From Juliet Clutton-Brock
The motive for building “Africa’s largest single ancient monument”, the
10-metre-high ramparts of Sungbo’s Eredo in Nigeria
(11 September, p 38), was, I
believe, quite straightforward. They were not built for spiritual purposes or to
defend against a human enemy, but to keep out elephants.
It is hard for us to appreciate what it was like for farming communities
trying to survive when surrounded by hundreds of elephants before the invention
of modern firearms. It must have been terrifying, life-threatening, and worth
any amount of effort in building ditches and walls to keep them out. In numerous
articles, Richard Barnes from the University of California has described the
conflicts between humans and elephants in the tropical rainforests of West
Africa, and how farmers told him that their forebears lived on the brink of
starvation as their food supply was regularly devastated by elephants. Even
today, elephants can cause persistent damage to crops and drive villagers from
their homes.
All over sub-Saharan Africa there are ramparts, walls (wider than an
elephant’s trunk) and ditches that appear to have little function, especially to
Eurocentric archaeologists who have no experience of the terror and destruction
that can be wrought by pachyderms.
Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire
