← The Origins Foundation Podcast
The Origins Foundation Podcast
Episode 591 - Paul Hubbard || A History Of Ivory Trade In Africa
01:31:48
Returning guest—archaeologist, anthropologist, and historian (basically a knower of all things)—Paul Hubbard joins Robbie to discuss the history of the ivory trade. This is an incredibly important podcast, as it’s the first we know of that truly seeks to tease apart the amount of ivory exported from African shores throughout recent history. They delve into painstaking historical detail about the trade over the years to examine the question often posed by anti-hunters: whether hunters stand to kill off all the “big tuskers” in Africa. So listen in and get the historical evidence to the contrary—some of the figures in this podcast will change your perspective on ivory and, hopefully, get you thinking about what could be driving the occurrence of big ivory in Africa.
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- [00:00]
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Robbie
Paul Hubbard is a returning guest. Paul Hubbard is just a wealth of knowledge. He's an archaeologist by training, he's a historian, he's an anthropologist.
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Paul Hubbard
He just loves it all. He loves research.
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Robbie
And I have Paul back specifically today to talk about elephant ivory trade. And we go into significant detail of trade over the years and really the idea behind this podcast was we are constantly hit with the rhetoric that is, oh, you hunters are going to kill out all of the big tuskers. And I look back over time and I'm like, how is that possible given the the pinch points in time of persecution around elephants? And so I wanted to get historical evidence and Paul is the guy who will be able to deliver it around the trade of elephants. And the numbers are staggering, like really staggering. It's fascinating stuff. This isn't going to be the last time we talk to Paul. There's just so much to tease apart. It's about an hour and a half's worth of podcast in which I think you're just going to love every single second of it. So enjoy. So there's a reason why I started Blood Origins, and that reason is simple, is that I wanted to convey the truth about hunting. It brings awareness to non hunters that it's more than just killing animals. How do I start it?
- [02:39]
Paul Hubbard
Brittany?
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Robbie
My name.
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Paul Hubbard
Does my hair look okay?
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Robbie
My name is Mike Axelrod. Yeah, I hated it too. Braxton, you said something in the car to me. You said that you were living on borrowed time. There's a perception around who hunters are, what we're supposed to be. And a feminist that works for a nonprofit that is a hunter that has only eaten wild game for the last 20 years is likely not the thing that people think about when it comes to a hunter. All right, take 400 with Paul Hubbard.
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Paul Hubbard
Only as few as that, hey?
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Robbie
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Welcome back, my. My friend. We get so many messages actually from people saying, man, we should have this guy on more often. That's why I have keep. Keep asking you to come back on.
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Paul Hubbard
Oh, that's very kind, Robbie. Thank you. It's only a pleasure, huh?
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Robbie
For those of you that may not know Paul Hubbard. Paul Hubbard, why don't you introduce yourself? I. Anthropologist, historian, philosopher, man of many words in a speech.
- [03:58]
Paul Hubbard
Oh, well, thank you, Robbie. Yeah. Paul, I'm an archaeologist by trade, but also nowadays spend a lot of very happy times as a guide, working in Zimbabwe, taking guests around to all sorts of places and sites and sharing what I know about it. And then, yeah, I also keep busy with my research and writing. I've actually just finished writing a new book which you can work on the.
- [04:25]
Robbie
Treatise next that we've been talking about. Oh, perfect timing.
- [04:30]
Paul Hubbard
It is actually. And you know, the new book is on the life of King Lobengula, who of course was such a key player in what we're going to talk about today with the pre colonial prehistoric ivory trade and use in, in Africa. And you know, King Lobengula was one of the. The linchpins in the. In the internal networks. And so I've just finished writing a biography of his. And you know, I found so many references to ivory that I've started a whole new folder on that for what we've talked about, you know, offline and all that. Hmm.
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Robbie
No, it's. It's such a fascinating subject, man. You know, I think that a lot of people and the reason why I wanted to have this topic of discussion and, and obviously it may transform into multiple. I'm. I'm a. Dare I say, I'm a student of rhetoric and I'm always looking for things that will debunk rhetoric, whether it's science, anecdotal information, simple visual information. Like yesterday I was going through, I came up with this idea of some new content. And the idea is there's rhetoric that again, people use all the time against us. Oh, you hunters are just a bunch of killers. Okay, so how do I disprove that? Or you guys are just trophy hunters, Just go out and you kill the biggest thing. That's all you're interested in. Well, how do I disprove that? Well, there's a bunch of hunting videos on the web that people have loaded that disprove it all the time. So I found two videos yesterday that I just, I, I ripped off the Internet and then I, I almost like movie critiqued it for the, for the rhetoric, you know, like this guy shot a caribou in Norway, was an old cull bull. Clearly not the biggest trophy because the in the picture you can see much bigger caribou and he chose to shoot that one.
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Paul Hubbard
And the fact that there were 60.
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Robbie
Other caribou standing there that he didn't plow down.
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Paul Hubbard
I hope you get a publish that as a debunking video as well with some comments.
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Robbie
Oh, I did it already twice yesterday. I sent it to my team. I was like what do you think about this NASA? There's oobles, oodles and oobs of content. Now look guys, I'm a hunter, right? And when I go hunting I like to figure out how to get my trophies back home as expeditiously as possible. Well, you don't have to look much further than Safari Specialty Importers. We know that trophy importation can be quite a headache. That's why Safari Specialty Importer strives to make it as easy and hassle free as possible. They have access to a bonded warehouse, you won't be charged storage fees and you get a dedicated team that's readily available and will update you at every step in the process. They'll even go one step further. Safari Specialty Importers is working with us and they are going to donate $100 from every shipment that they work with to conservation projects that include anti poaching, community development and wildlife conservation. At the end of the day, choose to spend your money with a team that's dedicated to you and is dedicated to helping show how hunting is a great conservation model. Hassle free logistics, fuel and conservation go with Safari Specialty Importers. Hunting and shooting suppressed have become the norm in over 42 states where suppressors are legal. The growing popularity of suppressors has even led to legislative changes. You might have heard some things around the big beautiful bill, right? Including the reduction in of the NFA mandated tax stamp. Before you used to pay 200 bucks and now starting January 1st of 2026, the tax stamp is going to zero. However, why wait until January 1st? Our partners, Silence Essential, great friends of ours, they're going to pay your tax stamp right now. So if you buy a banished suppressor or other popular brands that essentially are qualifying purchases, Silence Essential is going to cover the cost of the tax stand. They're going to save you 200 bucks right now. So make sure you don't miss out. Shooting suppressed if you're in the market for a new suppressor, whether it's your first or your next one, visit silenceesscentral.com or call them 866-811-6536. Silence Essential is going to cover your tax stamp right now. They're going to simplify the submission process and deliver your suppressor right, right to your door. Don't wait. Get your suppressor right now and start shooting. Suppress. This season, Bushnell is eager to help you get set up for conservation success. That's right. They want to help you. The conservation and research community is dominated by good people doing good things and investing significant time and effort for the benefit of habitat and the species. So what do you need to do? Pretty simple. Send us your conservation story and or your conservation wish. Could be managing whitetails, could be understanding your environment or species or something else related to conservation. What would you be able to do if you had a great trail camera setup? We will select the best story every other month and send you a camera bundle. Cell camera, normal SD camera, SD cards, as well as optics, everything you need to get set up for success. I can't wait to see what you submit. You can email us, DM us, message us, whatever you want. We are not hard to find. Good luck.
- [10:09]
Paul Hubbard
Piece. The piece of rhetoric that started this.
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Robbie
Conversation between us is this idea that, you know, these large tuskers are becoming rarer and rarer and rarer in the African system. And in my brain I'm just like, it's not. This isn't the first time that elephants have been quote, unquote persecuted, and I would even call it persecution at this stage of the game, you know, very selective taking of big animals in an elephant population that arguably today I would say is over half a million is pushing it up against its population expansion, opportunity, goals, whatever you want to call it. I just don't think that we can, we can take more elephants than we what we have with the given habitat that we have in the southern African countries. Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, little bit. There's a little bit of space left in Mozambique.
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Paul Hubbard
Tanzania is full.
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Robbie
Kenya, there's still space in Kenya, obviously Malawi, but those southern African, East African countries that hunt. And so it's like, has there been any pressure on elephants in the past? Which almost points the finger to like, well, if the idea of persecution of big elephants with big ivory is a true research statement, then why do we still have big elephants today? Yeah, you know, because millions. You're about to tell me. Millions and millions and millions of tons of ivory have Left Africa.
- [11:45]
Paul Hubbard
Yep. And, you know, again, that's. That's also, you know, centuries and centuries of selective hunting, if you want to call it that. You know, especially even going back down.
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Robbie
To the original guy. I think I told you when we first tried this, I was reading a book called White Hunters, Black Poachers.
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Paul Hubbard
Yeah, yeah.
