Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault. This episode originally aired
Speaker 1: on June nineteen, and it was about the Roman extinctions.
Speaker 1: We all know that we're creating plenty of ecological catastrophes
Speaker 1: and extinctions today, but how far back has this gone
Speaker 1: in history? Or are there examples we can find of
Speaker 1: previous empires driving species to extinction? Right? Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: not to single out the Romans as the only empire
Speaker 1: that caused extinctions, but there are some pretty interesting examples
Speaker 1: from that time period. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about not just extinctions, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about Roman extinctions, extinctions that occurred during the
Speaker 1: time of the Roman Republic, but especially the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: That sounds like one of those names for like a
Speaker 1: made up lewd act, the Roman Extinction. Roman Extinctions made
Speaker 1: maybe so good band names certainly so, Robert. I know
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about this because of some weird,
Speaker 1: uh maybe false memory you had that you were trying
Speaker 1: to explain to me yesterday. But it seems like a
Speaker 1: very apt topic, whatever the inspiration, because of course, all
Speaker 1: decadent empires place large stresses on the environment around them
Speaker 1: about so you would expect the you know, one of
Speaker 1: the great decadent empires of history would do the same. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think, well, one of the important things to
Speaker 1: keep in mind throughout this topic is, like, we're not
Speaker 1: we're certainly not meaning to single the Romans out as
Speaker 1: being like the like the the the soul examples of
Speaker 1: some of these activities that led to uh, to some extinctions, um,
Speaker 1: because ultimately you can look to very parts of the
Speaker 1: world in various times, including our own, to see plenty
Speaker 1: of extinction inducing activities. But I think it's an interesting
Speaker 1: exercise to sort of look to to look at Rome,
Speaker 1: which which would have been I think, in many ways
Speaker 1: sort of uh, an intensification of of impulses that were
Speaker 1: already present in other cultures. So to to get started,
Speaker 1: let's just remind everybody who the Romans were. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that one of the Romans ever done for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, speaking of that, yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't for reasons like that, I think that we don't
Speaker 1: really need like a full introduction. I think pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody has some idea of who the Romans were and
Speaker 1: what the Roman Empire was about. I mean, just the
Speaker 1: basic tropes um of of the Roman Empire a pretty
Speaker 1: uh you know, ubiquitous in our culture. Um. Look to,
Speaker 1: for instance, to Monty Python's Life of Brian, which you
Speaker 1: just quoted, which by the way, has been singled out
Speaker 1: for being actually quite historically accurate concernment concerning life in
Speaker 1: Roman occupied first century Judea. Yeah, I've read that before.
Speaker 1: A lot of historians that it's more accurate than a
Speaker 1: lot of serious movies, right, yeah, because you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of de pictions of Rome, they really especially the
Speaker 1: older cinematic interpretations, but even like more modern films that
Speaker 1: were influenced by those older interpretations, you just get like
Speaker 1: the stoic, colorless, very British vision of Rome generally not
Speaker 1: a lot of like street level understanding. Um. But but but
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons that HBO's Rome series, it
Speaker 1: was on for several years um, you know, which isn't perfect,
Speaker 1: but certainly had some admirers because of the way that
Speaker 1: it injected a lot of of color and and and
Speaker 1: life off in like street level life into this time
Speaker 1: in this place. I've also read that Kubrick spartacus Is
Speaker 1: is more accurate than a lot of the films that
Speaker 1: that you would have encountered in the nineteen sixties regarding
Speaker 1: the Romans, but of course still has a number of
Speaker 1: problems as well. I mainly just remember Joe Panaliono in
Speaker 1: the sub Pranos being mad at it because Kirk Douglas
Speaker 1: has a flat top and he's like, they didn't have
Speaker 1: flat tops in ancient Rome. Um. But by the way,
Speaker 1: I I always enjoyed the Ancient Roman detective novels of
Speaker 1: Gordianus The Finder by Stephen saler Um. I highly recommend
Speaker 1: those to anybody there to be clear contemporary novels set
Speaker 1: in ancient Rome. Anyway, we're in short, we're talking about
Speaker 1: an empire centered in Rome, established in twenty seven b
Speaker 1: C after the collapse of the Roman Republic, which was
Speaker 1: founded in five oh nine BC, and eventually grew grew
Speaker 1: rather rather sizeable and actually rather difficult to manage due
Speaker 1: to its size, stretching across Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East,
Speaker 1: and North Africa. It's the classic risk problem. You over
Speaker 1: extend your armies, you go out too far, you think
Speaker 1: you can hold all of Asia and get those whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty men at the end of each turn,
Speaker 1: that is to overextend. Yeah, it's the problem you see
Speaker 1: in every empire without fail and uh. And since they
Speaker 1: were an empire, they were of course built on military
Speaker 1: conquest in domination of other lands. And and to be fair,
Speaker 1: the characters in Monty Python are mostly correct in their
Speaker 1: list of the quote unquote good things that the Romans
Speaker 1: have done for us. Um. You know, we've we've we
Speaker 1: talk a lot, especially on our other podcast, Invention, about
Speaker 1: various Roman innovations. Roman technologies talked about sewers and toilets,
Speaker 1: sewers and toilets, But of course they didn't risk bring
Speaker 1: sewers and toilets. They all in Rhods. They also brought
Speaker 1: death and bloodshed. They depended on slave labor and uh,
Speaker 1: we can at least lay some of the hollow scene
Speaker 1: extinctions at their sandaled feet. So that's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: focus on today. And uh, and just fair warning that
Speaker 1: we will be talking in places about the Romans trade
Speaker 1: and exotic animals and their harsh treatment of these animals
Speaker 1: in the in the arenas and in the Colosseum, and
Speaker 1: this is all bloody and depressing stuff, cruelty to animals
Speaker 1: on a massive scale, So just you know, sort of
Speaker 1: fair warning on that, and uh, and just a reminder
Speaker 1: for information on how to report cruelty to animals today
Speaker 1: in the United States, please visit the American Society for
Speaker 1: the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at a spc A
Speaker 1: dot org or search for Report Animal Abuse a s
Speaker 1: p c A. That being said, let's move on to
Speaker 1: the extinctions. Okay, let's hear about it. So one of
Speaker 1: the articles that we were looking at and preparing for
Speaker 1: this episode is an excellent two thousand and sixteen Atlantic
Speaker 1: article titled the Exotic Animal Traffickers of Ancient Rome by
Speaker 1: Caroline Wazer and the it she points out that bloody
Speaker 1: animal spectacles were an important part of Roman culture, Like
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't just you know, something that was
Speaker 1: also going on. It's not like say, pointing to today's
Speaker 1: culture and saying like, uh, look at look at the
Speaker 1: popularity of say, mixed martial arts. It's central to the
Speaker 1: American experience. I don't know, you can maybe make that argument,
Speaker 1: but it's not just a thing in the culture. It's
Speaker 1: like an integral part of the culture. Maybe you're saying
Speaker 1: like you can't really understand the culture without it. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I believe that's the point. She's a king. Um So,
Speaker 1: I think most of us are familiar more familiar with
Speaker 1: human on human gladiator sports, which we've we've touched on
Speaker 1: on this show before and if it's in you know,
Speaker 1: any things in large part of Ridley Scott's Gladiator in
Speaker 1: modern times, but so many different treatments of gladiatorial combat
Speaker 1: have been rolled out in our media. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: just human on human violence. You also had daminatio at best.
