Ancient Ivory

A Daily Maverick article dated 14 January 2021 tells of the recent under-sea discovery of the Portuguese trading ship, the Bom Jesus, which, in the year 1533, sank off the coast of what is now Namibia. Sailing the spice route to and from India, it was carrying a fortune in gold and silver coins, and was recently discovered by off-shore miners. The ship’s cargo also included some 100 elephant tusks.

Copper ingots stored above the tusks had pushed the ivory down into the seabed, which preserved it, assisted by the cold Antarctic current flowing up southwest Africa’s coast. A team of geneticists, conservation biologists and archaeologists have determined that the ivory is that of West African forest elephants from areas which accord with the locations of historic Portuguese trading ports (the Portuguese had trading posts on the west coast of Africa, including Angola, from some 500 years ago).

For me, this initially interesting article turned sour when I saw the approach the author instantly took – blaming ‘hunting’ for the ‘decimation’ of West Africa’s elephants. He says the tusks varied in weight from 2 to 33kg, adding, “… the elephants seem to have been hunted indiscriminately, male and female, young and old alike.” He claims the discovery “… has revealed the decimation of forest elephants along the West African coast predating European trans-atlantic slavery”, later repeating, “The finding makes it clear that ivory may have predated European trans-atlantic slavery as a central driver of maritime trading systems connecting Portugal Europe, Africa and Asia.”

This is misleading and smacks of manipulation of facts to evoke anti-hunting sentiment. Ivory was among the earliest trade goods known to civilised man. Just one historical record is the Bible, which dates back some 3 000 years. The ancient Hebrew word for ivory is shen or shenhabbim. The Old Testament records Hebrew kings possessing ivory thrones, ivory beds – Ahab even had an ivory house built. Chapter 27, verse 15 of the book of Ezekiel (roughly 500BC) states, “The men of Rhodes traded with you, many coastlands were your special markets, they brought you in payment ivory tusks and ebony.” In the New Testament (written in Hellenistic Greek around 100AD) the word for ivory is elephantinos, and Revelations chapter 18:12 describes trade cargos which include “all articles of ivory… and slaves…”

The first Caucasians to migrate to Mediterranean North Africa came from Middle East Asia between 8000BC and 5000BC: Berbers, Semites and Hamites. The Hamito-semitic peoples occupied what became Egypt. The ancient Greeks conquered Egypt in 332BC and ruled there for 300 years. In 30BC, the Romans conquered Egypt. Both those empires employed the Nilotic African tribes of the fertile Nile River Valley as agents to trade with the sub-saharan tribes. (Camels weren’t in common use in North Africa until around 300AD; prior to which trans-saharan travel was limited to the Nile Valley which formed the only practical passage.) The immigrant Caucasians were forced to remain in the Mediterranean coastal belt as they had no resistance against malaria and other sub-saharan tropical diseases – the Nilotic African tribes were genetically immune). Trade in ivory and slaves from sub-saharan Africa continued via the Nile Valley from those times onwards.

The Daily Maverick article says the Portuguese completed the first trans-atlantic slave voyage to Brazil in 1526, “…quite possibly on the back of an already established ivory trade. Forty years earlier they had reached the Congo River and were trading and plundering along the West African coast.” The use of the word ‘plundering’ is perhaps disingenuous. Considering their matchlock guns of the time and their inexperience of Africa, Portuguese sailors would not have stood a chance against the numerous tribes in Africa. The Portuguese were traders, and plundering is bad for business. The local tribespeople provided both the slaves and the ivory as trade goods. The tribes warred against one another, enslaving prisoners, male and female. When the Portuguese demand for slaves arose, the tribes intensified their war raids for this purpose, raiding further inland then trading the slaves for beads, cloth and other goods.

Likewise, the Portuguese of that time ‘hunted’ no elephants themselves. Almost hesitantly, the author mentions that the wide genetic variety among the Bom Jesus tusks “hints that multiple communities in West Africa were involved in supplying the ivory.” For the most part, the tribespeople trapped elephants in pit-traps – mainly for meat – hence the wide variation of the tusk weights. This had no significant effect on elephant populations. In the 1500s, tropical Africa was awash with elephants, and to say that the 100 tusks (representing 50 elephants) found among the ship’s cargo “reveals the decimation of forest elephants along the West African coast” is fatuous. To his credit, the author admits that more than 60% of the elephants in West Africa have been poached within the past decade, but then surely this would absolve the Portuguese of the early 1500s from blame for the ‘decimation’?

Still, the wreck of the 500-year-old Bom Jesus and its cargo of ivory off Namibia is a fascinating find. – Gregor Woods