Towards distant seas and lands
Circulation of zoological species and ideas in the Mediterranean region and the Near East during the 1st millennium BC
p. 37-72
Résumés
There is considerable archaeological evidence for the circulation and trade of materials, ideas and living beings between the Mediterranean, the Near and the Middle East during the 1st millennium BC. A similar phenomenon has also affected the displacement of various faunal elements that have been exported to new territories completely unrelated to the natural environment of their homelands. Unfortunately, regarding the export of some of them cultural models based on little, if any, scientific evidence still persists.
Nous disposons de beaucoup de sources archéologiques sur la circulation et les échanges de biens matériels, d’idées et d’être vivants entre la Méditerranée, le Proche et le Moyen Orient au Ier millénaire av. J.-C. Des phénomènes similaires ont également régi les circulations d’espèces zoologiques, qui ont été déplacées vers de nouveaux territoires complétement étrangers à leur environnement naturel. Pour autant, on conserve encore pour certains d’entre eux des modèles culturels fondés sur peu de preuves scientifiques, voire sur aucune.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : bovin chianina, caracal, cerf élaphe et daim, coq, daman, éléphant d’Asie, espèces exotiques, mangouste ichneumon, porc-épic à crête
Keywords : Asian elephant, caracal, crested porcupine, Egyptian mongoose, exotic species, hyrax, jungle fowl, Tuscan cattle, red and fallow deer
Remerciements
While preparing this paper I have been fortunate in having had the help of many friends and colleagues. I am particularly grateful to Francesca Alhaique (Museo delle Civiltà, Roma), Bruno D’Andrea (École française de Rome), Jacopo De Grossi Mazzorin (Università del Salento, Lecce), Rubens D’Oriano (ex Soprintendenza Archeologica di Sassari e Nuoro), Cinzia Olianas (Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Cartagine), Luca Sineo and Salvatore Miccichè (Università di Palermo), and Francesco Tanganelli (Università della Basilicata, Potenza), for the critical reading of this manuscript and their useful suggestions.
Texte intégral
Introduction
1Depending on the scholars, the so-called centuries of darkness of the Hellenic world would range from the 12th-13th c. to around the 8th c. BC.1 They mark out the chronological borders between the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial civilization and the beginning of the 1st millennium BC and the Archaic Age. This period of ancient Greek history is generally made to coincide with the beginning of the invasions of the so-called Sea Peoples and continues until the birth of the poleis and the age of Homer, the reputed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two epic poems that are the foundational works of ancient Greek literature.
2This is also the chronological period in which other human cultures began to appear on the Mediterranean scene and were destined to play a dominant role in long-distance trade and network, which they maintained for a long time. Together with the Greeks, the new sea masters were the Tyrrhenians (Etruscans) and the Phoenicians-Carthaginians. Great navigators, they soon shared the vast marine distances, venturing into extreme seas not without conflicts, and establishing trading colonies along the main coasts and on the major islands, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. From there they did not disdain to organise pirate actions against coastal human settlements. There is considerable archaeological evidence for the circulation and trade of materials across the Mediterranean in the course of the 1st millennium BC. Cultural interaction between the opposite shores shows that this basin was more and more a bridge and less and less a barrier, enabling and multiplying in a relatively short time the circulation of ideas, goods, and human cultures that spread in new and differentiated environments, grafting themselves in various ways on autochthonal substrata.2 A similar phenomenon has also affected the displacement of various faunal elements that have been exported to new and unknown territories where many of them have tried to survive far from the environmental conditions of their native lands. The exportation of exotic species, and not only of durable parts of them, such as elephant tusks or giraffe hides, along the Mediterranean maritime routes was merely a repetition of a practice which had been going on for centuries—if not for millennia—whenever political and economic conditions were favourable.3
The island of monkeys
3By the time of the completion of the Odyssey (end of the 8th c. BC), the western Mediterranean as far as Sicily was not only well explored, but well settled with Greek colonies: colonies just as Hellenic, or almost, as their parent cities in ancient Greece (fig. 1). The fact is that within a few centuries a large part of the Mediterranean would be occupied by Greek emporia and ports, from Anatolia to the Iberian Peninsula. Large areas of Sicily and southern Italy were colonised and became known as Magna Graecia.
Fig. 1. The ruins of the polis of Selinunte, founded during the 7th c. BC in south-western Sicily (photo L. Sineo).

4First occupied by Greeks from the island of Euboea ca. 775 BC, the island of Ischia, Pithecusa, in the Gulf of Naples, was apparently the earliest substantial Greek settlement in the West.4 Sicilian Naxos is said to have been settled in 735 BC, Syracuse and Korkyra in 734, and half a dozen others before 700.5 The etymology of the oldest Greek colony in the western world has always posed a most complex and intricate problem, the constant subject of fervent debate from Antiquity up to the present, upon which scholars have finally reached agreement, at least as regards the derivation of Pithekoussai from pithekos.6 Pithecusa meant “isle of the monkeys”, and for a long time the etymology of the toponym was supposed to be due to the presence of these animals on the island. The point is that no free-ranging or wild populations of monkeys are known to have ever inhabited Ischia, neither in very ancient nor in more recent chronologies.
5However, if there were indeed monkeys, it would be quite logical for a western origin of these primates, which may have reached the central Mediterranean thanks to the commercial network already established by the Phoenicians and Euboeans following the initial frequentation of western North Africa. On the origin of the hypothetic occurrence of primates on Ischia, Gras observed that these animals were transferred by seamen within the circuits which, during the 8th c., connected the African coast with central Italy, Sicily, and even southern Sardinia.7 Indeed, one monkey at least must have been seen even in Iron Age Sardinia, in the course of the 9th-8th c. BC. This is the case of the bronze figure which decorates a lamp from an unknown locality, perhaps Baunei, in the Ogliastra province, now on display at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Cagliari (fig. 2).8 Apart from Lilliu,9 almost all the other authors agree upon the identification of this figure with that of a tailless monkey.10 The morphology displayed by this bronze primate relates its image to the phenotypes of a subadult Barbary macaque, Macaca sylanus (L., 1758), still naturally dispersed in the mountainous range of north-western Maghreb (Morocco and Algeria).11 This would therefore corroborate the hypothesis regarding the possible western origin of the primates involved in the commercial trade between North Africa and Italy, passing through Ischia and Sardinia.12
Fig. 2. Tailless monkey decorating a bronze lamp from an unknown locality, perhaps Baunei, in the Ogliastra province. Cagliari, Museo Archeologico Nazionale (courtesy of R. D’Oriano).

