Caesar’s Bestiary: using classical accounts to statistically map changes in the large mammal fauna of Germany during the Pleistocene and Holocene

ABSTRACT

In De Bello Gallico, Gaius Julius Caesar describes the various campaigns waged by the Romans under his leadership against the ‘Gauls’ and the geography, wildlife, and the various tribes of the lands he observed during his time in ‘Gallia’. Caesar remarks in one passage in chapters 26–28 of book 6 on the large mammals of an area of wilderness known to him as ‘Hercynia Silva,’ the Hercynian Forest. This passage, analyzed previously by several authors who identified the animals Caesar described and compared his descriptions with those of several mythological creatures, allows for a unique glimpse into the large mammal fauna of Germany of ~ 2000 years ago, as the mammals Caesar mentions include several species either locally extirpated from Germany or extinct altogether. Here, I review these descriptions and prior analyses of their meaning to compile a faunal list of the Hercynian forest megafauna from the Classical period. Additionally, I briefly statistically compare this faunal to several from Pleistocene Germany. These comparisons serve to both demonstrate changes in the megafauna of Europe during the late Quaternary and the use of classical sources in paleobiogeography and paleoecology.

KEYWORDS:

• Europe
• Hercynian Forest
• Megafauna
• Pleistocene
• Holocene
• Rome

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Ross Jaffe and Paul F. O’Rourke for discussions on Caesar’s De Bello Gallico and classical accounts of the natural world. The author also extends his gratitude to Gareth Dyke and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments that greatly improved the quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data can be accessed here.