I was talking about Hannibal with my father and he said that African elephants couldn't be tamed. Did Hannibal's elephants come all the way from india or were they in fact African?
The Carthaginians used the North African subspecies Loxodonta africana pharaoensis which was smaller and easier to tame than sub-Saharan elephants.
The North African subspecies went extinct due to overhunting by the Romans, although some remnant populations might have survived for centuries.
There was also a Syrian subspecies which went extinct around 100 BC; it was a larger variety of the Asian elephant.
I'm confused why your father would think that African elephants couldn't be tamed. The African elephant that the Romans knew was, as had been said elsewhere, a smaller subspecies. African elephants were universally thought to be easier to tame than Indian elephants (since the Romans didn't know about sub-saharan elephants), and Indian elephants were also considered fiercer and more dangerous--Pliny claims that African elephants are scared of even looking at Indian ones.
I'm curious why he thought African elephants couldn't cross the alps. They would have to be African elephants just on logistics but I've never really considered elephant type before. Fascinating question anyway.