SummaryA brief review of published data is presented, outlining the intensive exploitation of African elephants for ivory. Records suggest that this began in the early seventeenth century in western Africa, and that hunting pressure was sufficient to eliminate, or drive out, populations over wide areas. In eastern Africa intensive exploitation ensued between 1840 and 1890, leading to a sudden collapse of the ivory supply from over‐exploitation. Subsequent protection has apparently enabled surviving elephants to enter an exponential phase of population increase. Elephant population cycles, if they can be shown to have occurred, are probably reflections of over‐exploitation, followed by population recovery when hunting was no longer profitable. If cycles of scarcity and abundance were a natural feature of elephant populations, then they could have been masked by the intensity of hunt