Pheasant

The common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) is native to Asia but has been widely introduced elsewhere as a game bird. Their original range extended from Taiwan and mainland China through Korea, Siberia, Manchuria to the Caspian and Black Seas. It was most likely on the Black Sea coast and along the Rioni River in what is the western part of modern-day Georgia that the ancient Greeks first encountered these distinctive birds.

The bird’s scientific name translates from Latin as "pheasant from Colchis" where colchicus is a further reference to the area on the Rioni River. This major Georgian river was called Phasis by the ancient Greeks and their term corresponding to the English "pheasant" is Phasianos ornis (Φασιανὸς ὂρνις) means exactly that: "bird of the river Phasis".

The birds are found in woodland, farmland, scrub, and wetlands. In its natural habitat the common pheasant lives in grassland near water with small copses of trees.

The pheasant was certainly known to the Romans and the bird was extensively introduced in many places across the Empire eventually becoming a naturalised member of the European fauna. As far as we can determine the bird was not known in the Roman province of Britannia having not been introduced that far West. Pheasants may have been naturalised in Great Britain around the 10th century AD, perhaps earlier, but seemingly disappeared from most of the isles in the early 17th century. It was rediscovered as a game bird in the 1830s having been ignored for many years.

Today the pheasant is a common sight in Britain's fields, woodland and, sadly for those struck by vehicles, its roads.  If the risk of becoming roadkill is not enough, then the open season for pheasant shooting begins on October 1st...

Romans in China?

Every so often, over the last decade at least, our modern-day bards, the media, regurgitate a story about “European-looking” people in north-west China claiming ancient Roman descent. This tale of a “lost legion”, spawning generations of Chinese villagers with fair hair and green eyes, has an appeal in itself that perpetuates its stranglehold on popular imagination. Most recently the author encountered the story posted on social media and, unsurprisingly, it once again grabbed the attention of various commentators whose belief in its "obvious truth" seem unquestioning.

At first the stories were interesting and in their telling seemed, well, plausible. Yet on closer inspection can we be so certain that the evidence presented holds up to scrutiny? Ever the sceptic, could there be a much simpler explanation?

The Daily Mail (29 Nov 10), in the footsteps of a Daily Telegraph article from February 2007, reported that DNA tests have shown the residents in a windswept village in Gansu are the blond-haired, blue-eyed descendants of Roman mercenaries who allegedly fought the Han Chinese 2,000 years ago. While no one in the modern town of Lou Zhuangzi is fair, and there is no proof that the Romans ever set foot in Gansu before the Christian era, there has been frequent debate on whether a group of Romans offered their services to the Huns against the Chinese in the battle of ZhiZhi in 36 BC before settling in the Gansu village of Liqian. Before Marco Polo's travels to China in the 13th century, the only known contact between the two Empires was a visit by Roman diplomats in AD 166. Yet the story persists that 145 Romans, taken captive, had wandered the region for years before becoming mercenaries. Indeed, the idea has spawned various theories, TV documentaries, novels and, perhaps significantly, commercial opportunities for the impoverished area.

It was back in 1955 that Homer Hasenpflug Dubs, an Oxford University professor of Chinese history, first proposed the theory in a paper entitled “A Roman City in Ancient China”. In it Dubs stated that some of the 10,000 Roman prisoners reported by Plutarch as taken by the Parthians after the defeat in 53 BC of Marcus Licinius Crassus’ army at Carrhae in southeastern Turkey made their way to ZhiZhi in Uzbekistan to enlist with Huns against the army of the Chinese Han Dynasty commanded by General Chen Tang. Prof Dubs theorised that this group of legionaries made their way eastwards and thus how a mercenary troop "with a fish-scale formation" came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later. Interestingly, Chinese accounts of their victory at the battle of ZhiZhi note facing a unit of soldiers numbering more than 100 who used an unusual “fish scale formation” - now popularly associated with a testudo - and the use of wooden fortifications foreign to the nomadic Huns.

Dubs postulated that after the battle the Chinese employed the Roman mercenaries as border guards, settling them in Liqian, a short form of Alexandria used by the Chinese to denote Rome. The professor's hypothesis took almost 40 years to reach China. During Chairman Mao's rule, ideas of foreign ancestry were not ideologically welcome and the story was suppressed, and the issue has divided experts ever since. While some Chinese scholars have been critical of Dubs' theory, others went so far as to identify Lou Zhuangzi, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city, as the probable location of Liqian in the late 1980s.

