Still the same spade! Blue Moon lives again:)

There is an old joke that keeps doing the rounds. A guy shows of a gardening, or DIY tool, proudly, with a tear in his eye, declares it’s the old hoe, spade, hammer that his father handed to him before his father died. ‘They built things to last back then’ is the proud declaration, ‘why this has only needed a new blade and two new handles in all that time. As good as the day his father handed it to me,wouldn’t change it for a new one, no way.’

Blue Moon is a little like that spade/hoe/hammer. The story created over twenty years ago has only needed a ‘couple’ of changes, but otherwise as good as the day it was born.

Well no, not really.

It was brought home to me when I was discussing with a friend just exactly how I had brought it up to date.

A new blade, two new handles? And the rest!

I mentioned last time that I had in my innocence broken the cardinal rule of writing - to write about something you know - when I set it in the USA, in the police department. Broke the rule twice. Back then there was no google mapping, no swooping onto the Internet to research. Finding out about areas, departments did actually require someone on the ground. Three times I and friend from forever journeyed over there to carry out ‘research’.

Each time we had to buy another suitcase before returning home to carry the excess books, brochures, maps etc picked up in the course of the trip. We had a great time exploring the country. Thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

I wrote a book, called it Blue Moon.

It wasn’t great.

Actually, most of it was pretty dire:(

Never destined for publication I had enjoyed the writing of it. Then on a menopausal hiccough I took myself off to university in my late 40s, packed Blue Moon away in a box and got on with real life.

It never really went away, this story of the American detective. Kept poking me in the mind with a hiss of ‘hate this box’.

I got Blue Moon out one NaNo time and re-read it. Some bits were actually not bad. Some bits.

The world had changed since then, in so many ways. We had new technology, we had fought wars, leaders had come and gone, the culture had dramatically changed. I was vastly older and maybe a little wiser.

Was the story even worth resurrecting? I had by this time published the first three of The Sefuty Chronicles. Knew about at least having some knowledge of the subject of the book. New blades and handles were needed.

So I changed the following:

The hero was no longer to be a detective (what did I know about detecting-nothing) He was now  a builder/property developer.

He and his friends no longer lived in the USA (I really couldn’t take any more research to update the American connection! Now he lives on the East coast of England, this is my patch.

All the names of the main characters have been changed.

Instead of four characters thoughts and speech there is only three, the heroine remains only as memories of three friends as they each recollect past events. No longer a linear narrative, each of the three friends have their own sections where they recollect and interpret. Involving gaps, back stories and misunderstandings.

There are still the harrowing events, the lies and deceptions, the cover ups. Must have those.

And still it is a story of love: between lovers, between friends, between adult and child, between people and their God and what devastation can occur when secrets are heard, when loyalties and love are tested to the limits.

See, still the old story, just needed a couple of new blades and handles. Wouldn’t change the story for a new one - no way:)

Eating people is wrong?

Last time I was writing about the dilemmas of population control probably facing a population who were isolated, with uncertain food supplies. But maybe I should have backtracked a little and discussed what would have have happened to the food supplies before they were so alone.

In the Sefuty Chronicles I had set up a world ripped apart by war. Catastrophic wars in fact. Due to climate change and the decreasing availability of natural resources. I had supposed that there would be mass movement of displaced people, fleeing from growing deserts, minor wars over land control, drowned or salt poisoned land, floods and other climate disasters such as increased hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, rain and so the list goes on.

The world, at this moment, hosts billions of people. The global population growth is beginning to slow, it doesn’t feel like it but, individually, nation population growth is slowing down and in some cases almost stopped. There will be many more millions to accommodate as those who are young now reproduce, however this will be offset to an extent by the huge aging cohort dying. There is still the capacity to feed us all, if we become more responsible about resources.My scenario has discounted this responsible behaviour. Pre- chronicles the world has run out of resources and global starvation faces everyone.                                                                                        

Mass migration produces fear in the populations facing the arrival of so many extra mouths to feed, if resources are already reduced fear is easily translated into violence. There would little welcome. Equally there would be fear in the fleeing masses. Survival becomes all, if strength is left, feeding yourself and your family will incite violence. Small localized wars would soon spread to larger more violent conflict as governments mobilize to pacify their own and to deter outsiders.