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Robbie
And in that book, it talks about, like, this guy. I can't remember his name. I think his name was Moses Kutui or something like that. He was like, the most famous African ivory trader on the Tanzanian coast. And there was. He was well known for selecting very big ivory with very big elephants because he knew it was more valuable to trade.
- [12:30]
Paul Hubbard
Oh, absolutely. You know, it's. When it comes to the question of, you know, the use of elephants and for this discussion with. I just want to keep it to African elephants as well, because, of course, you know, 100%, you know, we. We could start looking at how people used mammoths, how people used elephants in India, China, you know, so I think we'll just set that as a broad guideline. Otherwise we will have lots of discussions as well. And, you know, one of my favorite things as an archeologist is to. With, you know, those sorts of questions where it's like, well, why do we still have big tuskers left? You know, it leads you down a fantastic rabbit hole of understanding archeology, genetics, elephant growth patterns, and also distribution and status of elephants over centuries. And you realize it's a very muddled mess with a lot of fantastic work done in little areas, but also a need for a synthesis, which has also got a little thing ticking in the back of my brain, having been doing some reading for this, because also, if I waved some of my reading at you, I've got a. Behind the camera here. I've got a pile of probably 70 books that I've been reading about this topic on elephants, as well as ivory, ivory trade, general trade in Africa before colonization. And one of the fun things that I've learned is that in southern Africa, to start with, we've got evidence of exploitation of elephants in this part of the world going back 30,000 years ago, which is, of course, during the Stone Age. And I don't think people back then were hunting the elephants, but it shows that they're going there. They cutting up carcasses for meat and also probably bringing back the big bones to. For some marrow, especially if it's the younger elephants, you know, before it all starts to harden in their leg bones and stuff. And also maybe we've also there's nascent evidence of them using some of the bones to make early carvings as well, you know, so that's shows a connection between people and elephants in this part of the world. That's quite ancient. But one of the things that fascinates me when we're talking about why do we want elephants and why do we care about tuskers is it's ivory. You know, that's it, plain and simple. You know, I've seen a lot of big elephants in my lifetime, big males, big females that don't have the most impressive ivory. But you look at this thing and it's six tons, you know, that's a huge animal. But then you go, ah, but your tusks are small. And that's the thing that seems to fascinate us humans is those two teeth that come out the front of their face. And why, that's also a question I've got, is why? You know, everything else about elephants, you know, they, to me, elephants are symbols of wisdom and power. They also signal many virtues in different cultures. You know, there's loyalty, there's constancy, there's knowledge. You know, elephants never forget. These are all attributes that we have with them. But when you, when you talk to what a lot of the debate focuses on nowadays is the great empathy for the elephants and that the fact that they're being poached and is simply for those two teeth and why, you know, and it's. It's one of the most ancient connections between hunting humans, you know, humans as hunters, sorry, and elephants as we want those teeth. You know, the meat, the skin, the bones are always secondary considerations until very, very recently when we've had more structure.
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Robbie
And it's such a unique material, I think, you know, it's got this, like, quality to it that doesn't absorb.
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Paul Hubbard
He.
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Robbie
It's constantly cool. It's cool to the touch, you know, it's lustrous.
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Paul Hubbard
You know, that's another one is, you know, that especially like when you've cleaned ivory, that light that it shines with. I don't know how to explain it. Lustrous is the only word that comes to mind right now. And, you know, the feel of it. You know, I think I mentioned last time there's an institution that I visit here that we still have ivory billiard balls. And when you play a game with those compared to the modern ones, it's a very different feel. And that clicking noise is something else. And of course, I always think of the animals that died to give us those balls. But at the Same time, you sort of get. You get it. You might not approve, but, you know, you get it. And, you know, these incisors that we are fascinated with, these tusks, have exerted a fascination for millennia. You know, if we go back to ancient Egypt 6,000 years ago is when we have a lot of evidence of the beginnings of the use of IV for. For what we'd recognize today, you know, for making ornaments, for making jewelry, and also for inlays. The Egyptians made a huge amount of use of. Of ivory and. And began to actively hunt their elephant populations, you know, starting on the. On the Nile, the Upper Nile, you know, which is. It always feels the wrong way around. But anyway, when you think of the way they talk about Egypt, but starting with hunting there and then moving down the Nile into, you know, modern Sudan and further down and then also into Ethiopia, one of the things that absolutely horrifies, yet fascinates me is Egyptian records, which I've got some of the book here, you know, reading one of the books on early Egypt and stuff like that. They reporting that elephants were locally extinct by over. Sorry, by nearly 3,000 years ago, that they had hunted out all the elephants just for their ivory. And so now they're starting to have to go further and further afield. And then that sets up these trade networks that are gonna be a huge part of our discussion, I hope today as well. Because the idea of ivory and where it comes from, there's also. Even all the way back then, there's preference for ivory from different parts of Africa. You know, there's again, during the Ptolemaic era of Egypt and North Africa, you know, when the Romans have conquered North Africa and they've got their trading colonies set up all along the Mediterranean and into Egypt and all that, they talk about how they do not like the ivory coming from the desert, which is, of course, coming out of West Africa at that time. And they don't like it. They see it as more brittle, less colorful. It also was often seen perception and trying to understand some of the references is seen as smaller. They're talking about the ivory just being smaller and inferior. Those are the most. Two common words that you read about. Whereas the stuff coming from the south, which by that era, the Ptolemaic era, they've.
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Robbie
What are we talking about in terms of years? What are we talking 3,000 years ago?
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Paul Hubbard
So that from. This is from about two and a half thousand years ago to 2,000 years ago, you know, with the. With the Roman. So this is before christ.
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Robbie
This is B.C. this is okay, correct?
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Paul Hubbard
Yes. So, and coming into the Christian era, or common era, as we. As we like people call it nowadays, and one of the things that absolutely fascinates me is they're also wanting elephants not just for their ivory, but also for use. You know, we see the war elephants, you know, Hannibal being the most famous guy who collects African elephants from North Africa and uses them to. To invade Rome and. And cause consternation and chaos amongst the armies. But on top of that, for also spectacle, you know, there. There's records of elephants being used in very cruel and quite frankly, in my opinion, barbaric ways. You know, for entertainment, bring coliseums and having people attack them and try and capture them, but also ride them and have clown displays like modern circuses did with elephants and, you know, African elephants, which is not a thing that we generally associate with them in prehistoric times as well, early historic times as well. But one of the things that interests me with them is it always comes back to ivory, you know, and something else is that, you know, in Ancient Egypt, you know, from 6,000 years ago, when we see the start of the hunting, all the way back into more recent times there. And elephants in that part of the world are locally extinct by 2,000 years ago. There's actually records saying that we haven't seen elephants in anywhere in North Africa, north of the Sahara desert, basically from 2,000 years ago, which also shows the massive impact of the demand. And you also then see the use and trade in ivory in Europe at that time. We'll come back to Asia and India just now. But from 2,000 years ago in Europe, ivory disappears as a significant trade. Good. And many ivory objects become treasured relics, especially very early carvings of ivory for religious icons. You know, especially as Christianity begins its spread from the Middle east into the rest of the world. A lot of early European missionaries and martyrs, you know, travel into these areas and all that. They had ivory carvings of everything from crucifixes to rosary beads and, you know, all sorts in a very early time. But it just disappears out because the convenience sources of ivory are gone, you know, from North Africa. And then the Sahara has by this time dried out to become this massive barrier between North Africa and the rest of the.
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Robbie
So essentially what we're waiting for to begin this next phase of ivory trade, ivory exploitation, is really the trade routes. Colonization of East Africa, Southern Africa. Is that what we're waiting for?
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Paul Hubbard
Yeah, exactly. And the development of these trade networks. Now, understand, the dates here are approximations. I cannot give you exact dates because we Just don't know. There's more research that's needed. More research is being done as I speak. So there's more to learn, but definitely from 1,800 years ago. Okay. We see the development of trade networks along the east coast of Africa. So we're starting up in the Red Sea, and then we come down the Horn of Africa, and then we start coming down the east coast of Africa, heading southwards. And it takes time. And the pioneers of this trade route are, quite frankly, people from the Middle east, led by the Persians, as they were known then. And then later on, we start to see what we generally refer to in most of the literature and stuff as basically just Arabs. You know, that's the term that's used, and that hides a lot of variety. I know, but we're going to keep it a bit simple here. Otherwise I get distracted.
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Robbie
We don't need you distracted because we know what happens. You just go down rabbit holes and we lose the conversation.
