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Mystery Pineapple in an Ancient Mosaic
- rmm 5y agoIt’s a pine cone
- CamperBob2 5y agoWhy put pine cones in fruit baskets? Nobody eats pine cones, do they?
- MengerSponge 5y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/mrhahf/candied_pinecones_that_taste_like_a_forest/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/mrhahf/candied_pin...
- rhplus 5y agoYou can find pine cone soda at some Asian supermarkets: https://gyppotravelreviews.wordpress.com/2019/03/16/unusual-food-lotte-pine-bud-drink/ https://gyppotravelreviews.wordpress.com/2019/03/16/unusual-...
- overkill28 5y agoPine nuts are pretty common in Mediterranean cuisine https://www.thespruceeats.com/thmb/ccOvmaY71HiTZ9EOOk9cnxOsG8o=/2121x1414/filters:fill(auto,1)/pinenuts-5acd007ba474be0036f05ac0.jpg https://www.thespruceeats.com/thmb/ccOvmaY71HiTZ9EOOk9cnxOsG...
- ianai 5y agoThey’re common in parts of the southwest US too-piñon. Very very tasty.
- irrational 5y agoBut where they common in ancient times? Or are they things like tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, corn, chocolate, etc. that were introduced after Columbus?
- mytailorisrich 5y agoThey are native to the Mediterranean and pine nuts have been eaten for millennia there [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_pine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_pine
- Xenoamorphous 5y agoPesto is a popular recipe with pine nuts. Also, pine nuts are very expensive, here in Spain at least.
- fortran77 5y agoDecoration? For the Pine Nuts? To separate easily bruised fruit?
- dguaraglia 5y agoActually, I was going to point out that growing up I'd eat the nuts extracted from the cone of the Araucaria tree, which - depending on shape and how ripe they are - could look remarkably like a green pineapple [1]. ... but that introduces another issue, because I grew up eating those in South America and it turns out the tree originates in Australia. But it's not unthinkable that a similar pine cone could be found in Europe (and the vast Roman Empire of the time). [1] https://jerry-coleby-williams.net/2015/02/15/bunya-prehistoric-plant-ancient-australian-food-tradition/roasted-bunya-nuts-araucaria-bidwillii-2/ https://jerry-coleby-williams.net/2015/02/15/bunya-prehistor...
- thamalama 5y agoclean your glass four eyes, it's grapes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome_and_wine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome_and_wine
- mads 5y agoWe can buy pine cones here in the supermarket at certain times of year (in Scandinavia). They are usually around pear size.
- pvaldes 5y agoHow do you use it?
- mads 5y agoYou wait for them to open and eat the seeds or nuts as some people call them. These particular pinecones dont grow in the north, so they are supposed to be some sort of delicacy. There is a video of a family collecting and preparing them here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH4nSgEIVKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH4nSgEIVKo
- mcphage 5y ago> The most logical solution to this mystery, however, is that Roman artists were attempting to represent pinecones! I’m not sure that “Romans didn’t know how to draw pinecones” is really the most logical solution.
- nilram 5y agoI was going to agree with you, noting that it’s in a basket of fruit (with an offering of foods) but humans have used Pine nuts for food since prehistoric times (per Wikipedia). It seems the simplest explanation–it’s not that Romans didn’t know how to draw pinecones, but that a particular Roman had a hard time representing a pinecone in a mosaic.
- mcphage 5y ago> that a particular Roman had a hard time representing a pinecone in a mosaic It's too bad nobody hired him to represent pineapples, though, because he would have done a great job.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoThe unopen pinecone of the stone pine looks quite like in the mosaic, actually, and is the one to get pine nuts out of. Also, pineapples are called that because they look like pinecones (and perhaps especially those pinecones).
- trav4225 5y agoAliens.
- carpedimebagjoe 5y agoNext, on Ancient Aliens: pineapples teleported to Byzantium! How did it happen? Are Neptunians responsible? Double facepalm, Picard-style.
- irrational 5y agoThis seems like a stretch. Everything else in the basket is clearly a fruit. A pine cone isn’t a fruit. A pineapple is. It looks like a pineapple in a basket of fruit.
- multiplegeorges 5y agoSeriously. The basket is full of delicious edible things and... a pinecone? The theory presented is either missing some background knowledge we need to understand it (pinecones were highly valuable to Romans? I dunno) or it makes no sense.
- klyrs 5y agoPine nuts come from pine cones, specifically stone pine trees are endemic to Europe. It might not be that weird to find a pine cone in a fruit basket
- riffraff 5y agoNot only that, I'm quite sure green pinecones are edible and still eaten in parts of the world. To me it seems the mosaic indeed shows what looks like a "young" pine cone (i.e. you see square platelets), not the open one you would get pinecone nuts from. A quick googling suggests a few Russian recipes[0] though I feel I had them somewhere in Greece. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/329953-4-russian-recipes-pine-cones/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/32...
- mytailorisrich 5y agoMy experience is that the best pine cones for pine nuts are the ones just about to open. Before that they are not ripe, but once they are open the nuts quickly fall off (at which point you look for them under the tree before the squirrels do).
