For time, archaeologists (and also novelists and of course Hollywood) imagine the Roman amphitheats full of gladiators, weapons and wild animals, beasts captured to submit them in the sand of the circus. One thing is however imagine or intuit it based on what historical and mosaic stories tell us, and another very different is to find palpable evidence.
That is what a team of archaeologists in Serbia has achieved, near the remains of the Roman amphitheater of Viminacium, former province of Meesia.
And the story he tells is fascinating.
Much more than bones. What the researchers have found in the vicinity of the Viminacium Amphitheater, a large enclosure built towards the second century DC, oval, with high walls and capacity for some 7,000 people, was part of the skull of a brown bear. Nothing else. Nothing less. For the common of mortals the bones could have gone unnoticed, but Nemanja Marković and the rest of the researchers who have just published their findings in AntiquityThey saw something else: a story that tells us about beasts, gladiators and struggles.
Why’s that? Because beyond the characteristics of the bones, which reveal to what kind of animal they belonged to, the skull retains marks that tells us about its last days in Viminacium. What did he do, what treatment he received, where he lived and what the bear died. Thanks to the application of bone analysis techniques, radiographs, microscopic analysis and DNA sequencing, the first thing the archaeologists found is that the skull belonged to a Ursusa male of about six years that the hunters probably arrested in the same region, in one of the forests that extend through the Balkans.
The fact is interesting because it suggests that the Romans had a hunting network that supplied animals for their shows. It is nothing new. Other studies have revealed how the Empire told of a sufficiently greased, broad and efficient system to bring lions to Britannia. All for the purpose of supplying the amphitheaters where the elites and the people were distracted.
What the wounds reveal. If the bones tell us things, much more do their wounds and brands, the great source of information to which Nemanja Marković and his colleagues have resorted. The first thing that caught their attention was an injury in the front of the skull, a broad wound in which the scientists appreciated two indications: one of healing, another of infection. That already tells us about a serious injury that the animal suffered for a season.
The next question is evident: how was it?
The other protagonist: the hunter. To answer that issue, researchers have looked directly at the amphitheater and a very concrete type of show: the fighting between beasts and hunters (o bestiarii), fighters who dedicated themselves to the sand with animals to delight the public.
“The Roman amphitheats also organized ‘Beast Cacerías’ (huntion), who faced people against animals, a show that lasted from the republican period to late antiquity, “they recently recalled in PLOS One The authors of another study that found another evidence of that kind of shows in Roman Britannia: the pelvis of a relatively young man (he was not more than 35 years old) who showed a clear and deep dentellada de León.
Unraveling the story. “We cannot say with certainty if the bear died directly in the sand, but the evidence suggests that the traum Live Science. The finding is relevant because until now historians only had references to use bears in this kind of shows. Do not test palpable. “This study provides the first direct osteological evidence of the participation of brown bears in Roman shows.”
Not just that. Beyond the front wound caused perhaps by the spear of a The hunter, The researchers observed something else. The bear jaws also seemed to show traces of infection. And above all their canines were spent. The reason? The study slides that could be due to prolonged captivity during which the animal was dedicated to biting the bars of its cage.
“It is likely that he has been in prison for years, not just weeks,” says the expert, which leads him to think that he participated in several Viminacium shows, where several tens of thousands of people came to reside.
One last mystery. That’s how it is. The bones hide a last mystery, a question that remains by driving at the archaeologists table: the skull of the brown bear was among the remains of a small building close to the entrance of the amphitheater. Was he buried there? And if so, why? “Previous investigations suggest that the dead animals in the sand were dismembered nearby, their meat was distributed and the bones were ruled out near the amphitheater, not buried in a formal animals cemetery,” says the Serbian researcher.
“The fact that this bear was buried and not discarded as other animal remains suggests that the spectators or organizers of the Games attributed some symbolic value. Perhaps respect, perhaps superstition. What is clear is that his death was not anonymous or banal”, Marković ditch in statements collected by National Geographic. Archaeologists also discovered part of the skeleton of a leopard in the same construction and bones of other wild animals, including brown bears, near the amphitheater. When analyzing these bone remains, the researchers dated them between approximately 240 and 350 AD
Images | 🇸🇮 Janko Ferilič (UnsPansh) and Wikipedia 1 and
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