Roman

A garbage cube of 2,000 ago in Mallorca exposes the star product of Roman fast food: Zorzal’s skewer

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The concept of “fast food“It is currently strongly associated with that of”junk food”. It usually involves a not very healthy dish due to the presence of processed foods. But fast food really exists For centuries And the Romans, of course, have something to say there. And a recent study puts on the table an important fast food industry in Roman times to northern Mallorca. The star dish? Singing birds. “Popina”Alejandro Valenzuela is a researcher at the Mediterranean Institute of Advanced Studies in Mallorca and the author of a Published article in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology in which he details how in the Roman city of Pollentiahe Zorzal He was the protagonist of street food. Founded in the 123 AC to the north of Mallorca, Pollentia was an imperial city for the empire due to its location in the Mediterranean and its ports that They favored trade With the island. Today is an archaeological site in which we have a curious and small theater, but in its day it must have been a very busy city, a bustling shopping center in which food played an essential role. Inside the shops, were the ‘Popinae‘. These are small establishments where you could eat something fast and have a wine before following the way. They were focused on the lowest classes of Roman society. Searching in the garbage. This was something common in Roman cities due to their rhythm of life. In Herculano and Pompeii you can see some ruins in good condition of Themopoliumwhich are more like taverns for somewhat more wealthy people, but basically, in both cases there was a bar with amphorae to get some hot food, serve the client and that it followed on their way. An example of Thermopolium Valenzuela, what interested him was to know what was in those mud vessels, but to discover what the inhabitants who were walking for Pollentia had to look in their garbage. Near one of those popinas there was a septic tank of a few meters deep in which everything was thrown. Part of the garbage was ceramic, which has allowed to date the date of use of the well between 10 AC and 30 AD What else was there? A large number of mammalian bones, birds and fish. And the bones of the birds are the ones that caught their attention. Pollentia location in Mallorca in image A. in B, the location of the well. In C, the meters at which a greater concentration of bones were found Fast Food Bird. Although there were several species, such as chicken, the bones were mostly slut. They are small singing birds associated with the diet of the upper classes of the Roman empirebut here we are in a very different context: popular food at street level. The remains highlighted the skulls and sternons of those birds, which indicated one thing: the most juicy parts should be the ones that served in the popina. As with other birds, the extremities and the upper part of the chest are the most juicy, and Valenzuela estimates that removing that juicy meat allowed the food seller to cook those parts quickly to the grill or in oil to serve it quickly. It is a meat that hardly takes a few seconds to cook. The darker, the more presence of parts they found in the black well. Within the red perimeter, the most fleshy parts and their associated bones, little present in the well Seasonal. There is also the possibility that customers sit down and consume the zorzal in dishes, since ceramic remains could indicate that there was a dishes, but due to the size of the bite, Alejandro Comment In Live Science that, within the “context of street food, it is also plausible to serve in skewer to facilitate consumption.” In the end, except exceptions, food in ancient times was linked to seasons and the foal is a seasonal product that would have integrated well into a diet like that of Roman cities with others like domestic chicken either European rabbittwo species whose remains would also have served in this restaurant Fast food of Pollentia. But the most important thing is that this finding makes the belief that the Zorzal was a luxury bite for the Romans staggers because the Popinae They were not precisely the premises that most frequented the High classes. Images | Daniele Florio From Rome, Dion art In Xataka | The world ranking of ultraprocess food: the countries that most and less consume it worldwide

We have discovered (again) the secret of Roman concrete. Is less impressive than it seems

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It does not fail. It seems mathematical. From time to time, the world rediscovers the Roman concrete and hallucin with the durability of a material that allows the Pantheon of Agrippa to have 2,000 years standing (while modern concrete cracks within a few decades). Incidentally, almost with the same regularity, there is some scientist or engineer who claims to have found the key secret that this is. The last occasion He has touched the Massachusetts Technological Institute And, as usual, the story is not exactly what it seems. What does the study say? MIT researchers They have studied Small pieces of lime that are usually found in Roman concrete: the ‘calcium oxide’ clasts. These types of structures have been studied a lot in romas infrastructure located in maritime contexts and, for years, has been related to some “self -regime” capacity of the material. Understanding what it means. According to some scientiststhe water that would enter through the concrete cracks would drag the calcium ions of the Classos in a process that would end up calcitating and sealing the cracks. The work of the MIT of recent days, also studies those clasts in the terrestrial concrete and theorizes that they are the result of the Romans added living lime to the mixture of the concrete (instead of the dull lime – calcium hydroxide – key of the Puzolenic reactions). Beyond that, researchers They made several mixtures With living lime and verified that, according to their theory, in these new mixtures lime clasts were generated (and was calcited that repaired the cracks). As Brian Potter saysthe discovery is interesting at the historical level. But, despite the attempts to sell it as something revolutionary, it is potentially useless. Useless? Yes, useless. When talking about Roman concrete, a lot of mistakes are usually made, but there are two recurring: the first, As Manuel F. Herrador always reminds usStructural concrete professor at the University School of the University of Coruña, is “the survivor’s bias.” The idea of ​​the extraordinary quality of Roman concrete comes from studying, precisely, the best structures they did, which have best been preserved. On the other hand, most of what the Romans built has already disappeared completely and cannot be studied. The second error. We are comparing ‘churras with merinas’ at a functional level. For being clear, with the Roman concrete we could not make a tenth of the things we do with modern concrete. The clearest example is reinforced concrete (that is, the mixture of concrete with reinforcement steel). These materials allow us to solve many of the structural problems presented , We have to pay a cost. The most obvious: the structures run before. We make the concrete we want to do. This is perhaps the most important to consider when we talk about Roman concrete: we do not “concrete to the Roman” because we do not want; Because it is not worth what we want to get. The same potter It puts examples (the Hindu temples and Buddhists built to “last more than 1000 years”) that show that current science and technology allow authentic virguerías. The question is if we want to do them in a world that changes so quickly and not, no matter how much we like the Romans, we do not want. Luckily: that allows us to go much further. In Xataka | Glass is a more everyday material but its physics does not. We are not even clear if it is really a solid In Xataka | Cheaper, durable and ecological: a new material with the help of ruthenium wants to change the rules of green hydrogen Image | Renzo Vanden Bussche *An earlier version of this article was published in January 2023

