Animal Extinctions caused by the Roman Military

[M. Demetrius]

Cave bears! Let's reintroduce cave bears and sabertooth cats! They should liven up the party, don't you think?

Not all extinctions are a bad thing. I don't want to deal with Tyrannosaurus Rex on the way to the grocery store, frankly, even though they used to live around my parts. Or Mosasaurs when I'm swimming in the lake, either, for that matter.

[jkaler48]

Cave bears! Let's reintroduce cave bears and saber-tooth cats! They should liven up the party, don't you think?

I agree! Bringing back extinct predators would be a good way to reduce the human population to it's natural level of perhaps a couple of hundred thousand worldwide. Extremist environmentalist leaders would be happy to see this if they were included in the group and as long as they could still keep their private jets limos and large mansions. This is somewhat similar to the attitude of ancient and medieval elites who kept nature reserves, private zoos and Animal entertainments for their benefit to the detriment of local human populations.

[M. Demetrius]

Well, we're stepping into the muddy waters of modern politics with the environmentalist/world population statements, but naturally, those aforementioned elitists couldn't fly their jets with that small of a population, because there would be insufficient workforce to refine their fuel, build and repair their machines, and stuff their pockets with contributions, right?

Someone computed that if every living person on the globe today were given 2000 sq feet (around 225 square meters) for their very own, there would still be room left over in Texas. The math works out pretty well.

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

Someone computed that if every living person on the globe today were given 2000 sq feet (around 225 square meters) for their very own, there would still be room left over in Texas. The math works out pretty well.

... of course, only if 70 % of people are satisfied with a 2000 sq feet swimming pool (not a bad thing nonetheless) ;-) )

[M. Demetrius]

Hmm. How deep is the pool? Might not be so bad. We've had 31 straight days here over 95 degrees F, and no rain to speak of. Looks like a hot summer coming on, if things don't change. Meanwhile, 1000 miles north of here, they're flooding out.

My point, of course, is that Texas is something like .0001 or less of the earth's land surface, yet all 6,000,000,000 of us could fit here. The problem isn't available space, it's the way things are distributed. I wonder, if we all did gang up on a certain point, turn to the west, and jump as hard as we could if we could affect the rotational speed of the earth?)

This doesn't have a lot to do with Romans any more. Maybe we should redirect our thinking?

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

Hmm. How deep is the pool?

Well, I wouldnt try to dive to the ground.

This doesn't have a lot to do with Romans any more. Maybe we should redirect our thinking?

I think the thread was prone towards this way from the first minute, but ...

*redirecting my brains*

ok, back on track.

[Matt Lukes]

LOL Yeah :wink: Well the suggestion that it was the demand of the Roman military that caused extinctions is just unreasonable- even if all the standard bearers in 30 LEGIONES wore lion skins, that's what- maybe 2000? Even if they were taken all at once, which simply wouldn't be feasible at the time, that's hardly going to wipe out a species. It might be defensible to suggest that the consumption by spectacles caused significant damage to populations but if even that didn't do it, the few pelts the army wanted sure couldn't.

[jkaler48]

You are correct in that the Roman military demand itself must have been small (unless soldiers were ardent games attendees.) Military conquests certainly allowed access to greater areas that could be exploited for Animal resources, allow safer trade over longer distances and introduced arenas throughout the Empire fueling the demand for Animals. So as an instrument of public policy
the Legions did play an important role including possible loss of habitat as veterans were settled in some frontier areas.

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

Well, its always pretty difficult to tie extinction of species to a single and quite specific factor as for example the Roman army. But essentially all boils down to the "misuse" of nature by humans at all. Its no special Roman thing, or even the Legions. Healthy populations of animals will endure even severe reduction and regenerate. Such losses and even extintions are quite normal in nature and have been happening on a regular basis without human intervention as well. In biology this is called a dynamic balance. But the basic problem here is the extensive use of land by humans for farming, livestock and deforestation (e.g. for building fleets etc), so animals loose their habitats where they can regenerate.
Animals behaviour is almost entirely dictated by instinct, that is useful in quite stable conditions, but a massive disadvantage when their surrounding changes to quick and/or severe. The dynamic balance isn't able to cope with these massiv changes and animals become extinct. And if one species dies, this affects others and so on, disturbing the balance even more.
Some scientists have calculated (sorry I lack the source) that our planet before the agricultural revolution had natural ressources for some 20 million people to sustainable live of. Every human being more would therefore change the balance forever, no matter how good our intentions are. So in some general respect the Legions actually took its toll, as they supported the spread of civilisation to unchartered territories.

[M. Demetrius]

One thing not to overlook, though, is that we humans ARE a part of nature. We're not some freak occurrence. Natural selection takes many forms, including deforestation by land clearance for farming, or a southward descending glacier, or a lava flow, or --

What I'm saying is that we belong here, too. By farming scientifically, we have increased the top population for our species. If we had not done so, we would not be having this conversation, particularly in this medium, and would not have the luxury of free time to pursue hobbies, such as historical reenacting, right? We'd be up to our elbows in just staying alive, fighting off packs of hyenas or prides of lions, guarding our gardens from bigfooted elephants, and dying by droves from plague diseases.