In the 1990s Chinese archaeologists were surprised to find the remains of an ancient fortification in Liqian that appeared strikingly similar to Roman defensive structures. Yet by 1999, no academic papers had been published on the subject, and no archaeological investigation had been conducted.  Despite this the media, residents and local government have remained unfazed. County officials, sensing potential tourist revenue, erected a Doric pavilion in Lou Zhuangzi (pictured opposite), while the county capital of Yongchang decorated its main thoroughfare with statues of a Roman legionary standing next to a Confucian scholar and a Muslim woman, as a symbol of racial harmony. Even entrepreneurs have caught on: in "Imperial City Entertainment Street" there is a “Caesar Karaoke” bar.

In 2005, after local authorities loosened control over genetic research, scientists and historians took blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian in the hope of that DNA tests would explain the unusual number of local people with western characteristics - green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair - mixed with traditional Chinese features. Typical of these residents is Song Guorong who, with his wavy hair, six-foot frame and strikingly long, hooked nose, stands out from his short, round-faced office colleagues. He epitomises local sentiment: "I really think we are descended from the Romans. There are the residents with these special features, and then there are also historical records about the existence of these people long ago."

Another resident, Cai Junnian, pictured opposite, said his ruddy skin and green eyes meant he was now nicknamed Cai Luoma, or Cai the Roman, by friends. He become a local celebrity, and was flown to the Italian consulate in Shanghai to meet his supposed relatives. Mr Cai said his great-grandfather told him that there were Roman tombs in the Qilian mountains a day and a half's walk away, but he had never connected them to the unusual appearance he inherited from his father.

The 2005 DNA test results confirmed some of the villagers were indeed of Caucasian origin, leading many to conclude their descent from an ancient Roman army, although others remained less certain. As Yang Gongle, of the Beijing Normal University said: "[Yongchang] county is on the Silk Road, so there were many chances for trans-national marriages…The 'foreign' origin of the Yongchang villagers, as proven by the DNA tests, does not necessarily mean they are of ancient Roman origin…Even if they are descendants of the Roman Empire, it does not mean they are necessarily from the Roman army. The empire covered a large area. Many soldiers were recruited locally, so anything is possible." Prof Wang Shaokuan has gone further pouring scorn on Prof Dubs's thesis, saying the Huns themselves included Caucasians, Asians and Mongols thus explaining the unusual characteristics of Liqian/Lou Zhuangzi’s residents.

Even so, on 21 November 2010, Newstrack India reported that experts at the newly established Italian Studies Centre at Lanzhou University in China’s Gansu province are looking into the possibility that some European-looking Chinese in Northwest China are the descendants of a lost army from the Roman Empire. Excavations are to be conducted on a section of the Silk Road, the 7,000-kilometre trade route that linked Asia and Europe, to see if a legion of Roman soldiers settled in China. Yuan Honggeng, head of the Centre, hopes to prove the legend by digging and discovering more evidence of China's early contact with the Roman Empire.

The Daily Mail story of 29 November 2010 is interesting for the misleading connections it makes to provide substance to the original Dubs theory and to perpetuate the myth. According to the story’s author, Niall Firth: “DNA testing of the villagers has shown that almost two thirds of them are of Caucasian origin. The results lend weight to the theory that the founding of Liqian may be linked to the legend of the missing army of Roman general Marcus Crassus.” Mr. Firth fails to mention, however, whether the DNA testing he refers to is more recent than the 2005 study. One can only assume that this is the earlier story regurgitated and thus not new evidence of proof.

Of interest, the article concludes with the bold statement that: “As part of their strategy Romans also hired troops wherever they had conquered and so many Roman legions were made up not of native Romans, but of conquered men from the local area who were then given training.” The implication is for evidence of some form of Chinese legion, but actually provides readers with a confused view of Roman history and more specifically the nature of military recruitment in the late Republic. In 110 BC the Roman army was composed of propertied men mostly of moderate means, but means nonetheless. They fought for the Republic because it was their duty as citizens. They were the Republic. By 107 BC a series of reforms, often attributed to seven time Consul Gaius Marius, had led to men with no means, who had to be equipped by the state, joining the Army. While the reforms were probably gradual to meet the circumstances faced by an expanding fledgling empire, they were the first steps towards a professional Roman army. In turn this resulted in a greater loyalty of these men to their leaders and their unit than the Republic. Leap forward in time to AD 400 and the legions were predominantly Germanic in origin, and supplemented with “foederati”, barbarian allies from beyond the Empire’s borders. But in 53 BC, the start point for the myth, this had yet to happen. The legionaries who marched with Crassus would have been Roman citizens, albeit with newly enfranchised Italian allies after the Social War. A century after Crassus and the legions of the Julio-Claudians were probably still mostly Italian. Clearly not an admixture of ethnic Chinese and Romano-Italians.