Speaker 1: It's my Latin correct on that, Joe. It looks like
Speaker 1: dumb natio a beast. I mean, I'm not an expert either, okay,
Speaker 1: but dumb natio right like damn nation. Well anyway, it
Speaker 1: stands for execution by beasts. And then there were the
Speaker 1: venatitiones or the hunts, in which animals were condemned to
Speaker 1: die either at the hands of human hunters um and
Speaker 1: sometimes like just we're talking like just a brutal display
Speaker 1: of like a hunter dispatching all sorts of exotic animals
Speaker 1: out there on the field, or they would have animals
Speaker 1: battle each other all for sport. And sadly, these uh,
Speaker 1: these blood sports have been a part of human civilization
Speaker 1: for quite a while, and though thankfully outlawed in most places,
Speaker 1: but still, cock fighting remains legal in parts of the world,
Speaker 1: as does dog fighting. Sports like bear baiting and lion
Speaker 1: baiting continued depressingly far into modern times, at least in
Speaker 1: some parts of the world, and bullfighting remains legal and
Speaker 1: parts of the world as well, uh, namely Spain and Portugal.
Speaker 1: I would say it's not quite the same because it
Speaker 1: doesn't involve vertebrates. But I mean even the bug fights
Speaker 1: thing on the internet. I'm sure you've seen that. We're
Speaker 1: like crickets or beatles are made to combat each other,
Speaker 1: or centipedes or spiders. I mean, it's just basically, you
Speaker 1: put two kind of scary looking bugs into a container
Speaker 1: together and then shake it and try to make them fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, I don't know what exactly that impulses. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a part of it. I guess I understand because
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid, I would very
Speaker 1: often want to ask adults questions like what would win
Speaker 1: in a fight between a tarantula and a score be
Speaker 1: in and like as if I thought that, like, adults
Speaker 1: just know these things. You know that, Yeah, you're grown up,
Speaker 1: you know which one would win. Well, there is kind
Speaker 1: of like a need, there's an human necessity to to
Speaker 1: rank and profile the creatures of the natural world. And
Speaker 1: you still see this kind of thing in like kids
Speaker 1: books today, Like my son has a book, uh like
Speaker 1: who would Win? And and it's it's about prehistoric creatures
Speaker 1: and dinosaurs, uh, and all good educational information, but it's
Speaker 1: delivered uh with the wrappings of this creature versus this creature.
Speaker 1: So I was not alone in this childhood curiosity. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's I mean, I think there's something you know,
Speaker 1: normal and healthy in it. I mean, I mean, look
Speaker 1: at nature documentaries, uh, which can be quite uncomfortable to
Speaker 1: watch at times when you have a predator and prey
Speaker 1: battling each other. But of course one of the key
Speaker 1: differences here is that these are natural occurrences or they
Speaker 1: better damn well, be natural occurrences in a nature documentary,
Speaker 1: and they're not something that has been orchestrated through cruelty
Speaker 1: by humans looking for entertainment. Right. Putting animals into the
Speaker 1: Roman arenas kind of the equivalent of the bug fight
Speaker 1: like you put him in the box and shake it
Speaker 1: and try to get him fighting, right. So I think
Speaker 1: this is though, an example of where you know, if
Speaker 1: you know the Roman cruelty to animals via blood sport,
Speaker 1: it's it's an outsized and more sensational example of something
Speaker 1: that occurs in other cultures and in other times. It's
Speaker 1: not an excuse for any of this, but again it's
Speaker 1: important to ground such activities in the larger picture of
Speaker 1: human awfulness. But ways are actually opens her article with
Speaker 1: a discussion of a Roman orator m. Marcus Cicero in
Speaker 1: his correspondences with a former illegal client, a man by
Speaker 1: the name of Marcus Calias. This is while Cicero was
Speaker 1: governor of Cilicia in modern day Turkey. So basically um
Speaker 1: Calias just continued to hound Cicero about how he needs
Speaker 1: him to have some hunters capture and send back some
Speaker 1: local leopards, which they refer to a Greek panthers because
Speaker 1: he needs because he's He's like, you gotta give these
Speaker 1: to me, Cistero. I've got to throw him in the arena.
Speaker 1: The people love this, and I'm trying to kick start
Speaker 1: my political career here, come on, don't let me down.
Speaker 1: And it's just it's like multiple correspondences where he's just
Speaker 1: really hounding Cistero over this, and Cistero keeps dodging him
Speaker 1: on the matter and saying, well, look, the the you know,
Speaker 1: the local hunters are busy, you know, etcetera. That's that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. It's like, can you get Mick Jagger
Speaker 1: to come to my party? Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It's like, imagine if instead of when you see an
Speaker 1: individual running for political office today, instead of it being
Speaker 1: a situation of them trying to score saying Neil Young
Speaker 1: or you know, the guzzlers to play their event, if
Speaker 1: instead you were trying to procure exotic animals to massacure
Speaker 1: each other in a public arena. But it speaks to
Speaker 1: how important this was to at least a large segment
Speaker 1: of the population. And so this is something that would
Speaker 1: have been practiced in uh, you know, in the Roman Republic.
Speaker 1: But but then reached you know, new heights in the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. But it but it also is important to
Speaker 1: know that like, not everybody was completely on board with this. Uh.
Speaker 1: Wayser shares descriptions by by Cicero that describe it as
Speaker 1: being you know, barbaric and unnecessary and uh. And there
Speaker 1: are also some descriptions by a plenty of the Elder
Speaker 1: as well, which I think we can we can trust
Speaker 1: him a little bit more here because he's dealing with
Speaker 1: domestic matters and not mysterious species that he has no
Speaker 1: firsthand knowledge of. But the plenty you will get vindicated
Speaker 1: a little bit later on in this episode two. But
Speaker 1: but in this case, Wayser points out things that they
Speaker 1: were both writing about how Pompey the Great organized a
Speaker 1: series of spectacles. Um. But but what like the main
Speaker 1: event essentially was a great elephant hunt in the arena.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting interesting in the in the accounts that
Speaker 1: showed that that while individuals like Cicero viewed these shows
Speaker 1: as bloody and cruel, the crowds generally loved it. But
Speaker 1: the elephant hunt was even too much for the masses.
Speaker 1: And here's the quote from Cicero, obviously translated that She's
Speaker 1: shares quote the last day was that of the elephants,
Speaker 1: on which there was a great deal of astonishment on
Speaker 1: the part of the vulgar crowd, but no pleasure whatever. Nay,
Speaker 1: there was even a certain feeling of compassion aroused by it,
Speaker 1: and a kind of belief created that the animal has
Speaker 1: something in common with mankind. Yet they kept watching. Huh, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they kept watching, and but apparently felt awful about it,
Speaker 1: and there was you know, some some booze and whatnot.
Speaker 1: And of course this didn't prevent later elephant spectacles from
Speaker 1: taking place, and and ultimately indeed, like the continued trafficking
Speaker 1: of exotic animals is the focus of Weser's article. Uh
Speaker 1: that there was this booming industry for folks who would
Speaker 1: arrange the capture of exotic wild animals, generally from the
Speaker 1: extremes of the Empire, and then transport them back to
Speaker 1: Rome to fight in the arena. So it was a
Speaker 1: cruel business, but enthusiasm, the enthusiasm for the spectacles in
Speaker 1: the arena also also bubbled over into enthusiasm for the
Speaker 1: details of the actual hunts and the tactics that procured them,
Speaker 1: and this is reflected both in the literature of the
Speaker 1: day and also in the art of the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: where you see murals and whatnot depicting individuals hunting these
Speaker 1: wild animals so they could bring them back, and that
Speaker 1: that the wildness of it was something that the Romans
Speaker 1: seemed to crave, if she points out, because the uh
Speaker 1: there there weren't there weren't really that many attempts to
Speaker 1: try and raise them in captivity. They had to be
Speaker 1: captured and brought back to Rome as part of the appeal.
Speaker 1: I wonder if the idea about the methods used in
Speaker 1: hunting them, does that show up later in the sort
Speaker 1: of styles of gladiators that appear in the arena, because
Speaker 1: I know, we have like the there was the style
Speaker 1: of gladiator that's modeled after the fisherman, you know that
Speaker 1: has like the trident and the net and all that.
