![]() ![]() ![]() Our Stanford teams have crossed at least 30 Alps passes and we’ve always used Polybius as a guide." Hunt explains, "Polybius says the army camped at the summit (Polybius Hist 3.53-54). "I have spent over 20 field seasons tracking Hannibal, not only in the Alps but also in Spain, France (Gaul) and of course Italy and elsewhere including Carthage and Western Turkey. Patrick Hunt, director of Stanford University's Alpine Archaeology Project, is another researcher who has been seeking Hannibal's route across the Alps since 1994. ![]() Others, including Andrew Wilson of Oxford University have disputed the radiocarbon dates, pointing out accuracy is only a period spreading over hundreds of years. The material was also radiocarbon dated close to 218 BCE, the time of Hannibal's crossing. ![]() Working in a peat bog just below the Col de la Traversette, his team discovered a disturbed layer of mud at a depth of about 40 cm that contained high levels of DNA found in bacteria common in the gut of horses. In April of 2016 geomorphologist Bill Mahaney of York University in Toronto, Canada announced that he and his colleagues had recovered new evidence to support their claim that Hannibal had used a southerly course across the Col de la Traversette. Since that time, scholars have poured over descriptions of the event by the Greek historian Polybius and Roman historian Livy in an effort to identify the route used by the Carthaginians and their Celtic allies. His achievement secured him a place in the history books as one of the greatest military minds ever born. The Carthaginian general Hannibal astounded the ancient world when he crossed the Alps during the Second Punic War with not only an army but a contingent of 37 African war elephants to wage war on the Roman Republic. ![]()
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