Already all over the world discontent and rage is being generated over much smaller numbers of immigrants and refugees. Nothing on the scale I am talking about in Sefuty Chronicles, we can still hold out a hand to aid, but more and more the hand wants to only aid, not to take in, the displaced.

The richer nations will pour in money but not open up homes.

Selfish?

Normal human nature?

So pre-Sefuty Chronicles has been global war; the north against the south. The richer nations against the poorer. The more technology against the less industrialized. However, eventually the minerals and natural resources  which often came from the exploited south, ran short for the north. Machines ground to a halt and the north too faced massive food shortage.

The North may not dry up, but good harvests are not guaranteed.

Governments fell as populations sensed their coming doom and toppled them. Anarchy not far behind. Law and order breaking down and nations unused to violence in their own territory left to fend for themselves.

This has all occurred before the Chronicles are written; I have suspected that those who delight in, or mind not, violence would soon gather in the available resources once government was gone and rationing would be a matter up to highest biders, favours and who you know. 
Those who consider themselves law abiding, gentle, unable to hurt others would die or become as the others. Famine is a dreadful event. Starving not a pleasant death. Self survival, survival of your family becomes all.

During the 1930s, multiple acts of cannibalism were reported during the Soviet famine in the 1930s (Yaroslav Lukov 2003)

Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. ... At least 2,505 people were sentenced for cannibalism in the years 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, though the actual number of cases was certainly much higher. ( T. Snyder 2010 Bloodlines. Europe between Hitler and Stalin)

Cannibalism is documented to have occurred in China during the' Great Leap Forward', when rural China was hit hard by drought and famine.(Jung Chang Wild Swans: three daughters of China)

In modern history there is the documented account of the ill fated Donner Party trapped in cold, blizzard and helplessness in the mountains of North America, also of the survivors of an air-crash in the mountains of South America. During the 2nd World war cannibalism was reported from Russia, especially at places such as Stalingrad under siege for years, so long that all the domestic, wild animals and even the vermin had been consumed. German and Japanese troops, cut off from their supply lines and with no sources of food to keep them alive, no doubt there are many other events of a similar nature , when the world is such turmoil survival becomes all.

In The Gulag Archipelago, Soviet writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described cases of cannibalism in 20th-century USSR. Telling about the famine in the 1920s in Povolzhie he wrote: "That horrible famine was up to cannibalism, up to consuming children by their own parents . . . ‘

Cannibalism has a long history not always proved, but common enough for it to be one of humanity's practices usually in times of famine, or for appeasements of angry gods.

Sailors adrift on the salty sea, shipwrecked or air wrecked survivors with limited hope of rescue, adverse weather marooning a population, nationwide famines when help is not forthcoming from governments all have thrown up this last taboo and broken it down.

I have placed evidence of cannibalism in the Chronicles, evidence discovered in the bones found 50 years after the event, at the time when the security of my nation broke and vanished. Cannibalism then, rumours of cannibalism, within the mined rings as well as in the land left unprotected.

Those left behind within ‘rings of explosives’?, yes, I can see some kind of cannibalism being practiced after successive bad harvests. Not always, for most it is a taboo to far.

But. . .but. . . but

Could I eat another?

My love of meat when younger was so strong friends would joke they wouldn't want to be shipwrecked with me, however, although I state that it would be foolish to die if there was a dead body next to one - could I?

Would I be able to kill another to feed?

If it was just me?

If my family needed the food?

Could you?

Whose life is the most important?

Who should live or die?

We have grown up with the thought that we are all important, and I am still talking about my culture, I don’t know enough about other cultures to make sweeping statements. However, there are rumours of double standards, even here in our so called civilization there is a debate about whether everybody has the same rights to life or choices in their own care.

