Up until now, no physical evidence—like belt buckles or bones—have been found to indicate where Hannibal made his crossing. However, an international team of microbiologists have finally found something…solid. According to the two papers (first and second) in Archaeometry, the researchers believe Hannibal crossed the Alps via the Col de Traversette pass (~1.9 miles or 3000 meters above sea level), which spans between Grenoble, France, and Turin, Italy.
..."The deposition [of animal feces] lies within a churned-up mass from a 1-meter thick alluvial mire, produced by the constant movement of thousands of animals and humans,” said Dr. Chris Allen, from the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen's University Belfast, in a statement.
“Over 70 percent of the microbes in horse manure are from a group known as the Clostridia, that are very stable in soil - surviving for thousands of years. We found scientifically significant evidence of these same bugs in a genetic microbial signature precisely dating to the time of the Punic invasion."
Or in other words, the researchers found evidence of poop—a lot of it. Certainly enough to belong to the thousands of horses Hannibal had with him, and it's dated to the right time period. And if this discovery should prove to be the discovery of Hannibal’s route, this find is enormous.
...“If the site was affected by human–animal traffic, as the evidence indicates, there is every possibility that artifacts such as coins, belt buckles, daggers, equestrian fasteners and so on might have been buried in the mire. If such archaeological evidence can be found and definitively linked to Hannibal, it would answer the question of which route Hannibal and his army took into Italia.”
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113413480/horse-dung-hannibal-trail-alps-040516/#SzhBiYd1s0ICbPBG.99
