A Lost Roman Sauce, Earlier Puberty, Elephants Getting Tusks Back
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2022
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about a mysterious ancient Roman sauce; puberty happening earlier; and how elephants are getting their tusks back.
Garum, an ancient Roman sauce, mysteriously vanished — and culinarians can't recreate it by Steffie Drucker
- Tonon, R. (2021, June 24). The Team Resurrecting Ancient Rome’s Favorite Condiment. Atlas Obscura; Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/garum-fish-sauce
- Grescoe, T. (2021, November). Culinary Detectives Try to Recover the Formula for a Deliciously Fishy Roman Condiment. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/recoving-the-recipe-for-garum-180978846/
- Fish Sauce: An Ancient Roman Condiment Rises Again. (2013, October 26). NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/10/26/240237774/fish-sauce-an-ancient-roman-condiment-rises-again
- Garum, Pompeii Fish Sauce. (2021). Pompeii-Food-And-Drink.org. http://pompeii-food-and-drink.org/garum.htm
The reason puberty is happening sooner may be because our bodies time it with our nutrition by Grant Currin
- Scientists discover how our brain uses nutritional state to regulate growth and age at puberty. (2021, November 3). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/933435
- Lam, B. Y. H., Williamson, A., Finer, S., Day, F. R., Tadross, J. A., Gonçalves Soares, A., Wade, K., Sweeney, P., Bedenbaugh, M. N., Porter, D. T., Melvin, A., Ellacott, K. L. J., Lippert, R. N., Buller, S., Rosmaninho-Salgado, J., Dowsett, G. K. C., Ridley, K. E., Xu, Z., Cimino, I., & Rimmington, D. (2021). MC3R links nutritional state to childhood growth and the timing of puberty. Nature, 599(7885), 436–441. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04088-9
- Philippa Roxby. (2021, November 3). The brain sensor discovery behind humans getting taller. BBC News; BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59140359
Intense poaching led to the evolution of tuskless elephants, but the good news is that those tusks are making a comeback by Cameron Duke
- Campbell-Staton, S. C., Arnold, B. J., Gonçalves, D., Granli, P., Poole, J., Long, R. A., & Pringle, R. M. (2021). Ivory poaching and the rapid evolution of tusklessness in African elephants. Science, 374(6566), 483–487. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe7389
- Dina Fine Maron. (2018, November 9). Under poaching pressure, elephants are evolving to lose their tusks. Animals; National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-watch-news-tuskless-elephants-behavior-change
- Preston, E. (2021). Tuskless Elephants Escape Poachers, but May Evolve New Problems. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/science/tuskless-elephants-evolution.html
- Yong, E. (2021, October 21). The Atlantic. The Atlantic; theatlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/elephants-poaching-war-tusklessness/620447/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from |
| 0:04.8 | Discovery. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about a |
| 0:08.6 | mysterious ancient Roman sauce that experts can't recreate, the brain receptor that explains why puberty |
| 0:14.7 | is happening earlier around the world, and why some elephants evolved without tusks, |
| 0:19.7 | but are finally getting their tusks back. |
| 0:22.6 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:24.4 | Have you ever tried replicating a Grandma's recipe |
| 0:28.1 | only for it to not taste the same? |
| 0:30.3 | That's exactly what a team of scientists is going through right now. |
| 0:35.0 | And the group is trying to recreate Gerum, a fermented fish sauce once beloved by generations of ancient Greeks and Romans, a sauce that suddenly vanished. |
| 0:48.5 | But I'm serious, Gerum was made by leaving heavily salted small fish like mackerel or sardines to decompose in giant vats beneath |
| 0:59.3 | the Mediterranean sun. This was a process that took months and it smelled so bad that Gerum producers |
| 1:06.5 | were banished to the edge of the city. But here's where things get tricky. |
| 1:11.3 | There were many variations of Gerum and no official recipe. |
| 1:16.6 | Whatever records do exist aren't very exact. |
| 1:20.5 | Some call for whole fish, while others only use the guts. |
| 1:25.0 | Cooks mixed in different herbs and spices, and they added honey, oil, wine, or vinegar. |
| 1:32.0 | Just like your Grandma, the ancient Romans weren't precise about recording ingredient |
| 1:36.7 | proportions. Scientists don't even agree on the term to refer to the condiment. Some say that Gerum was one particular variety, while another |
| 1:46.2 | version was known as liquamen. Its name might also have varied from place to place and |
| 1:52.1 | throughout history. |
| 1:53.0 | Archaeologists have found evidence that Gerum was being produced and consumed from Tunisia to France, |
... |
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