There are rumours of some elderly and/or disabled, not being given the same treatment in hospital as the young and abled. Arguments on the very premature and even the right of having children. Choices being made, without our consent, on the rights which  individuals / society have over our lives. I believe the consensus would be, that we are all entitled to live. This idea of the equality of all persons is relatively new in our history and has been hard fought for. It flourishes now in this land in a climate of certainty and social cohesion.

But in a climate of uncertainty and anarchy, what then? In the Sefuty Chronicles what would those settlements decide when it comes to making choices of food distribution. Back to the basics of survival.

If food is limited, should people who cannot, or will not, pull their weight in the manner of work, be looked after by others. The old, infirm,or very young, for instance?

Are all children wanted, should population controls be put in place, a limitation too how many or when they are allowed to be born?

If food is limited who should receive rations? Are women as bearers of children and so the future, worth more than men with their strength to provide protection and work the land?

Just how many children are needed to keep a population stable, when each year' rates harvest , illness and accident rate is uncertain?

How many of the old with the knowledge and skills are needed to pass on valuable information?

There comes a point in this scenario I set up in The Sefuty Chronicles, when some kind of population control is needed. I had many isolated settlements, no interaction with others, closed societies abandoned by any kind of central government. But all with a history and culture of modernity behind them. How in the extremities of survival would they choose?

How would they divide, first the food still in homes and shops, second what they can provide for themselves?

 To the men because they need the muscle power, 

to the women because they need to be healthy to nurse the children, 

 OR

to the children for their successful growth?

I remember, decades ago in the 60s, when TV showed pictures of a famine for the first time, hundreds of bone thin refugees, having made their way to a camp for help. Pictures of starving babies being lovingly cared for. An angry refugee male arguing that it was madness to feed the babies, the young adults needed the food, what use to a dying society to have well fed babies? What use was a baby, what could they do? Nothing, until years had passed. It was shocking to hear yet even then in my youth I could understand his logic and anger I cared for children, it was my chosen career for decades and what he said was against every fibre of my being, but I could understand.

Some societies in a famine will abandon the child (anathema to us) but, it does actually make sense, if you keep adult men and women alive more babies can be conceived when the famine has passed. If you keep children alive and let the adults die the baby on its own won’t survive. This chicken and the egg again. Other societies have many children, as an insurance against old age and infirmity, someone always there to help you stay alive.

So decisions about food divisions and population control would be be needed in my dystopian world. It is not sensible to trust to luck against natural disasters. 

Children apart, what happens to the sick, injured and old. What worth do they have? If the sick cannot work or contribute to survival are they abandoned/killed - if an injury is not so great, does everyone else carry them until they are back working alongside again? The old, are they useless mouths,a repository of knowledge and advice or cherished parents? Do our modern ethics, so hard won over the centuries, or our ancient religious beliefs, get used as our guides, or would they be abandoned to the even older instincts for self survival.

I thought long and hard about these choices, came up with a few variations for different communities. Impossible to know how any of us would react to supreme extended disaster We all hope we would maintain our moral standards.

Would we?

Could we?

How would you decide?

So how is progress with The Ancestor's Tale, the fourth book in The Sefuty Chronicles.

Actually, not so good.

I first realized the trouble I was in last summer, when I found, with careful contemplation,that what I was struggling with was in fact two books. They had inadvertently merged together. Now how has that happened?

I believe the problem was caused by the prolonged interruption in the writing of it, caused by illness. Some of the more minor characters had had time to think of themselves, time to enlarge and run away with their own tales.

Those characters were a handful of children.

And they weren't even dead!

So they didn't belong in the book titled The Ancestor's Tale!

Eventually I had to face facts and work out a plan to save this fourth Chronicle.

Drastic plans.

I dismantled the many thousands of words I had already written, 90,000 of them.

Painstakingly untangle the two separate stories.

Sat down to decide what could be salvaged from the wreck.