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Paul Hubbard
Well, absolutely, absolutely. So one of the big things that starts to happen is as they're coming around the Horn of Africa, the guys basically realize, hey, this is untold riches here. Because before that, the east coast of Africa and central Africa were mysteries. We didn't know, you know, they didn't know anything about it. Yeah. How big was Africa? You know, you look at all those early maps, Africa is always shown as this truncated little continent, you know, looking like a squashed Australia and some maps and stuff like that. So they start to come down and they go, hang on, this place is huge, and there's a lot of wealth. And again, the thing that they fixate on initially is elephant populations. You know, once they start landing along the coast and traveling inland, they realize, hang on there. There's a lot of elephants here and in the Middle east and. And into the Persia and the Turkey and that sort of area. The use and trade in ivory had never really stopped because they were getting stuff out of India, China, and also they were hunting their own populations at that time. You know, they weren't reliant on an African source, but they come to Africa and they realize, hang on, these guys have got big tusks here. That's one of the early records that we have, is they comment in certain documents that, wow, there are big elephants here, but how do we hunt them? That becomes the next problem. But the other thing, unfortunately, that also attracts the interest immediately as well. So you've got elephants on one hand is the people. Exactly. They want slaves. And these are to go into the Persian Empire into the growing, what becomes known as the Ottoman Empire, you know, and they're taking people out of here. And unfortunately, the rest of the story, for a large part of the history here, is those two themes are interconnected. It's blood and ivory, if you'd like to call it that, and it's the blood of people and it's the ivory from elephants. And. And the two are horrendously intertwined in a lot of this discussion. But we. I want to focus a lot more on the ivory for now. You know, when does ivory really, like.
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Robbie
I'm assuming in the beginning, it's, you know, it's here and there. A couple of tons here, a couple of tons there. When does. When do, like, legitimate trading routes get set up? And, you know, what are we talking about in terms of quantity? You already mentioned Lobengula, and. But that may be a little bit further along down the timeline, but yes, you know, I'm sure the Mombasa of.
- [25:52]
Paul Hubbard
The world.
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Robbie
The Darussalams of the world, that kind of stuff, start becoming sort of hubs for ivory moving out of Africa.
- [26:03]
Paul Hubbard
Absolutely. So, you know, from 600 A.D. so 1400 years ago, the. Those major ports that you've mentioned, plus never forget Zanzibar. Zanzibar is the eternal ivory hub in East Africa from basically 200 A.D. so 1800 years ago is. The guys are starting to reach down that way. You have the initial travelers down there. And then we just see the expansion of Arab trade that also. Again, that's a different talk entirely. But with the Arabs mixing in with Africans for trading purposes, and they also start to settle along the east coast of Africa, it creates the Swahili trading kingdoms. Okay. There are so many familiar names, you know, and it creates the Swahili as. As. As we now know them today, which we. We often use interchangeably as the language. And as people, you know, it gets. Again, focus. So the. The. With all those trading ports, we start to see a lot of ivory being exported out of Africa certainly by 1,400 years ago. Now, there's no records as to exactly quantities, but it's a lot. And how we know that is we start to see a proliferation of trading ports all along the east coast of Africa being opened up in a very rapid space of time. You know, within 100 years, we go from a handful of ports, you know, maybe five to 10 of them, operating from what is Somalia today all the way down to what is Kenya today, to suddenly having more than 50 ports known that are in use at any one time. And it becomes this progression where you have these specialist traders who focus on certain ports and certain commodities with ivory always being near the top of them. And some of them travel further down the east coast to get away from all the competition and over supply. And so you start to see them now again, unfortunately, in my head at the moment, I don't have the exact dates for the founding of all of these ports. That's something I've got to do more reading on because it's, it's a big topic. But, you know, it's quite clear that all of these ports are being established to facilitate the trade of ivory from the interior to the mainland. And for us down here in southern Africa, we start to see a huge amount of interest in ivory kicking off from around 1,000 adults. Okay? That's how the. So, so it takes 400 years for them to get all the way down from up there, all the way down to us. And one of the things that. That is a mentioned reason in some early Arab documents that have been translated into English that I've been able to read. There's a. There's a fantastic series that came out in, in the 1890s, edited by a guy called George Teal. And he does all these documents of the Portuguese documents of the Arabian Peninsula as they related to South Africa, southern Africa. But there's. Some of them are like, this is one of his here. I've got a set of them here somewhere. So, you know, these lovely old books with, with all that sort of stuff. And this is one of the ones I've been reading. It's as racist as hell, I'll warn you now. It's awful, the racism. But some of the statistics in there from these translated documents are quite remarkable. One of the things that they told me about by a thousand AD is they're really complaining about bottlenecks in supply of ivory from the interior to the coast that some of these trading posts have been forced to switch. And they sound quite annoyed, you know, like, damn it, when there's no more ivory, now we have to trade more in slaves, you know, that sort of thing. And you, you can see that because slaves as. As abhorrent as that that practice was, you know, with the, the practicalities of it, with the profit that people could make, you know, at the coast. And then when they get them to the destination, ivory was a surer bet. So you can see the preference for ivory there. Again, as disgusting as the whole concept is. Okay, so in this part of the world, in southern Africa, you know, We've got early records, and most of the evidence actually comes from two sites in southern Africa. One is called Froda, which is on the Shashi Limpopo confluence area. So basically, that's where Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa all meet on our borders. You know, southern Zimbabwe, for me and Schroeder is one of the first large towns in southern Africa. And during excavations there in the 1970s, 1980s, archaeologists found a huge amount of ivory. Now, also remember, for us in this part of the world, ivory is not just from elephants. We also have warthog tusks, we have hippo teeth and a whole bunch of other things. And conceptually, what's quite fascinating is in a lot of South African, southern African, sorry, people's languages, tusks are not distinguished from other bones. They regarded a tusk as a bone, which is also quite a fascinating thing, which showed that locally tusks were of no interest or use before there was this foreign demand for it. Okay, interesting. That's the suggestion here by the language. You know, if we don't have a word for something to make it special, what does it mean to you? It's a bone, you know. Yeah. So that's quite fascinating to me. So in that Limpopo Basin area is where we have our earliest thing. The other settlement is actually at a place called Kwagandaganda, which is. And in Dondwane, which is on the east coast in Kwazulu Natal as well. But I want to focus on Schroeder because there the archaeologists found a huge amount of unworked ivory of both hippo teeth as well as elephant tusks as well. They also found jewelry that had been carved. They found ivory making, sorry, ivory debris, which is the leftovers from when they are carving jewelry and, And. And other things. And the. The jewelry included things like big fat bracelets like this, you know, beautifully done, as well as anklets, as well as potential earrings. You know, some of this stuff. When it comes to ivory in the archeological record, it does not last. Well, that. That's why also our evidence is always so spotty. And all this when you find ivory during a dig, which. Which I've only ever had that once in my life, and thank goodness we had someone who knew what they were about there, because me, I knew nothing at the time how to preserve it, because as soon as it's exposed to air after being buried for so long, it disintegrates. It's actually really.
- [32:34]
Robbie
Oh, interesting.
