The shipwreck was discovered in April 2008 during mining operations and in the following month excavation of the findings was done; the ship was identified as a 16th century Portuguese shipwreck, what is the historic implication of the ship for Portugal/ Namibia in particular and Africa in general.
Ivory was also discovered onboard the ship and as far as it goes ivory enjoyed a flourishing market in Europe and Asia, in Europe ivory was used to cave religious statues, in the middle east ivory was used as beards and war horn, in Africa worked ivory was used as a music instrument, two great continent abound with elephant species which are known as londota Africana and londota Cyclosis, two elephant species also known as forest elephant and savannah elephant.
The ivories discovered on the Oranjemund shipwreck have been hypothetically categorised as belonging to the African savannah species given their large sizes, a detailed historical study on the ivories was conducted in 2010 as part of the fulfilment of an MA thesis through the text/books to determine where the ivories came from in Africa. It was established that these are not East African ivories as originally thought, but West Africans, what can these ivories tell us of the ecological and habitat change overtime as a result of poaching and hunting, the hypothesis was based on the idea that due to the large size of the tusks. The Oranjemund shipwreck has about 105 ivories roughly 53 elephants tusks were killed for that single trade. According to history West Africa flourished with both savannah and forest elephants, historically the West African ecology is known to be dominated by forest elephants, it has to be noted here that in the past as the demand for ivory grew in West Africa by the British and the Dutch who happened to replace the Portuguese dominance. The Royal Dutch Company was primarily founded on mission of trade in spices with east Africa but later this ivory became part of the items they exchanged with spices.
Historically Ivory imports from Dutch ships appears to have been mostly pieces of ivory other than large ivories, its clear why this number of small ivories( Scrivilos) was far greater than the number of full length ivory, Full length ivory was priced more than the Scrivilos and was very rare to find in the 17th and 18th century.
To put it into perspective within eight years more than 12000 large elephants were killed for their ivories, this number does not included the number of small or broken tusks of which the figure is much higher. These included indiscriminate killing of elephants which included both young elephant ivories and old brittle tusked elephants and those picked from naturally dead elephants.
The Dawn of Portuguese trade activities in Africa was not primarily slavery as it has been portrayed, the first Portuguese to land in Africa Diego Cao on his mission to round the Cape his last point was at the coast of Namibia known today as cape cross.
Eliot