After a couple of weeks of pondering and pottering around the garden, I decided the children needed the limelight and in fact they should do so in The Children's Tale. I had approximately 30,000 words for this new tale. What to do with the rest, I didn’t want to lose the ancestors, their story was important too. They have been moved over to a new book Companion Tales, I had begun planning this book in 2012, they would provide most of the backbone to this follow up book.

Companion Tales will be a series of short stories chronicling not just the ancestors, but also a few of the minor characters already mentioned in the previous books of the series, who in fact had had a fair amount to do with the story. So the Companion Tales would include Kennett Marshall and Gran in their early lives as well as the geneticist who medals with the DNA. Along with a few characters from The Children’s Tale.

Sorted.

The new Children's Tale, which is to be the fourth in the series, deals with the first-generation of mongrels. The children of Bixs and Jack, and their siblings and friends. Born outside of the City in a time of violence and war, trying to make sense of where they belong, where their loyalties lie. I have decided that in fact this does actually make a better fourth book. The story continues the end of Jack's Tale more smoothly than the Ancestors would have done. This leads me to wonder whether our brains are cleverer than we are. Well of course they are, we know this, Somewhere in the deep recesses of my tired, ill, mind my brain knew as I was straying along the wrong path. In those hours that I spent on my bed, not being able to do anything except let my brain go along its own sweet way The Children's Tale took off.

It sounds simple written like this,

Dismantle, untangle, resurrect.

However, another problem with the writing of this book, caused by my long illness, is the fact that what I am working with words which have been written over a long period of time, some typed, some dictated, depending on how much energy I had. Some indeed hand written. They have been written when I have been feeling optimistic and well, they have also been written when the opposite has been true. Editing these words is proving to be a new challenge. I can manage the different character’s voices, but which of mine am I producing?

Now at the beginning of 2014 real deep editing has begun. This has been the longest period of time spent writing a book, it began at the beginning of 2012. I think it will in fact be a better book due to this length of time,the amount of daydreaming and thought that has gone into it. We will see what editing will do with it, whether or no I can in fact edit the separate versions to become one whole.

Without the humble seed:food security

Then we were taken to the seed bank. Well, it was, as I could see Ellen thought it would be, the highlight of the day. The Security was intense but the results were well worth it. It may not seem that exciting to look at, not like the Library, but oh … all those drawers filled with the future of life. Many of them no longer have a niche Outside to grow in but still the Scientists germinate and grow them to collect the fresh seed and store it for that magical ‘one day’ that we all know we’ll never see.        Ellen’s Tale by Alberta Ross 2009

From the very beginning of The Sefuty Chronicles food security has been at its heart. Sefuty itself stands for it; Se = security, Fu= food. No matter what happens to us, the world, in the future, food security is still the most vital aspect of living. Always has been and always will. I have been running a short series here of collapsing civilisations, when the lack of food security has driven the demise of mighty empires and nations. We mess with food supplies at our peril.

I have blogged before about how precarious our hold on this security is. Natural disaster, or man made one. The global economy binds us all into the world in a frightening way. I cannot quote other countries, but this small overcrowded island is self sufficient only to the tune of 58.9%, despite the government of the day, back after the 2nd world war, declaring we should become self sufficient in the matter of food we import. We have 63+ million people (and rising) to feed and have areas already designated ‘arid’ zones - when I was at school ‘arid’ zones belonged somewhere overseas. Okay, most of us here could survive on half what we eat now if something drastic happened, but for how long, and how well?

All food comes from seeds. Even the meat and milk, grass feeds the animals who provide it. Our wood and many of our fabrics come from seeds. Life on earth as we know it would not have flourished, nor will it, without the humble seed. So the news this week that the EU - up to its tricks again- is thinking of banning heirloom seeds comes as another of those ‘When will we ever learn’ - ‘Doesn’t history teach us anything’ moment. This country doesn’t have to go far back in our history to remember the Great Hunger in Ireland when a million died of starvation when the potato crop they relied on failed, a million more emigrated. If our conveys had not prevailed during the second world war we probably would not, as a country, have survived.

Mankind’s stupid gene means we don’t ever learn our lessons, how can we be so clever and yet so stupid at the same time?