- [32:36]
Paul Hubbard
And this is why also some of our evidence for ivory can Be somewhat, and it's like cloth. It's almost once it's been buried for so long. And especially Zimbabwean soils are quite acidic by nature because of the granite geology here. The stuff just goes. Not everything, you know, there's, there's always exceptions. So. But what's quite fascinating is they're not hunting the elephants, we think, to get that ivory, generally speaking, they pick, they scavenging, they, they are going around and, and if you, if you don't mind, because I still, I kept my notes from last time when we would. The recording didn't work. So I just want to go through, if you remember how, how we figure this out. And it's, this is fantastic work done by one of my favorite archaeologists in southern Africa, which is Professor Tim Forsman. He's just fantastic. Okay, so this is based on his work with colleagues in that area. One of the things that he looked at with his colleagues as part of a project is looking at what was important for people wanting to settle in that area. Was it the agriculture, was it the trading opportunities? Was it something else entirely? And they asked the question, well, how important were elephants to these early people? Since we found all this evidence for trading and all that, how important were elephants, where were they getting the ivory from and what was it? So one of the things that they figured out, and I've cross checked their references, not because I didn't believe them, but I want to see the primary evidence and stuff like that to see what else I could learn. So one of the fun things is to start off with average elephant mortality rates are between 1 to 5% per annum. And a lot of that depends on the rainfall. You know, droughts increase elephant mortality drastically. So one of the things that they've estimated in the Shashi Le Popo basin today, the modern population of the elephants today is around 9,300 to 10,000 elephants between the three countries in that each basin of the Limpopa where, where we are. So one of the things is, is if you take just even 1% mortality, you know, we're going to have probably 194 carcasses a year of different ages also. Okay, now, what's the average number of tusks per elephant? Generally Speaking, mathematically, it's 1.9. Okay, two because, I don't know, because elephants break off tusks, you know, they fracture and stuff happens. Some are born without tusks. So technically you can't always expect two tusks per elephant. This is the fun of maths and statistics, which is not My forte. But luckily we've got clever people who can explain 1.9. There we go. So one of the things is, if we're getting 194carcasses a year, we've got 369tusks of all sizes and weights already. Before we kill this every year, before we've had us had to hunt a single elephant. So these people are getting a huge quantity of ivory already. And not that they're going to find all 370 tusks a year, but when you look at the average over a number of years, you're always going to be coming across carcasses, pulling out the tusks and bringing them back for your use, whether you're trading the whole tusks or you are using them yourself to make jewelry and ornaments and all that sort of stuff. Now, one of the other fun things to think about is how heavy were these tusks? Okay, you know, so we can ignore probably 10% as infant mortality. So infant in an elephant is generally five years or younger. Okay? Because, you know, they get those little milk tusks which you never even see most of the time because they don't protrude from the lips. From personal experience, if you see, you know, once you start seeing the tusks pushing out from the elephant's lips, as even the youngsters, that thing's over a year old already, you know. So one of the things is, is pre colonial times, this is where the, the fun of how you can make connections in archaeology. Pre colonial times, one of the, the, the most prolific elephant hunters was William Finnerty. Okay? Now in his book, he reports that he was hunting in this part of the world through south, northern South Africa. So he actually goes through the Charshi Limpopo and kills a few elephants. And then he comes up into Zimbabwe. He actually meets up with King Lobengula later on in his life. And that's another whole story with ivory being traded for guns and all that sort of stuff. But he actually reports that on average he was getting tusks of about 11 and a half kilos a tusk. Okay? So one of the things is, what that suggests is that that's also possibly what the weight of the tusks going all the way back to Schroeder, you know, a thousand years ago we were averaging. That's a fair average to assume based on that because Finati is one of the first guys white hunters into that area. And the Limpopo Valley had not suffered as had East Africa and northern Zimbabwe from the Attentions of, of pre colonial elephant hunters in the same way. So one of the things is, if you, you know, again, skipping over all the maths, I can, I could write it out longhand and you can have a little thing pop up here. But basically we work out that they, they could pick up in the bush at Schroeder 130 tons of ivory a year, just picking it up before we've killed a single elephant. Okay, now that's the theoretical. Were they actually doing that? No, I don't think so. But that shows you the potential pool of IV before we've killed a single elephant. Now, that's not the big tuskers, of course, but this is just a nice little thought exercise to show you the extent of natural ivory that could have occurred from populations at that time. Now, you know, from that period of time, we see increasing evidence for the use of ivory locally amongst the various kingdoms and empires that rise up in southern and eastern Africa. You know, Great Zimbabwe, unfortunately it was not archaeologists who dug it up, but a lot of the early looters and treasure hunters who dug holes everywhere There Report on finding, you know, ivory pieces, ivory bangles, ivory fragments and stuff like this all over Great Zimbabwe, showing that there was a significant amount of ivory pulled through there. Unfortunately, none of those objects on, we don't know where they are, even if they still exist today, given the fragility of the ivory. But it shows that if we jump ahead again to the pre colonial capital of Kami World heritage site just outside of, you know, it's less than 20k's from where I'm sitting right now in Bulawayo at Kami, during excavations there by professional archaeologists in the 1930s into the 1940s and 50s, they found a huge amount of ivory, showing that there was a local use of it, but also evidence for a, of exporting of ivory as well. And at Kami, they found enormous tusks there. One of the tusks that they found, which again unfortunately crumbled while they were trying to preserve it by painting it with resin. It just crumbled to dust. But the weight of that tusk, when fresh was estimated at approximately 140 pounds.
- [40:05]
Robbie
Jeez.
- [40:07]
Paul Hubbard
Which shows big elephants. Now what were they sending out if that's what they kept, you know, and it was a part of a matched pair. So this was probably one giant individual. And where it was found on Kami was the hill, which is the king's palace area.
- [40:20]
Robbie
You almost think that they wouldn't have sent anything bigger out because if you would have thought from a king's perspective, from a status perspective, you would keep the biggest for yourself.
- [40:31]
Paul Hubbard
Absolutely. But it shows the fact that there were big tuskers around. You know, this time period that we're talking about now with Kami is Approximately the year 1550, when those would have been hunted. Now that, that, that's a nice segue in some ways, but trade, like, you.
- [40:48]
Robbie
Know, we talked about 130 pounds being able to be picked up and probably.
- [40:51]
Paul Hubbard
Moved and traded and whatnot.
- [40:53]
Robbie
When does the serious ivory trade start kicking in in Africa? Are we talking about the 1500s, 1600s?
- [41:03]
Paul Hubbard
So there's, there's two, there's two phases. Okay. The first is the. What I like to think of as the pre. Portuguese, then there's the Portuguese period. And then to jump ahead is that period of that man I mentioned now, William Finnerty, which is the Victorian period. Okay. That's the third phase. And that one is the most devastating in terms of just sheer numbers of elephants that were hunted and simply for their ivory. So the early period, from roughly 1000 AD to about 1550, let's call it, which is the period of when Great Mapungugwe, then Great Zimbabwe and a lot of these pre colonial cities were existing. We don't really have any trading records now that are available in English to my knowledge. Okay. There's great estimates in all sorts of books, but I treat them with a huge amount of caution because I can never find out where they're getting those numbers from. I say, well, what should I read? There's one book that I've read where the guy estimates that, you know, they were exporting a thousand tons of ivory a year from Great Zimbabwe. And I said, nice. How did you figure that out? I don't know. He doesn't say, like, I've just showed our thought experiment there with Mapumbubwe, thanks to the work of Tim, but he doesn't. So I just treat that with suspicion. So we don't have numbers, but we do know it was a significant component of the trade equal in importance to gold being exported from this part of the world. So there's a lot of gold mining going on. On also a lot of other metals are being exported from this part of the world, as well as other animal products. So hunting is the same thing is.
- [42:44]
Robbie
Happening up all the way through East Africa at the same time too, right, Paul?
- [42:48]
Paul Hubbard
Absolutely, absolutely. And East Africa is where the trade becomes. At the same time, it has become entrenched and we see the rise of a lot of really, really famous elephant hunting peoples at that time. And I just have to, because there's this, I've got to make sure I'm pronouncing the names right. So I'm just pulling out my notes here. But one of the amazing things is we see the rise of specialist elephant hunters in East Africa and later on in southern Africa from about 1300 AD, so roughly 700 years ago. And some of them, you know, they last all the way through until colonization, you know, from the late 1800s. So these are people like the Sukuma, the Kamba, the Waboney, the Wata. These are all peoples whose names still ring in East Africa today as great elephant hunters. And they had a lot of techniques for hunting elephants and they had specific targeting because of all the risk that they were going to go through. Many of them settle on using the same techniques overall, but a few of them have little quirks that differentiate them. But most of those names that I mentioned, it's geographical localities throughout East Africa, which in this term I mean to include Kenya, Tanzania, northern Malawi, northern Mozambique. Okay, in my brain that's what I think of as East Africa specifically. So with all these people, how did they hunt these elephants to get their tusks? So first and foremost was the use of pit traps with spikes on the bottom. So they would cut down trees, carve the ends into spikes, spikes often harden them in the fire, dig a huge hole on a narrow game trail, cover it over and then try and stampede individual elephants. If they were picking on one that had a particularly wonderful set of cusks that they wanted and try and force it to run panic stricken along these trails and fall into the hole and then either they jump in and end its life or they'd leave it to die. Both are not ideal.
- [44:56]
Robbie
But imagine having the job that you're getting on the back of the elephant to slide the, a huge spear into its, between its vertebrate.
- [45:05]
Paul Hubbard
Oh no, that and especially one that's already riddled with pain. They're probably targeting the big bull elephant. So you're really dealing with a 5 to 6 ton animal and you've got to jump in on top of this thing. The cumber had a, had a, also a nuanced way of hunting that they used pit traps, they used to use dead falls where they would string trip wires across paths and they would have a weight, massive spear that was positioned to fall down vertically like that and pierce the vertebra somewhere along the lines of the elephant. And this was proved to work very, very well. Because any damage to the vertebra often would lame the elephant. It wouldn't kill it outright, making it easier to then run in with very long spears with massive spearheads. You know, some of these spearheads in metric are bigger than half a meter. So in American, I can't. I can never remember how many feet that is, but that's basically what's it. Yeah.
- [46:04]
Robbie
Anyway, so one and a half, two feet.
- [46:06]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah, yeah. So these are massive, massive spears. But the Kamba also had this technique which was also used by the. For heaven's sake. I've just gone blank on their name. In Malawi, where they had. Some of these people would work in groups of six to 10. And in that group, you had one guy who carried a massive axe. Now, this is an axe, like something out of your worst nightmares, okay. With this huge curving blade, like this long, thick handle designed to be held in two hands. And so what would happen is you'd have two of them whose job it was was to carry these axes. So they'd lie in ambush for these. These elephants. And as the elephant would come past them, they would leap out and sever the tendons on the back feet of these elephants with a couple, hopefully just one, but maybe two strokes from their axes on both sides at the same time, and then run like mad, because as the elephant goes down, it starts squealing and. And. And it's quite a horrific thing. But then you've got the third guy who begins as the elephant's going down, he is running out with another massive axe. Or later, visitors also saw him carrying a long spear with a short handle to run up the spine of the elephant and place it straight in between the vertebra behind the ears like that, to kill it. And at the front, you had another two guys who would be trying to distract the elephant from noticing who's running up. And what they would do is they'd ram the spear in. You're not going to sever the vertebrae in one go. They'd ram it in and they'd have to hold on and then rock from side to side to open the wound while pushing down the whole time. It is brutal. It is courageous beyond words. And it was very, very effective that these people. Again, there's anecdotal evidence, you know, stories and legends passed down from interviewees about what their grandfathers had done and stuff like that. But these guys could kill an elephant a day like that.