Speaker 1: So there are certain styles that seem to be based
Speaker 1: on on like the armies of opposing nations, or or
Speaker 1: on professions like fishing. I wondered also if that the
Speaker 1: hunting methods that they talked about, what these animals can
Speaker 1: tributed there? Uh yeah, I mean it might very well
Speaker 1: be the case. So she doesn't get into that in
Speaker 1: this paper, and I didn't see it mentioned in some
Speaker 1: of the other more animal focused sources I was looking
Speaker 1: at here. But you know, obviously the gladiatorial tropes that
Speaker 1: they used in the arena, they were all, you know,
Speaker 1: based on existing things, you know, to be it be
Speaker 1: it a fisherman or a uh, you know, a soldier
Speaker 1: or you know, some sort of animal component that was
Speaker 1: going to be echoed in the design. So let's come
Speaker 1: back to the elephants though, because I think because so far,
Speaker 1: that's been the most alarming, um, you know, obscenity that
Speaker 1: we've looked at here on the part of the Romans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that passage that you read from Cicero where
Speaker 1: you know, he's describing the crowds feeling sympathy for the
Speaker 1: elephants while they watch this brutality being done to them.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if there's more of that kind
Speaker 1: of thing going on in the appetites of the Roman
Speaker 1: Arena audiences than we would normally imagine, like we imagine
Speaker 1: the audiences of the editorial games and all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff just being you know, bloodthirsty, like, yeah, they
Speaker 1: want the fight, they want the violence, and and they
Speaker 1: love it and they're eating it up. I wonder if
Speaker 1: there was some element of the audience that I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's something more equivalent to to the kind of like
Speaker 1: hate watching or the hate clicking kind of thing that
Speaker 1: people do now, like where you know, people are constantly
Speaker 1: clicking on things on the Internet that they know we're
Speaker 1: going to make them unhappy. You know, you just reliably
Speaker 1: know if I click this link, I'm gonna feel bad
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna like what I read, but I
Speaker 1: click it anyway. You know, I wonder where people going
Speaker 1: to the arena, like, I know, I'm gonna feel bad,
Speaker 1: but I have to look at this, you know, that
Speaker 1: would be might be worth while to come back and
Speaker 1: explore that in greater detail, like the nature of these
Speaker 1: gladiatorial blood sport events um which we should stress are
Speaker 1: generally there were a lot more varied, uncomplicated than uh
Speaker 1: it is often relayed in fular media, but still we're violent, blood,
Speaker 1: blood thirsty events. You know, what, what was the psychology
Speaker 1: of that? And then how much of that psychology still
Speaker 1: remains in the fandom of various you know, high impact
Speaker 1: sporting events or you know, actual mixed martial arts or
Speaker 1: other martial arts contests or even simulated um athletic contests
Speaker 1: such as professional wrestling. I don't know, I have to
Speaker 1: come back to that, I think. But one thing the
Speaker 1: ways are also points out is you know that like
Speaker 1: there were there their artistic uh renditions of say big
Speaker 1: cats that were used in some of these events, and
Speaker 1: they would be given names in the art and they
Speaker 1: would be kind of there, like some of the iconography
Speaker 1: would be akin to that that would you be used
Speaker 1: for human gladiators. So yeah, it gets it gets sticky.
Speaker 1: And and then I mean just thinking about the elephants
Speaker 1: and the obvious connection, like the obvious intelligence that is
Speaker 1: there in the elephant, and the sympathy that one feels
Speaker 1: like this, uh, this kind of connection like has existed
Speaker 1: throughout I think our our experiences with elephants, and yet
Speaker 1: cruelty to elephants continues to this day. Uh and um,
Speaker 1: you know had certainly continued on through the you know,
Speaker 1: the history of circuses around the world. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean our relationship with animals is always complicated, even
Speaker 1: when we have you know, sympathy actually activated for them. Well,
Speaker 1: I know you wanted to explore more about the Romans
Speaker 1: and the elephants. Yeah, so I I found a book
Speaker 1: titled Elephant Destiny, Biography of an Endangered Species in Africa
Speaker 1: by Martin Meredith. And in this the author details the
Speaker 1: slaughter in the Roman arenas in general in the in
Speaker 1: the opening of Pompei's Games in the b C. And
Speaker 1: he mentions that no fewer than six hundred lions were massacured.
Speaker 1: Just to give everyone an idea of the scale of bloodshed. Here,
Speaker 1: six hundred lions. Can you imagine, I mean a lion
Speaker 1: is a lion as an apex predator, so there already
Speaker 1: aren't that many of them. And to remove six hundred
Speaker 1: lions from their habitat, Yeah, to essentially like basically put
Speaker 1: out the call and say, look, Pompey the Great knees lions.
Speaker 1: So everybody that is in the in the business of
Speaker 1: catching lions or could conceivably catch a lion, get out
Speaker 1: there and start catching lions. Essentially, uh and and this
Speaker 1: but this one meant just before the elephant event described previously,
Speaker 1: So what elephants were they catching? Well, the author here
Speaker 1: points out that the North African elephant was was the
Speaker 1: likely species, as these were the elephants used by the
Speaker 1: forces of Hannibals, Carthagian army, the African bush elephant that
Speaker 1: is still around. Um that this one is too wild
Speaker 1: to to ride around or to really tame in the
Speaker 1: same way that one uses uh, the Asian elephant and
Speaker 1: uh and and not to just you know, to a
Speaker 1: single out Carthage. Other groups used the North African elephant
Speaker 1: for labor in war as well, but any by following
Speaker 1: hannibals defeat, the region fell under Roman control, and the
Speaker 1: Romans used these elephants in their bloody sports as well
Speaker 1: as in attractions that really have more in common with
Speaker 1: the sort of circus work that we see uh, you know,
Speaker 1: throughout even like the twentieth century. And then that includes
Speaker 1: things like tight rope walking here, yeah, they single he
Speaker 1: singles that out in the book. But here's a quote
Speaker 1: that touches on the additional levels of exploitation that could
Speaker 1: become employed. Quote. Rome's liking for elephants meant that the
Speaker 1: North African herds faced constant raids, But even more perilous
Speaker 1: was the insatiable Roman demand for ivory. Ivory was used
Speaker 1: to decorate temples and palaces, carried in triumphal processions and
Speaker 1: made into a vast range of luxury goods, thrones, chess statues, chairs, beds,
Speaker 1: book covers, tablets, boxes, bird cages, combs, and broches. Caesar
Speaker 1: wrote in an ivory Chariot Seneca possessed five hundred tripod
Speaker 1: tables with ivory legs. Do you need that many tables
Speaker 1: for large events? Large scale events? I guess Caligula gave
Speaker 1: his horse an ivory stable. Wow, I'm glad we got
Speaker 1: Caligula in there. I wasn't sure we were can actually
Speaker 1: uh be able to make room for him. So that
Speaker 1: being said, some of the ivory came from India and Ethiopia,
Speaker 1: but North Africa suffered the most, and in seventies seven CE,
Speaker 1: plenty of the Elder Road about the shortage of African
Speaker 1: ivory quote an ample supply of ivory is now rarely
Speaker 1: obtained except from India, the demands of luxury having exhausted
Speaker 1: all those in our part of the world. And of course,
Speaker 1: um the ivory trade still remains a threat to elephant populations,
Speaker 1: despite laws and the hard work of of conservationist worldwide.
Speaker 1: And if you want more information about what's going on
Speaker 1: and what can be done, I recommend everyone check out
Speaker 1: stop ivory dot org for more information. Okay, but what
Speaker 1: was the ultimate effect on the elephant populations? Do we
Speaker 1: know if the Roman exploitation of these animals did it
Speaker 1: Did it damage their populations, did it drive mixtincts? The
Speaker 1: general consensus is that it it definitely drove their extinction.
