For a long time now, historians have considered the way across the Col de Clapier as the most likely invasion route of Hannibal's army across the Alps. Mahaney et al. challenge this view by introducing a two‐tier rockfall into the discussion, which they believe is mentioned in the ancient texts and has gone unnoticed by modern scholars. Since a deposit of this kind can only be found at the Col de la Traversette—and there alone—Hannibal's crossing of the Alps, so they reason, must have followed this alternative route. However, a critical reassessment of the ancient texts and a closer look at the geomorphological situation clearly show that this interpretation is unwarranted.

Over the past few years, OSL and TCN datings of glacial material from High Asia have come into fashion. To this day, however, these techniques do not permit safe calibration. The intensity of the cosmic ray flux is being modulated by the solar and terrestrial magnetic fields and their secular fluctuations in the past. So far, these variations cannot be converted into the respective local TCN production rates for High Asia. We have reason to believe that the ages that are being calculated despite these uncertainties are generally overestimated. This assessment is supported by conventional radiocarbon dates and above all by the glacial chronology developed independently on the basis of the Quaternary geological method. The strongly emerging evidence for a much more extensive LGM glaciation of High Asia is, however, either being ignored or rejected by many authors, solely on the basis of the above-mentioned uncalibrated datings. This self-conceit based on the "dating fallacy", as we call it, should be avoided since it goes decidedly against the standards of the scientific method established in Quaternary geology and makes a fundamental scientific discussion impossible.

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Hannibal's crossing of the Alps is an historical event that is only passed down to us through ancient texts. Careful analysis of these written sources must therefore antedate and inform any scientific enquiry, including fieldwork. The random selection and investigation of topographical or sedimentological features, on the other hand, informed only by free translations of the Greek originals, is a misguided enterprise and can only end in futile conclusions. However, if both lines of enquiry—the critical analysis of written sources and the gathering of geographical evidence—are combined, it is still possible to reach positive conclusions. In the case of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps, such combined efforts lead to the insight—first gained by Jean‐Baptiste Perrin (1887)—that the pass at Col de Clapier in the Mt Cenis group concurs with all the descriptive details as given in Polybius' Histories.

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