Well I am pretty sure elephants were used as mounts of war, and they were not unstoppable for opposing armies. Terrifying yes, but not an auto win.

IIRC they saw initial success but saw diminishing returns as it was figured out that they scare quite easily by fire, loud noises, pike formations, etc. If you manage to panic an elephant still in the enemy lines it can do quite some damage to their troops.

Hannibal did terrify Rome with them for a while, but Scipio Africanus figured out a very simple strategy to defeat them, which won the second Punic war for Rome at the battle of Zama. He just made corridors in his formation and channeled the elephants down them, which then ran away scared from the battle all together.

Those were Indian elephants, not the much larger and more aggressive African, and they were used in small numbers - 20 or so. The main defence was to scare them or to lure them into a bad position.

I'm envisioning all elephants working together with discipline and coordination which would make it nearly impossible to stop them.

Mammoths were exterminated with stone age technology.

> exterminated

Were they? Or was it a consequence of changing climate from the Ice Age?

Or did loss of megafauna contribute to the change in climate?

Fun project trying to test the direction of causality: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park

African elephants contribute greatly to deforestation. They enjoy knocking trees down for some reason[1]. And there's no doubt that deforestation can effect local climate change.

[1] https://www.krugerpark.co.za/kruger-park-news-study-shows-el...

Yeah, but they've been doing so for millions of years without any measurable effect upon global climate.

You sure about that? Most likely they are having an extremely measurable effect, it's just the effect is maintaining the status quo. Do you really think that the climate in Africa wouldn't change if forests were permitted to grow? Remember that climate is a complex dynamical process full of feedback loops. If anything, given the size of the landmass, allowing the savannahs to become dense forest would be a huge source of carbon capture.

Also I deny the premise that all climate change is bad prima facie, although again because complex dynamical system it can be impossible to predict the eventual outcomes. Nevertheless, a climate change like greening the Sahara could at least potentially be a net positive for humanity.

The point is that a sudden change in climate can't be blamed on them continuing to do what they've been doing for millions of years.

Now I highly doubt that an elephant occasionally knocking over a tree is the only thing holding back the continent from being forested, especially given that many elephants live in densely forested areas, but if for the sake of argument we assume that their behavior is a major factor, you still need to explain why their behavior, and thus that forcing function acting on the environment, would suddenly change.

> Now I highly doubt that an elephant occasionally knocking over a tree is the only thing holding back the continent from being forested, especially given that many elephants live in densely forested areas

Indian and African elephants are quite different ecologically speaking.

> but if for the sake of argument we assume that their behavior is a major factor, you still need to explain why their behavior, and thus that forcing function acting on the environment, would suddenly change

I never claimed it would suddenly change, I claimed that it's been consistent and has maintained a status quo.

Am I misunderstanding you?

We don't need to speculate. Roman legions frequently encountered elephantry and absolutely trounced them. The Romans then adopted war elephants briefly, before dropping them as totally impractical.

https://acoup.blog/2019/08/02/collections-war-elephants-part...

Colour me impressed with the legionnaires. But remember that we're speculating about large herds of disciplined elephants working together.

Is digging a trench modern technology?