- mastazi 5y agoMaritime Pines, the kind that is most common in Central Italy, have edible pine nuts. I grew up in Italy and I remember pine nuts being much more mainstream there as a food, compared to other countries where I've lived. They are consumed both by themselves and as ingredients in various recipes (an example is Pesto sauce - the original Italian version uses pine nuts - another example is the Tuscan "torta della nonna", a type of dessert). Obviously the ancient Roman cuisine was very different compared to modern Italian food but I suspect Romans may have been eating pine nuts too.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoThat looks rather small to me to be a whole pineapple. If that's a pineapple, it would suggest the grapes were simply humongous.
- crazygringo 5y agoIt doesn't look like a pine cone... but it also sure as heck doesn't look anything like a pineapple either. It's supposed to be a pineapple the size of... 6 grapes? It looks like a small dinner roll. It doesn't look anything like a pineapple. This feels like an entirely made-up mystery, like something tour guides invented to try to make the tour interesting.
- phinnaeus 5y agoThe scale is off, I grant you, but it looks very much like a pineapple otherwise to me. The cross-hatching pattern, the leaves on top, and even the "eyes" in each diamond cross-hatch shape. The color, too.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoIt's not very clear to me where those 'leaves' belong to. It may be something behind. Apart from that you've described a stone pine pinecone (which is why pineapples are called that...).
- mssundaram 5y agoPineapples get successively smaller each harvest. But commercial growers don't sell them so you're used to only seeing one size if you don't live in a country that grows them. I have harvested pineapples as small as an apple.
- Reason077 5y agoYou obviously haven’t seen the tiny little pineapples they sell in Tesco. Usually they’re hard, sour, and almost inedible too.
- sgt101 5y agoLooks like a loaf of bread to me.
- pvaldes 5y agoHum, bread is a very good candidate also.
- metafunctor 5y agoTFA seems to have copied text mostly from this (much better) blog post from 2012: https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-pineapple-of-pompeii https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-pineapple-of-pompeii Here's a larger image of the mosaic: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/0_Mosaico_pavimentale_–_Grotte_Celloni_–_Pal._Massimo.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/0_Mosaic... Also, I think it's just a pine cone.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- RachelF 5y agoPerhaps, however there are other indications of pre-columbian contact: Traces of nicotine and cocaine, both New World drugs, have been detected in Egyptian mummies. A counter argument is why would a pineapple have been brought over and not the much more useful potato and corn?
- meepmorp 5y ago> Traces of nicotine and cocaine, both New World drugs Nicotine production isn't limited to tobacco; it's been found in the bark of various acacia species, for example.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- omega3 5y agoSome people are complaining that the size is wrong, the fruits were much smaller before selective breeding.
- wolfi1 5y agoreminds me of the case of the Olympic rings in Delphi: https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/olympics/games.html https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/olympics/gam...
- ingleswood 5y agoSuppose your prior on whether or not there was communication between the Roman-era Mediterranean and America is 50-50. What's more likely, pineapples were known in ancient Rome but there's only a single picture of one ever where the strange and exotic fruit isn't even foregrounded, and no mention in any written text ever? Or there's one mosaic among all preserved images and writings which has a weird anomalous representation of something European that could be interpreted as a pineapple?
- Clewza313 5y agoThere are non-American fruit that look awfully pineappley at a distance. Here's an Asian pandanus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandanus_tectorius#/media/File:Pandanus_tectorius_fruit_(riped).JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandanus_tectorius#/media/File... Although admittedly it's not particularly likely that this made it to Rome either, and it's non-edible to boot.
- pvaldes 5y agoIs very interesting the number of cases of artists and museums entering in panic and craving for attention in this time. Is like a mortal combat for historians. As all the other fruits in the basket are from Mediterranean, and it seems to have leaves at one end, my candidate would be an african root vegetable that for some reason would be forgotten later in Occident. My main candidate would be Colocasia esculenta that is from China, but was cultured in the Mediterranean since the Roman empire at least. Size, color and leaves fit. Can't be consumed without a special processing that is well known in Africa but is not part of the culture in Europe. Lotus root was a common crop in Egypt and could fit also if we assume that the pineapple pattern could be wrong. Pineapple has a very different arrangement of leaves much more spread, stout and spiny, and this fruit has the wrong size and wrong shape also.
- tkzed49 5y ago> Colocasia esculenta Widely known as taro root.
- sethammons 5y agoEveryone saying it is too small to be a pineapple: the fruit right next to it is a pomegranate. Take two pomegranates and stack them - not too far off now on the size of the pineapple. Add to that that fruits were smaller back then; but even then, I’ve had a pineapple nearly as small as a large apple. The real question: how big are those grapes?!
- nonameiguess 5y agoFor what it's worth, you can actually eat pine cones. I was surprised to discover this last year, but a woman in a Facebook group I was in when I still had a Facebook account one day decided to post all these pictures of the delicacy she had just finished making that reminded her of her childhood. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/market/pine_cones_jam https://www.etsy.com/market/pine_cones_jam She grew up in Soviet-run Ukraine, so I guess you work with what you have, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that people in Europe thousands of years ago figured out you could eat pine cones, too.
- mc32 5y agoIt also resembles custard apples/sugar apples. Though they also don’t have leaves at the top either. And, like the pineapple are native to the Americas.