The Monk's Tale: food security part 4

To 'world build' the background of The Sefuty Chronicles I have had to trash it – these wanderings through history , which are selective I confess:) are showing how easy it is to trash a world.  We humans are past masters at the process.

When the Romans fell into nothingness so too did their great Empire – soldiers deserted when the money dried up, city folk vanished back to the land. Western Europe lost its network of trade routes, its security and its granaries. With no security on land or sea the great merchants sold up and folded their wings, no trade and the non producing cities died slowly.   Starvation and disease followed hunger, farmers eked out precarious livings on used up and mismanaged soil.  It is estimated that the population of Western Europe was halved between 200-600 AD.  So how did Europe hoist itself back up over the next few centuries to become the rampaging plunderers of the world?

Around the fourth century A.D. St Anthony rediscovered organic farming. I say rediscovered because of course before large-scale trade had changed the natural order of things all farming was pretty well organic. He was disgusted by the lawlessness and hopelessness of the world, so found himself this little bit of land, in North Africa, with a spring on it. 

Perfect. 

He tilled, sowed and lived off it in harmony with all things, taking nothing from anyone else.

Rather in the way of all these things others who wished to stop the world, get off and live simply and harmoniously, flocked to join him. This movement of St Anthony’s continued a long time. A hundred years after St Anthony had begun his simple life another churchman, Cassian, arrived on the farm so to speak. He was inspired by what he saw and decided to transplant the idea to Marseilles. His intentions may have been pure and good, but this was probably not the best place to set up his simple life. The city was large for the time, had a harbour and prospered after a fashion. Oh, but the doors to the temptation of expansion, ever present.

His community prospered and the idea of a simple life running alongside prayer and devotion caught on. A while later St Benedict, with his own version of the idea, began the Benedictine Order.  Many other orders ran monasteries but possible the Benedictines were the most well known. Saint Benedict changed the regime a little, well quite a lot actually, instead of a very simple monastic life he allowed some luxury as well.  More meals in a day, mattresses to sleep on – actually being allowed to sleep your fill was a new one.  His, were the best of reasons, if hard physical labour is required then adequate nutrition and rest was equally so. 

Good intentions! 

Now all of us can visualise that wide straight path, gleaming with bright optimistic paving, yes that one, leading straight down to hells fiery depths!

To be fair to Benedict and all other monks, their lives were a model to be emulated. The tools available at that period meant that sewing, tilling and harvesting were all backbreaking jobs. And, because of the decline in agriculture after the Romans collapsed, the land had gone back to the wild. They hacked out field after field, from grasslands, marshlands, and woodlands. To begin with it was a self-sufficiency exercise. To enable themselves to live in these communities and pray for themselves and others, they needed to be self sufficient.They worked hard and industriously.

After the first one was established then, of course, when the second one started the first would help them and send foodstuffs to them. To keep them going until they had built up supplies for themselves. The second would help the third and so forth. In a very short while they had a nice little network, complete with connecting roads,  monasteries that could be relied on to help each other out in times of need.

They became experts in farming, replacing fertility and good harvests.  They were good. The early monks. Their monasteries attracted not only the local peasantry but younger sons of the well to do.  The middle classes who had no other work to do would gravitate also.  Some good brain power and ingenuity was being harnessed within the monastery walls.

This collecting of brawn and brain was not all one sided.  Those in want were given food and shelter in return for their labour; some were taught trades or other skills.  Indeed our very own Bede, a peasant’s son, was taught his letters and became England’s leading historian and author of the time. Skills came in with these outsiders and, combined with those of the monks, modern technology advanced apace.

The Benedictines spread right across Western Europe, they became very powerful. They had two strands of power going for them. They were industrious, clever and legally keen, making sure that they retained the monopolies for anything that was likely to bring a profit.  They ended up controlling the manufacture and trading of alcohol, the mills, and therefore the staff of life! Also land rents and the trade fairs. They controlled food.

