Anelephants' graveyard (also calledelephant graveyard,elephant's graveyard, orelephants' cemetery) is a place where, according to legend, oldelephants instinctively direct themselves when they reach a certain age.[1] According to this legend, these elephants would then die there alone, far from the group. However, there is no evidence in support of the existence of the elephants' graveyard.[2]
Several theories have been proposed to explain the origin of this myth. One theory involves people finding groups of elephant skeletons together, or observing old elephants and skeletons in the same habitat.[3] Others suggest the term may spring from groupdie-offs, such as one excavated inSaxony-Anhalt, which had 27Palaeoloxodon antiquus skeletons.[4] In that particular case, the tusks of the skeletons were missing, which indicated either hunters killed a group of elephants in one spot, or else opportunistic scavengers removed the tusks from a natural die-off.[citation needed]
Other theories focus on elephant behavior during lean times, suggesting starving or elderly elephants who have worn their teeth down to a point that they can no longer chew tougher foods gather in places where finding food is easier, and subsequently die there.[5] Prolific elephant hunterWalter "Karamojo" Bell discounted the idea of the elephant's graveyard, stating that bones and "tusks were still lying about in the bush where they had lain for years".[6]
The idea of a graveyard for elephants was popularized in films such asTrader Horn and MGM'sTarzan films, in which groups of greedy explorers attempt to locate the elephants' graveyard, on the fictional Mutia Escarpment, in search of its riches of ivory.[7]
Ingeology, "elephants' graveyard" is an informal term for a hypothetical accumulation of "large blocks ofcountry rockstoped from the roofs ofbatholiths".[8]
Inmilitary settings, it is sometimes used as a slang term to describe postings or assignments for senior officers for whom there is no potential for further promotion.[citation needed]
In Spain, theSpanish Senate is often criticised as acementerio de elefantes where politicians who have lost their previous positions end up doing no productive work.[9]
In Spain, thecementerio de elefantes is also utilized as workplace harassment technique, when an employee is still on the payroll and has only nominal responsibilities in their work description, like clocking in and out, but no real effective work. Is a similar concept to the Japanesemadogiwa zoku.
It is a term for the offices and a secretary provided to former high-ranking executives of large companies (at least in the United States), who have either retired or resigned. An executive who relinquishes or is relieved of authority becomes a consultant (special adviser) where they continue to receive a salary and an office under their contract but have little or no actual responsibilities until theirnon-compete agreement expires.[10]
Additionally the term "elephants' graveyard" has been deliberately used in a symbolic fashion to refer to specific paleontological sites, such as the elephant-fossil deposit thatRené Jeannel, professor at theFrench National Museum of Natural History, discovered during a Kenya &Ethiopia expedition in 1932.[11]
^Armitage, Kenneth B.; Buss, Irven O. (March 1992). "The Great Beast — Elephant Life: Fifteen Years of High Population Density".BioScience.42 (3). BioScience, Vol. 42, No. 3:196–197.doi:10.2307/1311827.hdl:1808/10608.JSTOR1311827.
^Brühl, Enrico; Mania, Dietrich (22–25 September 2003). "Neumark-Nord: a middle Pleistocene lake shore with synchronous sites of different functional character".Données récentes sur les modalités de peuplement en Europe au Paléolithique inférieur et moyen. Rennes: Université de Rennes.
^Bell, Walter (1949).Karamojo Safari. Harcourt, Brace. p. 26.ISBN1-57157-358-5.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Earnhart, Brady (1 July 2007). "A Colony of the Imagination: Vicarious Spectatorship in MGM's Early Tarzan Talkies".Quarterly Review of Film and Video.24 (4):341–352.doi:10.1080/10509200500526778.S2CID194054571.
^Clarke, D. Barrie; Henry, Andrew S.; White, Mary Anne (10 September 1998). "Exploding xenoliths and the absence of 'elephants' graveyards' in granite batholiths".Journal of Structural Geology.20 (9–10):1325–1343.Bibcode:1998JSG....20.1325C.doi:10.1016/S0191-8141(98)00082-0.
^René Jeannel,Mission scientifique de l'Omo. Un cimetière d'éléphants avec 48 planches de photographies et une carte hors texte, Paris, publisher:Société des Amis du Muséum, 1934, in-8, sofcover (270 x 185 mm), 159 pp, ASIN B0000DSYFT(in French)
.jpg)
