Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios, How Stuff Works. Pay You Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: not just extinctions, but we're gonna be talking about Roman extinctions,
Speaker 1: extinctions that occurred during the time of the Roman Republic,
Speaker 1: but especially the Roman Empire. That sounds like one of
Speaker 1: those names for like a made up lewd act, the
Speaker 1: Roman Extinction. Roman Extinctions maybe maybe so good band names.
Speaker 1: Certainly so, Robert, I know you wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: this because of some weird, uh maybe false memory you
Speaker 1: had that you were trying to explain to me yesterday.
Speaker 1: But it seems like a very apt topic, whatever the inspiration,
Speaker 1: Because of course, all decadent empires place large stresses on
Speaker 1: the environment around them, so you would expect the you know,
Speaker 1: one of the great decadent empires of history would 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 sole examples of
Speaker 1: some of these activities that lead to, uh, to some extinctions. UM.
Speaker 1: Because ultimately you can look to various 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 out. I mean just the
Speaker 1: basic tropes, um of of the Roman Empire are pretty uh,
Speaker 1: you know, ubiquitous in our culture. UM. Look to, for instance,
Speaker 1: to Monty Python's Life of Brian, which you just quoted,
Speaker 1: which by the way, has been singled out for being
Speaker 1: actually quite historically accurate concernment concerning life in Roman occupied
Speaker 1: first century Judea. Yeah, I've read that before a lot
Speaker 1: of historians that it's more accurate than a lot of
Speaker 1: serious movies. Right, yeah, because you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: depictions of Rome they really especially the older cinematic interpretations,
Speaker 1: but even like more modern films that were influenced by
Speaker 1: those older interpretations, you just get like the stoic, colorless,
Speaker 1: very British vision of Rome generally not a lot of
Speaker 1: like street level understanding. Um. But but that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that HBO's Rome series, it was one for
Speaker 1: several years, um, you know, which isn't perfect, but certainly
Speaker 1: had some admirers because of the way that it injected
Speaker 1: a lot of color and and and life off in
Speaker 1: like street level life into this time in this place.
Speaker 1: I've also read that Kubrick spartacus Is is more accurate
Speaker 1: than a lot of the films that you would have
Speaker 1: encountered in the nineteen sixties regarding the Romans, but of
Speaker 1: course still has a number of problems as well. I
Speaker 1: mainly just remember Joe Panaliono and the Sopranos being mad
Speaker 1: at it because Kirk Douglas has a flat top and
Speaker 1: he's like, they didn't have flat tops in ancient Rome. Um.
Speaker 1: But by the way, I always enjoyed the ancient Roman
Speaker 1: detective novels of Gordianus The Finder by Stephen Saylor. UM.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend those to anybody. There to be clear
Speaker 1: contemporary novels set in ancient Rome. Anyway, we're in short,
Speaker 1: we're talking about an empire centered in Rome, established in
Speaker 1: twenty seven b C after the collapse of the Roman Republic,
Speaker 1: which was founded in five oh nine BC, and eventually
Speaker 1: grew grew rather rather sizeable and actually rather difficult to
Speaker 1: manage due to its size, stretching across Europe, the Balkans,
Speaker 1: the Middle East, and North Africa. It's the classic risk problem.
Speaker 1: You overextend your armies, you go out too far, you
Speaker 1: think you can hold all of Asia and get those
Speaker 1: whatever you know, fifty men at the end of each turn.
Speaker 1: That is overextend. Yeah, it's the problem you see in
Speaker 1: every empire without fail and uh. And since they were
Speaker 1: an empire, they were of course built on a military
Speaker 1: conquest and 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 talk
Speaker 1: a lot, especially on our other podcast Invention, about various
Speaker 1: Roman innovations. Roman technologies talked about sewers and toilets, sewers
Speaker 1: and toilets, but of course they didn't risk bring sewers
Speaker 1: and toilets. They all in Rhods. They also brought death
Speaker 1: and bloodshed. They depended on slave labor. And uh, we
Speaker 1: can at least lay some of the hollow scene extinctions
Speaker 1: at their sandaled feet. So that's what we're gonna focus
Speaker 1: on today. And UH, and just fair warning that we
Speaker 1: will be talking in places about the Romans trade and
Speaker 1: exotic animals and their harsh treatment of these animals in
Speaker 1: the in the arenas and in the colosseum. And this
Speaker 1: is all bloody and depressing stuff, cruelty to animals on
Speaker 1: a massive scale, So just you know, sort of fair
Speaker 1: warning on that. And uh, and just a reminder for
Speaker 1: information on how to report cruelty to animals today in
Speaker 1: the United States, please visit the American Society for the
Speaker 1: Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at a SPCA dot org
Speaker 1: or search for Report Animal Abuse a s p c. A.
Speaker 1: That being said, let's move on to the extinctions. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's hear about it. So one of the articles that
Speaker 1: we were looking at and preparing for this episode is
Speaker 1: an excellent two thousand and sixteen Atlantic article titled the
Speaker 1: Exotic Animal Traffickers of Ancient Rome by Caroline Wazer, and
Speaker 1: in it she points out that bloody animal spectacles were
Speaker 1: an important part of Roman culture, Like, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just you know, something that was also going on.
Speaker 1: It's not like, say, pointing to today's culture and saying, uh,
Speaker 1: look at look at the popularity of say, mixed martial arts.
