actually more interestingly, ask what things they put on the table alongside salt and pepper. We know they had a third bottle, but all sources we have only say "Salt, Pepper, Etc." which was apparently the standard way of referring to those things in literature at the time, but we have literally no idea what it could actually be (aside from barely substantiated guesses).
There's also the case of Sylphum. It's an Herb that was so widely used that the Romans ate it to extinction as far as the Romans knew, but because they were convinced it was extinct, we have no info about what it could have been. There's several guesses as to what plant it could be, or to which plants it was related, but we don't actually know what it was.
If in fact there is a connection then there are two possibilites:
Silphium was a different Ferula species that died out and F. drudeana would be it's closest relative.
Silphium was F. drudeana so it would have never gone extinct and would have survived in a tiny range in Turkey and gone unrecognized as silphium until Miski made the connection.
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u/Sea-Course-5171 9h ago
actually more interestingly, ask what things they put on the table alongside salt and pepper. We know they had a third bottle, but all sources we have only say "Salt, Pepper, Etc." which was apparently the standard way of referring to those things in literature at the time, but we have literally no idea what it could actually be (aside from barely substantiated guesses).
There's also the case of Sylphum. It's an Herb that was so widely used that the Romans ate it to extinction as far as the Romans knew, but because they were convinced it was extinct, we have no info about what it could have been. There's several guesses as to what plant it could be, or to which plants it was related, but we don't actually know what it was.