- [48:03]
Robbie
Jeez. Unbelievable. And obviously poisoned arrows were used, too. I remember reading in that book, White hunters, Black poachers the guys, you know, covering themselves in dung, elephant dung essentially, and sneaking in between the, you know, as close as possible and throwing a.
- [48:18]
Paul Hubbard
Poison arrow in there. Oh, absolutely. You know, and, and a variety of poisons that they made use of as again is something we know of archaeologically because there's residues that have been found on spears collected and stuff like that. So, so there's a wide variety of plant and, and animal toxins that have been used that, that would, some, some of the poisons would not necessarily kill the elephant but they'd incapacitated to such an extent that it would wither and die. So the, the, the one thing that I, I want to point out as well is that, you know, so we don't know the numbers that these guys are killing but if they, you know, like you've got how many. We don't know that how many people are hunting elephants at this time. We don't know if it was their full time job or if they were doing it in the winter months with ambushes at waterholes and stuff like that, which would make more sense than trying to do it in summer. Where the elephant populations just bombshell to every source of water and food. You're wanting them to concentrate where you can also identify individuals. I think that at this time that with these professional hunters they would have been targeting them because it's a lot of risk for the rewards. You would have been targeting large tusked individuals which are probably the big males over 50 years of age and choosing them to hunt. Now one of the things is we know that most of that ivory is leaving Africa and going to the Middle east and Asia, especially India and Sri Lanka. Those are the markets from what's in.
- [49:52]
Robbie
This first phase, this first phase? 1500, 1600.
- [49:56]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah. So from a thousand years ago to 400 years ago, basically that is where you've got your big focus, is shipping all the ivory over to there. Now there's a potential for a fascinating project which would be to go and look at museum objects, ancient ivory, and do isotopic analysis on those things which is possible as the technology gets better. And you could provenance that ivory, you could figure out where did those elephants come from because they've got these massive databases they've developed for anti poaching and anti trafficking now. So there's no reason that it couldn't apply further back in time to give us clues and that you could look at museum. And I know that there's been a couple of people looking at this from South African museum ivory so it'll be amazing to get into Asia, India, Sri Lanka and see ancient ivory. And then we could start like, hey, look here. We've found Statistically, you know, 70 museum objects, 35 of them are coming from the Serengeti area. So that shows that there was a lot of activity from. In this. In this period when. When these things were carved. You know what I mean? So. So that. That would be something cool because it would really give us a microscopic ideas about where were these elephants also being hunted, what were the hunting grounds and what were the ancient ranges of these elephants. One thing we do know about prehistoric, it's very dangerous to speculate on some of this because we don't have precise numbers. But one thing that we do know is from 1000 AD on the east coast of Africa, elephants were seen along the coastline. That's how prolific the populations were. You know, from there going all the way inland through the Great Lakes area, all the way towards the forest. Forests. Okay, the tropical jungle as we think of it.
- [51:33]
Robbie
Yeah, there was elephants everywhere.
- [51:34]
Paul Hubbard
There was elephants everywhere. We have no idea what the populations were. But something that, again, which I haven't done yet, so this could be another talk, but one thing I've been doing is every source I can, I'm looking at their trade, numbers of amounts of ivory being exported, thinking of what's an average weight for that area at that time, and then looking at the individuals that were being hunted and exported or ivory collected. You know, we. It's not always easy to say which is which, but just saying, okay, there's this many dead elephants for this many tusks coming out of this port. This area. This area. So that's the thing I've just started doing. And. And that's why there was. There's so many books on my desk at the moment. But also, you know, it's really become fascinating to me. So just a couple of tasters here. Okay. In the 16th. So in the early 16th century, one of our main ports that's been operating is Sofala. Now, Sofala had been established from 800 years ago, plus. All right. On the East African coast. And it gets really confusing because there were two, perhaps three ports, all with the name Sofala, but in different locations. So I'm talking about the southernmost Safala, which was just north of the. Where the Savilundi river empties into, you know, into the Indian Ocean.
- [52:57]
Robbie
So this is Mozambique so far, is it Mozambique?
- [52:59]
Paul Hubbard
Yes. So that means the ivory is coming out of my part of the world here, Southern Africa from anywhere from Wangi Chobe all the way down to the Limpopo Valley Truga area, then to the coast. Okay, this is the potential sources of this ivory getting there. So one of the things is, there's a fascinating early book. Before the Portuguese take over, Portuguese come into our part of the world and start taking over all these Arab Swahili trading posts in phases. But starting from the year 1510, that's when they take over everything in Mozambique. Then they push up towards Zanzibar. Then they try and take Mogadishu, but that proves to be too troublesome and they retreat back down, you know. But they interrupt and they try and take over the trade. So just before the Portuguese arrive and start interrupting the trade, there's records in this set of 26 volumes by Thiel where he reports anecdotal evidence, but from translated Arab documents which were found in. For heaven's sake, forgive me, I've just gone blank on the name of the city in the Middle east from that time. But anyway, they show that an average of. Of 30,000 pounds of ivory was exported from Safala every year for a century.
- [54:28]
Robbie
So 30,000 for a century.
- [54:30]
Paul Hubbard
Every year. So you times 30,000 by a hundred.
- [54:34]
Robbie
Okay, 130,000 a year.
- [54:39]
Paul Hubbard
Yes. Three million pounds of ivory in a century. Now, let's pretend that our average elephant tusk weight is. Is 80 pounds. All right? Because, you know, we. We're not going for the. We're not getting those.
- [54:51]
Robbie
Let's go back to what the data was. 11.5 kilos.
- [54:55]
Paul Hubbard
Yes. All right.
- [54:56]
Robbie
All right. That's what you have.
- [54:57]
Paul Hubbard
You have.
- [54:58]
Robbie
That's the piece of data that you have. 11.5 kilos. Let's just call it 35 pounds.
- [55:02]
Paul Hubbard
It's just 35 pounds into three. How many elephants?
- [55:05]
Robbie
85,000. 85,700 elephants.
- [55:10]
Paul Hubbard
Okay, so that's just from Safala. Now, remember, at that time there were six other trading ports in the same vicinity north of Sofala. So you could.
- [55:24]
Robbie
All pulling from the same area, do you think?
- [55:27]
Paul Hubbard
From the same area, Absolutely. So now you times that by six times that number of how many elephants? 85,000. Five, six.
- [55:39]
Robbie
Half a million elephants.
- [55:41]
Paul Hubbard
Yes. In a century. Killed in our part of the world.
- [55:45]
Robbie
In the 500s, 1400s.
- [55:48]
Paul Hubbard
In the 1400s, into the early 1500s. Okay.
- [55:52]
Robbie
We have no idea of the percentage. Like, we don't have. We have no idea the percentage. Like, if this is 15, if this is 500,000 taken over a century.
- [56:06]
Paul Hubbard
I.
- [56:06]
Robbie
Wonder how many elephants it could be.
- [56:11]
Paul Hubbard
I've Read estimates of elephant populations in the Portuguese era in southern Africa, and I don't know how they get to these numbers. Okay. But for example, I was just reading where the hell have I put it Now. It's somewhere here. There's a book by Keith Somerville on ivory where he's very skeptical of data as well. He's great. I really enjoyed reading his books as well. Well, but he, he says that there was an estimated 4 million elephants in southern Africa, which, again, I think is, you know, I, I, I don't know where he got that number from, but he says this is one potential source, another estimate.
- [56:50]
Robbie
I could see that, I could absolutely see that given the space that, you know, the space that we have for half a million elephants right now, there was unlimited space for 4 million. I get that. That's definitely possible.
- [57:04]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah. And, you know, again, it's going to sound brutal, but, you know, you're killing half a million elephants in a, in a, in a century with a population of that size. We, you know, we just trimming the branches there really, as humans at that time. Now into the Portuguese era, this is when things really start to accelerate in the hunting of elephants for ivory as well. And again, I'm still working on, on numbers and stuff like that. So if you don't mind, I want to ignore the Portuguese era for now and jump to. Sure, sure. Because that's weird.
- [57:40]
Robbie
You know, Portuguese, they do damage, Right. They obviously, they accelerate beyond the 30, 000 of safala on an annual basis.
- [57:49]
Paul Hubbard
Right.
- [57:49]
Robbie
There may be an order of magnitude up, but it, it doesn't come, it doesn't touch what happened in the colonial era and the Victorian era.