6The monkey figurine we have just referred to is part of a series of small bronze statuettes of various geographical origins, but all of them referable to a Sardinian array and to a chronological period between the final phase of the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. Various zoomorphic representations are part of this production, such as a standing bull, a subadult boar, a fox from the Nuragic sanctuary of Santa Vittoria (Serri), or an adult male domestic sheep from Campo Santo (Olmedo).13 Among other items, it is worth mentioning the various miniaturised bronze vessels some of which were also found in Etruscan funerary contexts of coastal Tuscany, such as the necropolises of Populonia and Vetulonia. From the latter comes by far the most sumptuously decorated Nuragic vessel of all known examples, that from the Tomba del Duce, known as the “Noah’s ark” due to the presence in it of the depiction of many animals. It is possible to recognise the effigies of oxen and pigs, while the figurehead consists of the trophy of a red deer adorned with sumptuous antlers. All these bronzes suggest the transport of some animal species by sea, which would be confirmed by the finding of contemporary continental faunal elements in Sardinia. They must have represented prestigious objects, the result of great craftsmanship. They could have been unique gifts between rulers or eminent individuals, as a symbol of trade and personal relations between them, or of marriage exchanges, or objects owned by Sardinian people who had moved to the Tuscan coast, to the mining centres of Etruria.14
Zoological and cultural elements from the east
7Archaeological evidence suggests that the Etruscan culture, characterised by a non-Indo-European language,15 developed in central Italy, emerging in the 1st millennium BC with some features pointing to an eastern influence.16 However, it is not clear if such influence reflects only trading and cultural exchange or also some sort of shared biological ancestry. This is a controversy of long standing.17 Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman antiquities, 1.30.2) favoured a local development, whereas Herodotus (Histories, 1.94) considered the Etruscans as Lydians from western Anatolia who had fled from famine.18 No modern archaeologist supports the latter view, but some affinities between the Lydian and the Etruscan languages have been identified,19 and genetic flow from the eastern Mediterranean region is impossible to rule out on archaeological grounds.20 Genetic distances and sequence comparisons have shown closer evolutionary relationships with the eastern Mediterranean shores for the Etruscans than for modern Italian populations.21 All mitochondrial lineages observed among the Etruscans appear typically European or West Asian, but only a few haplotypes were found to have an exact match in a modern mitochondrial database, raising new questions about the Etruscans’ fate after their definitive assimilation into the Roman state.22
8It is also worth noting that genetic analyses performed on the extant Tuscan cattle show a strikingly high level of mtDNA variation, which is found neither in the rest of Italy nor in Europe.23 In fact, several Italian breeds fell outside the western European group, and apparently had genetic ties with breeds from the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Near East. Significantly, this is the case for the “Maremmana” race and three other Italian breeds which are regarded as descendants of the longhorned grey/Maremmana group.24 All these breeds show a certain degree of affinity with Turkish and southern Anatolian cattle and originated in Tuscany and the adjacent geographical areas. This is not to say, however, that cattle of the longhorn grey phenotypes are still to be found in Asia Minor, the majority of the Anatolian breeds being traditionally dominated by the phenotypes of shorthorn races.25 In fact, the native grey breed, or Garay steppe breed, now represents only 4.2% of Turkish cattle, still occurring in Thrace, part of European Turkey, the region of Marmara, western Anatolia and partially also in central Anatolia.26 Up to the end of 1960s, however, it was the most numerous indigenous breeds in European Turkey and the most important race of Thrace.27 It is the genetic outfit of the extant Tuscan cattle that traces back to the patterns of their wild Asia Minor ancestors, the extinct Anatolian aurochs, Bos primigenius Bojanus, 1827. Genetic research has, in fact, confirmed a Near Eastern Neolithic origin for all the domestic cattle and no indication of domestication of European aurochs.28 Thus, from a genetic point of view, the Tuscan cattle are closer to Near Eastern than to European gene pools. This eastern genetic signature seems to contradict the component of Indo-European-associated steppe human ancestry in the course of the Iron Age and the lack of recent Anatolian related admixture among the putative non-Indo-European-speaking Etruscans.29 It does not mean, however, that what was first claimed by classic historians, such as Herodotus (Histories, 1.94) and Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War, 4.109), regarding an eastern origin of the Etruscans cannot be fully verified.
