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Results for elephant:

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chryselephantine statue

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of figurine sculpture made of ivory and gold. The flesh was of ivory and the drapery of gold. These were produced in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete, and in Greece from the 6th century BC. They were often colossal cult figures placed in the interiors of major temples, such as that of Minerva by Pheidias, which stood in the Acropolis at Athens and was 40 ft high, and that of Zeus, 45 ft high, also by Pheidias, in the temple of Olympia.

claw beaker

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: elephant's trunk beaker, Rüsselbecher
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Elaborate glass beakers dating from c 500 AD onward in Early Saxon graves and Frankish burials. Also called Rüsselbecher, the beakers have two superimposed rows of hollow, trunklike protrusions curving down to rejoin the wall of the vessel above a small button foot. In form they are similar to free-standing conical beakers, but they are embellished by a series of unusual clawlike protrusions. In many cases the glass is tinted brown, blue, or yellow. The beakers were probably made in Cologne or Trier, Germany.

elephant

CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Either of two species of the family Elephantidae, characterized by their large size, huge head, columnar legs, and large ears. The Indian elephant was regularly employed for show and war as early as the Bronze Age in China. Wild herds survived in the Near East into the 1st millennium BC, when they were hunted to extinction for their ivory, and in North Africa, where they supplied Hannibal with his war elephants. Forms now extinct, especially the mammoth, were an important source of food in the Palaeolithic period, and are portrayed in cave art. Living elephants are now confined to Africa. The African elephant formerly occupied a far larger area, as is attested by skeletal evidence and cave paintings in North Africa. The reduction in its range is probably due to the combined effects of climatic change, human hunting, and cattle-grazing. The straight-tusked elephant, Elephas antiquus, apparently adapted to the open deciduous woodlands of interglacials in Europe, but became extinct at the end of the Ipswichian interglacial. Dwarf forms of the straight-tusked elephant evolved on islands of the Mediterranean.

Elephantine

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island in the Nile just above Aswan, Egypt, which was the traditional southern boundary between Egypt and Nubia during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. It had famous granite quarries whose stone was used extensively throughout ancient Egypt. Two temples recorded by the archaeologists of Napoleon's expedition have since disappeared. Remains show continual occupation from the Archaic period to the Greco-Roman period.

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Ambrona

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic site in Soria, central Spain, first discovered before World War II. Ambrona probably dates 300,000-400,000 years ago, from the end of the Mindel glacial period. Its occupants hunted elephants, deer, and bovines though the horse was the most common animal in the area. There are stone hand axes, scrapers, and cleavers of the Acheulian type and similar to some African sites were made from chalcedony, quartzite, quartz, and limestone. Points were fashioned from young elephant tusks. Pieces of charcoal show that fire was used.

Aswan

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Swenet, (Greek) Syene, Assuan, Assouan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in Upper Egypt, on the first cataract of the Nile, where the Aswan High Dam has been erected. The ancient site included important antiquities such as the temples (Abusimbel's), the rock-cut tombs of Qubbet el-Hawa, and the island of Elephantine (modern Jazirat Aswan) have been rescued from flooding by international groups who also explored those structures which could not be saved. There are also local quarries on the eastern bank on the Nile which supplied granite for many ancient Egyptian monuments and which are still in operation. Aswan was the southern frontier of pharaonic Egypt. Aswan later served as a frontier garrison post for the Romans, Turks, and British.

Belzoni, Giovanni (1778-1823)

CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Italian excavator of Egyptian sites, who is known as a picturesque and unscrupulous collector of Egyptian antiques as well as a pioneer in Egyptology. Belzoni sought antiquities both for himself and for the British Consul-General on behalf of the British Museum, whose collection he enhanced enormously. His discoveries were numerous, ranging from at Thebes, the colossal sculpture of the head of Ramses II (the Young Memnon"); in the nearby Valley of the Tombs of Kings the tomb of Seti I and the aragonite sarcophagus (for the Sir John Soane's Museum London). Though he managed to take an obelisk from the Nile island of Philae (Jazirat Filah) near Aswan it was taken from him at gunpoint by agents working for French interests. He explored Elephantine (Jazirat Aswan) and the temple of Edfu (Idfu) cleared the entrance to the great temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel was first to penetrate the pyramid of Khafre at Giza and identified the ruins of the city of Berenice on the Red Sea. His methods were unnecessarily destructive by modern archaeological standards. He died in western Africa as he began a journey to Timbuktu. An account of his adventures was published in the year of his death "Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids Temples Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia" (2 vol. 1820)."

Cagayan Valley

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A broad valley in northern Luzon, Philippines, with several sites from which some association has been found between a pebble and flake industry with a Middle Pleistocene fauna including elephants, Stegodon, rhinoceros, and bovids.

Faiyum ""A""

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest-known phase of the Predynastic sequence of Lower Egypt with settlements in the northern Faiyum area. The economic base was agriculture, though there was much hunting of large mammals (elephant, hippopotamus).

Faiyum A""

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest-known phase of the Predynastic sequence of Lower Egypt with settlements in the northern Faiyum area. The economic base was agriculture, though there was much hunting of large mammals (elephant, hippopotamus).

ivory

CATEGORY: fauna; artifact
DEFINITION: Material from enlarged teeth (or tusk) of certain mammals and used for various tools and artifacts from the Upper Palaeolithic. The tusks of elephants, mammoths, and walruses have been prized throughout prehistory and history.

Khnum

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Khnemu
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The ancient Egyptian god of fertility, associated with water and procreation. Khnum was worshipped from the 1st Dynasty, c 2925-2775 BC, into the early centuries AD. He was represented as a ram with horizontal, twisting horns or as a man with a ram's head. Khnum was believed to have created humankind from clay like a potter and his first main cult center was Herwer. From the New Kingdom (1539-1075 BC) on, however, he became the god of the island of Elephantine and the area of the First Cataract of the Nile River. There he formed a triad of deities with the goddesses Satis (Satet) and Anukis. Khnum also had an important cult at Esna, south of Thebes.

Ku Bua

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Settlement of the Dvaravati period in south-central Thailand near the mouth of the Mae Klong River. Remains of Dvaravati architecture include stupa bases at Ku Bua, some of which have elephants supporting their bases, following a pattern that originated in Ceylon. A moat dates to the Khmer period, c 1000 AD.

Lehringen

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Palaeolithic site near Bremen in north Germany (Lower Saxony), where organic muds revealed a pollen diagram of the last Interglacial. In these muds, a yew wood spear broken into several pieces was found. It passed between the ribs of the skeleton of an Elephant of Elephas antiquus type. The tip was finely shaved to a point and fire-hardened; the spear was evidently used for thrusting.

mammoth

CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: A large extinct species of elephant (Mammuthus) which became adapted to Ice Age conditions in the northern hemisphere about a quarter of a million years ago. It was perhaps the largest animal hunted by Palaeolithic man. It is possible that they were killed by spearing, as no pit traps have ever been found near their carcasses. At Gravettian hunters' camp-sites in Moravia and the Ukraine, large numbers of mammoth bones have been found, and even houses built from them. The woolly mammoth spread across Eurasia into North America, and became extinct c 11,000-10,000 BC. They were frequently depicted in Palaeolithic art and complete carcasses have been found in Siberia and Alaska. They subsisted mainly on open grassy vegetation. The two main species were woolly mammoth and the Columbian mammoth.

Mariette, François Auguste Ferdinand (1821-1881)

CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French Egyptologist who excavated many of the major Egyptian sites and monuments and founded the Egyptian Antiquities Service and what was to become the Cairo Museum (National Museum of Egyptian Antiquities). He excavated the Saqqara Serapeum and found the burials of the Apis bulls and the jewels belonging to Rameses II. He also uncovered sites at Giza, Abydos, Thebes, Edfu, Elephantine, and in the Delta. He is buried in sarcophagus in front of Cairo Museum.

mastodon

CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Any of the various now-extinct species of large mammals related to elephants. It looked like a stocky, long elephant, had long reddish-brown hair, and shorter, straighter tusks than the mammoth. The American mastodon (Mammut americanum), is classified as a browser from its low-crowned teeth, as opposed to the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), which because of its high-crowned teeth, is classified as a grazer. It lived on spruce and pine. The mastodon had large hemispherical cusps on the surface of each molar tooth. They first appeared in the early Miocene and continued in various forms through the Pleistocene Epoch (from 1,600,000-10,000 years ago). In North America, mastodons probably persisted into post-Pleistocene time and were contemporaneous with historic North American Indian groups. Mastodons had a worldwide distribution; their remains are quite common and are often very well preserved. Hunting may have led to its extinction.

