[HN Gopher] Trove of spices from around the world on sunken fift...
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Trove of spices from around the world on sunken fifteenth-century
Norse ship
Author : wglb
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-02-11 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| INTPenis wrote:
| Henbane was pretty interesting. Apparently found in other viking
| graves.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus_niger
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Every 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Salt was also very expensive.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Salarium, indeed.
| baremetal wrote:
| > 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-...
| cletus wrote:
| We 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-
| reve...
| graphe wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| > international trading culture.
|
| It kind of does, just that the people themselves aren't
| terribly mobile.
|
| Trade is goods and capital, not people.
| graphe wrote:
| If 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.
| tomrod wrote:
| Those would probably be thought of as gifts, rather than
| trade.
|
| We see even in neolithic times that people ranged far
| with trade goods and community, such as sites like
| Gobekli Tepe.
| Fezzik wrote:
| To bolster this point: even today less than half the world
| population has flown on an airplane.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Assuming than implies "somewhere between 45-50%", that's
| higher than I would have thought. But a much higher
| percentage would have traveled 100s if not 1000kms over
| land surely.
| tomcam wrote:
| They're the smart ones
| wizofaus wrote:
| None of that debunks the reasonable assumption that a random
| individual from any previous century, particularly those before
| there were widely available means of travel other than walking
| and perhaps horseback, would have moved around a lot less in
| their lifetime than one from today. Further, I just recently
| watched a video of essentially an animated map showing the
| spread of humanity and human civilization across the globe
| compressed into 19 minutes, and even if you only consider
| "history" as beginning around 2000 BC it really did take an
| awful long time for trading populations to spread out from the
| near east+Egypt region to the rest of the world, first
| gradually taking in most of modern day Europe and then with a
| massive acceleration starting sometime around the 1600s that
| led to our modern idea of a world where almost no matter where
| you're born, you have a reasonable chance of being able to
| travel to another country, and of course for those of us in the
| developed world, a decent chance of travelling around the globe
| multiple times within a single lifetime. Even just 100 years
| ago that privilege would have been restricted to the very few.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > those of us in the developed world, a decent chance of
| travelling around the globe multiple times within a single
| lifetime. Even just 100 years ago that privilege would have
| been restricted to the very few
|
| I think you're forgetting how expensive international airfare
| was even in the 1980s. Traveling around the world multiple
| times in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s would have been very
| expensive compared to today (note: I'm considering airfare
| only, not accommodations)
| wizofaus wrote:
| Our family was basically middle class growing up but we
| traveled to Europe (from Australia) twice within a few
| years, both times in the 80s. But sure, you don't have to
| go a full 100 years back for that sort of luxury to be a
| rare thing even in wealthy countries - still, there were
| quite a few that made one-time journeys across half the
| globe at least, and many of us today have parents and even
| multiple grandparents that did just that of course.
| appletrotter wrote:
| > We have this notion of historic times that people largely
| stayed in place.
|
| Good rhetorical technique, I'm sure a lot of people have a
| relatively 'naive' preconception about such things - but I also
| think a lot of people do have an understanding that these kinds
| of things were possible as it is.
| biorach wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Citation? I'm no expert but I had thought that the introduction
| of farming to the region post-dated the inundation of the
| channel by millennia.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Who is "we"?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I 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.
| refuse wrote:
| There's a scientist that thinks they found some live silphium:
|
| https://allthatsinteresting.com/silphium
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Some people posit that it's just another varietal of asafetida.
| rcme wrote:
| Wow, 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 wrote:
| It is also thought to have been a contraceptive and
| abortifacient.
| wpietri wrote:
| Interestingly, 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
|
| 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 wrote:
| I'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
|
| (But I love Ryan North)
| graphe wrote:
| > 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.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I am also curious if it is possible to determine if the spices
| were pure (given technology/cultivation constraints of the
| day). Seems like there would be an enormous incentive to dilute
| the product as much as possible when the buyer likely has very
| limited opportunity to contrast quality.
| culi wrote:
| I have trouble imagining how you would "dilute" something
| like flaxseeds or nutmegs (the seeds are the size of a small
| egg). Do you make fake seeds that look the same and just mix
| them in with the other seeds?
| paganel wrote:
| Most probably via the Mediterranean, this being 1495 that meant
| Venice, with some chances of the Southern French doing the
| transport itself across some part of Mediterranean as the
| Venetians were already beginning to not be that much interested
| in sailing. The Venetians themselves were purchasing the spices
| either from Alexandria or from Beirut.
|
| There's a 1963 presentation by Ruggiero Romano, Alberto Tenenti
| and Ugo Tucci called _Venise et la Route du Cap: 1499-1517_ ,
| which has this table [1] of imports of spices in the
| Mediterranean Sea and Southern Europe going from the late 1490s
| to the early 1500s. One can see that the Portuguese only
| started bringing spices in Europe in 1501, and they started
| rivalling the Venetians in terms of quantities in 1503.
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/a/5bVsi6m
| fakedang wrote:
| 15th 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 wrote:
| Thanks, 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.
| Falonix wrote:
| [flagged]
| hbarka wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| The 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).
| Falonix wrote:
| [flagged]
| Falonix wrote:
| [flagged]
| Falonix wrote:
| [flagged]
| culi wrote:
| > 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
| narrator wrote:
| Henbane'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
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Henbane was used for all sorts, including brewing.
|
| As for the trip... we have it growing wild at our place, and
| I've been schooling myself as a herbalist/botanist, mostly
| for practical purposes. I've smoked it and had it in tea.
| It's not a "oh wow I want to do that again!" but it's also
| not "oh sweet Jesus no". Floaty, tranquil, visuals not unlike
| DMT, and a terrible stomach upset.
|
| Some locals still use it, as an alternative to hemlock, to
| stun fish.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Is that the ones that they call the zombie drug on the TV
| shows?
| nszceta wrote:
| Read post #2
|
| https://bluelight.org/xf/threads/scopolamine.765088/
| narrator wrote:
| It's used in parts of Latin America by thieves to rob
| people. They become delirious and detached from reality and
| will do whatever the thieves want.
|
| Circe also used it in the Odyssey to turn Odysseus's men
| into pigs. Odysseus prevented succumbing to Circe's poison
| by taking galantamine from the flowers of Galanthus
| nivalis, which is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor.
| Galantamine counteracts the effects of anticholinergics by
| inhibiting the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine.
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