9From the very beginning of the 1st millennium BC there is evidence of a still greater exportation of ideas and of biological elements and materials from the East towards the coasts of the central and northern Tyrrhenian.30 In northern Etruria, the extant remnants of the Etruscan necropolis of Quinto Fiorentino, in the vicinity of Florence, for example, constitute indirect evidence of the affluence achieved by various families in the Arno plain during the 7th c. BC, at the apex of a flourishing period that began in the Villanovian phase, thanks to the mineral resources of rock salt, copper and iron.31 In this regard, the archaeological exploration of a local tholos, the so-called Tomba della Montagnola, provided very interesting exotic material, such as fragments of ostrich shells decorated with geometric designs and fine carvings in the shape of lotus flowers, and ivory fragments decorated with Oriental motifs including a skeuomorph of a large Indo-Pacific marine bivalve Tridacna (Bruguière, 1797).32
10It is particularly from the so-called Orientalizing Period (8th-7th c.) that artistic styles reflecting specifically Oriental cultural customs were imported into Etruria. These include images of exotic animals that are evoked in the artistic decoration of some of the most important aristocratic tombs. This is the case, for example, of the Tomba Campana in Veio (Rome), dated to the last quarter of the 6th c., whose pictorial decoration of a detail of the first chamber reveals the image of a spotted felid on the back of a horse, probably destined to bring it to its hunting ground.33 Even some of the animals depicted on the walls of the Tomba dei Demoni Azzurri, in the necropolis of Tarquinia (Viterbo)—the horses, the dog and the hunting felids—show a clear oriental origin, enriching with sophisticated cultural notations the pictorial and scenografic context that documents the persistence in the 5th c. of those contacts with the Oriental world so evident in the previous age.34 Judging from these wall decorations, the use of large felids as hunting auxiliaries must have been a known Eastern elite practice in Etruria. This hunting custom may have been imported there already before the 6th c. BC. In the case of the Tomba Campana, the animal depicted could be identified as a cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus (Schreber, 1775) [pl. I, 6], the formidable felid capable of exceeding the speed of 100 km per hour for a few seconds while running. As documented by much later evidence, dating from no earlier than the early Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the method illustrated in the decoration of the Tomba Campana was still the one used for hunting cheetahs in Medieval times. The felids were brought to the hunting grounds hooded, seated on the backs of horses behind their keepers, and were allowed to jump off and pursue the game when the chances appeared good.35
11The image of another cheetah also seems to be present in the decoration of the already mentioned Tomba dei Demoni Azzurri, where a multispectral photographic process uncovered traces of the ancient pictorial wall decoration.36 The entrance wall of the tomb depicts scenes of deer and wild boar hunting in which, in addition to the cheetah mentioned above, another exotic felid, the caracal, Caracal caracal (Schreber, 1776), also takes part (fig. 3). This could represent the oldest documentation of the hunting use of this felid known to date. The caracal is a medium-sized felid, found in most of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, as well as the whole Near East.37 It is characterized by a variable coat colour, which may be wine-red, grey or sand-coloured.38 According to Harting,39 the caracal was trained in much the same way as the cheetah, although it was used for taking different quarry. Like cheetahs, caracals are surprisingly easy to tame, mainly if reared from a young age. On the unexpected depiction of this felid in the wall-paintings of the Tomba dei Demoni Azzurri, it should also be noted that we do not have equally effective osteological documentation of the presence of this species in contemporary archaeological contexts. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to document the past presence of a certain zoological species in a specific territory and/or a particular cultural context, solely based on the data offered by archaeozoological research, especially when we are dealing with animals that were utilized by an elite, such as royal and/or aristocratic hunters.40
Fig. 3. The image of a Caracal caracal (Schreber, 1776), as it appears in the multispectral processing of the wall paintings of the Tomba dei Demoni Azzurri (5th c. BC) of Tarquinia (from Adinolfi et al. 2019).

The island of hyraxes
12Coming from the East, and more particularly from the Levant, another human culture dominated the maritime and commercial routes of the Mediterranean from the second half of the 2nd millennium BC and for much of the following millennium, the thalassocratic Phoenician/Punic/Carthaginian civilization.41 At its height between the 9th c. and the 200 BC, its area of influence spanned from the eastern Mediterranean to Cyprus, Sardinia and Sicily, with significant cultural exchanges with Egypt as well.42 The Phoenicians also went on to conquer the Iberian Peninsula where they also settled along the Atlantic coast to exploit the abundant local mines of valuable minerals. The Punic presence in this territory lasted from 575 BC to 206 BC, when the Carthaginians were defeated by the Romans. In Iberia, the Phoenicians developed important commercial colonies, such as Cadiz, perhaps the mythical Tartessus, on the Atlantic coast of the Peninsula. There is a rather intriguing legend about the discovery of the Iberian Peninsula by Carthaginian people and the origin of the name “Spain” itself. It is said that when the Phoenicians landed there, they discovered a large number of animals which, on superficial observation, were reminiscent of hyraxes, Procavia capensis (Pallas, 1766) [pl. III, 14], widely distributed in their native lands, i.e. in the Levant.43 In reality, these were rabbits, Oryctolagus cuniculus (L., 1758), which at that time were still completely unknown to the eastern settlers. Since the hyrax was called shaphan in the Semitic language, they called the newly discovered land I-shephan-im (“island of the hyraxes”), from which the Latin name Hispania and subsequently the modern España were derived.
13Commonplace in modern zoology is to believe that it was the Phoenicians/Punics/Carthaginians who exported several zoological species outside their homeland, determining their subsequent distribution. Popular publications and television documentaries have long been promoting the news that the red deer, Cervus elaphus (L., 1758), was imported to Sardinia 2,500 years ago from North Africa, where the Phoenician/Punic people captured it. Unfortunately, we do not have the slightest scientific evidence to support such an assumption, the chronological date on which it would have taken place and by which human group. There have also been those, such as Zachos and Hartl,44 who attempted to demonstrate the autochthonous origin of the Sardinian deer, C. e. corsicanus (Erxleben, 1777), albeit in the complete absence of any osteological findings to confirm this. Even in North Africa, the primeval presence of red deer—C. e. barbarus (Bennett, 1777, fig. 4)—is still far from being confirmed.45 It cannot be excluded that the introduction of red deer to Sardinia and Africa is due to anthropic actions with animals of eastern origin.46 In spite of what is claimed by some authors,47 even phenotypically Sardinian and North African deer do not resemble each other, the island ruminant being characterised by a dark colouration which involves the forehead and other parts of the coat,48 not equally evident in the Tunisian population. Between these two deer there are also significant differences in the development and architecture of the antlers.
Fig. 4. Subadult male of Barbay stag, Cervus elaphus barbarus (Bennett, 1777). Tunisian National Park of Feidja. Note the absence of the dark colouration, which in the Sardinian deer involves the forehead and other parts of the coat (photo M. Masseti).

