
Cockatoo identified in 13th Century European book - clouddrover
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-44610271
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aezell
I feel like this could be an interesting device for a novel. It could tell the
stories of all the people involved along the journey from its home to the
palace of Frederick II.

~~~
abainbridge
Or a computer game. I have fond memories of Sid Meier's "Pirates" on the
Amiga. It taught me some stuff I wouldn't have known otherwise about the
colonization of the Caribbean. I've always felt there was scope for a much
richer world with modern computers. Probably it already exists, I don't follow
computer games much these days.

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sorokod
_The fact that a cockatoo reached Sicily during the 13th Century shows that
merchants plying their trade to the north of Australia were part of a
flourishing network that reached west to the Middle East and beyond, "_

North of Australia is a big place, the article mentions that the specie may
have originated in Indonesia.

It also possible that the birds may have been bread in captivity for a while
before one of them ended up in a book.

With this in mind , I find the quote curiously free of content.

~~~
tomahunt
It would be interesting to know when this cockatoo was last seen if at all in
west papua or papua new guinia.

Even so it is a fascinating story.

~~~
sorokod
For all we know, this cockatoo was born Europe.

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Theodores
It is just medieval supply chain details. At one level the origin of the
cockatoo might not have been important then to those entertained by such
things, at another level the true origin of the cockatoo might also have been
a closely guarded secret.

If you buy a fancy new car then the guy in the showroom has no idea who the
supplier of the seats was, never mind who supplied the leather to the seat
supplier or whom the farmer was that brought the cows to market for the
supplier of the supplier to buy. This applies even if it is a Rolls Royce type
of car where the marketing material says the leather comes from cows grown in
Norway where there is no barbed wire. None of this information is secret but
you are not going to find out the name of the farm the cows were 'grown' on.

With illegal substances - drugs - there is a matter of secrecy, the guy down
the pub who can sell your intoxicant of choice is not going to tell you who he
buys from and you wouldn't ask that question anyway. Then there is the rest of
the chain to the port of entry and it gets to be a big mystery after there.
Yet somewhere in the Bekaa valley or in darkest Afghanistan there is someone
making the stuff that ends up a continent away. At each step of this black
market supply chain things are far from transparent.

Spices and silk were like this for a long time, nobody knew where the guys in
Venice got their silk from, they didn't even know yet they controlled that
market until the Turks worked it out. Cockatoos were probably just another of
those type of novelty items.

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jaxonrice
This story reminds me of the giraffes that were sent from Malindi (in modern
day Kenya) as tribute to the Forbidden City in China in the early 1400's. (1)

1\. [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/peculiar-story-
gir...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/peculiar-story-giraffes-
medieval-china-180963737/)

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iafisher
This story reminds me of Abul-Abbas [1], an elephant given to Charlemagne by
the caliph of the Abbasids. Frederick II wasn't the first Holy Roman Emperor
to collect exotic animals, it seems.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul-
Abbas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul-Abbas)

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
The Romans had war elephants [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_war_elephants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_war_elephants)

~~~
baldfat
Hannibal? He fought the Romans in Spain and then took the elephants over the
Italian Alps and attacks Rome from the North. That is the greatest military
feat for me.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/03/where-
muck-h...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/03/where-muck-
hannibals-elephants-alps-italy-bill-mahaney-york-university-toronto)

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Yes the Romans had elephant idea probably from Hannibal, the article
references the Punic wars.

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wiz21c
a bit off topic, but does it exit a list of old books, sorted by dates ? I
mean the really old ones. Wikiepdia gives this :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manuscripts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manuscripts)

but is there something more graphical (to get a picture of the history of
these books)

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beat
They should probably explicitly mention the native habitat for the species in
such articles; it would clarify a lot.

That said, trade between Asia and the Mediterranean basin via the Red Sea was
highly developed at that point, with seafaring trade routes over 2000 years
old. So it's not exactly shocking.

~~~
jwilk
They do mention it's Australasian.

