Thu, Sep-30-21, 02:38
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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Keto diet ‘gave Crusaders the edge in battle’
An interesting article for any low carb history buffs!
Quote:
Keto diet ‘gave Crusaders the edge in battle’
Crusaders attempting to stake their claim to Jerusalem in the 12th century may have been given a boost by their “cardio diet”, according to researchers who have identified remnants of food in their pottery.
A group of scientists who specialise in extracting traces of proteins from historical objects were able to detect significant differences between pots used by Crusader forces led by Richard the Lionheart and those used by soldiers loyal to the sultan Saladin.
Gleb Zilberstein, an Israeli scientist who has previously identified tuberculosis bacteria in a letter written by George Orwell and evidence of kidney disease in a manuscript written by Mikhail Bulgakov, used acetate film to extract evidence from pottery shards found at Arsuf, the site of a confrontation between the rival armies.
His team found differences in protein traces from glazed pottery and shards of glass, which they associated with the Crusaders, and ceramic and terracotta pottery fragments, which were more consistent with Saladin’s army.
“Extraction of food remnants confirmed that the Crusaders’ diet consisted mostly of pig and sheep meat (together with cheese), with a minimum of carbohydrates (what today would be termed a ‘ketone’ diet) whereas the Muslim army consumed mostly carbohydrates (wheat, triticum durum, hordeum vulgare), together with fruits and vegetables, with minimal levels of sheep meat and cheese,” they wrote in an article accepted by the journal Heritage.
The researchers suggested that this meant that “Crusaders were more slim and more ‘cardio’ than Muslims” and added that this might help to explain why some accounts of the battle at Arsuf reported that Saladin’s army lost ten times as many soldiers as Richard the Lionheart’s.
“Shrewdness of leaders, soldiers’ equipment and willingness to fight are of course the main ingredients of victory, but diet too might not have a secondary role and help to tip the balance,” they said.
Historians of the Crusades welcomed the research, although they questioned whether the differences in diet had a decisive impact on battle outcomes.
Accounts of the conflict at Arsuf differ, with some accounts suggesting a large-scale confrontation while others state that little or no fighting took place.
Suleiman Mourad, co-author of Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period and a professor of religion at Smith College, Massachusetts, said that the new information was helpful for understanding the world of the Crusaders but added: “I personally don’t think it will help us understand why they won battles.”
He said that sources were ambivalent about whether there was a significant battle at Arsuf, as sources in the Near East suggested that each side avoided prolonged battles after the Crusaders captured the port of Acre in July 1191, preferring small skirmishes to all-out attacks that could end in a decisive defeat.
“The strategy of both parties was not to engage in a full-fledged battle that would destroy them,” he added. “The minute the Crusader army made the charge at Saladin, most of Saladin’s army took flight and Saladin had to stand his ground until his soldiers returned. The soldiers ran approximately a mile. Some sources say that there was nothing there, not even a battle.
“Information about diet is huge because that aspect we know very little about. It shows what kind of supplies they brought and what they had to depend on locally. It brings us closer to seeing them as human beings, not as ideas.”
Christopher Tyerman, professor of the history of the Crusades at Hertford College, University of Oxford, said: “As the battle of Arsuf was a sort of score draw with no clear outcome, even if the Crusaders held an immediate advantage, I’m not sure how diet comes into an analysis of the battle decisively either way.
“Generally, the crusaders on the Third Crusade had a big problem with bread — accessing corn, milling, baking — that was revealed during the siege of Acre 1189-91.”
He said that the staple diet for most Crusaders was bread or a kind of ship’s biscuit with salted meat, some cheese and dried legumes.
“Richard I took large quantities of bacon, cheese and grain in his fleet from England. Drink — wine and water, perhaps eight litres of liquid needed a day needed by the footsloggers — also varied in supply.
“By contrast Saladin had internal supply lines, region-appropriate food and conducted a scorched earth policy in the path of the Crusaders.”
Dr Piers Mitchell, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, said that the research was a new branch with huge potential.
“This kind of thing sounds very plausible,” he said. “I don’t think you can extrapolate what you find in a few pots to say whether one army had better nutrition than another army. You have to have many hundreds of pots before you can say representatively about what an army was eating. You may have found pots from people who happened to like cheese.
“I’ve had to [understand] diet mainly from written records, so if people can now look at things archaeologically, that’s really fascinating. There are records for what armies took on expeditions from Europe when they went by sea and we know what was being sold in Jerusalem or Acre from local regulations and taxes.
“If people start doing this to lots of sites then it would be great. This is the first one that’s been done in a Crusader context.”
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...attle-gbw6gdw33 |
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