Ivory has been a luxury item throughout time. It has been turned into art objects, like this tooth from 19th-century Angola. And although most countries now adhere to international animal and species protection agreements, demand for ivory continues unabated, and the illegal global trade flourishes. The tragic outcome is that every 20 minutes, an elephant pays with its life.

Elephants are relatives of the woolly mammoth, which became extinct 12,000 years ago. Only 350,000 elephants still live today in the steppes and forests of Africa. In 1970, around two million elephants were still alive. Offers for tusks on the illegal market can reach up to $50,000 per tusk.

As early as colonial times, ivory was already coveted booty. In the German colonies of Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, ivory was valued as a raw material that could be used to speculate on the markets. Thousands of tons of tusks were transported by land and sea, initially mainly to Europe and Asia and later also to America.

Ivory feels good to the touch and is easy to shape and carve. It is robust, yet elastic. It does not conduct heat, is never really cold and never gets too hot. The white color and the even shape embody purity and innocence for some cultures, although the tusks' brutal extraction tells a different story. The nature conservation organization WWF compares ivory with blood diamonds.

Whether viewed as a cult object or a status symbol, ivory says a lot about the coexistence of humans and animals and about the relationship between nature and culture. Rather than rotting, ivory objects have survived for centuries, even millennia. Egyptians, Romans and Greeks, Chinese, Indians and African societies all valued exquisite carvings made of ivory.

The trade in ivory objects, such as this carved jewelry box from Asia, helped spread artistic styles and modes of depiction around the globe. Yet ivory's history is a tale not only of cultural exchange but of capitalist value acquisition, violent appropriation and unequal power relations. The Humboldt Forum illuminates the connections in its exhibition, "Terrible Beauty: Elephant — Human — Ivory."

This figure of a mammoth originated some 35,000 years ago. It was found in a cave in southern Germany. The Humboldt Museum exhibition brings together pieces from many epochs and a wide variety of provenances. Exhibits include everything from ivory thrones, jewelry and hunting horns, to crucifixes, prayer chains and paperweights.

The Berlin exhibition even features a car trampled by an elephant, along with 200 other exhibits. For the show, the Humboldt Forum Foundation collaborated with German museums, as well as institutions in Kenya, London, Vienna and Paris. This photo shows the burning of huge stacks of confiscated elephant ivory by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) in Nairobi National Park