14In any case, there is very little archaeological and literary evidence that informs us about the presumed responsibility of the Phoenicians in exporting animals between the opposite shores of the Mediterranean basin. As far as is presently known, the sole archaeozoological evidence of the real transfer of a zoological species definitely attributable to the Phoenicians concerns that of the Egyptian mongoose, Herpestes ichneumon (L., 1758) [pl. II, 10], in 5th-4th c. BC Sardinia.49 Remains of this species were found in a Punic cistern of the island of Sulky, and represent the oldest record of the African and Near Eastern mammal available to date for the European territory.50 This is a fragmentary humerus that preserves the distal epiphysis, and most of the diaphysis (fig. 5). The carnivore is no longer part of the mammalian fauna of Sardinia but is instead widespread in most of the Iberian Peninsula where it might very likely have been introduced during the Roman occupation of Hispania.51 Since Antiquity, the appreciation of mongooses by humans appears to be mainly related to their employment in the control of unwanted populations of rodents and poisonous snakes.52
Fig. 5. Fragmentary humerus of Egyptian mongoose, Herpestes ichneumon (L., 1758) [pl. II, 10], from Sant’Antioco (Sulky, Sardinia), dated to the 5th-4th c. BC. Museo archeologico Ferruccio Barreca, Sant’Antioco (courtesy B. Wilkens).

15Another African carnivore, the Genets, Genetta genetta (L., 1758), currently present on the Iberian Peninsula, may also have had an ancient origin. The result of genetic analyses carried out on extant Andalusian specimens has led to the hypothesis that the haplogroup that characterises them would correspond to an early introduction event.53 We cannot then forget the deeply rooted rumour according to which an African medium-sized carnivore was imported to the Balearic Islands, in Roman times (around the year 20 AD), in order to contain the local, devastating demographic increase of rabbits.54 It is said that the emperor Octavian Augustus himself would have worked to allow the introduction of this special animal from Libya. The news of the devastation caused to the Balearic agricultural harvests by the impressive increase in the number of rabbits was also remembered by Pliny the Elder in his Natural history (8.218-219). The latter author says that carnivores named viverra were imported to the Balearics to this end.55 It is not given, however, to know with certainty what the neutral plural term viverra—used only by Pliny—referred to and only on this occasion;56 nor is it known from which geographical idiom the Latin author has borrowed the word. Delibes57 does not exclude to be in front of the literary witness of an early import onto the Balearics of the genet, which was described by Linnaeus (1758) just as Viverra genetta on the basis of the observation of a specimen from Spain.
16There is evidence for the exportation of rabbits as well beyond the borders of the Iberian Peninsula. The lagomorph is a post-glacial endemism of the latter region, from where it began to be exported no earlier than the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, as in the case of the island of Menorca, still in the Balearic Islands.58 To date, however, in the central Mediterranean basin, the oldest finding of rabbit remains was made in the sanctuary of Juno-Astarte at Tas Silġ on Malta, dated between the 1st c. BC and the 1st c. AD (fig. 6).59
Fig. 6. Earliest recorded introductions of rabbits, Oryctolagus cuniculus (L., 1758), onto the Mediterranean islands (from Masseti – De Marinis 2008, redesigned).

On the alleged Phoenician exportation of fallow deer: persistence of an unproven cultural model
17There is one species in particular that is still deceptively believed to have been exported beyond its homeland by the Phoenicians: the common fallow deer, Dama dama dama (L., 1758). This cervid has now been introduced on all continents, but it seems that at the end of the Last Glacial episode it survived only in a few areas of its former distribution, in the north-central Mediterranean shores and especially southern Asia Minor.60 Afterwards it did not return as far north as the full extent of its previous European range.61
18Within the genus Dama (Frisch, 1775), two extant varieties are recognised: the common fallow deer and the Mesopotamian or Persian fallow deer, D. d. mesopotamica.62 They have been classified by some authors as two different species or described by others as being conspecific.63 Both subfossil evidence64 and DNA analyses65 support that these species are discrete. However, the fact that the varieties interbreed, producing fertile offspring and that phenotypical differences are relatively minor suggests the two varieties may be best regarded as two subspecies of D. dama.66 Current knowledge reveals that the post-glacial diffusion of the genus was limited almost exclusively to the northern Mediterranean and the western Near East,67 where despite the contiguity of their native geographical distribution, the ranges of the two varieties did not overlap. Fallow deer of the Taurus range belong to common form,68 while the original range of the Mesopotamian variety is reported east of the Nur Dağlari, the ancient Amanus, a mountain range of south-eastern Turkey.69
19The belief that it was the Phoenicians who distributed the common fallow deer in the ancient oecumene is essentially based on an observation by the palaeontologist Joleuad,70 who merely speculated—even if in the absence of concrete evidence—that this cervid had been introduced to North Africa by the founders of Cadiz. No remains of D. dama have so far been recovered from the Punic levels of Carthage, where the species does not appear before the 1st-4th c. AD.71 Few remains attributable to D. dama have been retrieved in the Punic settlement of the Sicilian island of Motya and one metatarsal of the same species was found in a Punic ship, wrecked off the coast of Sicily.72 The assumption that it was the Phoenicians who exported the fallow deer beyond its homeland has given rise to an unproven cultural model that still persists.73 In fact, the practice of importing fallow deer from their natural range began much earlier, at least since prehistoric times. As far as is presently known, the oldest evidence of the export of the Mesopotamian deer beyond its homeland dates back to the 9th millennium BC, when remains of this subspecies were found in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B settlement of Shillourokambos, on Cyprus.74 For the common fallow deer we have to wait for more recent Neolithic chronologies, coinciding with the late 6th-5th millennium BC, when the first remains of this animal were found on the islands of Rhodes, in the Aegean Sea (fig. 7).75 In the north-central Mediterranean region, the common fallow deer reappeared in the Neolithic assemblages of the site of Rendina, in the vicinity of Melfi (Potenza, southern Italy), referred to between the middle of the 6th and the 5th millennium BC.76 Its remains have been discovered along with some of the oldest finds on Italian territory of other biological elements of certain Near Eastern origin, such as the Asiatic mouflon, Ovis gmelini (Blyth, 1841), and the wild goat, Capra aegagrus (Erxleben, 1777).77
Fig. 7. The arrows suggest the probable route of artificial penetration into the West of the common fallow deer and the Persian fallow deer. The line marks the boundary of the primary distribution of the two subspecies, roughly coinciding with the development of the Amanus mountain complex (elaborated by M. Masseti).