- [57:58]
Paul Hubbard
Yes. And one of the reasons why it accelerates with the Portuguese and, and I've got a couple more things to read, which is why I want to skip it for now, because I have a feeling they're going to be fun. But one of the reasons why it accelerates with the Portuguese is they come in and they just start trading guns for ivory. And that is the tone of the elephant hunting and trade trade in southern and eastern Africa for the next 400 years is when the Portuguese come in here. The fascinating thing to me is that the whole trade network shift as well under the Portuguese. The focus then stops being India and the Middle east and Sri Lanka for the export of ivory. It now becomes Europe. And once their desire for ivory is reawakened from the, you know, the 200 A.D. to 400 A.D. when, you know, ivory as a commodity just sort of disappears from Europe as we going into Europe with the rise of the Portuguese and also the upheavals in Christianity at that time, leading to mass creation of religious iconography and jewelry and stuff like that. The Portuguese are supplying a massive amount of ivory into Europe at that time. And they just come in with guns because in Africa, the people are like, no, no, no, we want those things that you've got. We've got no interest in your blankets. We've got no interest in glass beads anymore. We don't have interest in you. Bring us guns and gunpowder and bullets and lead. That's what we want. And now that becomes the main trade commodity. Guns first, everything else cloth. Yes. We all know that that's still a commodity for trade. But what do these ivory hunters and traders want before anything else is guns? And there's a whole bunch of fun stuff, which I'll talk again, where what was the rate of exchange? You know, one gun was worth how many pounds of ivory? And so that's something for the time, if you don't mind, because I'm still working on, you know, Commander, thinking about the Victorian age.
- [60:07]
Robbie
When does that start? The Victorian?
- [60:10]
Paul Hubbard
So for me, it's colonial. 1840s. Okay, okay. And why I've got that date is because that's when we really start to see.
- [60:19]
Robbie
Less than 200 years ago.
- [60:21]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah, yeah. And it's why I picked that area. Of course, there's been elephant hunting before that in the Cape and along the east coast of Africa. But by the 1840s, what's starting to happen is it's the rise of the professional elephant hunter to supply ivory to Europe and North America. That is the, that is the, the, the whole thing. And does North America come online about.
- [60:45]
Robbie
The same time as Europe or is it a lag?
- [60:48]
Paul Hubbard
There's a, there's a slight lag. But, you know, the, the, the, the demand for, for, for ivory in North America and Western Europe really explodes from the 1840s. It's the industrial revolution. It's the creation of a settled middle class with money to spare for luxury goods. But it's also increasing mechanization to create and market these, what do you call it, these luxury goods, you know, and we start to see the rise of. In both areas. So, for example, what I mean by that, and it's going to sound really funny to us in the modern world, but ivory use for combs for your hair, you know, it's something I don't know how to do. That's why I have to keep my hair short. Otherwise it's it's, you know, I don't know what a comb looks like. I've been told about them. But, you know, ivory combs. And there's actually a guy, which I always, I always remember his surname for obvious reasons that I can never remember his bloody first name. Oh, no, it's Phineas. So there's a guy in, in 1799, okay, develops a machine and his name is Phineas Pratt. And he gets a patent in. In New York for the machine that stamps out ivory combs. And this is the start of American demand for African ivory because he had tried mammoth ivory, he had tried Indian elephant ivory when he was developing his patent, did not work in the. And he had also tried ivory from West Africa, all inferior to what's coming out of our part of the world, Eastern and southern Africa. So he, he puts this in his patent documents and stuff like that. And, and one of the things that then starts to happen, happen is this just explodes demand because now you can mass produce these things. You don't have necessarily have the carvers one by one making these combs. They can be cut out and stamped and all. You should look up the patent documents. They're quite. This machine looks like a Frankenstein monster. But it's amazing that, you know, of course it gets refined and all that. And then after that we start to see similar things going on for making mirrors. The handle and holding for the mirror, for, for people of leisure, you know, became a fashionable thing to.
- [62:59]
Robbie
To own billiard balls and the keys.
- [63:03]
Paul Hubbard
On pianos and so on and so forth. And when I talk about some of these mirror cases and stuff, it's. It's that people are making this with ivory. You know, like, look at how super, super details a bit earlier. This is not quite the industrial revolution phase, but this is, this is why, you know, ivory in, in my opinion, was the plastic of its age, okay. Because you could shape it so easily and so beautifully into so many useful and also frivolous things as well. You know, the, the. And this is when we start to see the rise of the demand. So this is not something Africa controls either. What we are controlling is the provision of. Of ivory to these markets. But. And it creates an entrepreneurial class here in Africa. But these people, the wealth is not because of development, it's just because of trade. It's a bit like the situation in Africa at the moment where we merely exporting so much and what are we developing at home. But that's a different conversation. Okay. But it's a similar, you know, like History. Anyway, so. So one of the things is with Kratz work and others, this really explodes, this sort of thing. And it's also regrettably linked to the slave trade out of. Of into. Into North America at that time as well. Because, you know, a lot of the. The time the ivory is being brought out using enslaved peoples to carry the tusks to the coastline, and then from there, they're loaded onto ships and brought over. Now, a lot of the slaves coming out of our part of the world end up in Asia and the Middle east and then. But you see, people and ivory are interlinked in this story because a lot of the ivory coming to the east coast of Africa, slaves. There's a minority of slaves from East Africa make it to North America and the Caribbean islands and all that. But there are some. You know, there's work being done on this sort of thing, but it explodes. And again, here's a couple of statistics for you. Okay, now let's look at our main port of Zanzibar, which becomes the linchpin of the ivory trade in eastern and southern Africa. Wherever we sending it to the coast, it makes its way to Zanzibar and then spreads out around there, even in. In, you know, during the colonial period as well, because you've got all the white hunters and their. Their allies, their black allies coming from the coast inland, hunting, coming back to the ports and everything getting. Zanzibar was the ivory entrepot. You know, it was where all the trade was funneled through. So here's. Here's something again, just for some fun statistics. All right, so export records at Zanzibar. And this is from a fantastic book by an archaeologist called Freeman Grenville, who went into some of the documents and stuff. Again, it's a big, beautiful. I don't know where I've put it, but it's a very beautiful book, I must say. But one of the things is. Export records from Zanzibar show they used to use a standard weight called a fracylia, which is £34. That was their standard unit of weight for measuring ivory for export. Now, one of the things is, is that the export of ivory from Zanzibar, and I'll tell you proper numbers, but between the late 1820s to the 1870s, the export tripled. From the 1820 number to 1870, it was tripled, okay? And then from 1870 to 1890, it tripled again. So that is a real boom for the whole world. That is the zenith of ivory as a. As a global commodity legitimately. Okay?
- [66:44]
Robbie
From 1870 to the 1890.
- [66:47]
Paul Hubbard
That is the real. Okay. In my opinion, using those numbers from. From Zanzibar. So to give you an idea, just from Zanzibar alone. All right. Between 1790 and 1875. Okay. That's the. That's a long time period. I know. 1790 to 1895. So it's basically 1875. Sorry. Just from Zag Balon, the importing of ivory just into the UK Great Britain. Okay. In 1790, they were importing 125 tons of ivory a year.
- [67:22]
Robbie
From 125. Okay.
- [67:24]
Paul Hubbard
125 tons in 1790. By 1875, they are importing 670 tons a year of ivory into Great Britain alone. From Zanzibar.
- [67:39]
Robbie
Now, but we believe that. But Zanzibar is a funnel.
- [67:42]
Paul Hubbard
Right.
- [67:44]
Robbie
Are there other places shipping out ivory at the same time or is it like everything's going to Zanzibar and out of Zambia?
- [67:51]
Paul Hubbard
Zanzibar, that's in southern Africa. We've also got Cape Town, we've got Durban. There's also Lorenco Marx. Maputo in Mozambique is also a significant port. I have. I have not had the time to look up trade statistics and stuff because Zanzibar is the fascination to me at this moment in time.
- [68:09]
Robbie
So 670 tons are going per year, are going to Europe alone, to the.
- [68:14]
Paul Hubbard
UK we haven't even got to France, Germany.
- [68:17]
Robbie
Okay. Just to One country, the U.K. america.
- [68:21]
Paul Hubbard
For the same time period, goes from around 100 tons a year for. For North America, U.S. and Canada. Okay. To nearly 2,000 tons a year. Wow. And that's just from Zanzibar.
- [68:38]
Robbie
Jeez.
- [68:40]
Paul Hubbard
So how many elephants are being killed a year? Conservatively, you know, we looking at, again, a couple of hundred thousand elephants a year minimum being killed. Again, numbers are not my forte.
- [68:55]
Robbie
All right, how many kilos In a ton? 100.
- [68:57]
Paul Hubbard
Right. In a. No, no, no. It's a thousand kilos. Thousand. Yeah.
- [69:03]
Robbie
So 2.8 million kilograms of ivory to the UK and to America alone.
- [69:13]
Paul Hubbard
Okay.
- [69:14]
Robbie
So let's just do that. Divided by the 11.5 kilo number that we had back in the day.
