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Trove of spices from around the world on sunken fifteenth-century Norse ship
- thot_experiment 4y agoI wonder if we'll ever chance across some silphium with enough genetic data to revive it in one of these archeological finds. I've always found that story fascinating and I'd love to see the mystery solved one day.
- rcme 4y agoWow, I hadn't heard of that, but what a fascinating plant. Apparently, it's seeds or fruits may have been heart-shaped, and it was used as an aphrodisiac, which may be the reason why we associate the heart shape with love.
- dmckeon 4y agoIt is also thought to have been a contraceptive and abortifacient.
- wpietri 4y agoInterestingly, even many of the plants with modern descendants were very different in centuries previous. Ryan North gave a talk at the Long Now Foundation recently with an interesting bit on how much selective breeding has changed food. It starts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQg9YPSfAxg#t=29m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQg9YPSfAxg#t=29m Especially interesting to me were the images of watermelon from painted still lifes over the centuries. It was clearly a very different fruit to the one we know today.
- karmelapple 4y agoI’ve heard about the watermelons, but it seems to be debunked. See this HN comment from awhile ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23643871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23643871 (But I love Ryan North)
- wpietri 4y agoThanks! You should let him know, as he gave this talk very recently.
- refuse 4y agoThere's a scientist that thinks they found some live silphium: https://allthatsinteresting.com/silphium https://allthatsinteresting.com/silphium
- satvikpendem 4y agoSome people posit that it's just another varietal of asafetida.
- 6177c40f 4y agoMy understanding is that we don't even know for sure if it went extinct. We just don't know what it actually was/is. There's been a number of extant species that people have proposed as being silphium, but it's very hard to say if any of them actually are, and if so, which.
- cletus 4y agoWe have this notion of historic times that people largely stayed in place. We find evidence repeatedly that this just isn't the case. A good example is the spread of wheat cultivation across Europe. We can get fairly accurate reads on this because of DNA sequencing of wheat and it was a new crop. There is cultivated wheat at the bottom of the English Channel, meaning it was farmed there before the English Chanel was flooded by the North American ice sheet melting. Another example is the from the Bronze Age (>3300 years ago). There was a vast trade network at this time that we have direct evidence for [1], being a ship carrying goods from all across the known world from modern day Afghanistan to Europe. The Bronze Age spectacularly and suddenly ended, which is a whole other story. It's still speculated as to what caused this. One interesting aspect are the so caled "Sea Peoples", that were directly documented (and drawn) by the Egyptians at the time. There's speculation that the "Sea Peoples" themselves were refugees from some other disaster. This too hints at great mobility that so many people could migrate so far. Trade and human movement in historic times was way more extensive and common than you might otherwise assume. [1]: https://medium.com/teatime-history/bronze-age-shipwreck-reveals-the-luxurious-lifestyles-of-the-ancient-elite-42f880855c57 https://medium.com/teatime-history/bronze-age-shipwreck-reve...
- graphe 4y agoIt is the case for most of the settled people and civilizations. Just because a few traders, monguls and sea peoples exist doesn't mean most people don't live and die within a few miles of their birthplaces. This is even true today. A few north Korean traders does not make north Korean people an international trading culture.
- tomrod 4y ago> international trading culture. It kind of does, just that the people themselves aren't terribly mobile. Trade is goods and capital, not people.
- graphe 4y agoIf the hangul emperor married a perisan princess and got Persian goods, it doesn't change the status or the lives of average people. On the Indian subcontinent traders had participation from all walks of life so I'd call it way more culturally international. I'd argue royalty getting preferential treatment isn't culturally relevant for a people.
- graphe 4y ago> The researchers found spices such as nutmeg, cloves, mustard and dill. They also found samples of other plant material, such as saffron and ginger, peppercorns and almonds. Some of the spices would have come from as far away as Indonesia, suggesting that King Hans had developed an advanced trade network. The researchers also found snack items, such as dried blackberries, raspberries, grapes and flax, each find showing just how rich and powerful Hans had become. The researchers also found one non-edible plant, henbane, which, in the past, was used for medicinal purposes. Can we determine where the spices came from? Did he trade with the Mughal empire or an agent of theirs? All of them sound South Asian, except I don't know where almonds came from.