20Adding together the various data available today, we cannot therefore confirm Joleaud’s assumption that the Phoenicians were the earliest exporters of fallow deer outside the original range of the species.78 This fact would also be indirectly confirmed by D’Andrea,79 who in a recent essay considered the frequency of deer in Phoenician sacrificial and cultic practices to establish “the existence of a specifically Phoenician taste for cervids with particular attention to food choices, sacrificial practices and the role of cervids in the bestiary”. D’Andrea’s temporary conclusion is that the privileged role of cervids in the Phoenician daily life and bestiary is rooted in a long-standing Levantine tradition and may have constituted a peculiarity of Phoenician preference in the West, although this remains at present only a hypothesis. However, it should also be noted that, in the original territories of the Phoenicians, bovids played a role comparable to that of deer in the northern Mediterranean. According for example to Kroll,80 gazelles, wild goats and mouflons represent the largest part of identified game in the Levant.
Zoological elements from the Indian subcontinent and inner Asia
21Since the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, and even a little earlier, other species have been imported from the East to the shores of the Mediterranean. Some of them, such as the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus (L., 1758), could also come from the Indian subcontinent and its surroundings. Archaeological and literary evidence attests to the presence of a population of this proboscidean in the region of the river Orontes in Syria, in the lost land of “Niya” or “Niyi”,81 between the second half of the 2nd millennium and the 9th c. BC.82 This “land” in the Gharb plain probably accounted for most of the elephant’s ivory that was worked in the western oecumene at that time. Who knows whether this was an original wild population or whether Asian elephants were imported into Syria from the Middle East?
22Elephants have long ceased to exist in the Gharb plain but there is another Middle Eastern mammal that still inhabits the river valleys of the Near East, the smooth-coated otter, Lutrogale perspicillata (I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1826).83 Out of south-western Asia, the current distribution of this carnivore is indeed very interesting, since it is found in Java, Sumatra and Borneo, northward to south-western China and Vietnam, east through Nepal and Bhutan and India to Pakistan.84 But in Iraq there is an isolated population whose status is uncertain (fig. 8). The fact that the carnivore inhabits a geographical portion of the Near East so far located from the remaining world area of the species possibly indicates the range must once have been wider. However, one wonders if it cannot be the result of an ancient importation from abroad. Since immemorial time, smooth otters have been used for commercial fishing in the Indian subcontinent. Today, in southern Bangladesh, these otters are still bred in captivity, trained, and used to chase fish into fishing nets.85
Fig. 8. Current distribution of the smooth-coated otter, Lutrogale perspicillata (I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1826), in Mesopotamia (from Masseti 2021b).

23In some cases, there is a lack of osteological evidence, but a few indirect indications also point to the presence in the Near East of the 1st millennium BC of animal species originating in Inner Asia, as in the case of some artistic productions from the Assyrian palaces of Nimrud and Nineveh.86 A bharal or blue sheep, Pseudois nayaur (Hodgson, 1833), is represented in a detail of a Neo-Assyrian bas-relief of Ashurbanipal’s throne room at Nimrud (about 875-860 BC), in Iraq (London, British Museum). This caprine is naturally dispersed broadly across the Tibetan plateau which includes the high montane regions of China, the north-eastern corner of Pakistan, the mountains of north-western Nepal, and the Indian sector bordering China.87 This means that the ruminant depicted at Nimrud could not have been found naturally in Mesopotamia in the Assyrian Period, but must have arrived there as a precious good, perhaps following an exchange of gifts between rulers. One must also consider that there could be a circulation of images not necessarily accompanied by the equivalent physical transfer of the actual animals. In many cases, however, the faithful depiction of the distinct zoological species suggests that the artist had living models in front of him at the time of their artistic evocation.
24A similar problem arises when attempting to taxonomically identify the equids depicted in a hunting scene (645 BC) from the palace of Ashurbanipal’s palace at Niniveh, Iraq (London, British Museum). These images have been considered by many authors as depicting onagers,88 Equus hemionus (Pallas, 1775) [pl. II, 7], equids characteristic of the Near-Eastern biogeography, but only recently they have been referred to the phenotypes of the wild horse, Equus przewalskii (Poliakov, 1881), of the steppes of Central Asia.89
25Also from Ashurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh comes a bas-relief with a deer hunting scene (about 865 BC; London, British Museum). The work seems to show the same species of cervid already depicted in the detail of a bas-relief from Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh (about 700 BC; London, British Museum). This could be an Indian swamp deer or barasinga, Rucervus duvaucelii (G. Cuvier, 1823), an ungulate historically widespread throughout much of the Indian subcontinent where it now survives in a few restricted ranges.90 The ancient records of the long-known Syrian proboscideans or the lesser known Mesopotamian-Indian swamp deer may well be considered among the practical results of the international trade.
26But other animals have been imported from the Middle East to the shores of Mediterranean Europe during the 1st millennium BC.
