sardinia and Corsica to the rising Roman Republic. In the decades following those losses, Carthage expanded its empire into new territory: the Iberian Peninsula.

The Romans declared war on Carthage again in 218 B.C. By that time, Hannibal had become the commander of Carthage’s army in Spain. The Romans expected the war to be waged in Spain and North Africa, as historian John Prevas of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., writes in his book “Hannibal Crosses the Alps,” so Hannibal concluded that the best way to overcome his enemy was to surprise them: March into Italy and attack the heart of the Roman Republic. In the early summer of 218 B.C., Hannibal assembled his army and left New Carthage (Cartagena) in southern Spain. Five months and 1,600 kilometers later, Hannibal made it to Turin, Italy.

Modern historians know the timeline and general trail of this march based on the writings of two ancient historians: Polybius, a Greek born in roughly 200 B.C., and Livy, a Roman born in 59 B.C. Hannibal researchers must place their complete faith in the work of these men because no other ancient texts regarding Hannibal’s march have survived. On details where Polybius and Livy differ, historians tend to defer to Polybius because he actually traveled through the alpine terrain that Hannibal covered, Hunt says.

The crucial part of Hannibal’s trip, in terms of unraveling where he crossed the Alps, begins after Hannibal crossed the Rhône River in southern France and started marching north. After following the Rhône for four days, the army arrived at what Polybius and Livy simply call the “island,” a low-lying parcel of land between the Rhône and a river that Polybius called “Iskaras” and Livy called “Arar.” For the next week and a half, Hannibal’s army followed the Iskaras/Arar into the mountains, covering approximately 180 kilometers.

By the time the army entered the most rugged part of the Alps, with elevations of nearly 4,000 meters, it was early fall, and the journey was not peaceful. Hannibal’s army thwarted one attack by a mountain tribe known as the Allobroges before falling victim to an ambush five days later. The ambush occurred in a narrow gorge bordered by a steep wall on one side and a river on the other. When the entire army entered the gorge, walking single-file along the precipitous path, tribesmen perched on cliffs above began their assault. The attack spooked the army’s horses and elephants and as many as 10,000 of Hannibal’s soldiers fell to their death amid the confusion, as the tribesmen hurled boulders and slung arrows at them. Part of Hannibal’s army spent the night at a nearby “bare rock” or “white rock” place, as Polybius described it, and was reunited with the remaining soldiers the next day.

The army then marched along the valley floor and began to climb a snow-covered pass. Hannibal made a base camp nearly 200 meters beneath the pass' summit to allow his battered, hungry army to rest for two days. When the army arrived at the summit, the soldiers could see the plains of Italy stretched out below. On the steep climb down, the army encountered a rockfall that blocked their path. Hannibal ordered his engineers to rebuild the path, and according to Livy (but not mentioned by Polybius), the army attempted to clear a particularly large precipice by setting it on fire: Soldiers burned whatever wood they could find and hoped the heat would fracture the rock, making it easier to clear the path, so the story goes. The rockfall was the last great obstacle Hannibal and his men encountered on their journey down the mountain. They were at last in Italy.

Over the centuries, historians have used the topographical clues within this general description to narrow down the number of possible routes Hannibal took through the Alps. Two routes that run more or less parallel to each other before converging in Italy are most favored: a northern route and a southern route. Hunt prefers the northern route. In this scenario, Hannibal followed the Isère River north after leaving the island and later climbed the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche pass to get into Italy. Mahaney favors a route that starts a few kilometers south of where the Isère branches off the Rhône, where the Rhône meets the Drôme River. Along this southern route, he says, Hannibal followed the Drôme eastward into the mountains and later climbed over the Col de la Traversette into Italy.

Both Hunt and Mahaney have traversed these alpine routes several times, looking for clues related to Hannibal’s journey.

The southern route

Mahaney has always had an interest in ancient history. About a decade ago, he started reading about the Second Punic War. When he discovered that one of the biggest unsolved questions in that war regarded Hannibal’s march, he realized he might be able to solve the mystery. “As I read through all of this material,” he says, “I discovered that I could put an environmental matrix together, a table that I could use as a checklist” to assess various routes and mountain passes as described by Polybius and Livy. He and his colleagues, including Pierre Tricart, a geologist at the University of Grenoble in France, have done just that in four alpine expeditions to find Hannibal’s trail over the past eight years.

