Elephant's graveyard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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[edit] 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.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]
[edit] In popular culture
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.[5]
Other references include:
- The Disney animated film The Lion King featured a prominent scene in an elephant graveyard.
- The elephant graveyard is discussed in the first book in the Edgar Font's Hunt for a House to Haunt series.
- An episode of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest finds Jonny helping an elderly elephant reach the area.
- An elephant graveyard also appears in the Asterix volume Asterix and the Magic Carpet.
- British new wave band Boomtown Rats perform the song "Elephant's Graveyard" on their fourth LP, Mondo Bongo.
- In the MMORPG World of Warcraft there is a kodo graveyard, a reference to the elephant graveyard.
- The Haruki Murakami novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World discusses the concept of the mind/identity as a proverbial elephant graveyard.
- In the collectible card game Magic: the Gathering, an elephant graveyard is a land card.
- In the James Gurney novel, Dinotopia, dinosoaur characters often go to a location known as "The World Beneath" to die.
[edit] 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".[6]
[edit] References
- ^ Armitage, Kenneth B. (March 1992). "The Great Beast - Elephant Life: Fifteen Years of High Population Density". Bioscience 42 (3): 196-197.
- ^ Brühl, Enrico; Dietrich Mania (22-25 September 2003). "Neumark-Nord: a middle Pleistocene lake shore with synchronous sites of different functional character". Données récentes sur les modalités de peuplement en Europe au Paléolithique inférieur et moyen, Rennes: Université de Rennes.
- ^ 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 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t227.e47>
- ^ Elephant issue of Zoobooks
- ^ Earnhart, Brady (1 July 2007). "A Colony of the Imagination: Vicarious Spectatorship in MGM's Early Tarzan Talkies". Quarterly Review of Film and Video 24 (4): 341-352. doi:.
- ^ Clarke, D. Barrie; Andrew S. Henry, Mary Anne White (10 September 1998). "Exploding xenoliths and the absence of 'elephants' graveyards' in granite batholiths". Journal of Structural Geology 20 (9-10): 1325-1343.
[edit] External links
- www.upali.ch/teeth_en.html Teeth, second dentition, tusks - Contains information about the relevance of elephant teeth to the elephant graveyard myth
- The Elephant Debate - Contains information about the elephant graveyard myth.