Mauer jaw

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Heidelberg jaw
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: A large broken lower jaw of Homo erectus or pre-Neanderthaler type found in the Mauer sands near Heidelberg, Germany. It is dated to either the Mindel Glaciation or the Günz-Mindel Interglacial -- probably the latter. No tools were recovered from the stratum, but there was associated fauna (elephant, rhinoceros, bear, horse, saber-toothed cat). Although it dates from perhaps 400,000 years ago, it is not very different from the Neanderthals of c 50,000 years ago.

megafauna

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mega-fauna
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The large, Ice Age big-game fauna in North America, now extinct. These Late Pleistocene food sources included mammoths, mastodon; giant bison, sloths, camels, and diprotodons. The term also covers extinct larger species of quite small animals, such as giant beavers. The late Pleistocene extinction of megafauna did not occur synchronously nor was it of equal magnitude throughout the world. Considerable doubt exists regarding the timing of the megafaunal extinction on various landmasses. Evidence suggests that the earliest mass megafaunal extinctions occurred in Australia and New Guinea about 30,000 or more years ago. Eighty-six percent of the Australian vertebrate genera whose members weighed more than 40 kilograms became extinct. Much smaller extinction events occurred in Africa, Asia, and Europe earlier in the Pleistocene, removing very large species such as rhinoceroses, elephants, and the largest artiodactyls. Other mass megafaunal extinction events occurred on the Eurasian tundra about 12,000 years ago (affecting mammoths, Irish elk, and woolly rhinoceroses); in North and South America they occurred about 11,000 years ago (affecting a wide variety of species, including elephants, giant sloths, lions, and bears). These extinctions have removed 29 percent of the vertebrate genera weighing more than 40 kilograms from Europe and 73 percent of such genera from North America. Until 1,000 to 2,000 years ago the megafauna of large, long-isolated landmasses such as New Zealand and Madagascar survived. Gigantic birds such as the elephant birds of Madagascar and the moas of New Zealand disappeared in the past few thousand years.

mollusk

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mollusc, snail shell
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Any of a large phylum (Mollusca) of invertebrate animals (as snails, clams, or squids) with a soft unsegmented body usually enclosed in a calcareous shell. Often occurring in calcareous deposits, they may give useful information if associated with archaeological remains. A group may give an indication of environmental conditions and general climatic conditions. More tentatively, a deposit containing mollusks may be dated against the geological scale. The phylum Mollusca is divided into five classes: Amphineura (chitons), Gastropoda (snails and slugs), Scaphopoda (elephant's tusk shells), Lamellibranchiata (bivalve mollusks, such as mussels, clams, oysters), and Cephalopoda (octopus and squids). With the exception of the gastropods, most of these groups are aquatic; shells of gastropods and lamellibranchs are frequently found on archaeological sites. Shells also remain from the exploitation of these animals for food, most often found in middens found near coastal sites. Land snails are increasingly used as an adjunct to pollen and insect analysis in attempts to reconstruct past environments.

Musawwarat es-Sufra

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Meroitic site in Upper Nubia with a colonnaded temple, complex of monumental stone buildings, and elephant pens.

Mwanganda

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An elephant butchery site in northern Malawi, undated, but containing scrapers and core axes. The site is of interest as preserving in situ the debris of a single, clearly defined, activity. It has been attributed to the Lupemban industry.

Nilometer

CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A device to measure the Nile's height, usually consisting of a series of steps (staircase) against which the increasing height of the inundation could be measured. The most famous are on Elephantine Island at Aswan and on Roda Island in Cairo; surviving Nilometers are also associated with temples at Philae, Edfu, Esna, Kom Ombo, and Dendera.

Pasemah Plateau

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pasemah
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A plateau in southern Sumatra with a series of impressive prehistoric megalithic monuments -- massive slab graves and a rich collection of life-sized anthropomorphic carvings. The large stones are roughly carved into the shape of animals, such as the buffalo and elephant, and human figures -- some with swords, helmets, and ornaments and some apparently carrying drums. They are stylistically similar to those of Iron Age burials of the last centuries BC, and remote connections with the Dong Son culture of northern Vietnam and the megalithic cultures of south India are likely.

Philae

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island in the Nile at Elephantine near Aswan, the site of one of the finest surviving temples of the Ptolemaic period. The most important of the complex of temples is that of Isis to whom the island was considered sacred. The earliest standing monument dates from the reign of Nectanebo I (380-362 BC). Other buildings were erected by the Ptolemaic kings and early Roman emperors. During the Nubian Rescue Campaign, the temples of Philae were dismantled and re-erected on the island of Agilkia. Inscriptions in Greek and hieroglyphs on a commemorative obelisk at Philae supplemented the evidence of the Rosetta Stone to give Champollion the key to the ancient Egyptian writings.

