[shevy-java]

"And like medieval scholars drawing elephants they’ve never seen, we make those interpretations through the lens of our own biases."

Those images are quite amusing. They drew an elephant like a boar but with odd tusks. So the tusks were probably described correctly (semi-correctly) for the most part, but the size is totally wrong, which is weird. It's like ... "hey, I saw a thing with huge tusks but it was not bigger than a boar."

Or perhaps the one who drew this just imagined a strange boar, and never heard of the tusks. It's strange.

[afandian]

If you’re interested, Uli Westphal has made a serious study of elephant drawings and the chains of influence.

https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/

[gus_massa]

The ears are also extrange, but quite incorrect in shape and size, but they are not horse ears. Is it possible that they saw some tusks IRL, but no elephant ear?

About the size, one elephant is smaller than a horse but has 4 small guys standing on it. Is it possible that it was a standard convention to get everyone in the drawing, instead of tying to make a photorealistic image.

[IAmBroom]

Before Renaissance perspective was developed, artists used relative size to indicate things like relative importance (kings and Jesus were sometimes 20-50% larger than their followers), or timescale, or as you are suggesting, convenience to fit things in.

Basically, they didn't put much stock in making the scale realistic throughout the piece.

[thwave]

they could have seen tusks themselves, and relied on verbal descriptions for the rest of the animal.