The black rat
27Native to the Middle East, the black rat, Rattus rattus (L., 1758), is considered one of the world’s most harmful invasive species.91 The incredible distributional success of this anthropochorous rodent is related to its artificial spread due, both directly and indirectly, to human action. In fact, the history of its colonisation in Western Europe is essentially the result of its transportation by man and the degree to which the various settlement locations have been anthropised by immigrant human populations. Analysis of the archaeozoological data available for non-Mediterranean Europe shows that the spread of this murid developed along the main trade routes during the 1st millennium AD, and that the population density of the species increased significantly from the 11th and 13th c. AD, probably as a result of urban expansion. De Graaf92 is of the opinion that this murid initially reached North Africa as a consequence of the trade network established between the Roman Empire and the Indian subcontinent. The species would then gradually spread to the northernmost Mediterranean and the rest of Europe. In Italy, the propagation of the rodent would seem to be emerging in a period between the end of the 2nd c. BC and no later than 79 AD,93 although it has been observed that its introduction into the western oecumene may have taken place in much earlier chronologies, perhaps as far back as the 16th c. BC or even the Neolithic.94 Often, however, the occurrence of murid remains in particularly ancient stratigraphic contexts has been directly related to the excavation capabilities of the species. In fact, rats can dig vertically to a depth of several tens of centimetres.95 In archaeological sites it is therefore possible to find osteological remains of the species in deeper levels than one would expect, especially when dealing with unconsolidated deposits and sediments. This may be the case, for example, with the site of Fortelezza (10th-6th c. BC), near Tortoreto (Teramo, central Italy), where the discovery of rat remains raised new questions about the early diffusion of rats in southern Europe. In fact, the layer D3 t8 Sud of the excavation yielded one rodent mandible, without molars and still bearing its incisors, which was referred to Rattus sp.96
28The diffusion of the black rat in the western world is associated with that of bubonic plague carried by the flea Xenopsylla cheopis, specific to the bacillus Yersinia pestis, and of which the rat is a host.97 The gradual increase in the spread of this murid helps to explain the differences in the geographical impact of the different waves of plague spread during the early and late Middle Ages.98 As far as is presently known, the first serious epidemic that can be traced back to symptoms transmitted by Y. pestis did not take place until the 1st millennium AD and is the so-called Justinian’s plague, which spread through the Byzantine Empire in the 6th c.99
Jungle fowls and chickens
29From the Middle and Far East also came one of the most important species for the human economy of all time, the chicken.100 Distributed from the Indian subcontinent to Indochina and the Indonesian archipelago, the jungle fowl, Gallus gallus (L., 1758), populates both the monsoon jungles and the equatorial forests, as well as the green areas of the anthropogenic environments.101 It is regarded as the main progenitor of all current domestic chickens, which are scientifically classified as logically belonging to the same species.102 In fact, it makes no sense to give the significance of subspecies, or even of different species, to the domestic forms derived from the same unique wild ancestor. Some studies have placed the beginning of its domestication in northern China Neolithic, but contrary to what Xiang et al. claimed,103 it is not yet clear when the first domestic chickens actually appeared there.104 The research, however, suggests that wild junglefowl—mainly due to the absence of adequate environmental parameters—were a rare presence in central and northern China, assuming a likely human-mediated import of animals from south-eastern Asia.105 Domestic breeds of junglefowl occurred in India as early as 3200 BC.106 It seems probable that chickens entered the Near East spreading slowly across Iran into Turkey (2900-2400 BC), Syria (2400-2000 BC), and Jordan (1200 BC).107 Based upon textual evidence, the red junglefowl was known in Mesopotamia by the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2113-2006 BC).108 However, it should be considered that the massive spread of chicken into the Near Eastern region does not occur before the Persian time in the 6th-5th c. BC.109 The recent discovery of the first rooster at Arslantepe (southern Turkey), in a level dated to the very beginning of the 1st millennium BC, fits with the general development of this species into the Near East and from here, during the advanced Iron Age, to the Mediterranean and to the West (fig. 9).110
Fig. 9. The oldest known remains of chicken, Gallus gallus (L., 1758), at Arslantepe, dated to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Missione archeologica italiana in Anatolia Orientale of the University Roma La Sapienza, Arsalntepe, Turkey (photo G. Siracusano).

30Although they were unknown to Homer and Hesiod,111 chickens appear in Greek coinage from the second half of the 6th c. onwards,112 already in Himera (Sicily)113 as perhaps also in Ephesus.114 There, and on the Greek mainland, they may have been introduced from Persia and probably entered Italy through Greek colonies shortly thereafter.115 Not by chance, the cock was described by Aristophanes (Birds, 483) as a “Persian bird”. Persia was in fact on the trade route connecting the Far Eastern countries and the Mediterranean shores, and an incredible quantity of goods travelled through it. The oldest occurrence of the bird in Italy so far available has been provided by the excavation of the Etruscan site of Montecucco (Castel Gandolfo, Roma), dated to the end of the 9th/beginning of the 8th c. BC.116
31Another interesting case is that of the Indian peafowl, Pavo cristatus (L., 1758).117 The bird, native to the Indian subcontinent, was much appreciated in Antiquity.118 This Oriental bird had its first appearance in the western world in Egypt at the time of Ptolemy II (285-246 BC).119 In ancient Rome, the peacock was regarded as a luxury element and much sought-after on the tables of wealthy hosts. In his On agriculture, Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella observed that: “These are birds which can be kept with the greatest ease in the wooded islets that can be found south of Italy and along its coasts.”120 Pliny the Elder reported the food use of to which the bird was the object.121
Roman uenationes
32A very important place in Roman civilisation was occupied, as is well known, by spectacles, including uenationes, generally translated as “hunts”, although the sources are not unequivocal on this point. The term uenatio sometimes indicates a parade or exhibition of animals, sometimes a fight between animals, sometimes the hunting of carnivores to phytophagous, sometimes the hunting of animals by men.122 The introduction of uenationes is probably related to the wars of expansion that brought the Romans into contact with exotic countries, according to a practice of Greek influence, probably also known in the Etruscan world of the late Hellenistic Age.123 It was a spectacular way to show the citizens the greatness of Rome, celebrating its role as a great military and geopolitical power.
33The earliest use of animals in spectacles reported in the literary sources dates back to the middle of the 3rd c. BC, with elephants captured in Sicily.124 Later there was apparently a display of ostriches around 197.125 It is believed that the earliest uenationes in Rome may include those offered in 186 by M. Fulvius Nobilior, while in 169 the aediles curules P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica and P. Cornelius Lentulus presented a uenatio of 63 (ferae) Africanae, 40 bears and 40 elephants.126 At the end of the 2nd c. and during the 1st c., as Roman expansion consolidated and the availability of animals became more accessible, hunting shows became more frequent. Sometimes these were simple exhibitions of exotic animals, animal fights, or even acts with trained animals, other times of proper hunts.127 The shows took place in the Circus Maximus, in the Roman Forum and, until the construction of the Colosseum, in the wooden or partly stone amphitheatres built in the Campus Martius.128 As Rome’s area of influence expanded, new varieties of exotic animals were added to the public displays.