Their work has found that the southern route — first advocated in the 1950s by Sir Gavin de Beer, a former director of the British Museum — best matches all of the variables on Mahaney’s checklist. For example, they have identified the 21-kilometer-long narrow canyon Combe de Queyras as the site of the second ambush attack. The gorge sits along the Guil River and is bordered by steep, 200-meter-tall walls with plenty of rocky debris that the mountain tribesmen could have used as deadly projectiles: quartzite, dolomite and ophiolites (bits of oceanic crust and mantle that were pushed up and over continental crust) such as serpentine and basalt. In contrast, potential ambush sites along the northern route don’t work, Mahaney says. They aren’t large enough to hold Hannibal’s army, Mahaney’s team explained in a 2010 article in the journal Archaeometry, and pollen analyses described in a second 2010 article in Archaeometry indicate the cliffs above would have been forested in 218 B.C., just as they are today, making it difficult for the tribesmen to pummel rocks and roll boulders at the Carthaginians below.

But in all of the work that Mahaney has done, he says the best lines of evidence in favor of a southern route — and in particular, the Col de la Traversette as Hannibal’s mountain pass — are permafrost and a two-tiered rockfall.

Polybius described how snow and ice made the climb down the mountain pass into Italy a dangerous, slippery descent. Soldiers' feet sunk in a fresh layer of snow and then slid in layers of icy compacted snow from the previous winter, called firn. Climate studies show that the climate in the Alps at the time of Hannibal’s march was similar to the climate today, Mahaney says, so one way to test mountain passes along the proposed routes is to look for firn. It’s only present at one of the potential passes — Col de la Traversette — he says. At nearly 3,000 meters high, the Traversette has a microclimate that keeps snow from completely melting during the summer. If the Carthaginians were indeed sliding down the slopes of an alpine pass, then it must have been this one, Mahaney says.

In addition, the Traversette is home to a rockfall on its eastern side, at 2,600 meters above sea level, large enough to have blocked Hannibal’s army. In his writings, Polybius described the feature as a two-tiered rockfall, one rockfall event on top of an older one. Of all the mountain passes that Mahaney has investigated, only the Traversette has a two-tiered rockfall large enough to stop Hannibal’s army. “That’s the thing that really blew me away,” he says.

The rockfall consists of mica schist and metamorphosed basalt rubble of varying size, from pebbles to boulders, and likely originated from an outcrop 100 meters higher. Differential rates of weathering confirm that the rockfall does indeed consist of two separate events. The older rockfall likely dates to the Late Glacial, sometime between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, while the younger rockfall dates to the Neoglacial, between 3,000 and 1,000 years ago, Mahaney and his colleagues reported in Archaeometry. One way the team estimated the younger dates was by analyzing the soil properties of the younger deposit — such as its color and particle size — and then matching the soil to dated alpine mountain soils with similar soil profiles. The work confirms both rockfalls were present at the time of Hannibal’s march. And with a volume of up to 75,000 cubic meters spread out across 250 meters, it definitely would have been a challenge to get around, Mahaney says.

The rockfall, however, shows no signs of being fired, as described by Livy. There is burned rock along the Col du Clapier, the mountain pass along the northern route that Hunt believes Hannibal used to get into Italy, but Mahaney is skeptical that the fire dates back to 2,000 years ago or that it was ignited by humans. It is also too small to have been a barrier to the army, he says.

Mahaney came to these conclusions using several lines of evidence. First, his team created a “geothermometer” using the results of Raman Spectroscopy done on carbon-bearing minerals in the fired rock from the Clapier to determine the fire must have reached temperatures between 330 and 650 degrees Celsius, they reported in Geoarchaeology in 2007. Those temperatures are on par with a brushfire, Mahaney says — a brushfire likely started by a lightning strike, although tests looking for evidence of lightning-induced magnetization of the rocks have been inconclusive, the team reported. Still, the fire probably only occurred 100 or 200 years ago, Mahaney says. A lack of weathering on the fired, carbonized crust of the rocks and a lack of lichen growth (which can be used as a relative measure of age because lichen grows at a regular, measurable pace) point to the young age. Attempts to radiocarbon date the fire failed because not enough carbon was recovered from the rocks' carbonized crust, Mahaney says.

These results, he says, indicate the fired rock does not support the case for a northern route. And the lack of fire at the Traversette doesn’t hurt the southern route’s case, he says, because the fire may never have happened, as Polybius, the more reliable Hannibal historian, never mentioned it.

