But where they common in ancient times? Or are they things like tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, corn, chocolate, etc. that were introduced after Columbus?
Actually, I was going to point out that growing up I'd eat the nuts extracted from the cone of the Araucaria tree, which - depending on shape and how ripe they are - could look remarkably like a green pineapple [1].
... but that introduces another issue, because I grew up eating those in South America and it turns out the tree originates in Australia. But it's not unthinkable that a similar pine cone could be found in Europe (and the vast Roman Empire of the time).
You wait for them to open and eat the seeds or nuts as some people call them. These particular pinecones dont grow in the north, so they are supposed to be some sort of delicacy.
I was going to agree with you, noting that it’s in a basket of fruit (with an offering of foods) but humans have used Pine nuts for food since prehistoric times (per Wikipedia). It seems the simplest explanation–it’s not that Romans didn’t know how to draw pinecones, but that a particular Roman had a hard time representing a pinecone in a mosaic.
This seems like a stretch. Everything else in the basket is clearly a fruit. A pine cone isn’t a fruit. A pineapple is. It looks like a pineapple in a basket of fruit.
Seriously. The basket is full of delicious edible things and... a pinecone?
The theory presented is either missing some background knowledge we need to understand it (pinecones were highly valuable to Romans? I dunno) or it makes no sense.
Not only that, I'm quite sure green pinecones are edible and still eaten in parts of the world.
To me it seems the mosaic indeed shows what looks like a "young" pine cone (i.e. you see square platelets), not the open one you would get pinecone nuts from.
A quick googling suggests a few Russian recipes[0] though I feel I had them somewhere in Greece.
My experience is that the best pine cones for pine nuts are the ones just about to open.
Before that they are not ripe, but once they are open the nuts quickly fall off (at which point you look for them under the tree before the squirrels do).
Maritime Pines, the kind that is most common in Central Italy, have edible pine nuts.
I grew up in Italy and I remember pine nuts being much more mainstream there as a food, compared to other countries where I've lived. They are consumed both by themselves and as ingredients in various recipes (an example is Pesto sauce - the original Italian version uses pine nuts - another example is the Tuscan "torta della nonna", a type of dessert).
Obviously the ancient Roman cuisine was very different compared to modern Italian food but I suspect Romans may have been eating pine nuts too.
The first thing I thought looking at it: It is a pineapple. It was an immediate thought. There is also the fruit part on top, which makes it even more resembling a pineapple...
There are some hints that maize/corn made it across. Apparently there are carvings on temples in India that predate Columbus that appear to show corn cobs.
I have seen thousands of pine cones in my life, living in France, and none of them have hairs on top, not such a different coloration between the body and the head.
It doesn't mean it's a pineable though, Occam razor would lead me to thing it's more likely a fruit most people are not accustom to see.
Not that I think it's a figue de barbarie, the body matches, but not the head, yet there are a lot of fruits people don't know about, or it could have been a fruit that disappeared since. After all, we lost a whole class of banana type, why not other things?
All cacti except one species are from the Americas. That one species also somehow managed to colonise equatorial/southern Africa in addition to South America.
By the way, in English I'd call this a prickly-pear.
Wikipedia lists the following synonyms: Indian fig opuntia, Barbary fig, cactus pear, prickly pear, spineless cactus, and tuna (borrowed from Mexican Spanish).
Everything else in the basket is clearly a fruit... but what kind? From the left, there's some kind of leaf (bay leaves?), figs, ... some pale yellow orbs that could be loquats or anything else, grapes, ... some red orbs that are probably pomegranates and ... something that is about the size of two and a half figs.
It's actually not that easy to recognise what the mosaic is showing, especially with so much missing context after a couple thousand years. Bit of a stretch to call that thing a pineapple then.
Edit: Oh, and what's that behind the "pineapple"? That's even harder to decipher than anything else in the basket.
Come to that, can anyone recognise the species of fish below the basket?
The scale is off, I grant you, but it looks very much like a pineapple otherwise to me. The cross-hatching pattern, the leaves on top, and even the "eyes" in each diamond cross-hatch shape. The color, too.
Pineapples get successively smaller each harvest. But commercial growers don't sell them so you're used to only seeing one size if you don't live in a country that grows them. I have harvested pineapples as small as an apple.
Perhaps, however there are other indications of pre-columbian contact: Traces of nicotine and cocaine, both New World drugs, have been detected in Egyptian mummies.
A counter argument is why would a pineapple have been brought over and not the much more useful potato and corn?
Suppose your prior on whether or not there was communication between the Roman-era Mediterranean and America is 50-50.
What's more likely, pineapples were known in ancient Rome but there's only a single picture of one ever where the strange and exotic fruit isn't even foregrounded, and no mention in any written text ever? Or there's one mosaic among all preserved images and writings which has a weird anomalous representation of something European that could be interpreted as a pineapple?
Is very interesting the number of cases of artists and museums entering in panic and craving for attention in this time. Is like a mortal combat for historians.
As all the other fruits in the basket are from Mediterranean, and it seems to have leaves at one end, my candidate would be an african root vegetable that for some reason would be forgotten later in Occident. My main candidate would be Colocasia esculenta that is from China, but was cultured in the Mediterranean since the Roman empire at least. Size, color and leaves fit. Can't be consumed without a special processing that is well known in Africa but is not part of the culture in Europe.
Lotus root was a common crop in Egypt and could fit also if we assume that the pineapple pattern could be wrong.
