Posted on 07/02/2015 8:13:32 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Giraffe was on the menu in Pompeii's standard restaurants, says a new research into a non-elite section of the ancient Roman city buried by Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D.
The study, which will be presented on Jan. 4 at the Archaeological Institute of America and American Philological Association Joint Annual Meeting in Chicago, draws on a multi-year excavation in a forgotten area inside one of the busiest gates of Pompeii, the Porta Stabia.
Steven Ellis, a University of Cincinnati associate professor of classics, said his team has spent more than a decade researching the life of the middle and lower classes in Pompeii, including the foods they ate.
The excavated area covered 10 separate building plots, comprising homes and a total of 20 shop fronts, most of which served food and drink.
The researchers dug out drains as well as 10 latrines and cesspits, and analyzed residues such as excrement and food waste from kitchens.
It emerged that the poor ate rather well in Pompeii, living on a diet of inexpensive and widely available grains, fruits, nuts, olives, lentils, local fish and chicken eggs. But they also ate more expensive meat, shellfish, sea urchin and salted fish from Spain -- not to mention delicacies such as giraffe meat.
"The traditional vision of some mass of hapless lemmings -- scrounging for whatever they can pinch from the side of a street, or huddled around a bowl of gruel -- needs to be replaced by a higher fare and standard of living, at least for the urbanites in Pompeii," Ellis said in a statement.
Waste from neighboring drains turned up variety of foods which included exotic and imported spices, some from as far away as Indonesia, revealing a socioeconomic distinction between neighbors.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
excellent
How many vertebrate in a giraffe’s neck?
In a human neck?
Extra credit: in Obama’s neck?
Do giraffes suffer acid reflux?
Sore throats?
Extra credit: the heartbreak of psoriasis?
Are giraffes yellow with black spots, or black with yellow spots?
We’re they ever sea creatures?
Extra credit: is Michelle Obama’s mother a sea creature?
Would the Romans have crucified me for my jackanapery?
Yes
No
Don’t flatter yourself.
They had some technology — but there is something desperately wrong with a society which tolerated (indeed enthused for) gladiatorial contests.
O that would be a big ole brisquit
analyzing 2000 year old feces - what a fun job.
I’d try it...
“I’ll have the leg of giraffe hold the fly ash.”
And they were still primitive barbarians.
It occurs to me that the giraffe may have been used in a Roman circus that pitted exotic animals against other exotic animals, and afterward was eaten, just as bulls killed in the bullring are eaten today.
I retain this deep fascination with the Sumerian-Elamite-Harappans. I'm pretty convinced by what I have read that these three started off as the same people and that they are probably linked to the Kartveli speakers and maybe to the Basque speakers
They achieved such a high state of civilisation when the Semites, the Aryans were hunter-gatherers or herdsmen.
Well, they are kosher.
Not so sure they weren’t Aryans (a branch of Aryans themselves).
” However it is now recognized by scholars that the Aryan invasion theory of India is a myth that owes more to European politics than anything in Indian records or archaeology. (The politics of History, The Hindustan Times, Nov. 28 1993).
Kalibangan Fire AltarsThe evidence against any such invasion is now far too strong to be taken seriously. To begin with, sites spread over such a vast stretch, measuring well over a thousand miles across would not have been all abandoned simultaneously due to the incursion of nomadic bands at one extremity.
Further, there is profuse archaeological evidence including the presence of sacrificial altars that go to show that the Harappans were part of the Vedic aryan fold. As a result, it can safely by said that the Vedic age also ended with the Harappan civilization.”
http://archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-harappan-myth
I’ll have an elephant ear sandwich
sorry, we’re out today
Ha! I knew you didn’t serve elephant ears
Oh, we’ve still got plenty of elephant ears but ran out of those big buns
;’) Yeah, it was totally a stolen joke. Or adapted. ;’)
Sumerian, Elamite, and Basque are considered language isolates; there’s no Roman-era sign of Basques or the Basque language, indicating that they weren’t around until late-Roman/early medieval times. Harappan, like proto-Elamite script, is undeciphered, but Harappan is generally regarded as agglutinative. It’s not Sumerian (which has no known living relatives).
Kartveli speakers (Georgian) have a known presence in the Caucasus beginning in the 5th c AD, probably came west along the steppe as did a great number of people, including (over a long period) the various drifts of Indo-European groups. Perhaps that’s what happened with the Basques as well — the Suevi/Vandals and Visigoths arrived in Iberia, coming from the east in stages, and overwhelming the depleted western Roman Empire. It’s not unlikely that other, unrelated or barely related and smaller groups rolled in at the same time.
The problem with giraffe cuisine, historically, is that one has to climb a ladder to read the cookbook.
:’)
They need to do away with bullfighting. Cruel sport for some sadists pleasure.
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