Although they had food security in their hands they had another possibly greater power.  They were in charge of everyone's immortal souls.  If those early visionaries had not set out control Western Europe their descendants certainly ended up doing so.

Another advantage of the monasteries is that unlike the lands of the great and powerful when the monks died the monastery still remained. Never carved up between sons, or dispersed. Therefore over the centuries an amazing amount of money (and with it increased power) built up.

As they grew more successful, they began to force the peasantry off the land, into the cities. They began to look at specialisation; bad move, mono-culture destroys the land! For a while everyone's life was much more pleasant. Such huge surpluses of food were being produced by the very efficient monasteries that even those displaced from the land and sent to the cities could be fed. Populations began to boom. In 650 A.D. the population in Europe had dropped to about 5 1/2 million within 600 years it had risen to approximately 35 million.

Both church leaders and kings began an architectural bonanza, the wonderful cathedrals and palaces we gawk at when doing the tourist bit were financed by the wealth accrued and built by that displaced peasantry.

The old picture begins again; as the food increased, so too did the population. As the population increased the amount of food needed also increased. Whole swathes of land were deforested, tilled and planted. There was less and less time to leave them fallow between growing seasons. Land that had regained its fertility over the centuries since the Romans, purely by being left fallow for so long now began to lose that fertility and, as the soil degraded, harvests plummeted. All that expansion had happened during a warm period in  Europe, so all might well have saved if the weather had continued its kindly way.

By the 13th century Europe was in the grip of raging inflation.  Then, as it is wont to do, the financial system, that was bolstering everything, imploded.

The banks failed.

Maybe still savable? It's a never ending and familiar scenario throughout our history. The warm period that had helped it all happen ended and Europe descended into a mini ice age. A few years of torrential rain rotted harvests, combined with plunging winter temperatures and starvation took over with disease rampaging cheerfully behind. The  European population died in their millions. By the end of the 14th century it is estimated that between 25 and 45% of the population had perished.

Oh dear, but now maybe humanity had learnt their lesson?

Consumerism part of our genetic code?The Romans

Well it could be that not many of you had heard of the Sumerians and their Empire, the Bronze Age was a long time ago after all. But most people, I think, will have heard of the Roman Empire. Moving into the Iron Age they were, in fact, an incredibly successful Empire.

They began small, don't all Empires. Italy didn’t in fact have incredibly fertile land. To feed a growing population those in control looked around for new trading partners. There are some very fertile lands around the Mediterranean Sea, and the Romans decided to go to war to obtain access to them. Well it wasn't that simple of course, I am condensing decades of history into a few paragraphs, and I  am cherry- picking my arguments here. Fighting a number of wars, over a number of years against the Carpathians, Rome gained control of the Mediterranean. This included the amazing fertility of the Egyptian floodplains around the River Nile. The breadbasket of the Mediterranean, as it was to turn out to be.

Much of these years of warfare were in fact waged by the Roman Navy. We don't hear much about the Navy; it is the Roman soldiers marching across the world that lives in our imagination.  The wars were extensive and prolonged. Hundreds, probably thousands, of trees had to be felled to build the ships that were to win the new lands. We know about the dangers of felling too many trees, especially in hilly areas such as Italy!

The Romans at the end of this slaughter had access to better quality grain, wheat, which Egyptians grew well, was more nutritious than the barley that the Romans grew. Grain was the bedrock of any civilization and Rome was no exception. They also could import food from all around the Mediterranean Sea. Enough food for the populace and enough to start accumulating a surplus to strengthen their trade routes. Now speculators moved in, buying up the small scale farms around Rome, dispossessing the peasant farmers, building villas and investing in olive groves and vineyards.  Niche foods, which would obtain large profits.

The farmers migrated to the cities. At one stage, in the first century BC, the population of Rome stood at 1 million. If you consider just this one city and the population, then begin to wonder how all those people were fed. It was a logistic nightmare, but, the Romans were good at  logistics.

