Source: China News Network (id:cns2012)
Reporter: Song Yusheng
Elephant herds that have been "strolling around" and migrating along the way have been attracting attention lately.
A lot of people are paying attention to the same question every day – where are the elephants today?
Image source: People's Daily
From all the way north, to the overall westward migration. The news on the 7th showed that on the morning of the same day, the elephants lay down one after another to sleep. Monitors found that even if they were lying down to sleep, the elephant herd's protection of the baby elephant was also strict, and the baby elephant could not get out of the siege after waking up.
If you count from leaving xishuangbanna Mengyangzi Conservation Area in March last year, the elephant herd has been traveling for 1 year and 3 months, and the journey has almost spanned half of Yunnan. Some media outlets have called the elephant herds a "rare northward migration."
For elephants, northward migration is indeed rare.
After all, the overall trend is that over the past few thousand years, elephant migration routes have been largely compressed southward.
The picture shows the elephant herd detected. Provided by Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade
Looking back at history, the area where elephants live has actually changed a lot.
It may be hard for you to imagine that in today's Henan and Shandong areas, there were quite a few elephants.
Since the last century, the Anyang Yin Ruins have unearthed elephant bones, ivory and artifacts with elephant ornaments. The record of "obtaining elephants" in the oracle bone inscription of Yin Xu also confirms that there were indeed wild elephants in the Shang Dynasty in today's northern China.
Ancient texts such as "Lü Shi Chunqiu", "Mencius", "Chinese", "Huayang Guozhi" and other ancient texts also show that in history, elephants have been active in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, the Huaishui area, the Yangtze River Basin, and even Sichuan.
The picture shows the elephant herd monitored in Shuanghe Township, Jinning on June 3. Provided by Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade
Is it really possible for elephants to live in these areas?
First, the northern climate was warmer then than it is today.
In the article "Preliminary Research on Climate Change in China in the Past Five Thousand Years", meteorologist Zhu Kezhen pointed out that the Yin Xu era was "China's mild climate era", when the Anyang region was very rich in subtropical plant species and animal species.
At the same time, in the Shang Dynasty thousands of years ago, the population density of the lower reaches of the Yellow River was much smaller than today's population density, and the natural vegetation was widespread, and it was entirely possible for elephants to find suitable habitats in this area.
Even some scholars believe that the word "豫" in the ancient name "Yuzhou" in Henan is also closely related to the elephants who were active here.
The picture shows the elephant herd monitored by the forest fire protection in Yunnan. Courtesy of Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade
If this is the case, why did the scope of wild elephants retreat south to Yunnan today?
The reasons for this are both climate changes in a certain historical period and the expansion of the scope of human activities.
After the fall of the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the northern climate gradually turned dry and cold, and the animals and plants that lived here also changed accordingly.
For example, the Bamboo Book Chronicle records that in 903 BC and 897 BC, the Hanshui, a tributary of the Yangtze River, froze twice. The Yellow River Basin, which is further north, is naturally also heavily affected. And the temperature that falls to the freezing point is obviously not suitable for the survival of wild elephants.
This cold situation changed after about a hundred or two hundred years. In the literature of the Spring and Autumn Period, the climate warmed up again.
The "Left Biography" mentions that the country of Lu, located in today's Shandong, has a winter ice-free situation. Ancient texts show that in the Spring and Autumn Period, there were subtropical plants near Linzi, the capital of the State of Qi.
It was also during the same period that records of Chu people driving elephants into battle appeared in the Zuo Zhuan. Obviously, at this time, the range of the elephants can still reach the Jianghuai River Basin.
It is worth noting, however, that although the climate has warmed, current studies have shown that the elephant herds have not returned north to the lower reaches of the Yellow River. Some scholars believe that this is not unrelated to human activities. After the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the climate became colder, coupled with people's development activities, resulting in the degradation of biological vegetation in the Central Plains, forcing elephants to gradually migrate south.
In the history that followed, elephants moved south under the combined effects of climatic repetition and human activities.
It is worth mentioning that in Chinese historical documents, there are many records of wild elephants entering the human life area, and people in different historical periods and different regions have different ways of responding to intruding into wild elephants.
For example, the "History of the South" records that in the 6th century AD, in the Southern Dynasty Liang, hundreds of wild elephants appeared in the area of present-day Anhui, looking for food everywhere, "bad people rooms".
In the Tang Dynasty, Liu Ke recorded such a situation in the "Records of the Lingbiao": in the area from Chaoyang to Huizhou in today's Guangdong Province, there were many wild elephants; the local people regarded the trunk as a delicacy, and everyone "competed for food".
In the "History of the Song Dynasty", there are records of the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, and there are records of elephants appearing in the area of present-day Hubei, trampling on the people's fields and eating people's seedlings. At that time, the way people handled it was to capture elephants.
Since the Song Dynasty, with the occurrence of cold phenomena such as ice, snow and frost in the Lingnan region in the winter and half a year, coupled with the increasing frequency of human activities, the range of elephant herds has been further reduced.
By the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties, elephants in China were about the same range as they are today. It is worth mentioning that in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, elephants were used in military operations. Some documents indicate that Wu Sangui rebelled against the Qing Dynasty after being enfeoffed as the Queen of Pingxi in Yunnan; during this period, Wu Sangui used the elephant army when he entered Hunan in the north.
Different from the historical way of dealing with intruding elephants, in the process of responding to the migration of wild elephants in Yunnan, almost a whole network drama chasing boom has been formed, and many netizens have said on social media that "don't hurt them" and "hope they go home safely"...
In order to ensure the "safety of people and elephants", recently, the relevant staff has also fed elephant food along the way, inducing the elephant herd to move west and south.
The picture shows the elephant herd monitored in Shuanghe Township, Jinning on June 4. Provided by Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade
In this "national elephant pursuit", "do not harm elephants, human elephants coexist harmoniously" has become a consensus. We can also see that the relationship between humans and wild animals is moving from past hostility and use to respect and symbiosis.
"How can humans and wildlife coexist in harmony?" "How to deal with the relationship between humans and nature?" Such a question may have been answered in this elephant migration.
References: "90 Years of Animal Archaeology in Yin Ruins", "Discussion on the Species of Wild Elephants in Northern China in the Pre-Qin Period", "Preliminary Research on Chinese Wild Elephants in the Historical Period", "Preliminary Research on Climate Change in China in the Past 5,000 Years", "Traces of Ancient Elephants in China", "The Development of Eastern Soil in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties and the Migration of Elephants to the South", "History of Social Life in Xia and Shang", "The Retreat of Elephants"
Source: China News Service