Ancient Horse Poop May Solve The Historical Mystery Of Hannibal

By R. Siva Kumar - 05 Apr '16 09:44AM

And to those of you who are wondering when Hannibal crossed the Alps, here is a unique and exciting answer---horse poop can tell you! A team of archaeologists from Queen's University Belfast have used this strange method to find a solution to the mystery.

Hannibal, commander in chief of the Carthaginian army during the Second Punic War with Rome (218 - 201 B.C.), headed his army of 30,000 men, 37 elephants and more than 15,000 horses and mules over the Alps, and then conquered the Romans in Italia.

Even though he was defeated in Zama in 202 B.C., his conquest is revered and considered to have driven the change in the Roman Republic that laid the foundation of the European civilization.

But how he crossed the Alps has been hotly debated over the last 2,000 years between historians and academics. What was the route that Hannibal took to cross the Alps? No fixed archaeological evidence determined the answers till recently.

The Queen's University team concluded that he traversed the Col de Traversette pass, which was propounded half a century ago by biologist Sir Gavin de Beer, but was not widely accepted.

With interesting techniques such as "microbial metagenome analysis, environmental chemistry, geomorphic and pedological investigation, pollen analyses" as well as a number of geophysical techniques, horse poop also helped them to identify "mass animal deposition" near the Col de Traversette, going back to 218 B.C.

"The deposition lies within a churned-up mass from a 1-metre thick alluvial mire, produced by the constant movement of thousands of animals and humans," said Chris Allen, lead researcher of the study. "Over 70 percent of the microbes in horse manure are from a group known as the Clostridia, that are very stable in soil - surviving for thousands of years. We found scientifically significant evidence of these same bugs in a genetic microbial signature precisely dating to the time of the Punic invasion."

The findings will be published in the journal Archaeometry.