- [69:20]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah. Just for the. Just for the jitter, as we call it.
- [69:23]
Robbie
250,000 elephants per year to two countries.
- [69:33]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah.
- [69:34]
Robbie
250 thousand elephants per year to two countries.
- [69:38]
Paul Hubbard
And that's just from one port.
- [69:41]
Robbie
From one port from. What do we say from 1790 to. No, 1870 to 1890.
- [69:49]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah. So that's. And that's just from one port. That's zanzibar. Because by 1890, Zanzibar controls at least one quarter of ivory exports.
- [70:03]
Robbie
How many ports do you think there are?
- [70:05]
Paul Hubbard
3.
- [70:06]
Robbie
Just be conservative.
- [70:07]
Paul Hubbard
Well, okay, are we talking East Africa only? First, there's at least five major ports of which Zanzibar is the major because you've got Kilwa as well, which are.
- [70:17]
Robbie
Okay.
- [70:18]
Paul Hubbard
Plus southern Africa.
- [70:19]
Robbie
Give me some more from southern Africa.
- [70:21]
Paul Hubbard
Well, southern, South. Southern Africa. You know, by that time we've got Cape Town, we've got Durban, we've also got Maputo and. But they are not reaching the same numbers as Zanzibar. That one is.
- [70:33]
Robbie
Let's just, let's just, let's just use. Let's just say five. Okay. Let's combine the four. Let's combine the four down there. Let's make it. Let's just go. We'll even be more conservative. Let's go four.
- [70:44]
Paul Hubbard
Okay. I've.
- [70:48]
Robbie
I've times it by 20 because of the 20 years gap, right? 20, 1870 to 1890. And now I'm going to times it by four. That is 20 million elephants. If you went on the 11.5 kilo number.
- [71:07]
Paul Hubbard
Shit. How about it?
- [71:10]
Robbie
It's me.
- [71:10]
Paul Hubbard
Sparkling, isn't it? And, and you know how precise that number is. You know, we can argue, but. And the records are imprecise, but it gives us an idea of the staggering scale of what is going on in Africa. Okay. And when you start to get to the time where we have written records and guys producing their own books, like William Finnerty, Cornwallis Harris and so on and so forth. Salou, you know, all these sort of guys and you start totting up what they were personally killing a year. But then also several of them employ black hunters to go out and hunt ivory for them. And then they would trade with them and then they would ship it to the coast themselves. You know, you start to get a bewildering idea. You know. George west beach of Panama Tenga was reported to shoot 700 elephants a year personally for their tusks. Panama, you know, it's a. In the Chi. Morgan Wangi and southern Zambia. But he employed over a hundred other black hunters which he armed and sent into Angola, sent into Zambia, sent into Botswana, Zimbabwe to hunt for him as well. So you can imagine. And all of them would be. Would be hunting the elephants with guns. He gave them guns and they would come back with their ivory. And again, that's another facet. Panama, Tenga and its role in early hunting in this part of the world is worth. Again, wow. I could distract myself, but focus because one of the Things is, I just want to tell you that your figure of 20 million gels, with my own scribblings here, which are indecipherable half the time, but also with one of the estimates I read in Somerville's book, which was then referenced to one of these articles here, which is absolutely brilliant, which everyone who wants to read this here, I could email it to you or whatever, but this is. This is the Exploitation of elephants for the Ivory trade, A historical perspective by E.J. milner Gulland and J.R. beddington. And this is published in 1993. And they. They also have certain interesting statistics and graphs and all that, but it's actually, you can find it, it's available without having to pay for it, you know, through one of those academic paywalls and stuff. And they also have some sources that I'm following up. But one of the things is they point out the records are incomplete and also often imprecise. Some they think are wild, be overestimated. But one of the things that fascinates me is they suggested that between 1840 and 1890, so in 50 years, over 20 million elephants were killed in eastern and central Africa, which includes Zimbabwe. So we're ignoring South Africa.
- [74:00]
Robbie
And even though that number. I didn't even know that number.
- [74:05]
Paul Hubbard
No, but I love it because there we've just fiddled around. But we've come to a similar thing as. As a published document. And one of the other things is, is that when you start fiddling with that sort of information. Oh, boy, oh, boy, you know, like we. We start to. We start to. To get some really, really fun stuff, you know, because. To bring it back to what we had started with. Because I am conscious of time. I don't know how long we got and how long you want this to be.
- [74:32]
Robbie
There's only two people still listening to this, you know, so it's, you know, it'll just keep going.
- [74:38]
Paul Hubbard
Well, you know, to bring it back to what we had started off with talking. What does this imply with that absolute slaughter, okay, in such a short space of time, and yet we still have large tusked elephants today. So what does that imply about genetics and how things are passed on? I think the first thing it does is tell us tusk. Even with all the research that's been done, we still need to better understand how tusks are determined through genetics, diet, environmental factors, and also, you know, a whole host of other things that I think the focus on just looking at, oh, we're just killing off all the big tuskers is Perhaps the wrong.
- [75:20]
Robbie
And that's gonna. And that. And that.
- [75:22]
Paul Hubbard
That's really it.
- [75:23]
Robbie
Like we're focusing on that we're killing off all these big tuskers and that's going to lead to their demise. That there will never be a big tusker left in Africa. I call bullshit because of. We are nowhere close to the persecution that has occurred on elephants in southern and eastern Africa over time. And it's not just one persecution like the biggest obviously from 1850 to 1890. We haven't talked about the things that happened in the 1900s. The thing, you know, the big poaching scandal that happened in, you know, the 2010s that decimated, you know, Tanzanian elephants.
- [76:06]
Paul Hubbard
By 60%.
- [76:09]
Robbie
Kenyan elephants by 60, 70% and they've still got massive tuskers in elephant in Amboseli. And so I though, so I agree, I don't think it's a. I think that there's probably four or five factors that drive big tusked elephants, namely time, nutrition. I think those two factors pay a major role. Yes, genetics for sure. But I don't think genetics play as big of a role as we think because of the fact of these super bottlenecks over time of these elephant populations. Multiple times. It's not just once, multiple times. And you've still got big, you've still got big boys walking around today.
- [77:01]
Paul Hubbard
Yes. And you know, one thing I will say, okay, is again, and I'm speaking as a layman here on this particular topic, topic, but certainly when, when you look at, you know, the average weights of, of tusks coming out of the, this part of the world, there has been a, a decrease in the average weight of tusks over the last 50 years, including what's been recovered by, you know, people chasing after the illegal trafficking in ivory and stuff like that. And also, you know, your average weights of, of of hunted elephants. But we know that the hunters are not just targeting the big tusked individuals, you know, especially the most ethical hunters and stuff like that. It does happen and you know, it's. As long as the thing is done legally, what are we going to say? But one of the things is, I completely agree with time that also I think with some of our elephant management and also the increasing bottlenecks of space and nutrition for elephants as the human population has grown out into areas that elephants used to traverse and all the, that we seeing elephants perhaps not living as long as they used to in certain areas and not reaching their full potential. Because when you read the big Man's Bible here, which is Smithers, you know, for every guide and hunter, everything like this. For us in the southern African region, this is an earlier edition and I've got the new one lying around just somewhere. But, you know, they talk about how the tusks, the girth of the tusk will nearly double in the last 20 to 15 years of the elephant's life. So that's, that's from the age of 50 to 65, give or take, you know, and so some of these elephants, what, what are the ages that they're dying at? You know, what is, what is elephant mortality in parks and protected areas and stuff like that? I don't know.
- [78:52]
Robbie
I think we're seeing elephants live to 65. Yeah, like, you know, the, the best, the best data set we have is Krugers. Kruger, yes. There wasn't an elephant over 56. So, you know, it's, it's.
- [79:04]
Paul Hubbard
And that's because of us. You know, I think there's just, well, Kruger.
- [79:09]
Robbie
The Kruger system is, you know, there's. Is as human free as possible, right?
- [79:15]
Paul Hubbard
Yes, absolutely. As we humans who've pushed them into areas, we've destroyed certain areas of for their nutrition by, you know, promoting agriculture and all this sort of stuff, you know, what are we thinking about here? And, you know, I've been, you know, treasuring this book in preparation.
- [79:36]
Robbie
Yeah. So give me two books because people are going to be listening to this and go like, man, I'd love to read up more. And you have shared a couple of books with me. You know, if people are fascinated in getting into it, what are the books that they should be trying to find?
- [79:50]
Paul Hubbard
Okay. If you want to revel in the beauty of elephants with large tusks and to appreciate also a lot of good science and ecology explained in an entertaining manner, you can do no better than this book. Great Tuskers of Africa by Johann Mahreis and David Hadaway. I warn you, however, this thing is one of those books that was produced one printing and then became a collector's item and is now very, very cheeky prices. But if you can afford it, please get. Came out in 2006 and it was. I think they reprinted it once or twice. Mine is 2006. I don't know if it was.
- [80:26]
Robbie
I think it was reprinted $195 right here.
