Black legionnaries in Roman Army?

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

How un-British of Beatrix Potter to make an immigrant her hero!   
 still the evidence is that Romans brought them to Britain first.

[ithoriel]

The Independent.  Think they are sooooo clever. Cheddar man hunted rabbits did he? Odd, they didn't arrive in Britain till the 11th Century. Idiots. 

So it was a time travelling rabbit that left it's bones in Fishbourne Roman Palace then?

I know rabbits aren't mentioned in the Domesday Book but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

Given the rate at which science is pushing back the dates of "the earliest evidence for ....." I try to remember to say our earliest evidence for rather than the earliest date of. Not that I remember as often as I should!!

[nicknorthstar]

First of all cut out the sarcasm, there's no need for that.

Secondly, I'd not heard of the discovery. For me, it's one of those facts that we grow up with that the Normans introduced the Rabbit to Britain. Sure information changes but a quick google and this opinion hasn't changed on most websites:

Because of its non-British origin, the species does not have native names in English or Celtic, with the usual terms "cony" and "rabbit" being foreign loanwords.

I looked on the Fishbourne website and found this:
A chance find made during re-examination of zooarchaeological remains from Fishbourne Roman palace could push back the timeline of the introduction of rabbits to Britain by more than a millennium. I agree, that is interesting. But it's still 9000 years after Cheddar Gorge man.

[Pattus Magnus]

Just curious regarding whether or not the archaeological work distinguished between rabbits and hares? Those get mixed up in day to day speech a lot, but are different critters, possibly with different timelines for arrival in Britain (aren’t the mountain hares in Ireland and Scotland possibly also endemic, having arrived during the last glacial period- might have been more widespread before introduced species arrived. Or not, I’m not very familiar with archaeology and paleontology of the British isles.)

The discussion is getting to be a wide tangent from the OP.

[cadbren]

Romans introduced the apple tree too. There were apples before that,  but they came from native pear trees. Actually the native apple is the crab apple.

[cadbren]

aren’t the mountain hares in Ireland and Scotland possibly also endemic,...

They are. Interestingly Boudicca supposedly released a hare and used the direction it ran in to determine some divination. If true that might have been a brown hare, possibly introduced by the Belgae when they arrived in Britain a couple of centuries before the Romans.

I know it's called a mountain hare but the Irish ones don't all live in the mountains and presumably they originally lived in the flatlands of England at some point.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Romans introduced the apple tree too. There were apples before that,  but they came from native pear trees. Actually the native apple is the crab apple.

Apple trees from seeds do not reproduce the same sort of apple as their parent tree. The only way they can recreate a tree’s fruit is by grafting.

[anevilgiraffe]

Apple trees from seeds do not reproduce the same sort of apple as their parent tree. The only way they can recreate a tree’s fruit is by grafting.

so the fruit is a lottery?

this thread is great.

[carlos marighela]

so the fruit is a lottery?

Or maybe a fruit machine? Kerchingggg!!!

[anevilgiraffe]

 

[Ninefingers]

this thread is great.

It's been a hare-raising experience...

[carlos marighela]

But did the British Hare ever challenge the Roman Tortoise? And with that the thread descended down a yet another rabbit hole.

[Maniac]

Romans introduced the apple tree too. There were apples before that,  but they came from native pear trees. Actually the native apple is the crab apple.

All modern apples are the same tree effectively.  The granny smith you buy in Germany comes from the same tree as the one in Washington as in China (each one is a grafting from a grafting from a grafting from some tree lost to time).

Lacock Abbey has a nice heirloom apple orchard, with some very old varieties that look more like a rugby ball than what we think of as an apple.

We have a couple wild apples where I live and they are great for baking/desert/cider pressing.  Nice and tart with loads of flavor.  Sadly a late snow kill off the blossoms this year.

[rumacara]

Gentlemen, keep to the subject of this thread.
And be polite.

[anevilgiraffe]

Gentlemen, keep to the subject of this thread.
And be polite.

I’m genuinely intrigued by the whole apple thing… what grows from apple seeds then?