The recruiting of “foreigners” was not the exclusive purview of Rome. Pliny, for example, implies that the Parthians actively recruited prisoners for military service and the Roman historian Horace claims that the survivors of Carrhae were integrated into the Parthian army and married to local women. If this is accepted, then it is entirely plausible that the legionaries’ fate was to be moved to the far eastern fringes of the Parthian empire in Turkmenistan for use as border guards against the Huns - a practice familiar to many Auxiliary soldiers serving Rome on its imperial frontiers. There is, however, a problem with timing.

In 20 BC, during negotiations for the recovery of the standards lost at Carrhae between Augustus and the Parthians, it was stated that there were no prisoners to be returned. Various theorists have used this to substantiate the idea that the Romans must have migrated eastward to China as they were obviously no longer in Parthian hands. Unfortunately the negotiations were 33 years after Carrhae at a time when the life expectancy of a male soldier in the late Republic was between 45 and 50 years (excluding the risk of death in battle or other such mortal hazards). If we assume that most soldiers were aged between 17 and 30 years old during Crassus’ ill-fated expedition, then this would place them in the age bracket of between 50 and 63 years old which, when subject to scrutiny, seems highly unlikely and somewhat undermines the theory.

So, how to explain the Caucasian appearance of the Gansu villagers without the Roman hypothesis. Actually there is relatively straightforward explanation for the so-called “Chinese Romans” as explained in more much detail by Razib Khan in his blog entry “No Romans needed to explain Chinese blondes”. Based on gene studies, Mr Khan contests that they “are from the same population mix, roughly, of the Uyghurs”: a hybrid population with about a 50/50 West/East Eurasian mix that is the ultimate genetic result of the migrations and assimilations of peoples throughout the Eurasian region between AD 500 and AD 1000. Like many European populations, the Uyghurs have a West Asian and Northern European aspect, but critically they lack the South European ancestry. This is important, because it is dominant in both the Tuscans and North Italians. If the “Roman Chinese” are genuinely Roman, they will have this specific southwest European ancestry, but even the earlier 2005 DNA tests have yet to definitively prove the genetic link. For now, the Gansu villagers “are simply part of the normal range of variation on the Western borders of China, which was inhabited by European looking peoples like the Tocharians until relatively recently.” The people of Liqian are essentially a Chinese speaking group whose ancestry, with its equal portions of West and East Eurasian influence, creates the illusion necessary for this story’s persistent survival.

More Tea?

As costumed re-enactors know only too well there are occasions, especially in the height of yet another glorious British summer, when a warming cuppa would be most welcome.  If, however, your chosen period pre-dates the reformation, then you have a bit of a problem.  Imports of tea into Britain began in the 1660s with the marriage of King Charles II to the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza who brought the tea drinking habit to court.  So, while in "character" as, say, a Roman, some people never tire of pointing out that tea was unknown to them.  Thus the simple pleasure of enjoying a warming brew would be anachronistic and inappropriate.   Yet this got me thinking...we know from the writings of Pliny the Elder (Natural History Book VI) that the Romans were trading with China, so why was it that tea was never mentioned?

To find the origin of the refreshing cuppa, it is necessary to travel back to the year 2737 BC.   According to Chinese legend, the Emperor Shen Nung only ever drank boiled water until one day, while sitting beneath a wild tea tree, a breeze caused some of the leaves to fall into his pot of boiling water.  He found the resulting taste so stimulating that the practice of tea drinking was begun there and then.   Sadly it is not known whether the Emperor actually existed, or if the story is simply a convenient myth.  It is generally accepted, however, that drinking tea was popular in China long before it was ever exported to the West.

