Tracing the Source of the Elephant And Hippopotamus Ivory from ...

pastoralism. Today most of the hippos in Africa are found in the east along the White
and Blue Niles, Sobat River and the Jur of southern Sudan, along other tributaries of the
Nile, within several national parks in this area, as well as the Sudd. In the west of Africa
the hippopotamus may be found in estuarine habitats, along rivers close to the coast, and
in the sea in the Archipelago of Bijagos off the coast of Guinea Bissau (Eltringham 1993:
44-46). In the Late Bronze Age, however, the hippopotamus would have been present
throughout sub-Saharan Africa in all areas where their ecological requirements were met.
Prehistoric Distribution
Middle to Late Miocene fossils of hippopotamus recovered from East Africa
support the view that the hippopotamus originated in Africa. The hippopotamus initially
spread out of Africa in the late Miocene, and dispersed throughout Asia and Europe by
the Pleistocene, with dwarf (Phanourios minor) and pygmy (Phanourios minutus) species
colonizing Cyprus (Eltringham 1999: 40-41). Phanourios minutus persisted on Cyprus
and was demonstrated to coexist with, and possibly be rendered extinct by, humans. The
8500 B.C. (uncalibrated) site of Akrotiri-Aetokremnos yielded over 200 disarticulated
individuals in association with early or pre-Neolithic cultural remains (Simmons 1991,
1993; Reese 2001).
The modern species of Hippopotamus amphibius is featured in rock paintings and
engravings in the high plains and mountains of the Sahara, suggesting that the Sahara was
once watered. One example from Djanet in the Tassili n’Ajjer Mountains depicts a hippo
hunt and dates from 2000 to 3000 BC, while the largest example comes from Tilemsin,
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