Trove of spices from around the world on sunken fifteenth-century Norse ship

https://phys.org/news/2023-02-trove-spices-world-sunken-fifteenth-century.html

by wglb • 3 years ago

187 114 3 years ago

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.

rcme• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

It is also thought to have been a contraceptive and abortifacient.

wpietri2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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)

refuse• 3 years ago

There's a scientist that thinks they found some live silphium:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/silphium

satvikpendem6• 3 years ago

Some people posit that it's just another varietal of asafetida.

6177c40f• 3 years ago

My understanding is that we don't even know for sure if it went extinct. We just don't know what it actually was/is. There's been a number of extant species that people have proposed as being silphium, but it's very hard to say if any of them actually are, and if so, which.

cletus• 3 years ago

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...

graphe4• 3 years ago

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.

tomrod2• 3 years ago

international trading culture.

It kind of does, just that the people themselves aren't terribly mobile.

Trade is goods and capital, not people.

Fezzik• 3 years ago

To bolster this point: even today less than half the world population has flown on an airplane.

appletrotter• 3 years ago

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.

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

Who is "we"?

wizofaus3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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)

vongomben• 3 years ago

Can you share the link to the video? I m curious now!

biorach• 3 years ago

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.

graphe4• 3 years ago

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.

fakedang2• 3 years ago

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

graphe4• 3 years ago

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.

WaitWaitWha• 3 years ago

I can easily imagine a trade route from the Kara sea, southbound rivers (Yenisei, Angara and alike?) into the Baikal sea...

fbdab1033• 3 years ago

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.

culi14• 3 years ago

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?

crazygringo• 3 years ago

I can't imagine spices were ever shipped powdered, as you may be imagining from the supermarket.

They would be shipped as whole plant parts but dried. You'd powder or grate right before using.

If they were powdered before shipping they'd lose so much flavor and potency along the way.

paganel• 3 years ago

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

pvaldes4• 3 years ago

The researchers also found snack items, such as dried blackberries, raspberries, grapes and flax

Some can be snacks but its main purpose could be very different. Flax seeds are tiny and really not so valuable as snack, but you can powder them and obtain a very fine oil to use in lamps. In a six month dark winter or in a ship this can be more than a luxury. You could also save them for culturing at home and obtain a source of fine and durable clothes. Almond oil can be used in skin care to alleviate the effect of the cold in the face. Can be used also in candles.

Flax oil can be used also in another very important thing in a wooden ship, to protect the wood and made it shiny, more durable and waterproof.

Henbane is the outlier but could be used externally and its purpose in navigation is fascinating. Rare in the North but can be found in central and southern Europe if you know what to look for. Is not a creature that you should underestimate or play with but Vikings really don't need to navigate a lot to find it.

The dried berries are all European crops. Maybe their purpose was to acquire valuable varieties of crops. May be used also to dye clothes.

INTPenis• 3 years ago

Henbane was pretty interesting. Apparently found in other viking graves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus_niger

hbarka2• 3 years ago

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).

borissk2• 3 years ago

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).

hbarka2• 3 years ago

Are you referring to the Kyivan Rus'? Present day state of Russia are from Muscovites, a different historical entity from the Rus’.

satvikpendem6• 3 years ago

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.

baremetal2• 3 years ago

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-...

idlewords4• 3 years ago

This theory never made any sense to me. Why mask the taste of substandard food with incredibly expensive condiments?

pessimizer• 3 years ago

Salt was also very expensive.

satvikpendem6• 3 years ago

Salarium, indeed.

fatneckbeard• 3 years ago

it might be a genetic thing or even an epi-genetic thing.

as a vegetarian spice is essential. a lot of indian vegetarian cuisine is about spice use such as frying seeds in oil, add some other powdered spices to make a paste, adding certain other spices near the end. etc etc.

boomboomsubban4• 3 years ago

Imagine buying all your food for the winter around November. How tasty do you think it would be around February?

idlewords4• 3 years ago

Spices are compact, storable, highly concentrated, and hard to counterfeit. You and I eat them daily in everything either directly, or as artificial flavors that have been designed to replace the expensive stuff. They are a good choice for long-haul trade.

max_entropy• 3 years ago

One reason spices were treasured may be because back then, European food was much more bland that it is today. Think of all the foods of American origin which weren't known about (potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, chili peppers, cocoa etc).

eouwt• 3 years ago

we don't particularly use a lot of them and even when we do, the taste is better, but not extremely so

Speak for yourself!

LBJsPNS• 3 years ago

I'm going to be charitable here and assume your exposure to different kinds of food, styles of cooking, and "foreign" cuisines is severely lacking.

satvikpendem6• 3 years ago

Lol, I'm Indian, I am very well familiar with spices and "foreign" (by which you likely mean non-Western) foods in general. My point is that while spices are good, they are not mindblowingly good, like some drug. It's probably more a factor of me eating spices all my life and thinking that's normal, rather than eating bland food instead.

Your "charitable" ad-hominem is instead "severely lacking" in substance.

culi14• 3 years ago

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

narrator2• 3 years ago

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

xen2xen1• 3 years ago

Is that the ones that they call the zombie drug on the TV shows?

madaxe_again2• 3 years ago

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.

culi14• 3 years ago

Fair point. It's not really analogous to "dropping acid" as I put it, but we do have clear evidence of its use specifically for its hallucinogenic properties:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4224707/

In the Norwegian tradition, women put an ointment contain mixture of some plants such as BH on parts of the body with thin skin and became hallucinated
It Soothsayers applied BH as a component of their hallucinatory mixture

giantg2• 3 years ago

"anti-cholinergics"

Based on what little I know, that sound scary.

dr_dshiv3• 3 years ago

Crazy but there is no historical evidence (text or images) of psilocybin mushroom use in Europe, prior to 1957. So hard to believe, but we simply don’t have evidence otherwise…

culi14• 3 years ago

What exactly does this even mean? The very origins of "Christmas" are from people drinking the piss of reindeer who have consumed Amanita muscaria. Amanita muscaria, while not of the Psilocybe genus, ~~contains psilocybin~~ (EDIT: it contains other psychedelic substances but no psilocybin) but (unlike Psilocybe mushrooms) is poisonous. The poison is neutralized in the reindeer piss so you can consume it to have a fun trip

And Psilocybe themselves are global in distribution with hundreds of species. Almost all hallucinogenic and none are poisonous.

A quick google search shows we have evidence for magic mushroom use in Europe for at least up to 6k years ago:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928025-400-earliest...

Alex39173• 3 years ago

They always dance around hallucinogenic plants. Just admit people have basically been dropping acid for centuries

Because its medical use was for asthma. You could buy solanaceous cigarettes in the US until the 70s or so.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2844275/

culi14• 3 years ago

With ethnobotanically medicinal plants there's almost always many uses for them:

Henbane is used in traditional herbal medicine for ailments of the bones, rheumatism, toothache, asthma, cough, nervous diseases, and stomach pain. It might also be used as analgesic, sedative, and narcotic in some cultures

trillic2• 3 years ago

Henbane contains Scopolamine which is, in my opinion, the best drug available for long term motion sickness prevention. Makes sense the Norse had it on a ship. You can get patches of it today, one on the neck lasts 3 days, transforms a person who gets seasick easily to one with the stomach of a seasoned sailor. Never used the stuff myself but have had to get it prescribed for buddies who couldn’t keep their dinner (or water) down after dark.

TJSomething• 3 years ago

Scopalamine is amazing. Being on the ocean is otherwise a debilitating ordeal for me. Worked really well on cruises I've been on.

Trove of spices from around the world on sunken fifteenth-century Norse ship

Related Stories