The first written reference to tea does not appear until the 3rd century BC when a renowned Chinese surgeon said it improved concentration and alertness.  There is still some debate whether the surgeon was actually recommending tea or sow thistles, however.  The confusion has been created by use in the record of the Chinese word tu, which is used interchangeable for both tea and sow thistles!  The eventual distinction between the two plants was made sometime between 206 BC and AD 220 when an emperor of the Han Dynasty ruled that tea should be pronounced “cha” - from where, until quite recently, we British get the slang term for a cup of tea.

Until the 3rd century AD, tea was only ever used as a medicine derived from the leaves gathered from wild trees.  But as demand increased, Chinese farmers began to cultivate the plant.  Tea’s popularity continued to grow during the 4th and 5th centuries AD, with plantations established along the Yangtze River valley.  Tea began to appear everywhere - taverns, wine stores, noodle houses; in fact, it was held in such high regard it was even presented as a gift to the Emperors.  By this time, of course, the Roman Empire was beginning its steady and irretrievable decline.  Sadly, therefore, the Romans never had chance to enjoy a good ol’ cuppa Cha an’ a slice a cake!

A Brief History of Foods: Salt

"A Brief History of Foods" is mostly aimed at improving my knowledge on the origins of the foodstuffs commonly eaten in Britain throughout its long history.  Over the years I have been surprised to learn how few of our commonly used ingredients are actually native to these shores, and just how many were introduced, when and by whom.  Perhaps you too might discover something new and quite interesting.

Salt is a chemical compound of sodium and chloride (NaCl) and is an essential nutrient, the amount of which in the diet has a direct influence on health. Today, it is almost universally accessible and relatively cheap. Most of us probably take salt for granted, but it was not always the case. It has been central part of human history for thousands of years largely due to salt's ability to preserve food. It was this property that effectively removed man’s dependence on the seasonal availability of food and increased the opportunities to travel long distances.

Some of the earliest evidence of salt processing dates to around 6,000 years ago, when people living in Romania were boiling spring water to extract the salts; a salt-works in China has been found which dates to approximately the same period. Salt was prized by the ancient Israelites, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Hittites and the Egyptians[1]. As such salt became a highly prized article of trade and was transported by boat across the Mediterranean Sea, along specially built salt roads - some of the earliest dating to the Bronze Age, and across the Sahara in camel caravans. The scarcity and universal need for salt has led nations to go to war over salt and use it to raise tax revenues. Salt is also used in religious ceremonies and its cultural significance has led some commentators to argue that it was a contributing factor in the development of civilisation.

In the early years of the Roman Republic, with the growth of the city of Rome, roads were built to make transportation of salt to the capital city easier. The most obvious example is the via Salaria , literally the “salt road”, that leads from Rome to the Adriatic Sea. The Adriatic, having a higher salinity due to its shallow depth, had more productive solar ponds compared with those of the Tyrrhenian Sea, much closer to Rome. It is commonly believed that, at certain times, Roman soldiers were paid with salt, hence the word “salary”, but this is unlikely. The Latin word salarium does seemingly link employment, salt and soldiers, but the precise link is far from clear. This misunderstanding probably stems from the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, who stated as an aside in his Natural History's discussion of sea water, that "[I]n Rome...the soldier's pay was originally salt and the word salary derives from it...".[2] Today it is more generally accepted that, although Roman soldiers were typically paid in coin, the word salarium is derived from the word sal (salt) because at some point a soldier's salary may have been an allowance for the purchase of salt[3] or the price of having soldiers conquer salt supplies and guard the salt roads, i.e. via Salaria, leading to Rome.

During the late Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages salt was a precious commodity carried along the salt roads into the heartland of the Germanic tribes. Caravans consisting of as many as forty thousand camels traversed four hundred miles of the Sahara bearing salt to inland markets in the Sahel, the semi-arid zone that stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. Such markets traded salt for slaves: Timbuktu, for example, was a huge salt and slave market. Elsewhere, in China for example, salt was both a driver of technological development and a stable source of revenue for the imperial government.

Salt pan in Death Valley National Park, USA

There have been two main sources for salt: sea water and rock salt. Rock salt occurs when water in enclosed lakes, playas (or salt pans) and seas evaporates leaving behind vast beds of the mineral, some of which can be up to 350 metres thick. In the United States and Canada, for example, extensive underground salt beds extend from the Appalachian basin of western New York through parts of Ontario and under much of the Michigan basin. While in the United Kingdom underground beds are found in Cheshire and around Droitwich in Worcestershire.