Speaker 1: It's central to the American experience. I don't know, you
Speaker 1: can maybe make that argument, but it's not just a
Speaker 1: thing in the culture. It's like an integral part of
Speaker 1: the culture. Maybe you're saying, like you can't really understand
Speaker 1: the culture without it. Yes, yeah, And I believe that's
Speaker 1: the point she's making. Um So, I think most of
Speaker 1: us are familiar more familiar with human on human gladiator sports,
Speaker 1: which we've we've touched on on this show before. And
Speaker 1: if it's a you know, any things in large part
Speaker 1: of Ridley Scott's Gladiator in modern times, but so many
Speaker 1: different treatments of gladiatorial combat have been rolled out in
Speaker 1: our media, but it wasn't just human on human violence.
Speaker 1: You also had damnatio add beast is my Latin correct
Speaker 1: on that, Joe, it looks like dumb natio ad beasts.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not an expert either, okay, but dumb
Speaker 1: natio right like damn nation. Well, anyway, it stands for
Speaker 1: execution by beasts. And then there were the natitiones or
Speaker 1: the hunts, you which animals were condemned to die either
Speaker 1: at the hands of human hunters um and sometimes like
Speaker 1: just we're talking like just a brutal display of like
Speaker 1: a hunter dispatching all sorts of exotic animals out there
Speaker 1: on the field, or they would have animals battle each
Speaker 1: other all for sport. And sadly, these uh, these blood
Speaker 1: sports have been a part of human civilization for quite
Speaker 1: a while, and though thankfully outlawed in most places, but still,
Speaker 1: cock fighting remains legal in parts of the world, as
Speaker 1: does dog fighting. Sports like bear baiting and lion baiting
Speaker 1: continued depressingly far into modern times, at least in some
Speaker 1: parts of the world, and bullfighting remains legal and parts
Speaker 1: 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: we're like crickets or beetles or made to combat each other,
Speaker 1: or centipedes or spiders. I mean it's just basically you
Speaker 1: put too kind of scary looking bugs into a container
Speaker 1: together and then kit and try to make them fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, I don't know what exactly that impulses. I
Speaker 1: mean there's a part of it. I guess I understand
Speaker 1: because I remember when I was a kid, I would
Speaker 1: very often want to ask adults questions like what would
Speaker 1: win in a fight between a tarantula and a scorpion?
Speaker 1: And like as if I thought that, like, adults just
Speaker 1: know these things. You know that, yeah, you're grown up,
Speaker 1: you'd 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 delivered, uh,
Speaker 1: with the wrappings of this creature versus this creature. So
Speaker 1: I was not alone in this childhood curiosity. No, I
Speaker 1: 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 your documentaries, which can be quite uncomfortable to watch
Speaker 1: at times when you have a predator and prey battling
Speaker 1: each other. But of course, one of the key differences
Speaker 1: here is that these are natural occurrences or they better
Speaker 1: damn well be natural occurrences in a nature documentary, and
Speaker 1: they're not something that has been orchestrated through cruelty by
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 them in the box and shake it
Speaker 1: and try to get them 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 Roman orator um Marcus Cicero in his
Speaker 1: correspondences with a formal a legal client, a man by
Speaker 1: the name of Marcus Kalias. This is while Cicero was
Speaker 1: governor of Cilicia in modern day Turkey. So basically um
Speaker 1: Calias just continued to hound Cisero about how he needs
Speaker 1: him to have some hunters capture and send back some
Speaker 1: local leopards which they refer to as 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 Cisero over this, and Cicero keeps dodging him
Speaker 1: on the matter and saying, well, look though, 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, say 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.
Speaker 1: Uh Wayser shares descriptions by by Cicero the describe it
Speaker 1: as being you know, barbaric and unnecessary and uh And
Speaker 1: there are also some descriptions by a plenty of the
Speaker 1: Elder as well, in which I think we can we
Speaker 1: can trust him a little bit more here because he's
Speaker 1: dealing with domestic matters and not mysterious species that he
Speaker 1: has no firsthand knowledge of. But the plenty you will
Speaker 1: get vindicated a little bit later on in this episode two.
Speaker 1: But but in this case, Waser points out things that
Speaker 1: they were both writing about how Pompey the Great organized
Speaker 1: a series of spectacles. Um, but but what like the
Speaker 1: main 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 Cistero 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
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 were 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 Waiser's article. Uh,
Speaker 1: that there was this booming industry for folks who would
Speaker 1: arrange the capture of addict 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 enthusiastic. 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 to both in the literature of
Speaker 1: the day and also in h in the art of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, where you see murals and whatnot depicting
Speaker 1: individuals hunting these wild animals so they could bring them back,
Speaker 1: and that that, with the wildness of it, was something
Speaker 1: that the Romans seemed to crave, she points out, because
Speaker 1: the uh there there weren't there, weren't really that many
Speaker 1: attempts to try and raise them in captivity. They had
Speaker 1: to be captured and brought back to Rome as part
Speaker 1: of the appeal. I wonder if the idea about the
Speaker 1: methods used in hunting them does that show up later
Speaker 1: in the sort of styles of gladiators that appear in
Speaker 1: the arena. Because I know we have like the there's
Speaker 1: the style of gladiator that's mob old after the fisherman,
Speaker 1: you know, that has like the trident and the net
Speaker 1: and all that. So there are certain styles that seem