- [80:30]
Paul Hubbard
You could borrow mine when you come down. If you're coming down, I'll bring it for you. Another fascinating book is to look for Keith Somerville's and I'm afraid I don't know where I've put my copy of it here. But Keith Somerville's book is Ivory in Africa. That one is just remarkable. It's. He's an invest, you know, investigative journalist, but he has done fantastic ivory.
- [80:58]
Robbie
Is it Ivory Power and Poaching in Africa? Is that it?
- [81:01]
Paul Hubbard
Yes, that's it. And you know, it's a most marvelous book because the first half of it is looking at some of these historical trends in ivory acquisition through hunting and trade and all this. And then the other half of the book is a wonderful polemic in my opinion, on. On the need for humans to do better for elephants and the ivory trade and all that sort of stuff. There's also quite a few. I'd hate to recommend them because they're quite hard to find, but there's some fabulous early books on ivory and its use and production and that sort of stuff. And you can find. Do yourself a favor, go to the Internet Archive. It's a free, not for profit website that hosts PDFs and other copies of many books that are now out of copyright. Do yourself a favor, just type in African elephant or ivory and start looking at some of those books that were coming out in the 1880s, 1890s. There's a lot of the early. And you can read them for free on the website. You can even they let you download some of them depending on the copyright laws and you know, all that sort of stuff. Stuff. But there's some fabulous stuff in there including also what ivory was used for because you know, like as, as a fun. Well, maybe it's not fun, but here's a little, a little thing just to. To end the. To. To. Perhaps I don't want to run away, but I'm conscious of time here. But one of the things, because I wrote this down, here's a fun one if for. For an American audience. Okay. If you live on the east coast of America and your family came over to work in the nascent industries as they were developing in. In the. From the 1840s onwards because, you know, the east coast had gone into a massive trade slump with the. The stopping of fur trapping and you know, all that sort of stuff is one of the things is. Is trade in ivory from Africa to North America was responsible for some major industrial revivals on the east coast of, of North America, but mainly usa but also Canada to a large extent because in two ways. Number one was a lot of people set up ivory workshops to start making these billiard balls and piano keys and you know, all that sort of stuff along the east coast. And they couldn't do that without getting the ivory from Africa. But also it is where the major textile industries that used to dominate the. The industry of the east coast of the United States were all driven by the trademark with Africa. Because, for example, the first steam powered cotton mill in North America was built in Nberg Salem in Massachusetts. Okay. Specifically to make cloth to export to Africa to trade for ivory to bring back to North America.
- [83:52]
Robbie
Oh, that is amazing.
- [83:54]
Paul Hubbard
Now that's something that's kind of fun because this is where the, you know, if you've been to, to East Africa, they always talk about menkani, you know, the trade cloth, that's where it comes from. It was originally was made in Massachusetts to send there because that's what they saw some on early sailors. They said, that's the cloth we want. And now they start going back through the networks as they would have been that time. And they realized, hang on, we need to make a lot more of this much faster. And so you start to see development like that. And then that spurs on the textile industry, that revives the east coast and makes it into one of the economic powerhouses even today.
- [84:32]
Robbie
They built on that economic powerhouse of the EAs. East coast was all driven by ivory.
- [84:38]
Paul Hubbard
In the, in the, you know, in the period certainly just before the Civil War and just after it, you know, that was. That was it. That what was. That's what, you know, gave them the money that started it.
- [84:50]
Robbie
It started it.
- [84:51]
Paul Hubbard
Yes. And, and you know, again, I'm not downplaying other things, but that is one of the big things. Also, you know, when you look at again, this, this should be another chat and all that because, because I've still got like all these notes here, you see, like this, which I haven't even looked at yet for this talk. But you know, you, I've got statistics on like the, the, the, the factories producing ivory products in the States and the number of jobs, the number of the. Sorry, not the number of the amount of wealth being generated at that time. Because like I've said, ivory was the plastic of its time. So you start to see American homes, you know, where we. In Africa. Okay, this is the scene in Africa. This is a picture from the Smithsonian. So it is copyright free as far as I'm aware. But this is what, this is what is leaving Africa. And also look at the size of those tusks. My heavens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, just something else entirely. All right. And then this is what Americans are consuming. That is all ivory inlaid's Furniture, you know, carved with wood and all this. But this is so, so, you know, this is what we, we left with in Africa. This is what's being done. And again, I'm not accusing underdevelopment and stuff like that, but one fed into the other in, in many, many different ways, you know. And you know, I think just to end, because, you know, we've, we've talked about this a couple of times in other settings and all that sort of stuff. Stuff. But I thought what would just be fun and maybe you can do it as an insert better is to end with a picture of the, the largest. Since we've been talking about big tuskers and all that. So the largest tusks on record, you know, there they are in Zambia before they leave, you know, and, and Zambia.
- [86:40]
Robbie
Not Tanzania, not Kenya.
- [86:42]
Paul Hubbard
Zan. Zanzibar.
- [86:46]
Robbie
Yeah, yeah.
- [86:48]
Paul Hubbard
You know, so, so one of the things is, is when we go back to our, our young man here, who is one of my all time heroes with Smithers records, that this pair of tusks, the heaviest on record. Okay. Is the, the first tusk has a mass of 102.3kg and the other has a mass of 97kg. And those are the heaviest.
- [87:14]
Robbie
I thought it was like 222, 10 kind of thing with the weights.
- [87:18]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah, yeah.
- [87:19]
Robbie
So again, somebody would, somebody would, somebody would say we don't have those anymore. That's an indication of how we're changing big tuskers. You know, there's no, none of these 200 pounders anymore.
- [87:37]
Paul Hubbard
Well, you know what I would counter that with is I say, well, how common were they back then, then? Yeah.
- [87:42]
Robbie
100%. Yeah. It's not like there's 10 of those records. There's one of them, right.
- [87:48]
Paul Hubbard
And there's, you know, it's a bit like humans where we get the guy who's 7 foot 2, there's one a generation. Because it's a, it's a, you know, there's a lot of factors that combine for that. And it's not because the misrepresentation that frustrates me as, as we were discussing about a certain website is, is cherry picking of, of data, but also presenting certain things as facts without acknowledging the paucity of evidence for the stances that they might hold. And on top of that, what also frustrates me is they present the idea that all of the elephants were the size and every elephant had big tusks like this. No, but that's the same way that they misrepresent like you Started off with what hunters do. They are doing this. That. I read the website after we had discussed it and all the rest of it, which is a very large website, and I got really, really annoyed because every time it's presented as, this is what it was always like, but again, it's not. They stand out to us because we like to see things that are bigger than the usual, bigger than expected, and then in our heads that becomes, oh, well, this must have been what it was always like.
- [89:02]
Robbie
Like that Traders data. That's fascinating data, right? That, that average, that elephant average weight of 11.5 kilos shows you that, you know, if. If it was true that all these elephants were way bigger.
- [89:19]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah.
- [89:19]
Robbie
Then your, Your average should have been 25 kilos.
- [89:23]
Paul Hubbard
100%, you know, and, and again, you know, our data is also incomplete and imprecise and not. Not as specific as we would like, but it has a lot more. We show our working. Let me put it that way. It's like maths. When you dig long division before calculators, you know, you show your work. How did you get to your answer? Because there's more points for that than just giving me an answer, you know, and that, that's something that, that nuance is, Is one of the reasons why I love my job. You know, I'm. I'm always that guy who goes, well, actually, and I don't mean to be condescending. I tried never to be condescending because I love you.
- [90:01]
Robbie
That's why we love you, man. It's like, that's the thing. We, we. We live in facts. We live in. We try and live in. We live in truth, man. You know, and if you've got a. You've got a statement, say it and then back it up.
- [90:13]
Paul Hubbard
Yeah, and. And that's the joy. You know, it. It really is. And that's why I also love your podcast. I listen to every. Almost every episode as it comes out as soon as I can. And I'm, I'm a bit behind now because I've had the glorious joys of being in the bush for most of the last two months.
- [90:28]
Robbie
Yeah. And then you got sick too.
- [90:30]
Paul Hubbard
Yes, I did. There's this. The less said about that, the better, especially in public, you know, but it's, it's, you know, it's just a joy. And also what I will say, especially on this topic, the more I've learned, the less I know.
- [90:48]
Robbie
Well, isn't that the fact with most topics?
- [90:50]
Paul Hubbard
Alex.
- [90:53]
Robbie
Paul Hubbard, thank you so much, my man. Thank you, my man. You're the thank you. We'll definitely do it again and again and again.
- [91:00]
Paul Hubbard
So thank you 100%. Thank you so much, Robbie. Take care.
- [91:04]
Robbie
Well, that's it for today. I appreciate you listening. As always, leave a review, share it with your friends, and most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth. Around Hunting.
- [91:18]
Paul Hubbard
Bow hunting all comes down to a moment.
- [91:20]
Robbie
And in the moment, you want equipment.
- [91:22]
Paul Hubbard
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