Tag: rome

Romans may have used a poisonous plant as a hallucinogenic drug 2,000 years ago, study finds

The Romans are known to have been one of the world’s most influential civilisations.

But even they may have enjoyed a little escapism – in the form of powerful hallucinogens, a study suggests.

Archaeologists have discovered hundreds of black henbane seeds in a hollowed bone at the rural Roman settlement of Houten-Castellum in the Netherlands.

These seeds originate from a poisonous plant, which is part of the nightshade family, and have been used as both a medicine and a narcotic.

Until now, no conclusive evidence of the use of black henbane has been discovered from Roman times.

But experts said the placement of seeds inside a hollowed-out sheep or goat bone, sealed with a black birch bark tar plug, indicate the seeds were stored there intentionally around 2,000 years ago.

Historic texts suggest that henbane may have been used as a painkiller and sleep remedy.

But others warn it can also have strong hallucinogenic effects – causing loss of muscle control, dilation of pupils, visions and even induce a sense of flying.

While this is the first example of black henbane being found in a container from the Roman period, it is not clear exactly what its intended use was, the researchers said.

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Pagan Temple Shifts Rome’s Narrative of Rapid Conversion to Christianity

The ruins of an ancient pagan temple under a parking lot in central Italy 70 miles (112.65 km) north of Rome, sheds light on the cultural shift during the transition from Roman imperial theology to Christianity. The structure has been dated to the era of the Roman emperor Constantine, who ruled Rome between 306 and 337 AD, whose reign is marked by being the first Roman emperor to officially convert to Christianity.

The temple was found in Spello, Italy, as part of The Spello Project, an international effort to uncover the lost history of the ancient town formerly known as Hispellum. The announcement was made by Douglas Boin, a history professor at Saint Louis University, during the Archaeological Institute of America meeting in Chicago, according to a press release by Saint-Louis University.

The excavation team, led by Boin, discovered three walls of the monumental structure using underground imaging. The significance of the finding is connected to a concession made by Roman Emperor Constantine during the fourth century. In a letter inscribed in Spello’s Town Hall, Constantine allowed the townspeople to celebrate a religious festival in Spello, which had transformed into a Roman colony in 1st century BC, instead of traveling long distances.

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What Was the Purpose of a Roman Dodecahedron?

One of the significant advantages any historian of ancient Rome has is a wealth of written material that has survived from 2,000 years ago to help explain to us what the remains of the Roman Empire mean.

For instance, we know how the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum ended up buried under volcanic ash because Pliny the Younger wrote about Mount Vesuvius erupting in 79 AD and destroying the two settlements.

Likewise, we know that the giant concrete arches dot Italy and France today’s landscapes today because many Roman authors dedicated sections of their work to the discussion of the aqueducts.

Julius Sextus Frontinus, a Roman engineer, even wrote a book called On Aqueducts in the first century AD.

But occasionally, historians are stumped by something from Roman times because there is no obvious answer for what it is, and there is also no documentary material from the time that discusses it. Such is the case with the Roman dodecahedra.

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The Mysterious Dodecahedrons of the Roman Empire

IN THE FIRST EPISODE OF Buck Rogers, the 1980s television series about an astronaut from the present marooned in the 25th century, our hero visits a museum of the future. A staff member brandishes a mid-20th-century hair dryer. “Early hand laser,” he opines. As an observation of how common knowledge gets lost over time, it’s both funny and poignant. Because our museums also stock items from the past that completely baffle the experts.

Few are as intriguing as the hundred or so Roman dodecahedrons that we have found. We know next to nothing about these mysterious objects—so little, in fact, that the various theories about their meaning and function are themselves a source of entertainment.

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Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?

The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia. Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome’s famed Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is still intact, and some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome today. Meanwhile, many modern concrete structures have crumbled after a few decades.

Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out the secret of this ultradurable ancient construction material, particularly in structures that endured especially harsh conditions, such as docks, sewers, and seawalls, or those constructed in seismically active locations.

Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities. The findings are published today in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic, former doctoral student Linda Seymour ’14, PhD ’21, and four others.

For many years, researchers have assumed that the key to the ancient concrete’s durability was based on one ingredient: pozzolanic material such as volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples. This specific kind of ash was even shipped all across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time.

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