Speaker 1: to be based on on like the armies of opposing nations,
Speaker 1: or or on professions like fishing. I wondered also if
Speaker 1: that the hunting methods that they talked about with these
Speaker 1: animals contributed there. 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 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 simp with you
Speaker 1: for the elephants while they watch this brutality being done
Speaker 1: to them. I mean, I wonder if there's more of
Speaker 1: that kind of thing going on in the the appetites
Speaker 1: of the Roman Arena audiences than we would normally imagine,
Speaker 1: Like we imagine the audiences the gladiatorial games and all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff just being you know, bloodthirsty, like yeah,
Speaker 1: they want the fight, they want the violence, and and
Speaker 1: they love it and they're eating it up. I wonder
Speaker 1: if there was some element of the audience that I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's something more equivalent to to the kind
Speaker 1: of like hate watching or the hate clicking kind of
Speaker 1: thing that people do now, like where you know, people
Speaker 1: are constantly clicking on things on the Internet that they
Speaker 1: know we're going to make them unhappy. You know, you
Speaker 1: just reliably know if I click this link, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: feel bad and I'm not gonna like what I read,
Speaker 1: but I click it anyway. You know, I wonder where
Speaker 1: people going to the arena, like I know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: fee all bad, but I have to look at this,
Speaker 1: you know, that would be might be worthwhile to come
Speaker 1: back and explore that in greater detail, like the nature
Speaker 1: of these gladiatorial blood sport events UM which we should
Speaker 1: stress are generally there were a lot more varied, uncomplicated
Speaker 1: than UH is often relayed in popular media. But still
Speaker 1: we're violent, blood, blood thirsty events. You know what, what
Speaker 1: was the psychology of that? And then how much of
Speaker 1: that psychology still remains in the fandom of various you know,
Speaker 1: high impact sporting events or you know, actual mixed martial
Speaker 1: arts or other martial arts contests, or even simulated um
Speaker 1: athletic contests such as professional wrestling. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: have to come back to that, I think. But one
Speaker 1: thing the Waysier also points out is you know that
Speaker 1: like there were there their artistic UH renditions of say
Speaker 1: big cats that were used in some of these events,
Speaker 1: and they would be given names in the art and
Speaker 1: they would be kind of they're like some of the
Speaker 1: iconography would be akin to that that would you be
Speaker 1: used 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 the sympathy that one feels like this. Uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of connection like has existed throughout I think
Speaker 1: our our experiences with elephants, and yet cruelty to elephants
Speaker 1: continues to this day. Uh. And um, you know had
Speaker 1: certainly continued on through the you know, the history of
Speaker 1: circuses around the world. So um, yeah, I mean our
Speaker 1: relationship with animals is always complicated, even when we have
Speaker 1: you know, sympathy actually activated for them. Well, I know
Speaker 1: you wanted to explore more about the Romans and the elephants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I found a book titled Elephant Destiny Biography of
Speaker 1: an Endangered Species in Africa by Martin Meredith. And in
Speaker 1: this the author details the slaughter in the Roman Arenas
Speaker 1: in general in the in the opening of Pompei's Games
Speaker 1: in the b C and he mentions that no fewer
Speaker 1: than six hundred lions were massacured, just to give everyone
Speaker 1: an idea of the scale of bloodshed. Here, six hundred lions.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine, I mean, a lion is a lion
Speaker 1: is an apex predator, So there already aren't that many
Speaker 1: of them, And to remove six hundred lions from their habitat, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to essentially like basically put out the call and say, look, Pompey,
Speaker 1: the Great kneeds lions. So everybody that is in the
Speaker 1: in the business of catching lions or could conceivably catch
Speaker 1: a lion, get out there and start catching lions essentially,
Speaker 1: uh and and this but this would have meant just
Speaker 1: before the elephant event described previously. So what elephants were
Speaker 1: they catching? Well, the author here points out that the
Speaker 1: North African elephant was was the likely species. Is these
Speaker 1: were the elephants used by the forces of Hannibals Carthagian army.
Speaker 1: The African bush elephant that is still a round um,
Speaker 1: this one is too wild to to ride around or
Speaker 1: to really tame in the same way that one uses, uh,
Speaker 1: the Asian elephant and uh and and not to just
Speaker 1: you know, to a single out Carthage. Other groups used
Speaker 1: the North African elephant for labor in war as well.
Speaker 1: But anyway, following Hannibal's defeat, the region fell under Roman
Speaker 1: control and the Romans used these elephants in their bloody
Speaker 1: sports as well as in attractions that really have more
Speaker 1: in common with the sort of circus work that we
Speaker 1: see uh, you know throughout even like the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and then and then includes things like tight rope walking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they single he singles that out in the book. But
Speaker 1: here's a quote that touches on the additional levels of
Speaker 1: exploitation that get to become employed. Quote. Rome's liking for
Speaker 1: elephants meant that the North African herds faced constant raids.
Speaker 1: But even more perilous was the insatiable Roman demand for ivory.
Speaker 1: Ivory was used to decorate temples and palaces, carried in
Speaker 1: triumphal processions, and maid into a vast range of luxury
Speaker 1: goods thrones, chess, statues, chairs, beds, book covers, tablets, boxes,
Speaker 1: bird cages, combs, and broches. Caesar wrote in an Ivory
Speaker 1: Chariot Seneca possessed five hundred tripod tables with ivory legs.