34We can get an idea of this from the faunal repertoire depicted in the already mentioned late 4th c. AD Roman villa in Piazza Armerina.129 It is not possible to summarise the vast amount of information contained in the artistic production of this site in few notes. I will therefore limit myself to observing very briefly that there are depicted various Palaearctic animals such as the lion, Panthera leo (L., 1758) [pl. I, 3], the red deer, and the ostrich, Struthio camelus (L., 1758), with species of African origin, such as the addax, Addax nasomaculatus (Blainville, 1816) [pl. II, 8], and Asian animals, i.e. the tiger, Panthera tigris (L., 1758) [pl. I, 4], and the Indian rhinoceros, Rhinoceros unicornis (L., 1758), the result of the commercial activity of the villa’s owner, who recovered all these animals even from the most remote sites in the then known world. In this respect, of particular interest is a bone find from the ancient urban port of Pisa, the site of the discovery of several ancient vessels still partly equipped with their precious ancient cargo. In the midst of a “ceramic” cargo belonging to a large ship, called the “Punic” ship, mixed with a large mass of bone finds of various types and belonging to different animal species, an extraordinary osteological find was discovered. It was: “a fragment of left maxillary bone (length 111.2 mm, width 41 mm, thickness 18 mm), consisting of the anterior part, still well inserted in its alveolus, of the large canine tooth (length 86 mm, diameter 20.5 x 15.3 mm) in an excellent state of preservation, belonging to a Lion (Panthera leo L.).”130 According to Bruni,131 the chronology of the find could be placed between the second half of the 3rd c. BC and the first 50 years of the following century. Given the location of this bone within an “African” cargo of amphorae and ceramics from the wreck of the “Punic” ship, it may suggest a certain type of trade and/or maritime transport of animals from the African to the Italian coasts.132 Nevertheless, objectively speaking, it is not possible to exclude that there was no live lion on the Punic ship but only an osteological fragment of it.133
35It is worth noting the fact that, among the animals used in Roman circuses, there are not only exotic species, but also more familiar, autochthonous beasts, such as the brown bear, Ursus arctos (L., 1758).134 This carnivore seems to be one of the most common beasts exhibited in amphitheatres, at least according to archaeozoological findings. Surprising indeed is the large number of bones of bears recovered both in the Colosseum and in the area of the Meta Sudans.135 The remarkable occurrence of these animals in the Roman arenas can be interpreted in terms of an easier and more economic possibility of local supply of them, avoiding the costs and burdens of importing exotic species from distant territories. They were fearsome and untameable beasts that could be captured in geographical areas not too far from the capital of the Empire, without having to travel as far as North Africa or the Near East. According to Caiazza,136 for example, many Samnitic inscriptions show that the uenationes offered in Rome were often of bears, presumably captured in the Apennines. The distribution of bears was local to Italy in Roman times,137 and appears to have been much more extensive than the relic Apennine population known today.138 The disappearance of the bear, like that of the exotic beasts, from the Roman deposits of the early Middle Ages is an unequivocal indication of the break between the Ancient and Medieval Ages, which became concrete with the 6th c. and the gradual end of circus performances.139
Concluding remarks
36Returning now to our D. d. dama of boasted Phoenician translocation, some authors are of the opinion that this deer have arrived in the western Mediterranean only with the Romans.140 But even this assumption is rather questionable. How questionable it is to attribute to the Romans, from Brehm onwards,141 the responsibility for the introduction of the porcupine, Hystrix cristata (L., 1758), in Italy. This rodent currently occurs in most of northern and Sub-Saharan Africa.142 Its European distribution is limited to peninsular Italy, Sicily, and the island of Elba (fig. 10).143 Brehm was the first to argue that the Romans imported the porcupine from Northern Africa to Italy.144 Many authors have then accepted this hypothesis as an established dogma,145 notwithstanding the fact that, until recently, nobody has specified either the place and date of this event or it causal agent, whether natural or anthropic.146 However, it has been demonstrated on the basis of undeniable archaeozoological discoveries that the crested porcupine does not occur in Italy before Late Antique or even early Medieval times, and that it never spread in Europe beyond the Italian mainland and Sicily.147 Many of the earlier zoologists would have uncritically accepted Brehm’s assumption,148 investing his statement with the significance of a cultural model destined to last from then on.
Fig. 10. Present distribution of the crested porcupine Hystrix cristata (L., 1758) (from Masseti et al. 2010).

37The custom of moving animals—or their images—from one place to another, continued beyond the Roman Empire, especially if they were exotic and precious, doesn’t seem to have suffered a significant setback either in the Middle Ages, and beyond.149 Perhaps the time has finally come to call into question a whole series of models based on little or no data and which have subsequently become dogmatic cultural references. It is by no means easy, as has often been claimed in the past, to attribute the circulation of this or that species to a specific human ethnic group, especially with scarce and/or fragmented data, and considering the possibility of multidirectional circulations in time and space.
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Notes de bas de page
1James 1993.
2Masseti – Vianello 1991.
3Masseti 2001, 2003.
4Buchner 1994; Sacks 1995.
5Masseti 2008a.
6Masseti 2019a; see also Bonfante 1992 and Peruzzi 1992. See, here, Vespa.
7Gras 1994.
8Masseti 2019a.
9Lilliu 1996.
10Zervos 1954; Santoni 1989; Lo Schiavo – Usai 1995; D’Oriano 2007.
11Masseti – Bruner 2009.
12Masseti 2019a.
13Lilliu 1963, table XLVII.
14Cianferoni – Rafanelli 2014.
15Bartoloni 1989.
16Pallottino 1975; Barker – Rasmussen 1998.
17Ayda 1985. Cf. Vernesi et al. 2004; Posth et al. 2021.
18Barker – Rasmussen 1998.
19Beekes 2002.
20Tykot 1994.
21Vernesi et al. 2004.
22Masseti 2007.
23Pellecchia et al. 2006.
24Masseti 2007, 2010a.
25Manetti 1921; Vezzani 1929; Bradley 2003.
26Sojsal – Özder – Özkan 2004.
27French 1969.
28Edwards et al. 2007.
29Posth et al. 2021.
30Masseti 2007.
31Caputo 1959.
32Masseti 2012.
33Adinolfi et al. 2019.
34Masseti et al. 2022.
35Zeuner 1963.
36Adinolfi et al. 2019.
37Masseti 2009a.
38Harrison – Bates 1991.
39Harting 1883.
40Masseti 2009b.