On an industrial scale, salt is produced in one of two principal ways: the evaporation of salt water (brine) or by mining from underground beds. Evaporation can either be solar evaporation or using some heating device to produce salt crystals.
In the correct climate it is possible to use solar evaporation of sea water to produce salt. Brine is evaporated in a linked set of ponds until the solution is sufficiently concentrated by the final pond so that the salt crystallises on the pond's floor. This is the method recorded by the Roman authors where, in order to aid natural evaporation, shallow rectangular ponds (multifidi lacus) were dug, divided from one another by earthen walls. The opening and closing of sluices (cataracta) allowed sea-water into these pools through canals. The water was more and more strongly impregnated with salt as it flowed from one pond to another. According to Pliny the Elder, when reduced to brine (coacto umore) it was called by the Greeks ἅλμη, by Latin speakers salsugo or salsilago, and by the Spaniards muria. In this state it was used by the Egyptians to pickle fish[4], and likewise by the Romans to preserve olives, cheese, and meat[5]. As the brine left in the ponds crystallised, a salinator had the job of raking out the salt and laying it in heaps (tumuli) upon the ground to drain.

Solar evaporation salt works

Throughout the Roman Empire salt-works were commonly public property, but were leased by the government to the highest bidder. The first salt-works are said to have been established by Ancus Marcius at Ostia.  The important point, however, is that energy is required to evaporate the water or mine the salt. In these cases, the costs of fuel and labour have an impact on the cost of the end product of salt. The cost meant that, in the classical Mediterranean world at least, there was greater reliance on the use of fish sauce, or garum, as a cheaper more accessible substitute for salt.

As for the solution mining of salt, the earliest examples of pans date back to prehistoric times where the pans made of a course ceramic known as briquetage. Later examples were small pans about one metre square (3 ft square) made from lead and using wood as a fuel. After the Middle Ages pans started to be made from iron, firstly in pans measuring about 2.1 m (7 ft) by 2.4 m (8 ft). Over time pans have gradually increased in size until they are typically 6.1 m (20 ft) wide by 9.1 m (30 ft) long. Regardless of their size, brine would be pumped into the pans and concentrated by the heat of the fire burning underneath. The change from lead to iron pans coincided with using coal instead of wood to heat the brine. As crystals of salt formed these would be raked out and more brine added.

In the second half of the 19th century, industrial mining and new drilling techniques made the discovery of more and deeper deposits possible, increasing mined salt's share of the market. Although mining salt was generally more expensive than extracting it from brine via solar evaporation of seawater, the introduction of this new source on an industrial scale had the overall effect of reducing the price of salt.

Bread and Salt: a traditional eastern European welcome

Today one of the largest salt mining operations in the world is at the Khewra Salt Mine in Pakistan. The mine has nineteen storeys, eleven of which are underground, and 400 km (250 miles) of passages. The salt is dug out by the room and pillar method, where about half the material is left in place to support the upper levels. Extraction of Himalayan salt is expected to last 350 years at the present rate of extraction of around 385,000 tons per annum.[6] In 2002, total world production (of sodium chloride in general, not just table salt) was estimated at 210 million tonnes[7].  Five years later global production had increased by 12% proving salt continued inestimable value to us all.
References

1. Bloch, D. "Economics of NaCl: Salt made the world go round", Mr Block Archive. Retrieved 2006-12-19.
2. Pliny the Elder, Natural Histories XXXI
3. Ibid.
4. Herodotus, The Histories, II.77
5. Cato the Elder, on Agriculture, 7, 88, 105
6. Pennington, M. (25 January 2005), "Pakistan salt mined old-fashioned way mine", The Seattle Times.

7. Feldman, S. R. (2005). "Sodium Chloride". Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology.

A Brief History of Foods: Broccoli

"A Brief History of Foods" is mostly aimed at improving my knowledge on the origins of the foodstuffs commonly eaten in Britain throughout its long history.  Over the years I have been surprised to learn how few of our commonly used ingredients are actually native to these shores, and just how many were introduced, when and by whom.  Perhaps you too might discover something new and quite interesting.