Speaker 1: Do you need that many tables for large events? Large
Speaker 1: scale events? I guess Caligula gave his horse an ivory stable. Wow.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we got Caligula in there. I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: we were can actually uh be able to make room
Speaker 1: for him. So that being said, some of the ivory
Speaker 1: came from India and Ethiopia, but North Africa suffered the
Speaker 1: most and in seventies seven CE plenty of the Elder
Speaker 1: rode about the shortage of African ivory quote an ample
Speaker 1: supply of ivory is now rarely obtained except from India,
Speaker 1: the demands of luxury having exhausted all those in our
Speaker 1: part of the world. And of course, um the ivory
Speaker 1: trade still remains a threat to elephant populations, despite laws
Speaker 1: and the hard work of of conservationist world wide. And
Speaker 1: if you want more information about what's going on and
Speaker 1: what can be done, I recommend everyone check out stop
Speaker 1: ivory dot org for more information. Okay, but what was
Speaker 1: the ultimate effect on the elephant populations? Do we know
Speaker 1: if the Roman exploitation of these animals did it? Did
Speaker 1: it damage their populations? Did it drive them extinct? 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 we're 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 damage their populations enough,
Speaker 1: and all that that we think it strongly contributed to
Speaker 1: their decline, right, and that's something we're going to see
Speaker 1: in some of these other examples we bring it. 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 Empire, everything that was already present in
Speaker 1: human of civilization was there only maybe ramped up a
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh so their destructive tendencies, you know, they
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. Their various human appetites and are various
Speaker 1: wants and desires and our uses for the natural world
Speaker 1: that uh, at the scale we're doing things now are
Speaker 1: even more destructive than they ever were. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: sad fact, and it's going to come up again, and
Speaker 1: some of the other stuff I've got here. It's it's
Speaker 1: sometimes striking how similar the patterns of civilization level activity
Speaker 1: are between things that we do today and the things
Speaker 1: the Romans did to exploit their environment. Yeah, alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's go and take a quick break
Speaker 1: and we come back. We're going to continue to discuss
Speaker 1: Roman extinctions. Thank thank alright, 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 hats
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 peedge Coo called
Speaker 1: plenty of the elders Sylphium first recorded species extinction. Now
Speaker 1: the author, Ken perege Coo, I looked him up. He
Speaker 1: was 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: specs has gone extinct? In the words of E. O. Wilson,
Speaker 1: quote extinction is the most obscure and local of all
Speaker 1: biological processes that it took me for a second, and
Speaker 1: then I realized, Oh, yeah, I guess that must be true.
Speaker 1: Whenever the last ones disappear, it's always kind of a
Speaker 1: local and isolated phenomenon. Yeah. I mean, like a lot
Speaker 1: of these cases, it's it's looking to when was the
Speaker 1: last recorded like dependable and recorded sighting or killing of
Speaker 1: a particular organism. Yeah, and so the author writes, quote,
Speaker 1: the question of how many species extinctions have gone unnoticed
Speaker 1: in human history is unanswerable. Yet the past may shed
Speaker 1: light on the present, on what in our behavior has
Speaker 1: changed and what hasn't. So he starts off by talking
Speaker 1: about our old friend Plenty of the Elder. Now remember,
Speaker 1: of course, so we know the timing. The Plenty of
Speaker 1: the Elder's natural history was first published around seventy and
Speaker 1: so Plenty, in one section of his natural history dives
Speaker 1: into an ex explanation of sort of miracle plant that
Speaker 1: he calls silphium. The plant is described as having plentiful
Speaker 1: kind of stubby, thick roots, a finnel like stalk, blade
Speaker 1: like leaves that resemble parsley, and then at the top
Speaker 1: the stalks have an umbell. When an umbell is a
Speaker 1: cluster of short flower stalks all clumped together, so that
Speaker 1: the flowers kind of resemble a parasol. You've probably seen
Speaker 1: plants like this. Robert got sort of a little dome
Speaker 1: of little flowers all clustered together. So the Romans called
Speaker 1: it sylfium. It was also known as silphion by the Greeks,
Speaker 1: as well as laser wart uh and laser pithecum uh
Speaker 1: and and from this plant, apparently you can create a
Speaker 1: resin that is called laser l a s e r
Speaker 1: that might be pronounced losser. I don't know, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say laser. So this resin called laser Plenty describes
Speaker 1: it quote as among the most precious gifts presented to
Speaker 1: us by nature. And you could get this resin by
Speaker 1: making slits in the roots and the stem of the
Speaker 1: plant so that it's juices and its sap would leach out,
Speaker 1: and then those juices and the sap would be dried
Speaker 1: into a resin to produce laser Plenty. Cites a Greek author,
Speaker 1: probably the philosopher Theophrastus, who was a student of Plato
Speaker 1: and Aristotle's on the origins of the plant, and the
Speaker 1: Greek author claims that the plant was discovered in the
Speaker 1: seventh century b C. After a black rain fell upon
Speaker 1: the gardens in a region of north North Africa known
Speaker 1: as Synaica, which is now Libya. Precho writes, quote, it
Speaker 1: grew most profusely in a region of that country known
Speaker 1: as the sylphio Ferra, near the Gulf of Syrtus. There
Speaker 1: where the plateaus along the Mediterranean coast rises tiered highlands
Speaker 1: that received considerably more rainfall than the deserts to the south.
Speaker 1: Sylfium thrived in a region of hilly and forested meadows.
Speaker 1: So we're almost getting this picture of this pristine, you know,
Speaker 1: lush little area with a desert to the south, the
Speaker 1: coast to the north that has all these little plants
Speaker 1: with the finel like stalks and the parsley leaves and
Speaker 1: the umbell of flowers near the top. And in ancient
Speaker 1: times sylfium had a number of uses that recommended it
Speaker 1: to plenty as a kind of miracle plant. And among
Speaker 1: these uses documented by Peregeco 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 assi fatigue or something like that. So
Speaker 1: Peregiko notes that within Gaius 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 laser that you needed. And yeah, if you didn't
Speaker 1: trust them, if if they were a little sketchy, they
Speaker 1: might be cutting the product or selling something else, you
Speaker 1: know that they're calling laser. And think about what people
Speaker 1: were using this product for. I mean, it's something that
Speaker 1: if you you got something that was an inferior product
Speaker 1: 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 plenty of Sylfium might have been
Speaker 1: the species called Ferula tingetna or Farolla marmarica, which are
Speaker 1: North African plants that still exist today. Or of course
Speaker 1: it could be an extinct relative of these, but that's
Speaker 1: just rackham suggestion. It's widely believed that the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: may very well have driven this miracle plant to extinction.
