Colossal half-million-year-old elephant tusk discovered in southern Israel

In the south of Israel, near the Revadim kibbutz, there is an elephant graveyard half a million years old. It dates back to when herds of the giant beasts roamed as far north as Britain, with only a rare early human hunting party to watch out for.

But these were not elephants as we know them today: they were Palaeoloxodon antiquus, the elephant with straight tusks. And it’s one of those tusks, a specimen measuring 8.2 feet long, that was recently discovered by researchers working on a two-week investigation aptly named “Operation Elephant.”

“From our previous archaeological excavations in Revadim, we knew that the The site was established in the Late Lower Paleolithic period,” Avi Levy, a prehistorian with the Israel Antiquities Authority and director of the excavation, said in a statement sent to IFLScience.

“But finding this entire half-million-year-old elephant tusk in such good condition is something else!” he said.

The new discovery is “the largest complete fossil tusk ever found in a prehistoric site in Israel or the Near East,” Levy explained. But it is extremely fragile, making it difficult for even experienced archaeologists to excavate: exposure to human contact, or just air and sunlight, could be enough to disintegrate the entire artifact.

“The tusk underwent an initial conservation treatment when it was first discovered,” said Israel Hershkovitz, a professor at the Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory at Tel Aviv University and one of the researchers involved in the excavation.

“Now we are excavating it within its archaeological context, before transferring it to the Conservation Laboratory of the Israel Antiquities Authority, where it will be studied and preserved”.

But the discovery is not only exciting because of its size and quality, but also reveals some tantalizing insights into prehistoric human life. “The discovery of the tusk, separated from the skull and the rest of the body, raises questions”, explained Ofer Marder, professor of archeology at Ben-Gurion University.

“Are the tusks the remains of a hunted elephant, or was it collected by the local prehistoric inhabitants? Did the tusk have a social or spiritual meaning?”

Elephants were known to be hunted along with other large mammals in the area (wild cattle, hippos, deer, wild boar, wild horses, etc.), but it is rare to find their remains in archaeological sites. Previous excavations at the same site had already revealed smaller clues, such as fragments of elephant skulls, ribs and teeth, as well as ancient flint tools used to process animal flesh, such as scaling tools, hand axes and chopping tools.

But elephants are famous for their large size, and straight-tusked elephants still were more, growing up to 4.5 meters, or almost 15 feet, tall and weighing more than 14 tons. That’s even bigger and heavier than today’s African elephants, making hunting and killing one quite a feat.

Which raises a question that has been debated for some time: was elephant hunting normal for our prehistoric ancestors? Or was it something reserved only for special occasions?

“The concentration of the material remains, mostly stone tools, in the current excavation and throughout the site, indicates that there was a substantial number of people at the site over a period of time and that they were hunted. elephants,” they explained.

“In the hot and dry climate of our region, elephant meat it couldn’t stay fresh for very long, so it must have been consumed quickly by many people, probably as part of a community event.”

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