- fakedang 4y ago15th century, 1400s, Muvhal Empire did not exist. It's possible there was centuries-long trade between Vikings and Arabs that stopped at the Horn of Africa, because Arabs kept the route to India, Malacca and the Moluccas a mostly well-guarded secret against Europeans. That being said, it's possible for the Scandinavians to have indirectly acquired these spices from the Arabs, because the Arabs certainly resold a lot of them from the Vijayanagara Empire and the Srivijiya Sultanate (both which existed around that time). But the lack of any outposts or major presence like the Arabs did, means that the Europeans did not have direct access to Greater Asia (India, China, SEA) until the Portuguese opened up the routes. As you can expect, the number of middlemen involved meant that the prices commanded by these goods was extremely high. Edit:- Denmark had an outpost in Tuticorin (Southern India) much later though
- graphe 4y agoThanks, I mixed up my centuries. It's very impressive how far these spices went. Pre Mughal India is very interesting, I listened to a podcast about the Vijayanagara empire on fall of civilizations.
- WaitWaitWha 4y agoI can easily imagine a trade route from the Kara sea, southbound rivers (Yenisei, Angara and alike?) into the Baikal sea...
- INTPenis 4y agoHenbane was pretty interesting. Apparently found in other viking graves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus_niger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus_niger
- hbarka 4y agoThe Arab trade into South and Southeast Asia dates back to the 7th century. Arab merchants also traded with Vikings. Trading relationships amongst different tribes and regions developed by land and sea from the 7th century onwards into what we can probably classify as international trade (although they weren’t defined as nation-states then).
- borissk 4y agoThe state of Russia is a result of the trade between Vikings and Arabs and Vikings and and the East Roman Empire. The Vikings built fortified ports along the trade ways and eventually came to rule the surrounding Slavic tribes (the Slavs invited Rurik to rule them, according to the Primary Chronicle).
- hbarka 4y agoAre you referring to the Kyivan Rus'? Present day state of Russia are from Muscovites, a different historical entity from the Rus’.
- borissk 4y agoNot really. The capital of Rus moved from Lagoda to Novgorod to Kiev to Vladimir to Moscow. The rulers of Moscow up until the end of 16th century were members of the Rurik dynasty - the same one that conquered Kiev in 9th century.
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- satvikpendem 4y agoEvery time I hear about treasure troves of spices, I wonder, are they really that good and valuable? I mean we have the same spices today, we don't particularly use a lot of them and even when we do, the taste is better, but not extremely so. Perhaps if you just had salt to season your food, anything that'd make it taste better would be valuable.
- baremetal 4y ago> They were also used as a way to mask unpleasant tastes and odors of food, and later, to keep food fresh [1] Perhaps food wasn't always so fresh back then. [1] https://www.mccormickscienceinstitute.com/resources/history-of-spices https://www.mccormickscienceinstitute.com/resources/history-...
- idlewords 4y agoThis theory never made any sense to me. Why mask the taste of substandard food with incredibly expensive condiments?
- boomboomsubban 4y agoBecause the alternative is starvation. It's not like great food is available for much of the winter in many places. If you couldn't eat the somewhat rotten pie, you didn't eat.
- idlewords 4y agoSo in that situation trade the costly spices for ten non-rotten pies, is my point.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoThere aren't ten non-rotten pies available. As winter progresses, almost all the food is getting progressively more rotten. This story is of a Norwegian ship, a place where they regularly ate fish soaked in lye. Their food options weren't great.
- culi 4y ago> The researchers also found one non-edible plant, henbane, which, in the past, was used for medicinal purposes. They always dance around hallucinogenic plants. Just admit people have basically been dropping acid for centuries
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- Waterluvian 4y agoThe comment didn’t say that they did drugs or that everyone does.
- culi 4y agoIf you're European you should know your ancestors likely settled down to practice agriculture in large part so they could drink a massive amount of alcohol
- inglor_cz 4y agoIndeed it is not even clear whether "beer is a liquid bread" or "bread is a solid beer".
- ssnistfajen 4y agoAlcoholic beverages existed for as long as agriculture itself. Cannabis use is found in many ancient civilizations. Just because you consider recreational drugs to be sanctimonious doesn't mean ancient humans shared the same arbitrary moral values as you.
- narrator 4y agoHenbane's active ingredient is scopolamine which, as with most strong anti-cholinergics, is a really bad trip. For Example: https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=110604 https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=110604