Speaker 1: So how would that be. Well, already in his day,
Speaker 1: Plenty comp lanes that you can't really get sylphium anymore.
Speaker 1: He notes that in the year forty nine BC, Julius
Speaker 1: Caesar ordered the stockpiling of fifteen hundred pounds of lasers
Speaker 1: just the resin in the royal treasury. But by Plenty's
Speaker 1: own lifetime, Remember Plenty, this is published in seventy seven,
Speaker 1: so this would have been just about a hundred years
Speaker 1: later in Plenty's lifetime. By this time, the plant had
Speaker 1: vanished in its natural range, and the last known stock
Speaker 1: of it quote being valued at its weight in gold
Speaker 1: and sent to the Emperor Nero. And I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure Nero did something awesome with So what's the
Speaker 1: reason for this decline and disappearance of sylfium? Well, Plenty
Speaker 1: says that number. The main explanation Plenty gives is quote
Speaker 1: tax farmers who rent the pasturage and strip it clean
Speaker 1: by grazing sheep on it, realizing that they make more
Speaker 1: profit in that way. And to be honest, I'm not
Speaker 1: positive I understand what plenties saying there what that means.
Speaker 1: But I think pssibly it refers to the fact that
Speaker 1: meat from the livestock that's fed on sylfium got a
Speaker 1: much higher price because it was believed to taste better,
Speaker 1: so you could get more money for the you know,
Speaker 1: upgraded meat. But this is you know, this decimating your
Speaker 1: sylfium fields. Okay, So in a in a way like
Speaker 1: they're just multiple demands on the product because it was
Speaker 1: used for so many things, including people who just want
Speaker 1: to graze their animals on it and produce superior meat.
Speaker 1: But it all comes down to, like to demand for
Speaker 1: the various products direct products or products that depend upon
Speaker 1: the sylfium, and there were limited habitats in which sylfium
Speaker 1: would grow. So Perejiko also offers some other thoughts about
Speaker 1: would have what could have contributed to the decline of
Speaker 1: sylfium uh and a chief concern he raises his habitat destruction.
Speaker 1: He says that a very popular would for Roman furniture
Speaker 1: came from the thuon tree, which filled the forests of Synaica,
Speaker 1: and over harvesting of this would possibly lead to def
Speaker 1: for a station of the area that is now Libya,
Speaker 1: and in turn this led to soil erosion. So without
Speaker 1: tree roots to hold the soil in place, you know
Speaker 1: the soil roads in rainfall or in the wind or
Speaker 1: in anything um which destroyed the sylfium's natural habitat and
Speaker 1: the hilly meadows near the coast. So there you've got
Speaker 1: a couple of unsustainable practices coming together to conspire for
Speaker 1: the demise of this plant. He also points to unsustainable
Speaker 1: farming practices in the region which were aimed at short
Speaker 1: term profits but which came at the long term expense
Speaker 1: of soil quality. Also, he says there are historical records
Speaker 1: of political conflict over sylfium in synaica Um so in
Speaker 1: the region. In this region during the Roman Empire, they
Speaker 1: were like there were native tenant farmers and then the
Speaker 1: rich Roman landlords. And as sylfium became scarce, the Romans
Speaker 1: tried to put tight control on the production by saying
Speaker 1: only they could farm it on their lands, and they
Speaker 1: put fences up around the meadows where the sylfium grew
Speaker 1: in order to keep the locals out. But Perejko writes
Speaker 1: quote the natives practiced to kind of agrarian terrorism by
Speaker 1: tearing down the fences and letting their flocks graze on
Speaker 1: the sylphium to increase the value of the sheep's mutton.
Speaker 1: And then also apparently sometimes they would just go into
Speaker 1: the fields in the night and just uproot the plants,
Speaker 1: just pull them up by the roots, kind of as
Speaker 1: a middle finger to the Roman overlords. Romans go home.
Speaker 1: Another thing that's a possible explanation here, apparently the Romans
Speaker 1: were obsessed with garlic. Oh well we still have that.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and I don't often side with the Romans,
Speaker 1: but I cannot fault them there. Garlic is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean garlic not only is it a wonderful culinary ingredient,
Speaker 1: but I mean it has a number of different medicinal
Speaker 1: uses and you know in in in herbal traditions. Um,
Speaker 1: is that antimicrobial property? Yeah, um yeah, yeah absolutely, And
Speaker 1: so Perejhko writes quote Garlic was such a popular plant
Speaker 1: with the Roman army that it was said one could
Speaker 1: follow the advance of the Roman legions and expansion of
Speaker 1: the empire by plotting range maps for garlic. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: the Romans and Cyrenaica also apparently destroyed some sylfium habitats,
Speaker 1: so they could plant garlic locally. Uh. And so the
Speaker 1: question is did sylfium fully go extinct in the first
Speaker 1: century CE or not. Some scholars have argued that sylfium
Speaker 1: was cultivated at least until a few hundred years later
Speaker 1: in the fifth century, because there are references to it
Speaker 1: in some later writings, like people who have writing letters
Speaker 1: in the fifth century cee Talking about having sylfium plants.
Speaker 1: But these references could very well be to what what
Speaker 1: Peregco calls pseudo sylfium's other plants that were incorrectly identified
Speaker 1: as sylfium and had been for a long time, or
Speaker 1: also for a long time had been combined with laser
Speaker 1: resin to adulterate it, or had simply been sold as
Speaker 1: fake sylfium by yet another unscrupulous laser dealer. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: this is something I I was reading about recently and
Speaker 1: another book about just um. 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 patterns of human behavior
Speaker 1: leading to extinction of plant and animal species today have
Speaker 1: been with us for thousands of years. I mean this
Speaker 1: almost reads like a like a parody of you know,
Speaker 1: modern stories about how we we overexploited certain plants and animals. Absolutely. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're going to discuss a few
Speaker 1: more Roman extinctions, or at least in some of these cases,
Speaker 1: extinctions that were greatly contributed to by the Roman Empire. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, Okay. Can we talk about bears? Yes, let's
Speaker 1: talk about bears. Uh. The Atlas bear is um by
Speaker 1: some estimates, a notable victim of Roman civilization and the
Speaker 1: civilization that followed in the wake of the Roman Empire. Uh.
