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Medieval desert - dwelling Arabs in Saudi Arabia ate lizard after the Parousia of Islam , which broadly speaking prohibits wipe out reptiles , new research evoke .
Though historical and anthropological texts had mentioned the taste for these scaly desert snacks , the discovery is the first archaeological grounds support the lounge lizard ’s presence in the Arabian dieting , survey co - author Hervé Monchot , a zooarchaeologist at the Université - Paris Sorbonne , compose in an electronic mail to Live Science .
The spiny-tail lizard,Uromastyx aegyptia, which is found throughout the Middle East
Thelizardswere probably eaten because they are " an first-class author of protein , " Monchot said . [ Arabian Desert : Aerial Photos of Mysterious Stone Structures ]
forbid food ?
Just as Judaism has rules on what foods are kosher , Islam has its own law of nature about which foods are " halal " ( or permissible ) and " haram " ( sinful or prohibited ) to eat . In cosmopolitan , animals like snakes and lizards whose blood does n’t gush when chopped are considered haram .
Yet some of the informal locution , or hadiths , of theProphet Muhammadmention the nomadic Bedouin population eating lizards just as the Moslem faith come forth : though Muhammad reject to rust the lizards himself , he did n’t explicitly doom the practice session .
An 11th - 100 textual matter by the Persian Nasir Khusraw , who traveled along ancienttrade routesthrough the area , also observe , " That as presently as his fellow travellers caught spate of a lounge lizard , they seized it , killed it and ate it , " the author drop a line in their paper . And later European travelogues mention that lounge lizard were slaughtered to make tobacco purses and to keep up butter , and were also now and again eaten by the local anesthetic .
Still , grounds of this drug abuse remained scarce in archeologic remains .
Lizard snacks
Monchot and his colleague were excavating an oasis situation in theSaudi Arabian desertknown as al - Yamâma , which has been occupied from the second C B.C. to the 1800s . The site , which was part of a large mosque complex , hold in bed of food wasteland fulfill withcameland goat bones .
The ivory dumpsite also check 145 skeletal corpse of a lizard , most likely the spiny - tailed lounge lizard , Uromastyx aegyptia . The spiny - tailed lizard , which can grow to a length of about 2.2 feet ( 70 centimeters ) , is find oneself throughout the desert regions of the Middle East . The castanets were plant in layer that cross almost the full period of human occupancy there , and a cut brand on the wooden leg bone of one lizard also indicated massacre .
The desert - dwell the great unwashed of the region may have been butchering and eating these animals in the same way for at least 2,000 year . Another recent work of nomadic mass and haven granger in Oman , for instance , found they occasionally hunt lizards , which are easy to catch by dig out them out of cakehole or trapping them with snares , the author write . These nomads also edit the head and peg off first , which would create issue marks similar to those found in the archeological remains .
Of course , that does n’t intend lizard eating is a widespread staple of the Arabian dieting .
" It is necessary to distinguish the Bedouin , who eat on and [ still ] use up lounge lizard when travel in the desert because it is a root of easy - to - find protein , and urban populations who do not corrode lizard , " Monchot sound out .
The determination were published online Feb. 26 in the Journal of Archaeological Science .
