I have a BA in Art History and I work in a museum with little students who come to visit. Whenever we see ivories, students of all ages are usually familiar with the concepts of poaching and protecting endangered species, so they ask about whether the ivories were "poached." My answer has always been that elephants haven't always been endangered, so if/when people hunted elephants back in the 700's, they weren't doing as much damage to the elephant population as hunters now.
It does make me wonder though, whether people like the Yombe people of Central Africa hunted elephants for their ivory? And what methods did they use, if so?
My answer has always been that elephants haven't always been endangered, so if/when people hunted elephants back in the 700's, they weren't doing as much damage to the elephant population as hunters now.
It's not just that the elephant population was higher, but also that pre-modern hunting techniques were more dangerous, and a group of hunters could not kill elephants as quickly. There was also less demand for ivory, and less motivation to kill many elephants.
The introduction of guns, particularly big-bore muzzle-loaders (elephant guns, firing shot often about 100g, with big gunpowder charges), made a big difference. Those who hunted elephants for sport could kill dozens in a single expedition - with just one hunter and one gun-bearer. Later firearms made things even worse.
Hunting does not appear to have had much impact on elephant populations before the 19th century - the usual estimate is a population of about 26 million elephant in Africa, fairly constant up to about 1800. With more trade with Europe, including a much bigger demand for ivory, and the use of guns for hunting, the population approximately halved during the 19th century. The early 20th century saw a devastating crash in population, a real elephant genocide, with the population dropping by about 90%, to a little over 1 million by the mid-20th century. The population halved again by the end of the 20th century, and has continued to fall, to an estimated 400,000. In summary, the pre-modern elephant population is estimated to have been about 60 times higher than the modern population. The human equivalent would be a drop in population from the current world total to the population of, say, Japan.
There is also impact due to habitat loss, but by far the greatest impact has been from hunting.
I discussed pre-gun elephant hunting in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/e9f6sh/how_were_african_elephants_hunted_prior_to_the/
With less demand for ivory, and meat being a valuable resource, the old ivory may well have been a by-product of hunting elephants for meat.