Or some of them, at least - https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/diet-picts-revealed-breatkhrough-study-skeletons-2844874
Obviously because they hadn't yet invented chips.
Or marrs bars
deep fried of course
Quote from: Holly on May 13, 2020, 08:47:25 AM
deep fried of course
there's another way to eat them? :-[
Quoteits actually very nice.....!
All the way to the diabetic clinic :(
Anyway, I think the Picts mainly avoided Mars Bars because they had not yet crossed the Atlantic. Why they didn't eat much fish is another matter. It's not exactly rare around Scotland, which is famous for its sea food these days.
Some cultural reason....sacred animals?
Far too perilous: the Picts lived at a time when the Saint:water monster ratio was dangerously low.
"at another time, when the blessed man (St Columba) was for a lumber of days in the province of the Picts, he had to cross the river Nes [Ness]. When lie reached its bank, he saw a poor fellow being buried by other inhabitants; and the buriers said that, while swimming not long before, he had been seized and most savagely bitten by a water beast. Some men, going to his rescue in a wooden boat, though too late, had put out hooks and caught hold of his wretched corpse. When the blessed man heard this, he ordered notwithstanding that one of his companions should swim out and bring back to him, by sailing, a boat that stood on the opposite bank. Hearing this order of the holy and memorable man, Lugne mocu‑Min obeyed without delay, and putting off his clothes, excepting his tunic, plunged into the water. But the monster, whose appetite had earlier been not so much sated as whetted for prey, lurked in the depth of the river. Feeling the water above disturbed by Lugne's swimming, it suddenly swam up to the surface, and with gaping mouth and with great roaring rushed towards the man swimming in the middle of the stream. While all that were there, barbarians and even the brothers, were struck down with extreme terror, the blessed man, who was watching, raised his holy hand and drew the saving sign of the cross in the empty air; and then, invoking the name of God, he commanded the savage beast, and said: "You will go no further. Do not touch the man; turn back speedily". Then, hearing this command of the saint, the beast, as if pulled back with ropes, fled terrified in swift retreat; although it had before approached so close to Lugne as he swam that there was no more than the length of one short pole between man and beast.Then seeing that the beast had withdrawn and that their fellow- soldier Lugne had returned to them unharmed and safe, in the boat, the brothers with great amazement glorified God in the blessed man. And also the pagan barbarians who were there at the time, impelled by the magnitude of this miracle that they themselves had seen, magnified the God of the Christians."
Cheers
Mick
Ok, so we have two working hypotheses. The one in the article - that salmon were sacred - seems to lack evidence. The Picts put bulls on symbol stones but seem to have eaten beef and dairy. And even if salmon were sacred, what about other fish? The water monster issue could have been significant but we have limited evidence of the monsters being widespread. I suppose the appearance of the Pictish swimming beast on symbol stones may point to a wider distribution.
its seems odd that if fish as plentiful that more use of them in the diet isnt made...?
Quote from: Holly on May 14, 2020, 02:19:36 PM
its seems odd that if fish as plentiful that more use of them in the diet isnt made...?
I'm intrigued by the monastic evidence, when you might have expected fish to be served one day a week
Quote from: Jim Webster on May 14, 2020, 06:13:20 PMI'm intrigued by the monastic evidence, when you might have expected fish to be served one day a week
The article does comment on this, on the possibility that early mediaeval fasting practices were different and that fish as a substitute for meat on fast days may only have become common later on. By this argument, early Pictish monks might simply have eaten vegetarian meals on fast days.
Quote from: Duncan Head on May 14, 2020, 06:43:32 PM
Quote from: Jim Webster on May 14, 2020, 06:13:20 PMI'm intrigued by the monastic evidence, when you might have expected fish to be served one day a week
The article does comment on this, on the possibility that early mediaeval fasting practices were different and that fish as a substitute for meat on fast days may only have become common later on. By this argument, early Pictish monks might simply have eaten vegetarian meals on fast days.
indeed they may actually have been eating more meat on non-fast days than for example Welsh monks were doing
Also I wonder if actually they were catching fish, preserving it and selling it?
Or at least sending it to some overlord whether secular or religious
Also no mention of shell fish or did I miss that?
but even assuming they sent it on or sold it on, surely they would eat it as well?
QuoteAlso no mention of shell fish or did I miss that?
May have been hard to distinguish with the isotope tests they were using. Shellfish should be much more visible on settlement sites than fishbones though.
https://www.historyextra.com/period/early-medieval/medieval-matters-news-blog-salmon-knowledge-rolling-roman-mosaics-eels-crusades/
more info
People do know that in the Salmon of Wisdom legend, the salmon got eaten, don't they?
Quote from: Erpingham on May 15, 2020, 04:03:11 PM
People do know that in the Salmon of Wisdom legend, the salmon got eaten, don't they?
;D
Quote from: Jim Webster on May 14, 2020, 06:13:20 PM
Quote from: Holly on May 14, 2020, 02:19:36 PM
its seems odd that if fish as plentiful that more use of them in the diet isnt made...?
I'm intrigued by the monastic evidence, when you might have expected fish to be served one day a week
Remembering the early church was not aligned to Rome, so the practices might have been altogether different in regards to fasting, fish and Fridays.
How much did people really eat fish anyway?
This may be a Japanese perspective, but the presumption of the historical consumption of fish feels exaggerated by modern food culture.
Quote from: Dangun on June 01, 2020, 01:41:46 PM
How much did people really eat fish anyway?