41Kitto 1851; Hornblower – Spawforth – Eidinnow 2014; Jigoulov 2016; Xella 2017.
42Doak – López Ruiz 2019.
43Garcia y Bellido 1967; Kaetzke – Niedermeier – Masseti 2003.
44Zachos – Hartl 2006.
45Kowalski – Rzebik-Kowalska 1991.
46Hartl et al. 1995; Masseti 2002.
47Ludt et al. 2004; Pitra et al. 2004; Hajji et al. 2008.
48Beccu 1989; Mattioli 2003.
49Campanella – Wilkens 2004; Carenti – Wilkens 2006.
50Masseti 2009c.
51Detry et al. 2018.
52Mason 1984; Masseti 2009c, 2021a.
53Delibes et al. 2017.
54Strabo, Geography, 3.144; 3.168.
55Garcia y Bellido 1967; Borghini et al. 1983.
56Calonghi 1950.
57Delibes 1977.
58Sanders – Reumer 1984.
59De Grossi Mazzorin – Battafarano 2009.
60Masseti – Vernesi 2014.
61Haltenorth 1959; Heideman 1976; Stuart 1991.
62Brooke 1875.
63Masseti – Vernesi 2014, and references therein.
64Ferguson – Porath – Paley 1985.
65Randi et al. 2001; Vernesi et al. 2001; Masseti – Pecchioli – Vernesi 2008.
66Chapman – Chapman 1975, 1997.
67Haltenorth 1959; Uerpmann 1981; Masseti 1996; Chapman – Chapman 1997.
68Danford – Alston 1880; Harrison 1968.
69Masseti 1996; Masseti – Vernesi 2014.
70Joleaud 1935.
71Nobis 1992; Baumgartner 1996.
72Ryder 1975; Miller – Sykes 2016.
73Masseti 1996.
74Guilaine et al. 2000.
75Trantalidou 2002; see Masseti 1999, 2002a.
76Masseti 1996; Bökönyi 1977; Mascelloni et al. in press.
77Masseti – Vianello 1991; Masseti 1996.
78Joleaud 1935.
79D’Andrea in press.
80Kroll 2012.
81Masseti 2021b.
82Masseti 2003.
83Masseti 2021b.
84Wozencraft 2005.
85Feeroz – Begum – Hasan 2011.
86Masseti 2003, 2021b.
87Wang – Hoffman 1987.
88Strommenger – Hirmer 1963; Zeuner 1963; de Maigret – Fozzati 1980; Clutton-Brock 1981, 1992; Reade 1983.
89Masseti 2003, 2019b.
90Corbet – Hill 1992; Groves – Grubb 2011.
91Masseti 2002b and references therein. See, here, Lewis and Papayianni.
92De Graaf 1981.
93Armitage – West – Steedman 1984; Davis 1987.
94Masseti 1995.
95Ibid.
96Kotsakis – Ruschioni 1984; Masseti 1995.
97Treille – Yersin 1992.
98Vigne 1994; Audoin-Rouzeau – Vigne 1997.
99Rasmussen et al. 2015; Masseti 2019b.
100See, here, D’Andrea, Albizuri and Gardeisen, and De Grossi Mazzorin, Minniti and Corbino.
101BirdLife International 2016.
102Wong 2004.
103Xiang et al. 2014.
104Eda et al. 2016.
105Peters et al. 2016.
106Watson 2002.
107Pitt 2017.
108Heimpel – Calmeyer 1972, p. 487-488; Salonen 1973, p. 154.
109Lindner 1979.
110Siracusano – Manuelli – Masseti 2021.
111Pollard 1977.
112Chandezon 2021.
113Cutroni Tusa 2017; see Thompson 1895.
114Watson 2002.
115Wood-Gush 1985.
116Bartoloni et al. 1987; De Grossi Mazzorin 2005; Corbino et al. 2022; Masseti 2022. See, here, De Grossi Mazzorin, Minniti and Corbino.
117Here, Trinquier.
118Toynbee 1973; Grimal 1990.
119Houlihan 1986; Yalden – Albarella 2009.
120Columella, On agriculture, 10.6.2-4.
121Pliny the Elder, Natural history, 10.43-46. See Rackham 1983.
122Ville 1981.
123Feruglio 1977; Rea 2001; Trinquier 2011.
124Pliny the Elder, Natural history, 8.6.17.
125Plautus, The Persian, 199.
126Livy, History of Rome, 39.22.2. See De Grossi Mazzorin – Minniti – Rea 2005.
127Livy, History of Rome, 44.18.8.
128De Grossi Mazzorin – Minniti – Rea 2005.
129Carandini – Ricci – De Vos 1982.
130Sorrentino 1999; Sorrentino – Di Giuseppe – Manzi 2000; Sorrentino 2003.
131Bruni 1999.
132Sorrentino 1999; Sorrentino – Di Giuseppe – Manzi 2000; Sorrentino 2003.
133L. Landini, who is currently studying the find, hypothesises that it is an osteological element pertaining to a live transported lion, certainly excluding that it could have been an ornamental object (L. Landini, 2022, pers. com.).
134De Grossi Mazzorin et al. 2005.
135De Grossi Mazzorin 2016.
136Caiazza 1995.
137Horace, Epodes, 16.51.
138Pratesi – Tassi 1972; King 2002; Ciucci et al. 2015, 2017.
139De Grossi Mazzorin 2016; Masseti 2019b.
140Davis – MacKinnon 2009; Sykes et al. 2011.
141Brehm 1890.
142Cabrera 1932; Corbet – Jones 1965; Ranck 1968; Smit – Wijngaarden 1981; Niethammer 1982.
143Lovari 1993; Masseti 2008b, 2010b; Masseti – Albarella – De Grossi Mazzorin 2010.
144Brehm 1890.
145Toschi 1965; Van den Brink – Barruel 1971; Kingdon 1974; Corbet 1978, and others.
146Riquelme Cantal – Morales Muñiz 1997.
147Masseti et al. 2010.
148Brehm 1890.
149Masseti 2019b.
Auteur
International Union for the Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission, Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Sicilia “A. Mirri”Società Italiana per la Storia della Fauna
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