32 2GM Monday August 3 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
“Some day I will go to Aarhus, To see his
peat-brown head,” wrote Seamus Heaney
in his poem Tollund Man, dedicated to one
of the most famous “bog bodies” whose
mortal remains were found almost per-
fectly preserved in 1950 after lying in a
peat bog for more than 2,000 years.
Archaeologists have warned that it is
getting harder to find such naturally pre-
served remains due to the recent effects of
farming and climate change, meaning that
vital clues about our ancestors’ diet and
lifestyle could be irretrievably lost.
In a study in the journal Plos One,
researchers say that it is “tacit but wide-
spread knowledge” that “prehistoric
organic remains are more rarely recovered
today, and that bones from earlier excava-
tions are generally better preserved” than
modern discoveries.
They revisited the Agerod bog in south-
ern Sweden, where digs since the 1940s
have unearthed thousands of well-
preserved deer and boar bone carvings,
arrowheads, and fishing net sinks asso-
ciated with Mesolithic people who lived in
FROM OUR
CORRESPONDENT
The disappearance of a 6th-century
version of Sauternes could presage the
end of civilisation in our time
B
ack in 2009 when the
financial crisis struck
Dubai, newspaper
columnists were moved
to a flight of apocalyptic
fancy. Expatriates were fleeing,
and some foresaw its gleaming
towers suffering the fate of
Shelley’s “Ozymandias, King of
Kings”. The natural order would
be restored, one doomsayer
predicted, and survivors would
scavenge for food in the skeletons
of those skyscrapers.
The natural order has yet to be
restored. Dubai survived, as
market forces did their work in
making rents cheaper. A bailout
from Abu Dhabi may have helped
more than market forces.
Recent events have made us
think once again about whatmakes cities and civilisations
collapse, and a new study of one
lingering mystery from a
different era in Middle Eastern
history makes grimmer reading.
The recent events, of course,
are the myriad consequences of
the coronavirus pandemic. No
one can be complacent about the
outcome of the disease but it is
clear that places whose
prosperity — like Britain — and
very existence, like Dubai,
depend heavily on global trade
have more to fear than most.
The mystery is the fate of Gaza
wine, a sweet white which in the
6th century AD was the
Sauternes of its day, fetching a
price to match its quality. Like
Dubai, its grapes grew in unlikely
terrain, on the fringes of the
Negev desert in what is now
southern Israel. Residents built
irrigation systems for their vines,
and their towns and villages were
at the cutting edge of Byzantine
Christian civilisation.
Then one day the wine pretty
much disappeared, and until now
no one really knew why. The
villages and the irrigation
systems fell into disuse and the
towns to dust, and the onlyexplanation anyone had was that
it was because of the Muslim
conquests of the 7th century,
which discouraged the villagers
from producing alcohol.
That never really made sense:
the invading Arabs never stopped
Christian towns from making and
drinking wine, and more than a
few liked a tipple themselves.
The new study, from Israeli
archaeologists, finally disproves
that chestnut. The research
shows the decline of the Gaza
wine industry began 100 years
earlier, in the mid-6th century.
The AD541 Plague of Justinian
was the world’s first recorded
outbreak of the bubonic plague.
It is not known exactly how many
people died but one estimate says
that the population of Byzantium,
the richest and most powerful
city of the western hemisphere,
fell by a fifth.
Byzantium was a multicultural
hub and a consumer society, the
Manhattan or even Dubai of its
time. So the plague had a terrible
effect on not just life and limb but
also the economic drivers of the
empire. Demand for luxury
goods collapsed — including, it
seems, Gaza wine.
There are no written accounts
from Negev residents of the
period. Perhaps they never quite
realised how bad things were
getting until it was too late.
The fate of the towns left
behind is worth pondering. We
all sense that civilisation is fragile
but economic boom and bust is a
symptom, not the cause. The
Roman empire had spectacular
financial crashes but it was the
four more traditional horsemen
that brought apocalypse to the
Negev.Richard Spencer
DUBAIMen preserved in peat
threatened by farming
the region more than 8,000 years ago.
These artefacts often look “as if they had
been laid down the day before yesterday,”
said Adam Boethius, lead author and an
archaeologist at Lund University, drawing
comparisons to Tollund Man in Denmark
and his ancient counterparts, including
Cheshire’s Lindow Man, who died around
the first century AD and was found in 1984.
When they compared recent finds with
earlier discoveries, the researchers no-
ticed a sharp decline in quality, especially
of organic matter.
The researchers argue human activities
such as excavation and farming have
introduced oxygen into the bog, which can
react with chemicals to create sulfuric ac-
id, corroding potential finds. Drought and
flooding caused by climate change may
have exacerbated the situation further.
“The results indicate that the bone ma-
terial has suffered from accelerated deteri-
oration during the last 75 years. This has
led to heavily degraded remains in some
areas and complete destruction in others,”
they add. As the Agerod site is relatively
untouched, the findings suggest that ar-
chaeologists may need to act quickly to
uncover what’s left in the world’s bogs.Sweden
David Rose
SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/GETTY IMAGESRuff love Keyah, a L’Hoest’s monkey, cuddles her infant at the Mulhouse
zoo, France. The species, from the Congo basin, is noted for its white beardA metal detectorist who boasted on-
line about his collection, amassed
over years of allegedly plundering ar-
chaeological sites in southern Spain,
has led police to an array of Phoeni-
cian gold jewellery and Islamic,
Roman and Visigoth artefacts.
Officers specialising in archaeolog-
ical theft came across the 34-year-old
man’s habit of sharing images of his
collection. They included a Phoeni-
cian gold earring believed to be
between 2,500 and 3,200 years old.
“They realised that his looting ac-
tivities were neither circumstantial
nor random but had taken place over
a long period of time,” a police state-
ment said. “It also emerged that the
suspect had been fined for similar ac-
tivities in the past.”
When police searched his house in
Villamartin, in Cadiz province, they
discovered a treasure trove that in-
cluded a gold dirham, five gold pieces
possibly from a necklace or bracelet, a
stone bust of a woman and coins.
The man took investigators to
farmland near Jerez de la Frontera,
where he said he found many of the
items. “It looks like there’s a bit of
everything, which is quite normal
when you’re dealing with people who
use metal detectors to find treasure,”
an expert told El Pais.
The treasure hunter could face
between six months and three years in
prison. Police are now trying to find
out if he sold any of the items.Bragging
detectorist
faces prison
Spain
Pablo Sharrock Madrid