In a town in Badajoz they have encountered a strength of 5,000 years ago. And a Roman with a suspicious burial

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The Spanish territory is is filling with solar panels. Whether it’s Taking advantage of the roofs of industrial estates or in huge Photovoltaic plants in the middle of the fieldenergy are clear that we must take advantage of the country’s solar potential. What happens is that, from time to time, they run into unforeseen events. Such as, with a huge strength of copper age. Photovoltaic archaeologists. This was precisely what happened in 2021, when Action was inspecting an olive grove to lift the Extremadura I-II-III photovoltaic complex. The plan was to have an installation that, together, provided 125 MW of renewable energy, enough to satisfy the annual consumption of more than 65,000 families. Then, I know They encountered With a wall. Or what should have been a wall 5,000 years ago. Cortijo Lobato. Near the municipality of Almendralejo in which Actiona was carrying out the works, the plant appeared of what, at some point, must have been an imposing fortification. As they tell The countryin the baptized as a Cortijo Lobato site, a fortress composed of three concentric walls, 25 semicircular towers and three grave with four meters wide and two depth was erected. The total area was about 13,000 square meters with a single entrance of less than a meter wide. The most important tower rose on a hill of more than 300 meters above sea level, a strategic point from which to control the surroundings. Around it, adobe walls between 1.3 and 1.5 meters wide that were reinforced with the aforementioned concentric exterior pits and walls. You can see the silhouette of the towers and the walls Undermining morality. César Pérez is the director of the excavations, belonging to the Archaeological Research Team of Tera, and argues that this intricate defensive complex not only had as its objective to be a physical barrier, but to discourage whoever wanted to cross it. The problem is that, although it was raised at some point 5,000 or 4,800 years ago, it seems that, 400 years, then it was destroyed. The culprit: a fire. And it is estimated that it was caused, because the wooden doors would be strategically placed outside any flammable material. In addition, numerous arrow points have been found, suggesting that, either it was an enemy attack, or an act of internal rebellion. The result was the same: the destruction of the complex. Three years of work. At the time of discovery, the archeology team focused on protecting the surroundings of Cortijo Lobato. Cease commented A few months ago, during the first three years, “it has been possible to delimit, conserve and it is now when it is being known in depth. We have the possibility to document it to make it known to society, which is to whom the site belongs. ” At the same time, energy continued with its plans to lift the complex, but adapting to the situation. “We had to modify the project as a kind of ‘tetris’ to adapt the configuration of the panels to the different areas of the deposit. In the end, we have managed to preserve the generation capacity at the same time that it was possible to protect all the areas of archaeological interest that have been discovered, ”said Jenifer Andreu, from Actiona. Roman mystery. However, the story had a little girl, which gave the discovery of a mysterious grave. Montserrat Girón is the Coordinator of Archaeological Teams of Tera and comments that they have focused on giving a first sweep to pave the way to following investigations. And it turns out that they have not only found the remains of the inhabitants of the 2800 BC, but also of the 5th century DC Specifically, an almost superficial tomb that had the remains of a male between 25 and 35 years old who lived in the time of the low Roman Empire. He was face down and with a military dagger on his back. You cannot know if nailed or not, but Montserrat jokes saying that, although it is a mystery, it does not look good. Face down and with a dagger on the back. It may be that of that person and be buried with him as a tribute … or who was killed The reason is that, beyond the dagger, the body was whole, except the feet, which seem to have been cut, and the grave had much smaller dimensions than necessary for a body of that size, indicating that it was a Hurd burial. As much as it may be, the efforts at this time is to continue investigating the area of ​​this huge bastion in which they have appeared multitude of vestiges such as loom plates, plates, flint arrow tips, chisels and even ornamental and religious elements. Images | Tera Act In Xataka | We have found new vestiges of the Roman era. We are not very sure what they did in a cave of the Pyrenees

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