Slashdot Mirror
Ancient Pompeii Diet Consisted of Giraffe and Other "Exotic'" Delicacies
Philip Ross writes "New research into Pompeiians' daily lives is broadening our understanding of this ancient Roman culture, particularly their eating habits, before Mt. Vesuvius brought it all crumbling down nearly 2,000 years ago. Over the past decade, archaeologists excavating a row of building plots discovered remnants of food that would have been widely available and inexpensive in ancient Italy, like grains, fruits, olives, lentils, local fish, nuts and chicken eggs. They also uncovered evidence that Pompeiians enjoyed a variety of exotic foods, some of which would have been imported from outside Italy, including sea urchins, flamingos and even the butchered leg joint of a giraffe."
And the donkey is good I hear for the rest !!
It didn't matter if it tasted good, the point was you were showing off your ability to buy meat from an animal that lived thousands of miles away.
i don't know why people here are assuming it doesn't taste good...we really have no idea. ...and let's not forget, different cultures have radically different preferences in taste.
it only takes one example, the Asian fondness for the to-our-western-palettes-horrific fruit Durian, to make this point.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Garum liquamen is still in the stores today, still doing the same things it did for the ancient Greeks and Romans. We know it as "fish sauce", with one of the most well-known names being Viet Huong 3 Crabs Fish Sauce.
[End Of Line]
Romans eating Giraffe (with honey?) was mentioned in at least one of them.
Sea urchins aren't exotic for Italy. They may be considered an exotic food in North America, but they're indigenous to the Mediterranean and eaten in the region.
wolf's nipples chips.
At least these animals were dying for a decent purpose: someone's meal. Exotic animals from Africa and Asia were often brought in to the Roman Empire for the simple purpose of being killed in the arena for sport. Of course, the Romans had no concept of "endangered species", nor is it likely that the giraffe was in fact endangered at that point in history(at least, not endangered by humans). And really, your rant makes no sense. It's not as if the tourists to Pompeii are standing around chowing down on roast giraffe legs or smoked tiger ribs. Should we stop eating cows or chickens, animals in abundance now, because they MAY be endangered 2000 years from now?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
And I've worked at Pompeii. Not sure where Ellis go the idea that there was ever a "traditional vision of some mass of hapless lemmings - scrounging for whatever they can pinch from the side of a street." Pompeii has long been known from both epigraphic and archaeological evidence to have been a prosperous seaside town and popular destination for well off Romans.
That different restaurants and tabernae catered to various social strata comes as absolutely no surprise, especially given the fact that habitations in the site range from modest shacks to villas resplendent with sculpture, virtuoso frescoes, and fantastic mosaics. Given wealthy Romans' well-known penchant for exotic delicacies, the presence of giraffe, etc. shocks absolutely no one.
About that giraffe leg:
"I'll have the large horse leg meal please."
"Would you like to go supersize for an extra denarius?"
"Err - yeah. Supersize me."
Any Roman city with self esteem had an arena for gladiator games. Part of these was the mass slaughter of 'exotic' animals. Not just predators such as Lions and Tigers but Flamingo's, Giraf's, Anteloupes and the like. In fact, the capture and import of these animals was big business and Rome emptied entire regions of its wildlife. Lions, for instance, are still extinct in Syria as a result of the capture and transport of Lions to the arena's of Rome. Quite a bit of the meat from these games found it's way to the market and was even given to the poor to show the generosity of the games organizers.
According to Ellis, this was the first giraffe bone ever found during an archaeological excavation of ancient Roman Italy.
What if that one piece of bone was a part of a funny advertizement that hung just outside the door? "We don't sell no giraffe here!"
Seriously though, why would they speculate that it was something that was eaten, if they only found one?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Do you have ANY way of relating to the world and its history besides through windows-bashing or other discussions of gadgets? And ners are supposed to be smart.
... I hear they taste like chicken.
WHAT ??? Sea urchins taste like chicken ?? No way!! If you have to find a comparison perhaps caviar is the closer (but still far) one, since you basically eat the eggs of the female urchin.
