[History] How many elephants did Hannibal, the famed Carthaginian general, lead across the Alps in 218 BC?

How many elephants did Hannibal, the famed Carthaginian general, lead across the Alps in 218 BC? 

Hannibal was the first general to cross the Alps, and the most spectacular part of this feat was the convoy of 40 elephants. However, contrary to our imagination of thousands of elephants, these were just North African elephants, slightly larger than horses. 

Hannibal started crossing the Alps in autumn, but by spring, only one of the 40 elephants survived, and out of his army of 60,000 soldiers, only 26,000 managed to survive. 

Thus, the 29-year-old Hannibal lost 39 elephants and 34,000 soldiers in the Alps. However, in 216 BC, Hannibal, who had crossed the Alps to advance toward Rome, drove 50,000 Roman soldiers to their demise in a single day of battle. 

Was Hannibal Black?

There is a theory that Hannibal might have been Black and that no portraits of him remain. However, Hannibal was definitely not Black. Carthage was undeniably a nation of Phoenicians, and Hannibal was a Carthaginian noble who adhered to a strict purity of bloodline. A coin in the Cologne Museum, believed to depict Hannibal, does not support the idea of him being Black.

The majority of the population in North Africa today, including nomadic groups, is not Black. The ancestors of the Carthaginians, the Phoenicians, originally lived in the region around present-day Lebanon. Their descendants have largely assimilated into modern Arab populations. While modern Lebanese and Tunisians are classified as Arabs, the Arabs of North Africa and the Levant resemble Southern European Caucasians to such an extent that they are considered white.

Arabs who fit the stereotype of being Black or mixed-race tend to live near the borders of North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Representative examples of these populations include Nubian Arabs living in southern Egypt and the Republic of Sudan.