Broccoli (Brassica oleracea italic) is a cultivar of wild cabbage, which originated along the northern and western coasts of the Mediterranean and Asia Minor.  Wild cabbage may have been domesticated by the Etruscans, who first settled in the northern and central portion of Italy in about 1100 BC.  That domestication eventually produced wildly different cultivars, including broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts, all of the mustard family (Brassicaceae).

The Italian word “brocco” means sprout, bud, or shoot, and derived from the Latin brachium meaning an arm or branch.  However, Roman references to a cabbage-family vegetable that may have been broccoli are not entirely clear.  The Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder writes of a vegetable fitting well with the description of broccoli and most classical food historians recognise broccoli in the cookbook of Apicius.

As its name suggests, broccoli was eaten in Italy long before anywhere else.  It is first mentioned in France in 1560, but broccoli was still so unfamiliar in Britain that Philip Miller's Gardener's Dictionary of 1724 referred to it as a stranger in England and explained it as "sprout colli-flower" or "Italian asparagus”.  So, although the Roman cultivated and ate broccoli, it was not until the 1700s that this particular vegetable was widely introduced to Britain and America.

Strawberries

"A Brief History of Foods" is mostly aimed at improving my knowledge on the origins of the foodstuffs commonly eaten in Britain throughout its long history.  Over the years I have been surprised to learn how few of our commonly used ingredients are actually native to these shores, and just how many were introduced, when and by whom.  Perhaps you too might discover something new and quite interesting.

With the first week of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club's 2015 Championship in Wimbledon all but over, it got me thinking about strawberries (and cream) and where this iconic summer treat originated.  As usual, not all is as clear cut as you might think.  To give you a flavour of what I mean, back in 2010 Heather Driscoll-Woodford, writing for BBC Surrey[1], suggested Wimbledon's strawberries and cream had Tudor roots.  It is to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor and King Henry VIII's right-hand man, that the credit is first given to combining berries with diary.

Although, as we shall see, strawberries had been around in England and elsewhere since the Ice Age, the idea of teaming them with a dollop of cream had not occurred to anyone.  Yet someone in Wolsey's Hampton Court Palace was apparently inspired to do so.  History, however, fails to name which of the many cooks it was, toiled for hours in the hellishly hot kitchens to produce the food needed to feed 600 people twice a day, who first created the dish.  So, rather unfairly, Cardinal Wolsey is given the credit for this simple combination enjoyed as a treat by millions worldwide.

Commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits, the generic term for these flowering plants is actually Fragaria. Surprisingly, strawberries are part of the rose family, Rosaceae, and there are more than 20 described species, with many hybrids and cultivars[2]. Strawberries are not true berries[3]. The fleshy and edible part of the fruit is a receptacle, and the parts that are sometimes mistakenly called "seeds" are known as achenes[4]. Such achenes contain a single seed that nearly fills the edible outer layer of the fruit (known as the pericarp), but does not stick to it. The seed-like appearance comes from the hardening of the wall of the seed-vessel that encloses the solitary seed so closely as to seem like an outer coat.

Home growing wild strawberries

The first garden strawberry was grown in Brittany during the late 18th century[5].  Before this, wild strawberries and cultivated selections from wild strawberry species were the common source of the fruit.  Indeed, man’s consumption of wild strawberries has been dated to the Neolithic based on the evidence from La Marmotta, a Neolithic site on the shores of a volcanic lake, Lago di Bracciano, 32 km (20 miles) northwest of Rome.  Similarly, we have evidence for strawberries being gathered from the wild before 6,000 BC at Grotto dell’Uzzo in Sicily.

Although a huge leap forward in historical terms, by the classical period Roman authors were mentioning strawberries for their medicinal uses.  And that’s where the story seems to stall until the 1300s when the French are credited with first bringing the wild strawberry from the forest to their gardens where they would be propagated asexually by cutting off the runners.   The French King Charles V (r. 1364 to 1380), for example, is said to have had 1200 strawberry plants in his royal garden.

In the early 1400s western European monks were using the wild strawberry in their illuminated manuscripts and, echoing the ancient Roman literature, the entire strawberry plant was being used medicinally to treat depressive illnesses.

By the 1500s references to the cultivation of the strawberry become more common.  People were still using it for its supposed medicinal properties, but now botanists began naming the different species.  In England the demand for regular strawberry farming had increased by the mid-1500s.  Written instructions for growing and harvesting strawberries appeared in 1578 and by the end of the century three European species had been cited; Fragaria vesca, Fragaria moschata, and Fragaria viridis.

