Elephant's graveyard

An elephant graveyard (also written elephant's graveyard or elephants' graveyard) is a fictional place where, according to legend, older elephants instinctively direct themselves when they reach a certain age. They then die there alone, far from the group. The term has entered the proverbial store of English metaphors as a venerable repository or resting place for a collection, group or type.

Origin

There are several theories about the term's origin. One type of theory revolves around people finding groups of elephant skeletons together, or observing old elephants and skeletons in the same habitat as Kenneth Armitage suggests. [cite journal
last = Armitage
first = Kenneth B.
title = The Great Beast - Elephant Life: Fifteen Years of High Population Density
journal = Bioscience
volume = 42
issue = 3
pages = 196–197
date = March 1992
doi = 10.2307/1311827] Others such as Enrico Bruhl suggest that the term may spring from group die-offs such as one he excavated in Saxony-Anhalt which had 27 "Palaeoloxodon antiquus" skeletons. [cite conference
last = Brühl
first = Enrico
coauthors = Dietrich Mania
title = Neumark-Nord: a middle Pleistocene lake shore with synchronous sites of different functional character
booktitle = Données récentes sur les modalités de peuplement en Europe au Paléolithique inférieur et moyen
publisher = Université de Rennes
date = 22-25 September 2003
location = Rennes] In that particular case the tusks of the skeletons were removed, which indicates either that hunters killed a group of elephants in one spot, or else that opportunistic scavengers removed the tusks from a natural die-off.

Other theories focus on elephant behavior during lean times, suggesting that starving elephants gather in places where finding food is easier, and subsequently die there.Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Richard Barnes, Hezy Shoshani, A. Christy Williams, A. J. T. Johnsingh, Robin Beck, Katy Payne "Elephants" The Encyclopedia of Mammals. Ed. David W. Macdonald. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.28 August 2007 ] Similarly, Rupert Sheldrake notes that elephant skeletons are frequently found in groups near permanent sources of water and suggests that elephants suffering from malnutrition instinctively seek out sources of water in the hopes of improving their condition. The elephants that do not improve develop increasingly low blood sugar, slip into a coma and die. Finally, older elephants whose teeth have worn out (typically after their sixth set of teeth) seek out soft water plants and eventually die near watering holes. [Elephant issue of Zoobooks]

The myth was popularised in films such as Trader Horn and MGM's Tarzan talkies, in which groups of greedy explorers attempt to locate the elephants' graveyard, on the fictional Mutia Escarpment, in search of its riches of ivory.cite journal
last = Earnhart
first = Brady
title = A Colony of the Imagination: Vicarious Spectatorship in MGM's Early Tarzan Talkies
journal = Quarterly Review of Film and Video
volume = 24
issue = 4
pages = 341–352
date = 1 July 2007
doi = 10.1080/10509200500526778
accessdate = 2007-08-27 ]

Current meanings

In geology, "elephants' graveyard" is an informal term for a hypothetical accumulation of "large blocks of country rock stoped from the roofs of batholiths". [cite journal
last = Clarke
first = D. Barrie
coauthors = Andrew S. Henry, Mary Anne White
title = Exploding xenoliths and the absence of 'elephants' graveyards' in granite batholiths
journal = Journal of Structural Geology
volume = 20
issue = 9-10
pages = 1325–1343
date = 10 September 1998
doi = 10.1016/S0191-8141(98)00082-0]

References

reflist

External links

* [http://www.upali.ch/teeth_en.html www.upali.ch/teeth_en.html Teeth, second dentition, tusks] - Contains information about the relevance of elephant teeth to the elephant graveyard myth
* [http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/html/debate.html The Elephant Debate] - Contains information about the elephant graveyard myth.