Mahaney is still conducting various lab tests on samples from the Alps, but at this point, he’s confident that he has made a strong case for the southern route and the Traversette. In his 2009 book, “Hannibal’s Odyssey,” he lays out all of the environmental variables — the rockfall, the permafrost, the gorge as well as appropriate campsites that could have held Hannibal’s entire army — in favor of this route. “I think I’ve got it nailed down pretty exactly,” he says.

The northern route

Hunt and his colleagues disagree with Mahaney’s assessment. The southern route isn’t the best fit with the historical evidence, Hunt says. British historian Frank William Walbank discredited the southern route in the 1950s, in part, on the grounds that it didn’t match up with Polybius' description and timeline of events, he says.

Part of the problem comes down to historical linguistics. For example, “Iskaras,” the Greek name that Polybius gave to the river that Hannibal followed after the island, is philologically similar to Isère, bolstering the claim that the Isère is indeed the river that led the army into the Alps, Hunt says. The Isère also marks the historical boundary of the Allobroges' territory. “That tribe doesn’t seem to have moved a whole lot in hundreds of years,” he says, and it’s most likely that they would have attacked Hannibal in their own territory — which does not encompass the southern route. Proponents of the southern route must create a “convoluted passage for Hannibal to get near Allobroges territory,” he says, making it a less logical path than the northern route.

Historical arguments aside, Hunt says the geology of the Alps also provides evidence in support of the northern route. For example, contrary to other claims, he says, there are several potential ambush sites along the northern route. “There’s a place called the Gateway to the Alps, just outside of Grenoble, where two great massifs squeeze the Isère River to its narrowest point,” he says. “There is a perfect ambush spot there.”

Another ambush spot, likely the site of the second attack, is the Bramans Gorge. Polybius says that this attack occurred near a “white rock” or “bare rock” place. Hunt believes this landmark corresponds to a massive, 600-meter-tall exfoliating anticline made of gypsum and dolomite, which rises up just east of the Bramans Gorge. The exfoliation — a type of weathering in which entire sheets of rock are stripped from a formation — has chipped away at this arch-shaped fold for thousands of years. “It stands out in this area as brilliant white,” Hunt says. “This [anticline] is so dramatic because it’s surrounded by a dark, large forest.” The site is about 20 kilometers from the summit of the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche mountain pass — which fits Polybius' description that the ambush occurred within a day’s march from the summit of the mountain pass where Hannibal showed his soldiers Italy. The path up the mountain has a gradient of up to 15 percent, so traveling just 20 kilometers in one day seems reasonable, Hunt says.

The Col du Clapier-Savine Coche was probably snow-covered back in Hannibal’s day, Hunt says. At 2,475 meters tall, the mountain pass is often home to summer snow, but not always. For example, Hunt and his colleagues found snow there in August in 1996 and 2004 but not on a subsequent summer trip in 2006, Hunt wrote in his 2007 book “Alpine Archaeology.” His team has also studied the soil chemistry and postglacial weathering of moraines along the pass to date the long-term stability of the Savine Valley near the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche summit, which is big enough to have held Hannibal’s army when it rested before making its descent into Italy. According to Hunt, who has studied 25 alpine mountain passes in his quest to locate Hannibal’s route, there is not a similarly suitable valley beneath the Traversette. On the descent down the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche, there is also a two-tiered rockfall that geological weathering dates to more than a few thousands years ago, Hunt says.

These are just some of Hunt’s findings. He cannot discuss all of his work because his research is sponsored by the National Geographic Society’s Expedition Council, which has a media exclusive.

But Hunt can talk about the type of research his team is still pursuing. A lot of this work involves figuring out how much the landscape has changed since Hannibal’s time. For example, he’s studying how much soil accumulation has occurred in the past 2,000 years in some of Hannibal’s possible campsites. In general, he says, soil accumulates slowly at such high elevations, but it’s also dependent on factors like average temperature and the rock type. And soil accumulation has to be balanced by the rate of erosion. He’s also trying to assess which areas along the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche pass are the most geologically stable and which are most likely to experience rockfalls. Any rockfalls that have happened since Hannibal passed through could have deeply buried important archaeological remains, making more stable sections along the pass better places to search for artifacts.

The answer is in the archaeology

Geology may hold the clues, but uncovering artifacts is the ultimate goal of both researchers. Mahaney has identified several sites along the Combe de Queyras and the Col de la Traversette that he suspects might be good places to investigate with ground penetrating radar to locate archaeological remains. He’s now looking for an archaeologist who would be interested in collaborating with him on such a project. Hunt has begun to do archaeological investigations along the northern route. His team returned to the Alps (he cannot disclose the location) last summer with permits that allowed them to excavate to certain depths. “The depth is exactly what we want based on what we know of soil development,” he says. If his results confirm the presence of Hannibal’s army, the millennia-old question over Hannibal’s march might be put to rest.

If he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, then Hunt and Mahaney will continue their search. “No one’s going to know [where Hannibal crossed the Alps] until there is a sufficient number of archaeological artifacts found,” Hunt says. “It’s all speculative until there’s archaeological confirmation.”

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Hannibal’s Campaigns in Italy 218–203 BCE

Hannibal’s Campaigns in Italy 218–203 BCE

In the First Punic War (264–241 BCE), the Romans emerged victorious from a largely naval conflict. In 218 BCE the Carthaginian general Hannibal decided to take the war to Rome with an unprecedented overland invasion, which involved taking his troops, including cavalry and war elephants, across the Alps. The strategy took its toll: during the crossing of the Alps, thousands of his troops died from cold and avalanches, and he lost virtually all his war elephants. However, the shock of his arrival in northern Italy was soon intensified by his military brilliance, and he routed the Romans at Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. Macedon and Sicily joined the Carthaginian cause, and the Romans adopted a ‘scorched earth’ policy, refusing to meet Hannibal in battle, but destroying his sources of supply. Hannibal lacked the siege technology to storm Rome, and was increasingly bottled up in the south of Italy, as the Romans began to retake territory. After a 15-year campaign, a frustrated Hannibal eventually sailed back to Carthage in 203 BCE.

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Friday, October 05, 2012

Hannibal's journey on google maps, no comments:.

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  1. Hannibal's crossing of the Alps

    Hannibal's crossing of the Alps in 218 BC was one of the major events of the Second Punic War, and one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare.. Hannibal led his Carthaginian army over the Alps and into Italy to take the war directly to the Roman Republic, bypassing Roman and allied land garrisons, and Roman naval dominance.

  2. Map of Hannibal's Route into Italy

    Academy, The Department of History, United States Military. " Map of Hannibal's Route into Italy ." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 26 Apr 2012. Web. 21 Mar 2024. Hannibal's route into Italy in the Second Punic War.

  3. How (and Where) Did Hannibal Cross the Alps?

    He died in 183 B.C. of poison, self-administered—his alternative to being apprehended and paraded in chains through the streets of Rome. Thirty-seven years later Carthage was captured and razed ...

  4. How Hannibal Crossed the Alps (With Elephants)

    Hannibal Crosses the Alps. That meant navigating rugged terrain, snow and ice and getting through mountain passes controlled by fierce, tough local tribesmen who could attack them from above. And ...

  5. Hannibal in the Alps

    The Carthaginian general Hannibal (247-182 BCE) was one of the greatest military leaders in history. His most famous campaign took place during the Second Punic War (218-202), when he caught the Romans off guard by crossing the Alps. Map of Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps. Hannibal 's route across the Alps is one of those historical questions ...

  6. The truth about Hannibal's route across the Alps

    How Hannibal managed to get thousands of men, horses and mules, and 37 elephants over the Alps is one magnificent feat." This article was amended on 15 April 2016. An earlier version implied ...

  7. Hannibal

    Hannibal - Alpine Crossing, Italy, Rome: Some details of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps have been preserved, chiefly by Polybius, who is said to have traveled the route himself. ... Finally, on the 15th day, after a journey of five months from Cartagena, with 25,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and most of his original 37 elephants, Hannibal ...

  8. Hannibal

    Hannibal (born 247 bce, North Africa—died c. 183-181 bce, Libyssa, Bithynia [near Gebze, Turkey]) was a Carthaginian general, one of the great military leaders of antiquity, who commanded the Carthaginian forces against Rome in the Second Punic War (218-201 bce) and who continued to oppose Rome and its satellites until his death.. Early life. Hannibal was the son of the great ...

  9. Hannibal

    Hannibal's Postwar Life and Death. In 219 B.C., Hannibal of Carthage led an attack on Saguntum, an independent city allied with Rome, which sparked the outbreak of the Second Punic War. He then ...