In any case sea urchins are more of a delicacy or condiment at best, not a consistent source of proteins. If anything because finding them, fishing them (and opening them) requires some dedicated manual effort, which is not easy to scale or automate.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Larks' tongues. Wrens' livers. Chaffinch brains. Jaguars' earlobes. Wolf nipple chips. Get 'em while they're hot. They're lovely. Dromedary pretzels, only half a denar. Tuscany fried bats.
BRIAN: Larks' tongues. Otters' noses. Ocelot spleens.
REG: Got any nuts?
BRIAN: I haven't got any nuts. Sorry. I've got wrens' livers, badgers' spleens--
REG: No, no, no.
BRIAN: Otters' noses?
REG: I don't want any of that Roman rubbish.
JUDITH: Why don't you sell proper food?
BRIAN: Proper food?
REG: Yeah, not those rich imperialist tit-bits.
BRIAN: Well, don't blame me. I didn't ask to sell this stuff.
REG: All right. Bag of otters' noses, then.
If the history's first FDA-like authority approved of giraffe even for the Chosen, why should we be surprised, the unenlightened pagans ate it?
What is interesting in the article is that the Romans possessed the technology — and the economy — to bring such exotics foods into Italy from thousands of miles away in a manner, that, while possibly expensive, was still affordable for the citizenry.
But we've known of such achievements for ages — Romans, for example, have largely stopped growing wheat in Italy long before Julius Caesar. Because it was cheaper to bring stuff over from Africa. (This made Egypt the place of strategic importance in the later civil wars.)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why not just make 'em walk? They've got long enough legs.
Pff they were missing out they should have tried the Galapagos tortoise that's some good eats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k-l1HLj9Nk
That's a tall order.
Table-ized A.I.
Bro calm down it's just a bunch of animals. It's not like they are people.
Several centuries before the Romans, the Greeks named the giraffe "Camelopardalis" due to the belief that it was the offspring of a camel and a leopard. This name is retained to this day for the constellation of The Giraffe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelopardalis).
While there weren't wild giraffes wandering around Greece or Asia Minor in antiquity, there certainly were in north Africa, and so through trade, the Greeks were familiar enough with giraffes to assign them a Greek name (rather than borrow, say, a local Nubian or Carthaginian word for it), but ignorant of their mating habits. Perhaps they had only ever seen adult specimens...or maybe just skins.
Whatever the truth, I've no doubt a giraffe dish in either the Greek or Roman style would be delicious.
Hannibal brought elephants into continental Europe.
True, elephants to this day have a history of being used as draft animals, but he also brought them farther and under more difficult circumstances (war with Rome).
Pompeii is in the southern part of the Italian peninsula and it doesn't seem unreasonable that giraffes could have been brought as livestock from Africa. Roman Carthage was an important city in the Roman empire and likely would have attracted all manner of exotic trade from Africa.
They used to f...k Giraffe before eating them, proof try image search 'secret museum naples'
Ocelot spleens. Jaguar earlobes. Wolf nipple chips. Get 'em while they're hot, they're lovely.
Giraffes aren't endangered. It's like you don't actually care.
..."Carnivore Restaurant" and other ESP restaurants encourage bushmeat trading. I hope a volcano erupts on top of them...
Tell us where!! (and how much...)
Hmmm?
In Pompeii, when you walked into a bar and ordered a 'long neck', you actually got a long neck!
I thought the distinction behind Pompeii was that it, for the most part, did NOT come crumbling down.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and...
Sea urchins, really the ovaries with roe in them, are still eaten in the Mediterranean. This applies to Alexandria in Egypt, and shared by today's Greeks, Italians and (I think) the south of France. They are eaten fresh with some lime juice squeezed on them.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
No, not someone's meal. Someone's amusing. Or do you really think giraffe was a significant part of Rome feeding?
I think you will find that the meat of all the animals killed in the arenas were sold or given away for food. This is usually the case and still the case for bull fights in Mexico and vacation hunting trips in South America by rich Americans. You'll also find that most animal sacrifices throughout history were also eaten. Once dedicated to the god, they were then eaten with small amount, usually inedible things anyway, being burnt at the altar. Any possible food was usually too precious to waste.
Leg or breast or neck or neck or neck or neck or neck?