Speaker 1: These were the brown bears of northern Africa, and their
Speaker 1: extinction can at least be partially attributed to the Romans,
Speaker 1: though we have to stress here it didn't truly go
Speaker 1: extinct in the wild and in the wild to the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, so sometime later to be sure. But
Speaker 1: so we're saying that maybe the Romans did stuff to
Speaker 1: contain its range or something like that, Yeah, or certainly
Speaker 1: really kickstarted the tradition of of exploitation, uh and in
Speaker 1: habitat destruction that would reach you know, its final form,
Speaker 1: uh in the nineteenth century. Uh. So, basically what happens
Speaker 1: is when the Romans expanded into the Atlas Mountains of
Speaker 1: modern day Morocco, the bears were hunted for sport and
Speaker 1: they were captured for transport back to the Arenas in
Speaker 1: Rome as well. So we're talking thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: them again. You know, when we're talking about the the
Speaker 1: trade and exotic animals, it's not just like a few
Speaker 1: a few individuals here and there catching a few curious
Speaker 1: creatures and sending them back. You know, I think it's
Speaker 1: easy to fall back on. Uh. You know, certainly a
Speaker 1: lot of this took place steering, you know, the time
Speaker 1: of European colonialism as well. Um. But uh, a lot
Speaker 1: of times it brings to mind pictures of say, like
Speaker 1: the hold of a ship with a few different animals
Speaker 1: in it or something like that. But no, we're talking
Speaker 1: like tons and tons of creatures here, um, thousands, thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of bears. I mean, it's not like they're
Speaker 1: all that many bears to begin with, right, Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: and so the initial depleting of their numbers put them
Speaker 1: in a terrible position for a centuries of habitat loss
Speaker 1: and deforestation to follow, and also continued hunting, which was
Speaker 1: ultimately bolstered by the development of modern firearms. And they
Speaker 1: apparently when you look at the like the the the
Speaker 1: last known sightings of these animals, they pretty much line
Speaker 1: up with modern firearms being available, so that at just
Speaker 1: pushing the hunting over the edge. Um. This made me
Speaker 1: 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 bears 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,
Speaker 1: like you know, there were there were times there were
Speaker 1: certainly there were certainly animals that you know 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 natural creature that would be out there in the
Speaker 1: Roman arena, right, But the ostrich we're talking about about
Speaker 1: here is not the common ostriche that you're probably thinking of,
Speaker 1: and that you would you can see it most zoos
Speaker 1: and window and what have you. Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: was thinking when you said this, okay, there are some
Speaker 1: large birds I can't imagine in the arena. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about the cassowary. Oh yeah, Well, and is the
Speaker 1: scariest feed of anything I've ever seen? Well, yes, and
Speaker 1: ostriches can be quite terrifying close up for sure, and
Speaker 1: they can and they are dangerous animals. But but I
Speaker 1: have to admit it wasn't like the first thing I
Speaker 1: thought about is being something that there would have you know,
Speaker 1: really suffered due to the pressure of Roman appetite. But
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is not common ostrich, but
Speaker 1: the Arabian ostrich or the Syrian ostrich, also known as
Speaker 1: the Middle Eastern ostrich, and it lived in the Near
Speaker 1: and Middle East, as opposed to the common ostrige of
Speaker 1: Africa that we still know today now. To be sure,
Speaker 1: the Arabian ostrich suffered under humans for quite a while.
Speaker 1: They're mentioned in in other ancient texts. Uh they're even
Speaker 1: mentioned in the Bible. And given that they are giant birds,
Speaker 1: you know they're they've always been something of a curiosity
Speaker 1: for humans. And then you see this as far east
Speaker 1: as China where specimens were taken for display, but the
Speaker 1: Romans were were also rather taken with them. And again
Speaker 1: everything with the Roman Empire you can sort of see
Speaker 1: as like a leveling up of of of of appetite
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, but also just the ability to
Speaker 1: exert that appetite on the natural world. Uh So, because
Speaker 1: again these ostriges, they were exotic and they became something
Speaker 1: of a status symbol. You see them popping up on
Speaker 1: Roman coinage. From that, from that time period seem true.
Speaker 1: Sylfium sylfi amazon coins we have, which just speaks to
Speaker 1: like what kind of value was put on these on
Speaker 1: these species. But in the arena, the ostriches were made
Speaker 1: to pull chariots to participate in other you know, violent
Speaker 1: arena spectacles, which of course tended to have a terrible
Speaker 1: end for the animal. But they were also prized in
Speaker 1: Roman cuisine, both the meat and the eggs. I was
Speaker 1: the Romans were omnivorous to an extreme. You can read these,
Speaker 1: uh 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 parrot and flamingo. I think, yeah, there's some very
Speaker 1: exotic dishes, which again I think is part of just
Speaker 1: like the traffic of these exotic animals. Uh. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: apparently a really good book on it that I didn't
Speaker 1: have time to really get into a lot. But Patrick
Speaker 1: Foss wrote one called Around the Roman Table, Food and
Speaker 1: Feasting in Ancient Rome. Uh, and then he was looking
Speaker 1: at some Roman cookbooks and uh he appointed to at
Speaker 1: least a couple of Austria recipes, one for an Ostrich
Speaker 1: stew and one for a boiled Ostrich. So boiled whole Ostrich.
