S. Worthen | Weblog

Down in the Roman vaults underneath Colchester's Roman castle, our tour guide told us that the natives of eastern Britain would have been astonished to see something so large as an elephant.

If only they had lived half a millennium million earlier! Inside the castle museum, a fascinating little sign told met that there was local evidence of human habitation 500,000 years earlier near Colchester, along with the then-native elephants and rhinoceroses. Britain, that island so well known for its rhinoceroses.

This particular elephant (no rhinoceros, although it was in the company of a lion and a hippo) was in the gardens just outside the castle. C and tamaranth and I paused to admire it, en route to meet up with ladymoonray's tour group.