Pleistocene

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ice age, Ice Age, Oiluvium; Quaternary; Great Ice Age; Pleistocene Epoch
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A geochronological division of geological time, an epoch of the Quaternary period following the Pliocene. During the Pleistocene, large areas of the northern hemisphere were covered with ice and there were successive glacial advances and retreats. The Lower Pleistocene began c 1.8 million years ago, the Middle Pleistocene c 730,000 years ago, and the Upper Pleistocene c 127,000 years ago; it ended about 10,000 years ago. Most present-day mammals appeared during the Pleistocene. The onset of the Pleistocene was marked by an increasingly cold climate, by the appearance of Calabrian mollusca and Villafranchian fauna with elephant, ox, and horse species, and by changes in foraminifera. The oldest form of man had evolved by the Early Pleistocene (Australopithecus), and in archaeological terms the cultures classed as Palaeolithic all fall within this period. By the mid-Pleistocene, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and Europe. Homo sapiens spread to Asia and the Americas before the end of the epoch. There were mass extinctions of large and small fauna during the Pleistocene. In North America more than 30 genera of large mammals became extinct within a span of roughly 2,000 years during the late Pleistocene. Of the many causes that have been proposed by scientists for these faunal extinctions, the two most likely are changing environment with changing climate, and the disruption of the ecological pattern by early humans. The Pleistocene was succeeded by the Holocene or present epoch.

Pliocene

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The latest geological epoch of the Tertiary period; the epoch dating between c 5 million years ago and the beginning of the Pleistocene (c 1.8 million years ago). During the Pliocene, mammals such as the elephant, horse, ox, and deer appeared, in addition to ancestors of man. It followed the Miocene. There was a separation of the Homo genus and the Australopithecus genus; the first worked tools and the first camps. It is often divided into the Early Pliocene Epoch (5.3 to 3.4 million years ago) and the Late Pliocene Epoch (3.4 to 1.8 million years ago). The Pliocene is also subdivided into two ages and their corresponding rock stages -- the Zanclean and the Piacenzian.

rhinoceros

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl rhinoceroses, rhinoceri
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Any of five species of large hoofed mammals found in eastern and southern Africa and in tropical Asia. The term rhinoceros is sometimes also applied to other, extinct members of the family Rhinocerotidae. Five species of rhinoceros have survived until recently: the Great Indian rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis), the Javan rhino (R. sondaicus), the Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), the white, or grass rhino (Ceratotherium simum) and the black, or browse rhino (Diceros bicornis). Like the elephant, these species have presumably been restricted both by intensified desertification and the interference of man. The closely related woolly rhinoceros evolved late in the Quaternary period and was adapted to cold, open conditions. It became common across Europe and northern Asia during times of colder climate, but became extinct before 10,000 BC.

Sankisa

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Samkashya
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Famous Buddhist pilgrimage center in the upper Ganges Valley, India, where the Buddha is said to have descended from heaven. It was visited by the emperor Asoka in his pilgrimage of 249 BC and retains the commemorative pillar with its elephant capital erected on that occasion.

Satet

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Satis
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: Goddess associated with the island of Elephantine at Aswan and guardian of the southern frontiers of Egypt. She was Khnum's, the creator god, companion. She was depicted as wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, with antelope horns on either side of it.

Seven Wonders of the World

CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A list made in the Hellenistic period (2nd century BC) of what were then considered to be the seven greatest wonders (monuments) of the world. These were: the Great Pyramids of Egypt; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; the Temple of Artemis (Artemision) at Ephesus; the chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia; the Colossus of Rhodes; the Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria; and the Mausoleum of Mausolus at Halicarnassus.

size classification

CATEGORY: typology
DEFINITION: A categorization of faunal remains into categories based on body size: 1) rodent- and rabbit-sized, 2) wolf- and pronghorn antelope-sized, 3) mule deer and bighorn sheep, 4) bison- and elk-sized, and 5) giraffes and elephants

Torralba

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Torralba and Ambrona
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Lower Palaeolithic lakeside site in the Spanish province of Soria. Torralba and the nearby site of Ambrona have Acheulian tools (cleavers, flake tools, handaxes) and the remains of dismembered elephants and horses. The sites are of the Middle Pleistocene, c 300,000-700,000 BP. Traces of fire are amongst the earliest known, possibly c 0.4 million years ago.

ungulate

CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Any hoofed typically herbivorous quadruped mammal -- ruminant, swine, camel, hippopotamus, horse, tapir, rhinoceros, elephant, or hyrax.

Wallacea

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Biogeographical zone of islands between Southeast Asia Sunda shelf and the Sahul shelf -- an area separating Australia from Southeast Asia for 70 million years. It marks the division between two major faunal groups: oriental animals (elephants, tigers, and apes) and the animals of Australia (kangaroos, wombats, and monotremes). Dates of first human settlement are uncertain; the first settlers of Australia prior to 30,000 years ago had to cross sea gaps of up to 70 km in this zone. The water formed a barrier to the spread of animals and humans into Australia and New Guinea. It is named after the British naturalist A.R. Wallace, who first recognized its significance.