Speaker 1: Uh No, not whole, not whole. You know, there were
Speaker 1: limits to what you could do. But then I mean
Speaker 1: outside of this too, I mean ostrich feathers were prized
Speaker 1: um for use in ornamentation and costumes. But the Arabian Ostrich,
Speaker 1: the Syrian Ostrich ends up surviving the Roman Empire, but
Speaker 1: they did not survive the pressures of the modern world,
Speaker 1: so they're thought to have gone extinct sometime in the
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century. So they made it pretty far. But again,
Speaker 1: this is a situation where you can't lay their extinction
Speaker 1: entirely at the feet of the Roman Empire by any means,
Speaker 1: but you can certainly look to the degree that the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire added additional pressure upon their survival. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I've got another one where, uh, we don't have clear
Speaker 1: evidence that the Romans drove a species extinct, but there
Speaker 1: are some interesting clues about possibilities in history that that
Speaker 1: may have previously not been imagined. So uh, let's let's
Speaker 1: take a look at Plenty again. Plenty of the Elder
Speaker 1: from his Natural History Book nine, chapter five, and this
Speaker 1: one's the John Bostock translation where Plenty is talking about billina,
Speaker 1: the ballina and the orca uh. And note in this
Speaker 1: passage there's this word billina. It's believed to refer to
Speaker 1: some kind of you know, key toss, meaning like sea
Speaker 1: monster or big fish, which which for Plenty would include whales.
Speaker 1: But we don't. We think he's talking about a whale.
Speaker 1: We don't know what whale he's talking about. Okay, but
Speaker 1: this is where we get balin from. Is it like
Speaker 1: similar etymology? I would assume so yeah, uh, so he says, uh.
Speaker 1: The billina penetrates to our seas, even it is said
Speaker 1: that they are not to be seen in the Ocean
Speaker 1: of Gettyes before the winter solstice, and at periodical seasons
Speaker 1: they retire and conceal themselves in some calm, capacious bay
Speaker 1: in which they take delight in bringing forth. This fact, however,
Speaker 1: is known to the Orca, an animal which is peculiarly hot,
Speaker 1: hostile to the ballina, and the form of which cannot
Speaker 1: be in any way adequately described, but as an enormous
Speaker 1: mass of flesh armed with teeth. The animal attacks the
Speaker 1: billina and its places of retirement, and with its teeth,
Speaker 1: tears its young, or else attacks the females which have
Speaker 1: just brought forth, and indeed while they're still pregnant, and
Speaker 1: as they rush upon them, it pierces them just as
Speaker 1: though they had been attacked by the beak of a
Speaker 1: Liburnian galley. And that refers to like a sharp pointed ship.
Speaker 1: And he goes on and on about the orca hunting
Speaker 1: these billina. But all of it is I mean, this
Speaker 1: sounds exactly like everything we've discussed regarding the orca in
Speaker 1: the past. I mean, this is like straight out of
Speaker 1: a modern documentary in which we get to see, you know,
Speaker 1: spectacular underwater footage of the orcas, or at least the
Speaker 1: the the variety of orcas that that feed on whales
Speaker 1: going after them. Yes, I mean it is an accurate
Speaker 1: description of things you might see in some parts of
Speaker 1: the ocean. It scept there's a problem. In the early
Speaker 1: part of this passage, he's referring to some kind of
Speaker 1: whale that retires seasonally to the shallows to give birth
Speaker 1: in the area around what is now Cadiz, So that's
Speaker 1: in southwestern Spain. But the passage has long been of
Speaker 1: interest to marine biologists because there are no whales in
Speaker 1: the region that match this ecological and behavioral description, And
Speaker 1: in fact, there are whales in the Mediterranean sometimes, but
Speaker 1: they tend to be you know, like deep water whales
Speaker 1: that do not retire to shallow bays around Cadiz to
Speaker 1: give birth. So what was plenty of talking about, Like,
Speaker 1: did he get the story mixed up? Is he confused
Speaker 1: about the location or about the behavior of the whales
Speaker 1: or what or maybe was he referring to whales that
Speaker 1: once would have calved in that area but no longer
Speaker 1: do Now there are whales that that fit that ecological
Speaker 1: and behavioral description, but they don't live in the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: A couple of examples would be gray whales, which is
Speaker 1: the gray whale is a baleen whale up to about
Speaker 1: fifteen meters long or fifty feet about thirty five metric tons,
Speaker 1: and it's worldwide range today has been reduced to a
Speaker 1: couple of populations in the Northern Pacific Ocean, and one
Speaker 1: of its two population subgroups, the Western group, is endangered.