We should not foul our nest; we should exert our dominion over nature in as positive a way as we can, and preserve what is able to be preserved. But we are not automatically the enemy of the planet.

[Bran ap Maclou]

If you take a simple aphid, their reproductive rate is so high that you can easily calculate that, by simple parthenogenesis and without predators, these aphids will equal the weight of the Earth itself in only six months. As you can see, without regulation, any species can flush its environment. However for the great fauna like whales, it's radically different.

About antiquity, the region of Marseille is symptomatic. Ancient shepards in the region of Marseille (Massalia) were keeping the herds in some normaly high trees forests. To gain more pasture, they burnt these forests and then changed their territory, classical story all around the planet.

However at the end of summer, some violent storms happens with rains of more than 200-300mm per square meter in less than 24h sometimes. On the hills behind Nice, we calculated that thanks to the mosses and roots in a normal hillside forest the water goes down in about 24 hours and the flow is buffered, sponged by the underwood, the soil stay well in place. On a recently burnt forest the water go down in less than 40minutes, very violently (high speed) and bring with her a important amount of soil (mud).

So, the most a soil is thick (and then rich) the more the trees can grow high. The problem is that this cycles of fires and pastures during about 3000 years damaged so much the soils that the trees became smaller and smaller, forming a "maquis" like in corsican mountains "dwarf" forests for exemple and further a "Garrigues" with very thin soils (few centimeters) and bare rock appearing.

Except the fires another element increased this phenomenon, the herd animals were mainly goats. Goats pull up the plants with roots, chew the leaves and spit roots, they eat even some hard leaves of aggressive oaks species and by rubing their horn on the trunks of young trees they kill them and so on. So they disturb a normal regeneration.

These phenomenons began at the end of the prehistoric times. Some researchers seem to demonstrate that it reached some peaks during the roman era and later during the XVIIIth century. So, if you come to visit the white cliffs of the "calanques" between Marseille and Cassis, it's beautiful but it's an especially damaged environment with a specific fauna but an anormally poor diversity.

The romans were the first civilisation able to modify very deeply its environement. Some forest researchers in France are convinced that the end of the roman empire was benefic to regenerate some forests. It takes several centuries to regenerate a high quality forest and their hypothesis is that the caravels made by the portuguese and later used by Christopher Colombus shouldn't have existed before due to this time of regeneration (not the only reason).
Well, I have no real opinion about that but if the vikings made a few raids in the mediterranean sea, it seems that they did not stayed to long in this area due to the lack of sufficiently long trees to repair their langskips (A broadside of langskip was made of a single one long pine board) according to Regis Boyer.

So, a lot of forest researchers are convinced that the romans had a deep impact on natural ressources anyway.

Bye

Greg

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

Wow Greg, thats really interesting ... Laudes... almost exactly what I had imagined.
My point was that every culture that reaches a certain grade of civilisation will inflict this sort of damage to its environment. So the ways things happened were not especially Roman, but basically human.

[Bran ap Maclou]

Yes that did not wait for the romans to happen however the roman way of life increased it more than some others. But never forget to remember to celtomaniacs for example that the gauls though practicing an animism very close to nature, did the same in some cases and at another level.

Bye,

Greg

[PMBardunias]

About elephants during the punic wars, it seems that they were a dwarven species (originally) from Sicily close to african elephant (not the forest one though). That's a normal phenomenon for animals of big sizes when they are blocked on an Island to reduce their size.

Greg, excellent post, but the above is incorrect. Sicilain dwarf elephants were extinct by the clasical period, and they were only about 1.5 meters tall in any case. Interestingly they may not have been "elephants" at all, because some DNA work points to them being a pygmy off-shoot of Mammoths.

http://62.103.58.147/niarchos/files/pre ... etters.pdf

The Carthaginian elephants were probably either a race of L. Cyclotis, or a new related species.

[Bran ap Maclou]

Thank you very much and laudes to you.

The sicilian origin of carthago's elephants is a classical historian hypothesis. The DNA fairy hit once again. Finally that's pretty logical.

That opens some new horizons. I wonder if we have some remains of "elephants" (I will now use some quotation commas) used by Carthago in antiquity ? In french Alpens some elephantid paths supposed to belong to Hannibal's elephants during a long time were finally mammoths and even dinosaurs...

This article only deals with asian and euro-siberian phylogeny, which seems correct for the mediterranean islands. What about some north african origins ? Sahara had not the same aspect than today. 6000 years ago, some large areas were still savannas. Perhaps some
elephants were trapped in north when the desert increased ?
Some isolated areas may have functionned like islands ?


If you have some other informations, I'm interested in...

Bye

Greg