We have been incorporating elephants into our lives since humans first became…well…humans.

The earliest known San rock paintings depict elephants, so do the cave paintings throughout Asia and Europe.

There are some 75 000 prehistoric sites worldwide depicting elephants. The ‘primitives’ believed animals were people but that they represented the best and noblest of human traits.

To them elephants, (as we believe even to this day) symbolised strength, intelligence and loyalty. They were incorporated into belief systems as benevolent deities, an early human behaviour that still manifests in most religions today.

Hinduism and Buddhism are the two beliefs most associated with elephants. Asian elephants are represented at the moment of Creation when Indra, the Lord of the Universe, rides into the world on the back of an elephant named Airvaya.

Read the full article here: http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2013/10/09/elephants-are-revered-yet-we-hack-off-their-tusks-ilivehttp://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2013/10/09/elephants-are-revered-yet-…