Speaker 1: They either died out during the fifth century or at
Speaker 1: least were well on their way to extinction. But the
Speaker 1: damage was done during the Roman imperial period, So it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily that we know that the Romans like hunted
Speaker 1: down the very last of the North African elephants, but
Speaker 1: they may whatever they did to them damaged their populations
Speaker 1: enough and all that that we think it strongly contributed
Speaker 1: to their decline, right, And that's something we're going to
Speaker 1: see in some of these other examples we bring We
Speaker 1: bring out as well, is that there are other cases
Speaker 1: where it's certainly not in a situation where the Romans
Speaker 1: just went out and had killed or had killed all
Speaker 1: members of a species, but they you know, they had
Speaker 1: the power, through their their appetites, through their their economic demands,
Speaker 1: to actually like do this much damage to the environment. Again,
Speaker 1: with the Roman An empire. Everything that was already present
Speaker 1: in human of civilization was there, only maybe ramped up
Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh so their destructive tendencies, you know,
Speaker 1: had a little more reach than you might find in
Speaker 1: other civilizations. And of course the same thing can be
Speaker 1: said for today. They are various human appetites and our
Speaker 1: various wants and desires and our uses for the natural
Speaker 1: world that uh, at the scale we're doing things now
Speaker 1: are even more destructive than they ever were. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a sad fact. And that's going to come up again,
Speaker 1: and some of the other stuff I've got here. It's
Speaker 1: it's sometimes striking how similar the patterns of civilization level
Speaker 1: activity are between things that we do today and the
Speaker 1: things the Romans did to exploit their environment. Yeah, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's go and take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to continue to
Speaker 1: discuss Roman extinctions. All right, we're back. So, so, Joe,
Speaker 1: what what is the next organism we're going to discuss
Speaker 1: here that was made to to fight glad he years
Speaker 1: in the arena? Well, uh, it's not. This next one
Speaker 1: is a plant. But this is going to be one
Speaker 1: of the main examples that people often bring up as
Speaker 1: something that was likely driven to extinction by the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: So my main source here is an article from Conservation
Speaker 1: Biology from two thousand three by Ken Peregeco called plenty
Speaker 1: of the elders Sylphium first recorded species extinction. Now the
Speaker 1: author Ken perege COO. I looked him up. He was
Speaker 1: a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin Stout.
Speaker 1: I think he's retired now. But in this essay, the
Speaker 1: author asked the question, how do we know when a
Speaker 1: species has gone extinct? In the words of E. O. Wilson, quote,
Speaker 1: extinction is the most obscure and local of all biological processes.
Speaker 1: It took me for a second, and then I realized, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that must be true. Whenever the last ones disappear,
Speaker 1: it's always kind of a local and isolated phenomenon. I mean,
Speaker 1: like a lot of these cases, it's it's looking to
Speaker 1: when was the last recorded like dependable and recorded sighting
Speaker 1: or killing of a particular organism. Yeah, and so the
Speaker 1: author writes, quote, the question of how many species extinctions
Speaker 1: have gone unnoticed in human history is unanswerable, Yet the
Speaker 1: past may shed light on the present. On what in
Speaker 1: our behavior has changed and what hasn't. So he starts
Speaker 1: off by talking about our old friend Plenty of the Elder.
Speaker 1: Now remember, of course, so we know the timing. The
Speaker 1: Plenty of the Elder's natural history was first published around
Speaker 1: seventy and so Plenty in one section of his natural
Speaker 1: history dives into an ex explanation of a sort of
Speaker 1: miracle plant that he calls silphium. The plant is described
Speaker 1: as having plentiful kind of stubby, thick roots, a finnel
Speaker 1: like stalk blade like leaves that resemble parsley, and then
Speaker 1: at the top the stalks have an umbell. When an
Speaker 1: umbell is a a cluster of short flower stalks all
Speaker 1: clumped together, so that the flowers kind of resemble a parasol.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen plants like this. Robert got sort of
Speaker 1: a little dome of little flowers all clustered together, so
Speaker 1: the Romans called it sylfium. It was also known as
Speaker 1: silphion by the Greeks, as well as laser wart uh
Speaker 1: and laser pithecum uh and and from this plant, apparently
Speaker 1: you can create a resin that is called laser l
Speaker 1: A s e R. It might be pronounced losser. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I'm gonna say laser. So this resin
Speaker 1: called laser. Plenty describes it quote as among the most
Speaker 1: precious gifts presented to us by nature. And you could
Speaker 1: get this resin by making slits in the roots and
Speaker 1: the stem of the plants so that it's juices and
Speaker 1: its sap would leach out, and then those juices and
Speaker 1: the sap would be dried into a resin to produce laser.
Speaker 1: Plenty cites a Greek author, probably the philosopher Theophrastus, who
Speaker 1: is a student of Lato and Aristotle's on the origins
Speaker 1: of the plant, and the Greek author claims that the
Speaker 1: plant was discovered in the seventh century b c. After
Speaker 1: a black rain fell upon the gardens in a region
Speaker 1: of north North Africa known as syen Aca, which is
Speaker 1: now Libya. Pareto writes, quote, it grew most profusely in
Speaker 1: a region of that country known as the Sylphio Ferra,
Speaker 1: near the Gulf of Syrtus. There where the plateaus along
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean coast rise as tiered highlands that received considerably
Speaker 1: more rainfall than the deserts to the south. Sylfium thrived
Speaker 1: in a region of hilly and forested meadows. So we're
Speaker 1: almost getting this picture of this pristine, you know, lush
Speaker 1: little area with a desert to the south, the coast
Speaker 1: to the north that has all these little plants with
Speaker 1: the fenel like stalks and the parsley leaves and the
Speaker 1: umbell of of flowers near the top. And in ancient times,
Speaker 1: sylfium had a number of uses that recommended it to
Speaker 1: plenty as a kind of miracle plant. And among these
Speaker 1: uses document ended by Peregco number one. It was fed
Speaker 1: to livestock like cattle and sheep under the idea that
Speaker 1: it gave their meat a special desirable flavor. So you
Speaker 1: really wanted you wanted your mutton to be fed on
Speaker 1: sylfium tasted way better. Apparently, the plant parts could also
Speaker 1: just be cooked and you know, used in cooking, like
Speaker 1: the stalk could be used, or the resin could be used.
Speaker 1: It was also used medically as a laxative, you know,
Speaker 1: so for fast effective relief you go with sylfium. But
Speaker 1: the concentrated resin called laser, which was which was made
Speaker 1: from the plant, was considered even more useful. It could
Speaker 1: supposedly treat fevers and coughs and warts. It was believed
Speaker 1: to be a pain reliever and a hair restoration tonic,
Speaker 1: and apparently, as I mentioned, it was sometimes just also
Speaker 1: used in cooking. And there's also another huge use for
Speaker 1: this plant, which was that it was apparently believed to
Speaker 1: be a contraceptive and a board efficient, and so the
Speaker 1: juice or resin would be applied to a piece of
Speaker 1: wool and then used as a vaginal suppository as a
Speaker 1: contraceptive or a board deficient, and contraceptives and a board
Speaker 1: officians were highly desirable in ancient room. They were largely
Speaker 1: sought sought after for of course, many of the same
Speaker 1: reasons that they have been throughout all of history. So
Speaker 1: apparently a laser was in such demand that there was
Speaker 1: a widely acknowledged problem of unscrupulous merchants selling low quality,
Speaker 1: adulterated laser. You cut that laser, buddy. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like the scene in the movie where the guy gets
Speaker 1: in trouble for for cutting the coke with baby powder
Speaker 1: or something. You know, this is this is cutting the laser,
Speaker 1: maybe with with assa fatida or something like that. So
Speaker 1: Peregco notes that within Gaias Petronius first century CE fictional
Speaker 1: work known as the Satiricon. There's a scene where an
Speaker 1: Egyptian slave sings a song from what is apparently a
Speaker 1: well known contemporary musical farce, and this musical force of
Speaker 1: the day is called the laser dealer. So you get
Speaker 1: a sense that the laser dealer of ancient Rome, the
Speaker 1: ancient Roman Empire might have had a reputation sort of
Speaker 1: like the used car salesman of today who's trying to
Speaker 1: give you, you know, get you to buy, to pay
Speaker 1: too much for something that's not worth what you think
Speaker 1: it is, Okay, because I mean, ultimately we're not talking
Speaker 1: this was not FDA approved. There was not no like
Speaker 1: a system you were you were going to you know,
Speaker 1: essentially an apothecary or just somebody who had a supply
Speaker 1: or claim to have a supply of the the the
Speaker 1: the the laser that you needed. And yeah, if you
Speaker 1: didn't trust them, if if they were a little sketchy,
Speaker 1: they might be cutting the product or selling something else,
Speaker 1: you know that they're calling laser. And think about what
Speaker 1: people were using this product for. I mean, it's something
Speaker 1: that if you you got something that was an inferior
Speaker 1: product that didn't work as well as you thought it would,
Speaker 1: you might be facing serious consequences. And so here's the
Speaker 1: weird fact. We don't know for sure what plant species
Speaker 1: Plenty was talking about. It was this hugely important, commercially
Speaker 1: important plant, and we don't know for sure what it was.