Well,
Quote from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11457-018-9215-1The last decade has also seen greater consensus that fishing and fish processing was an economically important and profitable enterprise in Classical antiquity, especially in the Roman western Mediterranean—a topic which has generated great interest amongst Classical scholars...
Or,
Quote from: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/medieval-people-were-already-ruining-fish/589837/In medieval Europe, an era stretching from about a.d. 500 to 1500, fish was a prestigious food. Chefs experimented with ways to disguise beef as fish: At least half a dozen cookbooks of the era include recipes for turning veal into imitation sturgeon for wealthy lords and ladies. Sturgeon was so rare in England and France that it was reserved for the monarchs, and the Cistercians, a Catholic religious order that used sign language to communicate, referred to it using the sign for fish and then the sign for pride.
People of all social classes, though, ate freshwater fish—trout, whitefish, pike, eel, lamprey, and shads. This taste started to have consequences. Today, fish populations around the world are rapidly declining; a millennium ago, Europeans faced similar challenges. Overfishing resulted in local extinctions, and popular food fish had to be domesticated through aquaculture. The population pressures created by humans may have even changed the size of fish.
The answer would appear to be "quite a lot", in some times and places at least.
Quote from: Duncan Head on June 01, 2020, 02:40:11 PM
The answer would appear to be "quite a lot", in some times and places at least.
What's our a priori...
A quick google suggests fish contributes about 6% of animal protein in the modern US.
Given electricity, road transport and refrigeration, I imagine (don't know, just a thought) that percentage is higher now that it was.
Meat consumption is historically high today too... so across the Roman Empire I'm not sure where else to start other than a small number.
I would be very reluctant to take the modern US as a yardtsick for anything.
However this older article (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319280881_Taboo_or_Not_Taboo_Fish_Wealth_and_Landscape_in_Iron_Age_Britain) does suggest that fish were not a great item of consumption in Iron Age Britain as a whole. This one (http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/dhl/papers/jb/index.html) suggests however that Vikiing fishing practices changed that picture, and that in Viking Orkney, fish made up about 30% of dietary protein. (Remember the Viking freeze-dried cod (http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=2894.msg35133#msg35133) trade?)
So actually the site in the original story may have been less unusual for pre-Viking Pictland than first thought.
I'm sure it's all very regional and time-dependent; I would expect a very different picture in the ancient Mediterranean, for instance.
The US figure is very low. In the UK between a quarter and a third of people eat fish regularly but we don't eat it as ancient peoples might - a lot of it is processed (frozen, tinned, smoked). So, I think modern comparisons are of limited use.
Quote from: Duncan Head on June 02, 2020, 08:29:13 AM
I would be very reluctant to take the modern US as a yardtsick for anything.
However this older article (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319280881_Taboo_or_Not_Taboo_Fish_Wealth_and_Landscape_in_Iron_Age_Britain) does suggest that fish were not a great item of consumption in Iron Age Britain as a whole. This one (http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/dhl/papers/jb/index.html) suggests however that Vikiing fishing practices changed that picture, and that in Viking Orkney, fish made up about 30% of dietary protein. (Remember the Viking freeze-dried cod (http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=2894.msg35133#msg35133) trade?)
So actually the site in the original story may have been less unusual for pre-Viking Pictland than first thought.
I'm sure it's all very regional and time-dependent; I would expect a very different picture in the ancient Mediterranean, for instance.
I suspect the importance of garum as a savoury in the diet probably distorts the amount of fish eaten
Quote from: Erpingham on June 02, 2020, 10:33:26 AM
The US figure is very low. In the UK between a quarter and a third of people eat fish regularly but we don't eat it as ancient peoples might - a lot of it is processed (frozen, tinned, smoked). So, I think modern comparisons are of limited use.
When I googled about fish's contribution to diet there is a lot of non-data like yous point to, basically surveys about behavior. The data is without scale. (Pardon the pun.) UK vs US is not going to be very different - fish protein is just more expensive. There may be some data about whether this was also true in the classical period...
Here is another source, I haven't done more than scan it, but it says that in 1961 ex-China fish made up 13% of global animal protein.
https://www.greenfacts.org/en/fisheries/l-2/06-fish-consumption.htm (https://www.greenfacts.org/en/fisheries/l-2/06-fish-consumption.htm)
Granted a modern comp is of limited interest, but we do know, in the classical period people ate less calories and ate less meat protein.
So I am confused by why our a priori is - they ate a lot more fish?
I think there are a couple of potential factors: we know that fish were available in greater numbers than in our modern period. Without modern farming and transport methods, food had to be sourced largely locally, with exceptions for grain shipments and luxury food stuffs.
Which all tends to lead to the assumption that if you lived in a location with an abundance of fish protein available, it simply couldn't be ignored as a food source as there were few substitutes available at reasonable cost.
Secondly, within living memory there was a much heavier reliance on fish as a food source. I lived within 20 miles of at least 8 fish markets as a child, and now there is one. On the coast where I live, entire communities were based on fishing. Now arguably, they can all just go buy fish from the freezer in the supermarket, but they don't.
Finally, comparatively, fish has become more expensive relative to other sources of protein.
So those of us living in coastal communities have a lived experience of a reduction in fish consumption. We have anecdotal and historical evidence of diet. There has been a reduction in fish stocks, increasing scarcity. (The mussel and shellfish that once supplied the basic diet of poor folk in Edinburgh are mostly gone.)
So whether it is correct or not, there are valid explanations for the assumption.