Pineapple has a very different arrangement of leaves much more spread, stout and spiny, and this fruit has the wrong size and wrong shape also.
Everyone saying it is too small to be a pineapple: the fruit right next to it is a pomegranate. Take two pomegranates and stack them - not too far off now on the size of the pineapple. Add to that that fruits were smaller back then; but even then, I’ve had a pineapple nearly as small as a large apple. The real question: how big are those grapes?!
For what it's worth, you can actually eat pine cones. I was surprised to discover this last year, but a woman in a Facebook group I was in when I still had a Facebook account one day decided to post all these pictures of the delicacy she had just finished making that reminded her of her childhood. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/market/pine_cones_jam
She grew up in Soviet-run Ukraine, so I guess you work with what you have, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that people in Europe thousands of years ago figured out you could eat pine cones, too.
It also resembles custard apples/sugar apples. Though they also don’t have leaves at the top either. And, like the pineapple are native to the Americas.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_pine
Also, pine nuts are very expensive, here in Spain at least.
... but that introduces another issue, because I grew up eating those in South America and it turns out the tree originates in Australia. But it's not unthinkable that a similar pine cone could be found in Europe (and the vast Roman Empire of the time).
[1] https://jerry-coleby-williams.net/2015/02/15/bunya-prehistor...
They are usually around pear size.
There is a video of a family collecting and preparing them here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH4nSgEIVKo
I’m not sure that “Romans didn’t know how to draw pinecones” is really the most logical solution.
It's too bad nobody hired him to represent pineapples, though, because he would have done a great job.
Also, pineapples are called that because they look like pinecones (and perhaps especially those pinecones).
Double facepalm, Picard-style.
The theory presented is either missing some background knowledge we need to understand it (pinecones were highly valuable to Romans? I dunno) or it makes no sense.
To me it seems the mosaic indeed shows what looks like a "young" pine cone (i.e. you see square platelets), not the open one you would get pinecone nuts from.
A quick googling suggests a few Russian recipes[0] though I feel I had them somewhere in Greece.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/32...
Before that they are not ripe, but once they are open the nuts quickly fall off (at which point you look for them under the tree before the squirrels do).
I grew up in Italy and I remember pine nuts being much more mainstream there as a food, compared to other countries where I've lived. They are consumed both by themselves and as ingredients in various recipes (an example is Pesto sauce - the original Italian version uses pine nuts - another example is the Tuscan "torta della nonna", a type of dessert).
Obviously the ancient Roman cuisine was very different compared to modern Italian food but I suspect Romans may have been eating pine nuts too.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tiny-blue-beads-eu...
It doesn't mean it's a pineable though, Occam razor would lead me to thing it's more likely a fruit most people are not accustom to see.
E.G: figue de barbarie: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figue_de_Barbarie (and if you wonder, it's very good)
Not that I think it's a figue de barbarie, the body matches, but not the head, yet there are a lot of fruits people don't know about, or it could have been a fruit that disappeared since. After all, we lost a whole class of banana type, why not other things?
they are also quite commonly grown and eaten in Italy, but apparently they are also of American origin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia_ficus-indica
Wikipedia lists the following synonyms: Indian fig opuntia, Barbary fig, cactus pear, prickly pear, spineless cactus, and tuna (borrowed from Mexican Spanish).
It's actually not that easy to recognise what the mosaic is showing, especially with so much missing context after a couple thousand years. Bit of a stretch to call that thing a pineapple then.
Edit: Oh, and what's that behind the "pineapple"? That's even harder to decipher than anything else in the basket.
Come to that, can anyone recognise the species of fish below the basket?
Figs (or garlic), quince, grapes and pomegranates
It's supposed to be a pineapple the size of... 6 grapes?
It looks like a small dinner roll. It doesn't look anything like a pineapple.
This feels like an entirely made-up mystery, like something tour guides invented to try to make the tour interesting.
Apart from that you've described a stone pine pinecone (which is why pineapples are called that...).
Here's a larger image of the mosaic: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/0_Mosaic...
Also, I think it's just a pine cone.
A counter argument is why would a pineapple have been brought over and not the much more useful potato and corn?
Nicotine production isn't limited to tobacco; it's been found in the bark of various acacia species, for example.
What's more likely, pineapples were known in ancient Rome but there's only a single picture of one ever where the strange and exotic fruit isn't even foregrounded, and no mention in any written text ever? Or there's one mosaic among all preserved images and writings which has a weird anomalous representation of something European that could be interpreted as a pineapple?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandanus_tectorius#/media/File...
Although admittedly it's not particularly likely that this made it to Rome either, and it's non-edible to boot.
As all the other fruits in the basket are from Mediterranean, and it seems to have leaves at one end, my candidate would be an african root vegetable that for some reason would be forgotten later in Occident. My main candidate would be Colocasia esculenta that is from China, but was cultured in the Mediterranean since the Roman empire at least. Size, color and leaves fit. Can't be consumed without a special processing that is well known in Africa but is not part of the culture in Europe.
Lotus root was a common crop in Egypt and could fit also if we assume that the pineapple pattern could be wrong.
Pineapple has a very different arrangement of leaves much more spread, stout and spiny, and this fruit has the wrong size and wrong shape also.
Widely known as taro root.
She grew up in Soviet-run Ukraine, so I guess you work with what you have, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that people in Europe thousands of years ago figured out you could eat pine cones, too.