Speaker 1: There is a plant genus in North America called Sylfium,
Speaker 1: but it's apparently not related. An author named Rackham in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty suggested that plenties Sylfium might have been the
Speaker 1: species called Ferula tingatana or Farolla marmarica, which are North
Speaker 1: African plants that still exist today. Or of course it
Speaker 1: could be an extinct relative of these, but that's just
Speaker 1: rackham suggestion. It's widely believed that the Roman Empire may
Speaker 1: very well have driven this miracle plant to extinction, So
Speaker 1: how would that be Well. Already in his day, Plenty
Speaker 1: complaints that you can't really get sylfium anymore. He notes
Speaker 1: that in the year forty nine BC, Julius Caesar ordered
Speaker 1: the stockpiling of fifteen hundred pounds of lasers just the
Speaker 1: resin in the Royal treasury, but by Plenty's own lifetime.
Speaker 1: Remember Plenty, this is published in seventy seven CES, so
Speaker 1: would have been just about a hundred years later in
Speaker 1: Plenty's lifetime. By this time, the plant had vanished in
Speaker 1: its natural range, and the last known stock of it
Speaker 1: quote being valued at its weight in gold and sent
Speaker 1: to the Emperor Nero. And I'm you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: Nero did something awesome with So what's the reason for
Speaker 1: this decline and disappearance of sylfium? Well, Plenty says that number.
Speaker 1: The main explanation Plenty gives is quote tax farmers who
Speaker 1: rent the pasturage and strip it clean by grazing sheep
Speaker 1: on it, realizing that they make more profit in that way.
Speaker 1: And to be honest, I'm not positive I understand what
Speaker 1: plenties saying there what that means, but I think possibly
Speaker 1: it refers to the fact that meat from the live
Speaker 1: stock that's fed on sylfium got a much higher price
Speaker 1: because it was believed to taste better, so you could
Speaker 1: get more money for the you know, upgraded meat. But
Speaker 1: this is you know, this decimating your sylfium fields, Okay,
Speaker 1: I said in a in a way like they're just
Speaker 1: multiple demands on the product because it was used for
Speaker 1: so many things, including people who just want to graze
Speaker 1: their animals on it and produce superior meat. But it
Speaker 1: all comes down to like to demand for the various products,
Speaker 1: direct products or products that depend upon the sylfium, and
Speaker 1: there were limited habitats in which sylfium would grow. So
Speaker 1: Peregiko also offers some other thoughts about what what could
Speaker 1: have contributed to the decline of sylfium uh and a
Speaker 1: chief concern he raises his habitat destruction. He says that
Speaker 1: a very popular wood for Roman furniture came from the
Speaker 1: Thuon tree, which filled the forests of Synaica, and over
Speaker 1: harvesting of this would possibly lead to deforestation of the
Speaker 1: area that is now Libya, and in turn this led
Speaker 1: to soil erosion. So without tree roots to hold the
Speaker 1: soil in place, you know the soil of roads in
Speaker 1: rainfall or in the wind or in anything um which
Speaker 1: destroyed the sylfium's natural habitat and the hilly meadows near
Speaker 1: the coast. So there you've got a couple of unsustainable
Speaker 1: practices coming together to conspire for the demise of this plan.
Speaker 1: He also points to unsustainable farming practices in the region
Speaker 1: which were aimed at short term profits but which came
Speaker 1: at the long term expensive soil quality. Also, he says
Speaker 1: there are historical records of political conflict over sylfium in
Speaker 1: Syrenaica um so in the region. In this region during
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, they were like there were native tenant
Speaker 1: farmers and then the rich Roman landlords. And as sylfium
Speaker 1: became scarce, the Romans tried to put tight control on
Speaker 1: the production by saying only they could farm it on
Speaker 1: their lands, and they put fences up around the meadows
Speaker 1: where the sylphium grew in order to keep the locals out.
Speaker 1: But Perejko writes, quote the natives practiced to kind of
Speaker 1: a grarian terrorism by tearing down the fences and letting
Speaker 1: their flocks graze on the sylfium to increase the value
Speaker 1: of the sheep's mutton. And then also apparently sometimes they
Speaker 1: would just go into the fields in the night and
Speaker 1: just upper the plants, just pull them up by the roots,
Speaker 1: kind of as a middle finger to the Roman overlords
Speaker 1: Romans go home. Another thing that's a possible explanation here,
Speaker 1: apparently the Romans were obsessed with garlic. Oh well we
Speaker 1: still have that. Well, yeah, and I don't often side
Speaker 1: with the Romans, but I cannot fault them there. Garlic
Speaker 1: is great, Yeah, I mean garlic not only is it
Speaker 1: a wonderful culinary ingredient, but I mean it has a
Speaker 1: number of different medicinal uses. And you know in in
Speaker 1: herbal traditions, Um is that antimicrobial property? Yeah? Um yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And so Pereshiko writes, quote garlic was such a popular
Speaker 1: plant with the Roman army that it was said one
Speaker 1: could follow the advance of the Roman legions and expansion
Speaker 1: of the empire by plotting range maps for garlic. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the Romans and Cyrenaica also apparently destroyed some sylfium
Speaker 1: habitats so they could plant garlic locally. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: the question is did sylfium fully go extend in the
Speaker 1: first century CE or not. Some scholars have argued that
Speaker 1: sylfium was cultivated at least until a few hundred years
Speaker 1: later in the fifth century, because there are references to
Speaker 1: it in some later writings, like people have you know,
Speaker 1: writing letters in the fifth century CEE talking about having
Speaker 1: sylfium plants. But these references could very well be to
Speaker 1: what what Peregco calls pseudo Sylfium's other plants that were
Speaker 1: incorrectly identified as sylfium and had been for a long time,
Speaker 1: or also for a long time had been combined with
Speaker 1: laser resin to adulterate it, or had simply been sold
Speaker 1: as fake sylfium by yet another unscrupulous laser dealer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, this is something I was reading about recently,
Speaker 1: and another book about just you know, as his ancient
Speaker 1: people's moved around, there might be a traditional plant that
Speaker 1: they depended upon, and as they move out of its range. Uh.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you know, take it with them to some extent,
Speaker 1: but then lose it. They have to find new substances
Speaker 1: that will fulfill at least some of the properties, or
Speaker 1: they hope will fulfill some of the properties. And sometimes
Speaker 1: you just give it the same name or you know,
Speaker 1: or a similar name exactly. Uh. And you know, and
Speaker 1: not all plants can follow you outside of I mean,
Speaker 1: some plants are very particular about their native range and
Speaker 1: and can't be really grown outside it very well. And
Speaker 1: it does appear sylfium as one of those. But in
Speaker 1: the first centuries, see other plants and spices were being
Speaker 1: recommended as a substitute for sylfium, like petco sites a
Speaker 1: Roman cookbook from around twenty CE that recommends assa fatida
Speaker 1: as a substitute for laser and recipes, presumably because real
Speaker 1: laser was already really expensive or hard to get. So ultimately,
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure whether or not the species
Speaker 1: Plenty is talking about actually when extinct, but it seems
Speaker 1: pretty likely it's got a limited natural range, subject to
Speaker 1: habitat destruction and over exploitation, as well as intentional destruction. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the author ends by saying, either way, it's interesting
Speaker 1: and sad to see the exact act patterns of human
Speaker 1: behavior leading to extinction of plant and animal species today
Speaker 1: have been with us for thousands of years. I mean,
Speaker 1: this almost reads like a like a parody of you know,
Speaker 1: modern stories about how we we overexploited certain plants and animals.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to discuss a
Speaker 1: few more Roman extinctions, or at least, in some of
Speaker 1: these cases, extinctions that were greatly contributed to by the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. Alright, we're back, Okay. Can we talk about bears? Yes,
Speaker 1: let's talk about bears. The Atlas bear is by some estimates.
