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Study tracks elephant tusks from 16th century shipwreck

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In 1533, the Bom Jesus – a Portuguese trading vessel carrying 40 tons of cargo including gold, silver, copper and more than 100 elephant tusks – sank off the coast of Africa near present-day Namibia. The wreck was found in 2008, and scientists say they now have determined the source of much of the ivory recovered from the ship.

Photo of about a dozen weathered tusks on a green-painted floor.

Elephant tusks recovered from the shipwreck were unusually well-preserved.

Their study, reported in the journal Current Biology, used various techniques, including a genomic analysis of DNA extracted from the well-preserved tusks, to determine the species of elephants, their geographic origins and the types of landscapes they lived in before they were killed for their tusks.

Photo of several African forest elephants standing in a mud pool at the edge of the forest.

Four of 17 matrilineal elephant lineages discovered from the shipwrecked tusks still exist today. The others may have gone extinct.

The ivory had been stowed in a lower level of the Bom Jesus under a weighty cargo of copper and lead ingots, said Alida de Flamingh, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the study with U. of I. animal sciences professor Alfred Roca and anthropology professor Ripan Malhi.

Researcher in protective clothing and a mask holds vials with chips of ivory in them.

Lead author Alida de Flamingh processed shipwrecked ivory in the Malhi Molecular Anthropology Laboratory at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I.

“When the ship sank, the ingots compressed the tusks into the seabed, preventing a lot of physical erosion by sea currents that can lead to the destruction and scattering of shipwreck artifacts,” de Flamingh said. “There is also an extremely cold sea current in that region of coastal Namibia, which likely also helped preserve the DNA in the shipwrecked tusks.”

The team extracted DNA from 44 tusks.

Photo of shelves of tusks.

The Bom Jesus shipwreck was discovered on the grounds of a diamond mine in Oranjemund, Namibia. The elephant ivory cargo was kept in a storeroom of the mine.

By analyzing genetic sequences known to differ between African forest and savanna elephants, the scientists determined that all of the tusks they analyzed belonged to forest elephants. A further examination of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed only from mothers to their offspring, offered a more precise geographic origin of the elephant tusks than is otherwise available.

An African forest elephant wades in mud near a mature forest.

A new study analyzed the largest archaeological cargo of African ivory ever found, researchers report. All of the elephant tusks were from African forest elephants, Loxodonta cyclotis.

“Elephants live in matriarchal family groups, and they tend to stay in the same geographic area throughout their lives,” de Flamingh said. “By comparing the shipwrecked ivory mitochondrial DNA with that from elephants with known origins across Africa, we were able to pinpoint specific regions and species of elephants whose tusks were found in the shipwreck.”

Photo of a cross-section of the tusk. Layers are visible as is a small hollow near the center of the tusk.

A tusk from the 16th century wreck.

All 44 tusks were from elephants residing in West Africa. None originated in Central Africa.

“This is consistent with the establishment of Portuguese trading centers along the West African coast during this period of history,” de Flamingh said.

The team used DNA to trace the elephants to 17 family lineages, only four of which are known to persist in Africa.

Group photo.

The research team included technicians and curators from the National Museum of Namibia and archaeologists from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. This group includes, from left, Dawid Kapule, Judith Sealy, Nzila M. Libanda-Mubusisi, Fouzy Kambombo, Virimuje Kahuure, Eliot Mowa, Henry Nakale and Shadreck Chirikure.

An African forest elephant stands in an opening near a mature forest.

All of the elephants whose tusks were found in the shipwreck were from West Africa, the researchers found.

“The other lineages disappeared because West Africa has lost more than 95% of its elephants in subsequent centuries due to hunting and habitat destruction,” Roca said.

The team is adding the new DNA sequences to the Loxodonta Localizer, an open-access tool developed at the U. of I. that allows users to compare mitochondrial DNA sequences collected from poached elephant tusks with those in an online database collected from elephants across the African continent.

To learn more about the environments the elephants inhabited, Oxford University Pitt Rivers Museum research fellow and study co-author Ashley Coutu analyzed the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes of 97 tusks. The ratios of these isotopes differ depending on the types of plants the elephants consumed and the amount of rainfall in the environment.

That analysis revealed that the elephants lived in mixed habitats, switching from forested areas to savannas in different seasons, most likely in response to water availability.

“Our data help us to understand the ecology of the West African forest elephant in its historic landscape, which has relevance to modern wildlife conservation,” Coutu said.

Photo of a large tusk that is weathered and fractured in places.

One of more than 100 ivory tusks recovered from the 16th century Bom Jesus shipwreck.

“Our study analyzed the largest archaeological cargo of African ivory ever found,” de Flamingh said. “By combining complementary analytical approaches from multiple scientific fields, we were able to pinpoint the origin of the ivory with a resolution that is not possible using any single approach. The research provides a framework for examining the vast collections of historic and archaeological ivories in museums across the world.”

de Flamingh conducted the DNA analysis in the Malhi Molecular Anthropology Laboratory at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I. This project was a multi-institutional effort involving collaborators in Namibia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service African Elephant Conservation Fund, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Department of Science and Technology of South Africa, and Claude Leon Foundation supported this research.

Editor’s notes

To reach Alida de Flamingh, email deflami2@illinois.edu.  
To reach Alfred Roca, email roca@illinois.edu.
To reach Ripan Malhi, email malhi@illinois.edu.
To reach Ashley Coutu, email ashley.coutu@prm.ox.ac.uk.

The paper “Sourcing elephant ivory from a 16th century Portuguese shipwreck” is available online and from the U. of I. News Bureau.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.10.086

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