Roman Life Lesson
“Did the Romans keep chickens?”
“Did the Romans smoke?”
“Was there coffee in Roman times?”
All quite tricky questions for a seven year old. I wonder how many grown ups comprehend that the answer to all three has to be no as all three are from non european places.
While the Romans did have a sort of burger made from off cuts of meat cooked together in a flattened round the french fries hasn’t arrived yet.
Visiting a reconstructed village based on local Roman remains and archeology is very interesting. They grow vegetables a bit and keep livestock. The later mediaeval section shows progression but the globalised world we live in helps the children realise that the lady statue can’t be holding a mobile phone. It’s all a puzzle.
The hens arrived a lot later. Hard to see a hen as a jungle animal. Not as exotic as an orangutan.
We are so used to the things that are around us we cannot imagine how many are not local at all.
Are you surprised by the every day items that are actually exotic in life today?
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6 comments on “Roman Life Lesson”
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Green Lizard's Blog 
It’s like the horse here in the States… so many people don’t know that it’s not native to the Americas because it’s such an iconic symbol of the Old West. It’s the same with the tumbleweed, which also not native. But who can imagine the Western states without either?
If you go back far enough, all animals came from wild roots. ^_^
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Yep.
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Romans did keep chickens, though! Domestic fowl was already known in ancient Greece (it was imported through India and Asia Minor), and chickens are referred to all throughout the Roman empire.
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Yes but I think they brought them, as you say, from Asia. It’s hard to remember that they were introduced.
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Sorry i wasn’t clear, they were originally imported, but then bred in the empire.
Most roman seven-year-olds would have been equally surprised as yours to learn that chickens weren’t native.
The one fact that floored me as a kid was that the Romans did not have tomatoes!
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That’s a good one.
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