Speaker 1: A notable victim of Roman civilization and the civilizations that
Speaker 1: followed in the wake of the Roman Empire. Uh. These
Speaker 1: were the Brown Bears of northern Africa, and their extinction
Speaker 1: can at least be partially attributed to the Romans, though
Speaker 1: we have to stress here it didn't truly go extinct
Speaker 1: in the wildland, the wild to the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: so sometime later to be sure. But so we're saying
Speaker 1: that maybe the Romans did stuff to contain its range
Speaker 1: or something like that, yeah, or certainly really kick started
Speaker 1: the tradition of of exploitation uh and and habitat destruction
Speaker 1: that would reach you know, its final form uh in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. Uh. So, basically what happens is when
Speaker 1: the Romans expanded into the Atlas Mountains of modern day Morocco,
Speaker 1: the bears were hunted for sport and they were captured
Speaker 1: for transport back to the Arenas in Rome as well.
Speaker 1: So we're talking thousands and thousands of them again, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the the trade and exotic animals,
Speaker 1: it's not just like a few a few individuals here
Speaker 1: and there catching a few curious creatures and sending them
Speaker 1: back you know, I think it's easy to fall back on. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, certainly a lot of this took place during
Speaker 1: you know, the time of European colonialism as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but uh, a lot of times it brings to mind
Speaker 1: pictures of sale the hold of a ship with a
Speaker 1: few different animals in it or something like that. But no,
Speaker 1: we're talking like tons and tons of creatures here. Um, thousands,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of bears. I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: they're all that many bears to begin with, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and so the initial depleting of their numbers
Speaker 1: put them in a terrible position for a centuries of
Speaker 1: habitat loss and deforestation to follow, and also continued hunting,
Speaker 1: which was ultimately bolstered by the development of modern firearms.
Speaker 1: And apparently when you look at the like the the
Speaker 1: the last known sightings of these animals, they pretty much
Speaker 1: line up with modern firearms being available, so that that
Speaker 1: just pushing the hunting over the edge. Um. This made
Speaker 1: me think a little though about bears and human extinction. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was once theorized that prehistoric cave bears were hunted
Speaker 1: into extinction by humans, but it doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: that this was actually the case, or at least this
Speaker 1: is not the predominant theory. Now. Uh. You know, these
Speaker 1: were largely herbivorous creatures and they might have just been
Speaker 1: too much for ancient humans to really tackle on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, and human numbers might not have been sufficient
Speaker 1: to pull off that kind of extinction at the time,
Speaker 1: So we can't lay their extinction entirely at human feet.
Speaker 1: I'd love to come back and discuss cave bears or
Speaker 1: or other prehistoric bearers like the short faced bear in
Speaker 1: the future, but it is interesting to sort of think
Speaker 1: of that in terms of the scaling up of human activities, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, there were there were times there were certainly
Speaker 1: there were certainly animals that you know that that that
Speaker 1: that early humans contributed to their to the extinction of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, no doubt about it. But if if, if
Speaker 1: populations are smaller, uh, there's less that can be done
Speaker 1: towards pushing an animal's extinction. Right now, another animal creature
Speaker 1: you might not expect to show up on this list
Speaker 1: is the ostrich because you know, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: a knack roll creature that would be out there in
Speaker 1: the Roman arena, right, But the ostrich were talking about
Speaker 1: about here is not the common ostrich that you're probably
Speaker 1: thinking of, and that you would you can see it
Speaker 1: most zoos and window and what have you. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I was thinking when you said this, okay, there
Speaker 1: are some large birds I can't imagine in the arena.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the cassowary. Oh yeah, well, and
Speaker 1: that is the scariest feed of anything I've ever seen. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: and ostriches can be quite terrifying close up, for sure,
Speaker 1: and they can and they are dangerous animals. But but
Speaker 1: I have to admit it wasn't like the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought about as being something that there would have
Speaker 1: you know, really suffered due to the pressure of Roman appetite.
Speaker 1: But what we're talking about here is not the common ostrich,
Speaker 1: but the Arabian Ostrich or the Syrian ostrich, also known
Speaker 1: as the Middle Eastern ostrich, and it lived in the
Speaker 1: Near and Middle East, as opposed to the common ostriche
Speaker 1: of Africa that we still know today now. To be sure,
Speaker 1: the Arabian Ostrichs suffered under humans for quite a while.
Speaker 1: They're mentioned in other ancient texts. They're even mentioned in
Speaker 1: the Bible, and given that they are giant birds. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they've always been something of a curiosity for humans.
Speaker 1: And then you see this as far east as China
Speaker 1: where specimens were taken for display, but the Romans were
Speaker 1: were also rather taken with them. And again everything with
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire you can sort of see as like
Speaker 1: a leveling up of of of of appetite to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, but also just the ability to exert that
Speaker 1: appetite on the natural world. Uh So, because again these ostriches,
Speaker 1: they were exotic and they became something of a status symbol.
Speaker 1: You see them popping up on Roman coinage from that
Speaker 1: from that time period, seems true Sylfium sylfi amazon coins
Speaker 1: we have, which just speaks to like what kind of
Speaker 1: value was put on these on these species. But in
Speaker 1: the arena, the ostriches were made to pull chariots to
Speaker 1: participate in other you know, violent arena spectacles, which of
Speaker 1: course tended to have a terrible end for the animal.
Speaker 1: But they were also prized in Roman cuisine, both the
Speaker 1: meat and the eggs. I was the Romans were omnivorous
Speaker 1: to an extreme. I mean you can read these uh
Speaker 1: these cookbooks where you know, it seems like they ate,
Speaker 1: they tried eating just about everything. I was reading a
Speaker 1: cookbook entry and something earlier today with this recipe for
Speaker 1: like a parrot and flamingo. I think, yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: very exotic dishes, which again I think is part of
Speaker 1: just like the traffic of these exotic animals. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's apparently a really good book on it that I
Speaker 1: didn't have time to really get into a lot. But
Speaker 1: Patrick Foss wrote one called Around the Roman Table, Food
Speaker 1: and Feasting in Ancient Rome. Uh and and he was
Speaker 1: looking at some Roman cookbooks and uh he appointed to
Speaker 1: at least a couple of Ostrich recipes, one for an
Speaker 1: ostrich stew and one for a boiled Ostrich so boiled
Speaker 1: whole ostrich. Uh no, not whole, not whole. You know,
Speaker 1: there were limits to what you could do. But then
Speaker 1: I mean outside of this too, I mean ostrich feathers
Speaker 1: were prized um for use in ornamentation and costumes. But
Speaker 1: the Arabian Ostrich, the Syrian Ostrich ends up surviving the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, but they did not survive the pressures of
Speaker 1: the modern world, so they're thought to have gone extinct
Speaker 1: sometime in the mid twentieth century. So they made it
Speaker 1: pretty far. But again, this is a situation where you
Speaker 1: can't lay their extinction entirely at the feet of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire by any means, but you can certainly look
Speaker 1: to the degree that the Roman Empire added additional pressure
Speaker 1: upon their survival. All right, well, I've got another one where, uh,
Speaker 1: we don't have clear evidence that the Romans drove a
Speaker 1: species extinct, but with there are some interesting clues about
Speaker 1: possibilities in history that that may have previously not been imagined.