The cultivation of the modern strawberry, however, had to wait until the 1600s when Fragaria virginiana was introduced from eastern seaboard of North America to Europe.  The new species gradually spread through the continent, but it was still essentially a wild strawberry very different from the modern hybrid.  It was a French expedition to Chile, in 1712, that led to introduction of a plant with female flowers, Fragaria chiloensis or the Chilean strawberry.  Once again, although these new plants grew vigorously in Europe, they still produced no fruit.  Until that is, in 1766, when it was discovered that female plants could only be pollinated by those plants that produced large fruit, such as Fragaria moschata, Fragaria virginiana, and Fragaria ananassa.  European growers finally understood that strawberry plants produced either male-only or female-only flowers, and it was this realisation that paved the way for the cultivation of the common strawberry hybrid that we have today.

References:
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/surrey/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8756000/8756132.stm

[2]  A cultivar is an assemblage of plants that (a) has been selected for a particular character or combination of characters, (b) is distinct, uniform and stable in those characters, and (c) when propagated by appropriate means, retains those characters.

[3] Esau, K. (1977), Anatomy of seed plants, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Welsh, M. (2008) "Strawberries", Nvsuk.org.uk.

A Brief History of Foods: Pepper

"A Brief History of Foods" is mostly aimed at improving my knowledge on the origins of the foodstuffs commonly eaten in Britain throughout its long history.  Over the years I have been surprised to learn how few of our commonly used ingredients are actually native to these shores, and just how many were introduced, when and by whom.  Perhaps you too might discover something new and quite interesting.

Long pepper (Piper longum), sometimes called Indian long pepper, is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae.  It is cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning.  Long pepper has a similar, but hotter, taste to its close relative Piper nigrum from which black, green and white pepper are obtained; the latter is actually just a ripened form of black pepper.  The word “pepper” itself is derived from the Prakrit word for long pepper, pipali.

The fruit of the pepper consists of many minuscule fruits - each about the size of a poppy seed - embedded in the surface of a flower spike that closely resembles a hazel tree catkin.  Like Piper nigrum, the fruits contain the alkaloid piperine, which contributes to their pungency.  Another species of long pepper, Piper retrofractum, is native to Java, Indonesia.  The fruits of this plant are often confused with chilli peppers, which belong to the genus Capsicum and were originally from the Americas.

The first reference to long pepper is found in the ancient Indian textbooks of Ayurveda where its medicinal and dietary uses are described in detail.  It became known in classical Greece around 400 BC where it was mentioned by the playwrights Antiphanes, Eubulus, Alexis and in a Hippocratic text, although Hippocrates discussed it as a medicament rather than a spice.  Among the Greeks and Romans, and before the European rediscovery of the Americas, long pepper was an important and well-known spice being imported from northeastern India.  In fact, pepper was the quintessential spice of the Indian Ocean trade whereby large quantities of Roman gold and silver coins made their way into the markets of India.  So important was this trade that the Roman treasury stockpiled pepper, especially in the horrea piperatoria ("pepper warehouses") built by Emperor Titus Flavius Caesar Domitianus Augustus (Domitian), as an alternative form of currency.  For those who could afford "exotic" pepper, Apicius mentions it over 400 times.

The ancient history of black pepper is often interlinked with (and confused with) that of long pepper even though Theophrastus distinguished the two in the first work of botany.  The Romans clearly knew of both but, confusingly, often referred to either as just piper; Pliny erroneously believed dried black pepper and long pepper came from the same plant.  Long pepper (piper longum) is the hotter of the two, however, with Galen comparing its heat to that of ginger.  It fetched twice the price of black pepper in Roman times.

Round, or black pepper, began to compete with long pepper in Europe from the 12^th century and had largely displaced it by the fourteenth.  The quest for cheaper and more dependable sources of black pepper fuelled the Age of Discoveries; only after the discovery of the American Continents and of chilli pepper, called by the Spanish “pimiento”, employing their word for long pepper, did the popularity of long pepper fade away.  Chilli peppers, some of which, when dried, are similar in shape and taste to long pepper, were easier to grow in a variety of locations more convenient to Europe.

Today, long pepper is quite a rarity, but it still can be bought through more specialised food outlets.