Speaker 1: And then also it would fit the North Atlantic right whale,
Speaker 1: which is also a baleen whale of endangered today. It
Speaker 1: lives in the Northern Atlantic. As the name implies, it's
Speaker 1: up to about sixteen meters or about fifty feet long
Speaker 1: and about sixty four metric tons. And the right whale
Speaker 1: was a huge target of the historical whaling industry because
Speaker 1: they were valuable and they were easy to catch, and
Speaker 1: they were hunted to commercial extinction by the mid nineteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and nearly to biological extinction. They're they're pretty much
Speaker 1: entirely gone from the eastern North Atlantic. There's a single
Speaker 1: population of about five hundred individuals that survives in the
Speaker 1: western North Atlantic and that's it. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of extinction, we've often touched on like the
Speaker 1: differences between extinct and wild. Uh, you know, absolute extinction,
Speaker 1: but commercial extinction is something I don't often think about,
Speaker 1: like basically depleted to the point where, like the the
Speaker 1: industry of whaling this particular animal is no longer viable. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Um So, so let's come back to the whales in
Speaker 1: a minute. A different question. When was the first time
Speaker 1: somebody decided they could base a whole industry off of
Speaker 1: hunting whales? And we know the hunting of whales in
Speaker 1: like individual cases goes back thousands of years. But the
Speaker 1: first known large scale commercial whaling industry and history has
Speaker 1: long been believed to be the basque whaling business of
Speaker 1: the medieval period. And there's no evidence that hunting of
Speaker 1: whales by humans would have happened at any scale large
Speaker 1: enough to have had an effect on whale populations before
Speaker 1: the Basque whalers of the Middle Ages, but there are
Speaker 1: earlier descriptions of whale hunting. Another piece of ancient Roman
Speaker 1: literature we want to look at here is an awesome
Speaker 1: poem about fishing by the second century ce Greco Roman
Speaker 1: poet Opien, called the Halley Utica, and this is from
Speaker 1: the Lobe Classical Library edition. It describes all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, the way the fishers go out in the
Speaker 1: boat and they stab at the whale with barbs and
Speaker 1: attached a hook to it with a rope, and that
Speaker 1: they then attached the rope to water skins or skins
Speaker 1: that 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: go and they spear the shark with the floating barrels um.
Speaker 1: But then uh Oppian rights 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 herald 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 thinks 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. They 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 Rodriguez at All and the authors here
Speaker 1: point out that whales are often archaeologically invisible, meaning when
Speaker 1: they die, their bones sink to the bottom of the ocean,
Speaker 1: and we just don't usually get much of a record
Speaker 1: of them even when they're you know, called or processed
Speaker 1: by humans. They tend most often to be processed on
Speaker 1: the beach and there's stuffed you know, all the blubber
Speaker 1: and everything taken away, and then the bones just get
Speaker 1: washed back into the water. Uh. And this study used
Speaker 1: DNA analysis of bones found in Roman and pre Roman
Speaker 1: archaeological sites, I think primarily ancient fish processing factories in
Speaker 1: the Gibraltar region, and they found among the bones that
Speaker 1: there were there were remains of three right whales, three
Speaker 1: 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 North 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 E and five, so that's the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire period. Uh. And the authors believed this indicates
Speaker 1: that the historical range of these two whale species, the
Speaker 1: gray 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 accessible whales were historically present, it might indicate that
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire had a forgotten pre Basque whaling industry.
Speaker 1: Quote 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 particularly adult females with disproportionate
Speaker 1: 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 decline 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 these whales habitats once included the Gibraltar region,
Speaker 1: but that the small number of bones over the short
Speaker 1: time span found doesn't necessarily prove that there was a
Speaker 1: large commercial whaling industry in ancient in the ancient Roman Empire, which,
Speaker 1: of course the authors didn't say they were proving that,
Speaker 1: but they just suggested as possible. Uh quote. I think
Speaker 1: that if these whales were present in such numbers, and
Speaker 1: we're being caught on an industrial scale, that we would
Speaker 1: have more evidence, perhaps not in the zoo archaeological record,
Speaker 1: but in the ceramic record. In the literary sources, the
Speaker 1: Romans ate and talked about an enormous variety of fish
Speaker 1: and seafood, and if the whale was widely exploited and exported,
Speaker 1: then it is strangely absent from many discussions. So she
Speaker 1: makes the point. Yeah, you might not expect to find
Speaker 1: many physical remains because of the way that whales are
Speaker 1: often processed, but you would probably expect to find writings
Speaker 1: where people talked about the whale industry. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: the Roman authors whose work survives today would have would
Speaker 1: have seen it, would have commented on it, would have
Speaker 1: been impressed by the scale of the industry. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: would have said that they ate it, would have recorded
Speaker 1: 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 that, they have a lot of consequences, and
Speaker 1: it's and it's I think easy to to overlook the
Speaker 1: consequences that they have on the natural world and have
Speaker 1: always had. And again we have to think about the
Speaker 1: scaling up of human behavior as our you know, our
Speaker 1: modern empires, in our modern um you know, nation states, uh,
Speaker 1: continue to scale up what they're doing sometimes uh take
Speaker 1: into into account their impact on the natural world, but
Speaker 1: perhaps not as much as it should be the case.
Speaker 1: Uh So kind of a cautionary tale, I guess from
Speaker 1: the Roman world. Don't kill the elephants, don't deplete the sylphium.
Speaker 1: And of course these are the mainly the species. Most
Speaker 1: of the species we talked about here were things that
Speaker 1: their absence is notable because they were a value in
Speaker 1: some way. These are the things that they are historical
Speaker 1: records of of going missing. Right, Yeah, so we're being reduced.
Speaker 1: So just imagine other species that were less remarkable or
Speaker 1: at least less valued, or you know, they weren't exotic creatures,
Speaker 1: you know, very you think of the various rodents or insects, birds,
Speaker 1: or what have you that could have also been destroyed
Speaker 1: by Roman activity and it just didn't make it into
Speaker 1: the history books. Yeah, all right, So there you have it.
Speaker 1: As always, if you want more episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, visit Stuff to Blow your Mind dot
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Speaker 1: can do is tell friends about the show. Make sure
Speaker 1: that you rate and review us wherever you have the
Speaker 1: power to do so. And if you have any thoughts
Speaker 1: on the the organisms we discussed today, the histories we
Speaker 1: discussed today, if you have additional ideas, if you have
Speaker 1: corrections additional organisms we might have missed that when extinct
Speaker 1: or might have gone extinct during the Roman time or
Speaker 1: do in part to the Roman influence, let us know.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Try Harrison. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: to answer any of those questions Robert just said, or
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
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