Speaker 1: So uh, let's let's take a look at Plenty again,
Speaker 1: if any of the elder from his Natural History book nine,
Speaker 1: chapter five, and this one's the John Bostock translation, where
Speaker 1: Plenty is talking about ballina, the ballina and the orca.
Speaker 1: Uh and note in this passage there's this word billina.
Speaker 1: It's believed to refer to some kind of you know,
Speaker 1: key toss, meaning like sea monster or big fish, which
Speaker 1: which for Plenty would include whales. But we don't we
Speaker 1: think he's talking about a whale. We don't know what
Speaker 1: whale he's talking about. Okay, but this is where we
Speaker 1: get balin from. Is it like similar etymology? I would assume?
Speaker 1: So yeah, uh, so he says uh, the billina penetrates
Speaker 1: to our seas. Even it is said that they are
Speaker 1: not to be seen in the Ocean of Getties before
Speaker 1: the winter solstice, and at periodical seasons they retire and
Speaker 1: conceal themselves in some calm, capacious bay in which they
Speaker 1: take delight in bringing forth. This fact, however, is known
Speaker 1: to the orca, an animal which is peculiarly hostile to
Speaker 1: the ballina, and the form of which cannot be in
Speaker 1: any way adequately described, but as an enormous mass of
Speaker 1: flesh armed with teeth, the animal attacks the billina and
Speaker 1: its places of retirement, and with its teeth tears its young,
Speaker 1: or else attacks the females which have just brought forth,
Speaker 1: and indeed while they're still pregnant, and as they rush
Speaker 1: upon them, it pierces them just as though they had
Speaker 1: been attacked by the beak of a Liburnian galley. And
Speaker 1: that refers to like a sharp pointing ship. And he
Speaker 1: goes on and on about the orca hunting these billina.
Speaker 1: But all of it is I mean, this sounds exactly
Speaker 1: like everything we've discussed regarding the orca in the past.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like straight out of a modern
Speaker 1: documentary in which we get to see, you know, spectacular
Speaker 1: underwater footage of the orcas, or at least the the
Speaker 1: the variety of orcas that that feed on whales going
Speaker 1: after them. Yes, I mean it is an accurate description
Speaker 1: of things you might see in some parts of the ocean,
Speaker 1: except there's a problem. In the early part of this passage,
Speaker 1: he's referring to some kind of whale that retires seasonally
Speaker 1: to the shallows to give birth in the area around
Speaker 1: what is now Cadiz. So that's in southwestern Spain. But
Speaker 1: the passage has long been of interest to marine biologists
Speaker 1: because there are no whales in the region that match
Speaker 1: this ecological and behavioral description. And in fact, there are
Speaker 1: whales in the Mediterranean sometimes, but they tend to be
Speaker 1: you know, like deep water whales that do not retire
Speaker 1: to shallow bays around Cadiz to give birth. So what
Speaker 1: was plenty of talking about, Like did he get the
Speaker 1: story mixed up? Is he confused about the location or
Speaker 1: about the behavior of the whales or what or maybe
Speaker 1: was he referring to whales that once would have calved
Speaker 1: in that area but no longer do Now there are
Speaker 1: whales that fit that ecological and behavioral description, but they
Speaker 1: don't live in the Mediterranean. A couple of examples would
Speaker 1: be gray whales, which is the gray whale is a
Speaker 1: baleen whale up to about fifteen meters long roughly fifty
Speaker 1: feet about thirty five metric tons, and it's worldwide range
Speaker 1: today has been reduced to a couple of populations in
Speaker 1: the northern Pacific Ocean, and one of its two population subgroups,
Speaker 1: the Western group, is endangered. And then also it would
Speaker 1: fit the North Atlantic right whale, which is also a
Speaker 1: baleen whale of being day injured today. It lives in
Speaker 1: the Northern Atlantic. As the name implies, it's up to
Speaker 1: about sixteen meters or about fifty feet long and about
Speaker 1: sixty four metric tons. And the right whale was a
Speaker 1: huge target of the historical whaling industry because they were
Speaker 1: valuable and they were easy to catch, and they were
Speaker 1: hunted to commercial extinction by the mid nineteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: nearly to biological extinction. They're they're pretty much entirely gone
Speaker 1: from the eastern North Atlantic. There's a single population of
Speaker 1: about five hundred individuals that survives in the western North
Speaker 1: Atlantic and that's it. So, you know, in terms of extinction,
Speaker 1: we've often touched on like the differences between extinct and
Speaker 1: the wild. Uh, you know, absolute extinction, but commercial extinction
Speaker 1: is something I don't often think about, like basically depleted
Speaker 1: to the point where, like the the industry of whaling
Speaker 1: this particular animal is no longer viable. Yeah, exactly. Um So,
Speaker 1: so let's come back to the whales in a minute,
Speaker 1: a different question. When was the first time somebody decided
Speaker 1: that they could base a whole industry off of hunting whales?
Speaker 1: And we know that the hunting of whales in like
Speaker 1: individual cases goes back thousands of years, but the first
Speaker 1: known large scale commercial whaling industry and history has long
Speaker 1: been believed to be the basque whaling business of the
Speaker 1: medieval period. And there's no evidence that hunting of whales
Speaker 1: by humans would have happened at any scale large enough
Speaker 1: to have had an effect on whale populations before the
Speaker 1: basque whalers of the Middle Ages. But there are earlier
Speaker 1: descriptions of whale hunting. Another piece of ancient Roman literature
Speaker 1: we want to look at. Here is an awesome poem
Speaker 1: about fishing by the second century CE. Greco Roman poet
Speaker 1: Opian called the hali Utica, and this is from the
Speaker 1: Lobe Classical Library edition. It describes all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, the way the fishers go out in the boat,
Speaker 1: and they stab at the whale with barbs and attached
Speaker 1: a hook to it with a rope, and that they
Speaker 1: then attached the rope to water skins or skins that
Speaker 1: are filled with human breath, and there of course buoyant.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like in Jaws, right when you
Speaker 1: and they spear the shark with the floating barrels um.
Speaker 1: But then uh Opian writes, quote, now, when the deadly
Speaker 1: beast is tired with his struggles and drunk with pain,
Speaker 1: and his fierce heart is bent with weariness and the
Speaker 1: balance of hateful doom inclines, then first of all the
Speaker 1: skin comes to the surface, announcing the issue of victory,
Speaker 1: and greatly uplifts the hearts of the fishers. Even as
Speaker 1: when a Harold returns from dolorous war in white raiment
Speaker 1: and with a cheerful face, his friends exulting follow him,
Speaker 1: expecting straightway to hear favorable tidings, so do the fishers
Speaker 1: exult when they behold the hide the messenger of good
Speaker 1: news rising from below, and immediately other skins rise up
Speaker 1: and emerge from the sea, dragging in their train the
Speaker 1: huge monster, and the deadly beast is hauled up, all
Speaker 1: unwillingly distraught in spirit with labor and wounds. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, I feel like Oppian is kind
Speaker 1: of a good poet in a way, but it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a sad story. He seems to be delighted
Speaker 1: about it, though it does seem to resemble the shark
Speaker 1: hunting sequence and jaws more than more than It's not
Speaker 1: clear what kind of whale Oppian things he's talking about. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we know the Romans didn't have the technology to
Speaker 1: do deep ocean whaling, but it but is it possible
Speaker 1: the Romans did participate in more shallow whaling than previously thought.