They have left their trace in every country they conquered. It was almost a ‘do it by numbers’ operation. They definitely came, saw and conquered. They set up an amazing network of  overland, as well as sea, routes, to facilitate their trading partners. But this was the Iron Age not the steam age. Road haulage was done by oxen and cart, it was slow and dangerous.  Sea transport was totally dependent on prevailing winds and clement weather.   Over land were thieves and bandits, on the seas the danger came from piracy; the problem of bandits and pirates is an age old one. If you can take your food and your luxury goods without any effort, apart from killing a few people, why not?

Another problem Rome had, from the beginning, was that the water approach was very shallow, so the large ships required to bring in huge shipments of grain had to stop at a place Ostia, which is 15 miles from Rome. The large granary ships would stop there, transfer cargo to a flotilla of smaller craft, to finish the journey to the city.  To unload a shipment of a years worth of grain for the city required 4,500 return trips of three days of these smaller boats.

And harvests only occurred once a year, so a  whole years worth of grain had to be brought in and stored.  One of the large granaries indicates that it had 225,000 ft.² of storage space, the Coliseum only had 29,000 ft.² This particular granary was not the only one that the city possessed. Building a granary of this size, which would keep your grain in good condition for an entire year, was in fact quite a feat which for a long time the Romans managed very well. The granary had to be weatherproof, rodent proof, dry and cool, well ventilated and well protected from thieves. Our ancestors from long ago were very clever people.

Of course with the Empire, demand for luxury goods grew. I am almost convinced that consumerism is inbuilt into our genetic code! At one stage Italy was importing more than it was exporting. An imbalance was building up, and a steady stream of silver was trickling outwards paying for goods and reducing the roman treasury.

One of the most desired luxury goods was pepper. As one reads about the history of food exchange and trade one finds these enticing little spices and herbs, that we all use so casually, caused more trouble than you would think they could possibly be worth.

So ships left Rome using wine and timber and olive oil for ballast and returned loaded with pepper. This spice attracted the speculators; huge fortunes were made and destroyed on the back of it. I have a Roman cookery book, I collect cookery books, and pepper seems to be in almost every recipe. I can only think that the normal Roman fare back then was very bland. Nowadays people invest in the banking/financial system – or maybe they don’t after this last fiasco! Back then they invested in olives, wine and pepper.

Rome almost starved many times, at one stage pirates launched an all-out attack at  Ostia, sinking the ships and looting the warehouses, Rome tottering almost to it’s knees from starvation and riot, caused the Senate to pass new immediate laws regarding the control of piracy, not an easy decision as the laws went against the grain of their principles, but what would you do when the city was rioting; more of them then there are of you! These periodic starvations instead of teaching the Romans a valuable lesson in not congregating too many people in one place if you couldn't feed them, just made them march out to conquer more lands.

The collapse of food security was not what brought Rome to its knees. But it was part of the problem. A succession of bad rulers, corruption and unwise decisions. An increasing financial shortfall, all helped as well. Because of their Empire the land around Rome had become heavily degraded, not helped by the stripping of all those trees. This in itself might not have been so disastrous if the farming was still small-scale and the climate was with them. At the height of their power the Romans were living through a very benign warm period of climatic history. During their decline the climate was also declining its pleasantness. The weather became cooler, the growing season became shorter, rainfall decreased. Then if the land had been in good heart, and didn't have the task of feeding millions, disaster might still have been staved off.

When those at the top, who are meant to lead and to organise, would rather play with expensive toys and over indulge on the good life, when the money system goes skew whiff, then the essentials of life soon cease. Armies need paying or they vanish into the mist, the population needs feeding or they drift back to the countryside. Road routes need constant repair, security needs to keep thievery of the highways or the peasants will not risk their lives taking food to the markets. When the markets fail, trade routes crumble.  Those who can, return to the land to scratch out an uncertain future. Empires don't fail overnight it takes time. They grow, they overextend, and then they are ripe for defeat and chaos . . .

Here come the dark ages. . .

Recommended books:

Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Evan D.G.Fraser & Andrew Rimas 

A Splendid Exchange; How Trade Shaped the World by William Bernstein