  10. Map of Hannibal's Invasion 218 BC

    Map of Hannibal's Invasion Route 218 BC (Italy) Map of the Italian Peninsula and Vicinity at the Beginning of the Second Punic War, 218 BC (USMA) Map of Rome and Carthage at the Beginning of the Second Punic War, 218 BC (Shepherd) Map of the Battles of the Second Punic War, 218-201 BC. Map of the Battle of the Trebia, 218 BC.

  11. Hannibal's Major Battles in Italy

    Illustration. by Frank Martini. published on 26 May 2016. Download Full Size Image. A map showing the location of three of the most important battles won by Carthaginian general Hannibal against Rome during the Second Punic War between 218 and 201 BCE. Lake Trasimene in June 217 BCE, Trebia River in December 218 BCE, and Cannae in August 216 BCE.

  12. On the trail of Hannibal's army

    It is one of the most famously brazen moves in military history, but the exact route that Hannibal's army — which included tens of thousands of foot soldiers and cavalrymen, thousands of horses and nearly 40 elephants — took through the mountains has long been a mystery. Now, a team has found microbial evidence that a large number of ...

  13. Hannibal

    Hannibal (also known as Hannibal Barca, l. 247-183 BCE) was a Carthaginian general during the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome (218-202 BCE). He is considered one of the greatest generals of antiquity and his tactics are still studied and used in the present day. His father was Hamilcar Barca (l. 275-228 BCE), the great general of the First Punic War (264-241 BCE).

  14. Hannibal's March on Rome

    Hannibal's March on Rome | Smithsonian Channel. TV-PG. Special. Documentary. 2020. 44m. Researchers use new scientific discoveries to retrace the treacherous route taken by General Hannibal and his Carthaginian army of men and elephants across the Alps and into Rome in 218 BC....

  15. Map of Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps

    Map of Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps. Description. Map of Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps. Date. 218 BCE. Creator. Jona Lendering. Licence. CC0 1.0 Universal.

  16. The Ancient Battlefield That Launched the Legend of Hannibal

    Hannibal mounted his infamous invasion of Italy during the Second Punic War against Rome, which spanned 218 B.C. to 201 B.C. But two years before he took on Rome, the Carthaginian general fought a ...

  17. Hannibal

    In 219 B.C.E., Hannibal led his army to attack Saguntum, a city in the middle of the eastern Spanish coast. Saguntum, however, was an ally of Rome, so Hannibal's attack and siege on the city led Roman Senate to declare war on Carthage. Hannibal's physical bravery and outstanding leadership skills created great loyalty among his troops.

  18. Hannibal

    Hannibal (/ ˈ h æ n ɪ b əl /; Punic: 𐤇𐤍𐤁𐤏𐤋, romanized: Ḥannībaʿl; 247 - between 183 and 181 BC) was a Carthaginian general and statesman who commanded the forces of Carthage in their battle against the Roman Republic during the Second Punic War.. Hannibal's father, Hamilcar Barca, was a leading Carthaginian general during the First Punic War.

  19. On Hannibal's Trail: The clues are in the geology

    Along this southern route, he says, Hannibal followed the Drôme eastward into the mountains and later climbed over the Col de la Traversette into Italy. Both Hunt and Mahaney have traversed these alpine routes several times, looking for clues related to Hannibal's journey. The southern route. Mahaney has always had an interest in ancient ...

  20. Hannibal's Campaigns in Italy 218-203 BCE

    Hannibal's Campaigns in Italy 218-203 BCE. $ 3.95. Map Code: Ax02063. In the First Punic War (264-241 BCE), the Romans emerged victorious from a largely naval conflict. In 218 BCE the Carthaginian general Hannibal decided to take the war to Rome with an unprecedented overland invasion, which involved taking his troops, including cavalry ...

  21. Biologists Find Possible Hannibal Route

    This route through the Alps was first suggested as Hannibal's path by biologist Sir Gavin de Beer some 50 years ago. "The deposition," said Chris Allen of Queen's University Belfast in a ...

  22. Maps Mania: Hannibal's Journey on Google Maps

    The Hannibal's Journey map shows the (very rough) route that Hannibal took and some of the major battles that he fought with the Roman Empire along the way. I also used the Polyline Symbols function in the Google Maps API to include an animated arrow that provides a little bit of action to an otherwise fairly static map.