Speaker 1: They certainly did a lot of fishing and fish processing.
Speaker 1: The Roman Empire loved fish that had like fish processing plants.
Speaker 1: Basically they made stuff that's like you know, modern fish sauce,
Speaker 1: like colatura, uh, you know, salted fish products. So they
Speaker 1: were they were big on seafood and and the fishing industry.
Speaker 1: But did they do any whaling. We we didn't previously
Speaker 1: have really any evidence that that happened at any kind
Speaker 1: of scale, but a study from ten finds some interesting
Speaker 1: evidence that might make us question that. Uh And this
Speaker 1: was published in Proceedings to the Royal Society b Biological
Speaker 1: Sciences by Anna Rodrige as at All and the authors
Speaker 1: here point out that whales are often archaeologically invisible, meaning
Speaker 1: when they die, their bones sink to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean, and we just don't usually get much of
Speaker 1: a record of them even when they're you know, called
Speaker 1: or processed by humans. They tend most often to be
Speaker 1: processed on the beach and there's stuffed you know, all
Speaker 1: the blubber and everything taken away, and then the bones
Speaker 1: just get washed back into the water. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: study used DNA analysis of bones found in Roman and
Speaker 1: pre Roman archaeological sites, I think primarily ancient fish processing
Speaker 1: factories in the Gibraltar region, and they found among the
Speaker 1: bones that there were there were remains of three right whales,
Speaker 1: three gray whales, but also a fin whale, a sperm whale,
Speaker 1: a long finned pilot whale, a dolphin, and one bone
Speaker 1: from an African elephant. Not sure what was doing at
Speaker 1: the fish processing plan. Also makes me wonder which if
Speaker 1: this was truly since it's not a study about elephants.
Speaker 1: If we're talking about the uh, the extant African elephant
Speaker 1: or the extinct the African elephant. Oh yeah, I'm actually
Speaker 1: not sure they're But so the author has used radio
Speaker 1: carbon dating that placed the bones with an origin between
Speaker 1: two fifty b C and C. So that's the Roman
Speaker 1: Empire period uh, And the authors believed this indicates that
Speaker 1: the historical range of these two whale species, the gray
Speaker 1: whale and the right whale, actually included the Gibraltar region
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean Sea as Calvin grounds at the time.
Speaker 1: So in the Roman period the ranges of these two
Speaker 1: whales were very different. They were much bigger apparently. And
Speaker 1: the author's right that when these two whale species disappeared
Speaker 1: from the Mediterranean, it was probably accompanied by quote, the
Speaker 1: disappearance of their predators, killer whales. So you're not normally
Speaker 1: going to be seeing orca in the Mediterranean, right, but
Speaker 1: they might have been there to prey on these whales
Speaker 1: at the time, and when they're their their main prey vanishes,
Speaker 1: they have to vanish as well. Exactly and then also
Speaker 1: they say, and a reduction in marine primary productivity. And
Speaker 1: the authors also think that if these two species of
Speaker 1: coastal excess sable whales were historically present, it might indicate
Speaker 1: that the Roman Empire had a forgotten pre basque whaling industry. Quote.
Speaker 1: None of this demonstrates that the Roman whaling industry existed,
Speaker 1: but it indicates that Romans had the means, the motive,
Speaker 1: and the opportunity to capture gray and right whales at
Speaker 1: an industrial scale. And then also quote nonetheless, if such
Speaker 1: an industry did exist, it could have had an impact
Speaker 1: on the eastern North Atlantic populations of these two species,
Speaker 1: as it would have affected uh, particularly adult females with
Speaker 1: disproportionate demographic consequences in these long lived, slowly reproducing species. Thus,
Speaker 1: Roman exploitation may have played a role in the observed
Speaker 1: decline in Atlantic gray whale genetic diversity before the onset
Speaker 1: of industrial basque whaling. So quite a few ifs they're right,
Speaker 1: we don't know, uh, you know, if this whaling industry
Speaker 1: existed and all that, But you can see how it's
Speaker 1: plausible that a Roman whaling industry could have contributed to
Speaker 1: the client of whale populations in the Mediterranean in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: But I did just want to caution this with, you know,
Speaker 1: because not everyone agrees with how to interpret the study.
Speaker 1: So I was reading an article about this in The
Speaker 1: Guardian that cited a doctor Erica Rowan, a classical archaeologist
Speaker 1: at Royal Holloway, University of London, and she said the
Speaker 1: study does show that these whales habitats once included the
Speaker 1: Gibraltar region, but that the small number of bones over
Speaker 1: the short time span found doesn't necessarily prove that there
Speaker 1: was a large commercial whaling industry in ancient in the
Speaker 1: ancient Roman Empire, which of course the authors didn't say
Speaker 1: they were proving that, but they just suggested as possible.
Speaker 1: Uh quote. I think that if these whales were present
Speaker 1: in such numbers, and we're being caught on an industrial scale,
Speaker 1: that we would have more evidence, perhaps not in the
Speaker 1: zoo archaeological record, but in the ceramic record. In the
Speaker 1: literary sources. The Romans ate and talked about an enormous
Speaker 1: variety of fish and seafood, and if the whale was
Speaker 1: widely exploited and exported, then it is strangely absent from
Speaker 1: many discussions. So she makes the point. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: not expect to find many physical remains because of the
Speaker 1: way that whales are often processed, but you would probably
Speaker 1: expect to find writings where people talked about the whale industry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the Roman authors whose work survives today would
Speaker 1: have would have seen it, would have commented on it,
Speaker 1: would have been impressed by the scale of the industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would have said that they ate it, would have
Speaker 1: recorded some sort of a recipe, or if not a recipe,
Speaker 1: than like, you know, some sort of record of what
Speaker 1: they were using the you know what, the various things
Speaker 1: they might have been processing the whale into. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can see that being a potential red flag there. So
Speaker 1: I guess the big takeaway today is that empires have consequences.
Speaker 1: They do, uh, that they have a lot of consequences.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's I think easy to to overlook
Speaker 1: the consequences that they have on the natural world and
Speaker 1: have always had. And again, we have to think about
Speaker 1: the scaling up of human behavior as our you know,
Speaker 1: our modern empires, in our modern um you know, nation states,
Speaker 1: UH continue to scale up what they're doing, sometimes uh
Speaker 1: taken into into account their impact on the natural world,
Speaker 1: but perhaps uh not as much as it should be
Speaker 1: the case. Uh so kind of a cautionary tale, I
Speaker 1: guess from the Roman world. Don't kill the elephants, don't
Speaker 1: deplete the sylphium. And of course these are the mainly
Speaker 1: the species. Most of the species we talked about here
Speaker 1: were things that their absence is notable because they were
Speaker 1: a value in some way. Right, these are the things
Speaker 1: that they are historical records of of going missing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're being reduced. Yeah, so just imagine other species
Speaker 1: that were less remarkable or at least less valued, or
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't exotic creatures, you know, very you
Speaker 1: think of the various rodents or insects or birds or
Speaker 1: what have you that could have also been destroyed by
Speaker 1: Roman activity and it just didn't make it into the
Speaker 1: history books. All right. So there you have it. As always,
Speaker 1: if you want more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: visit Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com because that's
Speaker 1: where you'll find them. And if you want to support
Speaker 1: the show always, the best thing you can do is
Speaker 1: tell friends about Out of the show. Make sure that
Speaker 1: you rate and review us wherever you have the power
Speaker 1: to do so. And if you have any thoughts on
Speaker 1: the the organisms we discussed today, the histories we discussed today,
Speaker 1: if you have additional ideas, if you have corrections additional
Speaker 1: organisms we might have missed that when extinct or might
Speaker 1: have gone extinct during the Roman time, or do in
Speaker 1: part to the Roman influence, let us know. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer, Torri Harrison. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest topic for the future, to
Speaker 1: answer any of those questions Robert just said, or just
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