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The advance of the Punic superior general Hannibal on Rome during the Second Punic War caused mayhem to those in his path , and a devastating fervor in an Iron Age farmhouse may be grounds of the damage work by his military personnel more than 2,200 long time ago , a new study finds .
The ardour completely destroyed the farmhouse and almost everything in it — including four sheep , a Capricorn and a gymnastic horse — but the people who lived there seem to have escaped , as no human remains were happen , say study lead authorOriol Olesti Vila , an professor of Antiquity and the Middle Ages at the Autonomous University of Barcelona .
The archaeologists have found evidence at the site of a two-story farmhouse with a wooden ceiling and a wooden partition between the floors that was destroyed in a fire in the last quarter of the third century B.C.
" This was a very with child fervour , " he tell Live Science . " The roof and the ceiling were of wood , and two floor were separated by a wooden segmentation . … The whole construction was demolish . “The survey , published Friday ( May 17 ) in the journalFrontiers in Environmental Archaeology , describes the archaeological excavations and analyses of the remains of Tossal de Baltarga , an Iron Age settlement in the Pyrenees mountain chain about 70 miles ( 115 kilometers ) northward of Barcelona in Spain ’s Catalonia region and near the border with France .
The artifacts there let in a single gold earring , which seems to have been deliberately concealed and may be grounds of the Carthaginian plan of attack , Olesti Vila say .
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A single gold earring was hidden in a pottery jar on the second floor of the farmhouse destroyed by fire; archaeologists think it is evidence of a Carthaginian attack.
Mountain village
The settlement at Tossal de Baltarga was home to a radical of the Ceretani , a pre - Roman Catholic hoi polloi who were famous for raising oxen in the mountain valleys and were mentioned in both Hellenic and popish writing around that prison term , Olesti Vila said .
Much of the settlement was badly damaged during its millennia underground , but the remains of the farmhouse survived because the Romans who later on settled in the arena built a construction on top of it , he enounce .
Coins from southern Gaul ( modern - day France ) discovered at the site date the destructive fire to the last one-fourth of the third century B.C. — the meter of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome , from 218 to 201 B.C.
Teams from the Autonomous University of Barcelona have been excavating the site of the Iron Age settlement at Tossal de Baltarga, near Spain’s border with France, since 2011.
Olesti Vila cogitate the entire liquidation was set aroused by the predatory troops of the Punic statesman and general Hannibal Barca , who famously take his Army from Carthage in North Africa and across what are now Spain , southern France and the European Alps to occupy Italy .
Hannibal ’s greatest feat was bringing warfare elephant across the Alps to aid his invasion — in all probability the first elephant ever seen in Europe — and at one point , he controlled most of southern Italy .
Punic wars
But Rome regroup , and in 204 B.C. , the romish general Publius Scipio invade Carthaginian Africa ; Carthage then recalled Hannibal and his armies from Italy but ultimately suffered defeat . Scipio was thereafter know as Scipio Africanus — " the African " — and Carthage became low-level to Rome ; but it was destroyed in 146 B.C. at the end of the Third Punic War , which Rome instigate for political reason .
Olesti Vila enounce the Greek historiographer Polybius ( who last circa 200 to 118 B.C. ) recorded that Hannibal defend several battle during his interbreeding of the Pyrenees , and it was likely that the destructive fire at Tossal de Baltarga was a import of these .
" It was not a peaceful crossing , " he said .
Much of the settlement at Tossal de Baltarga has been badly damaged by its many centuries underground, but the remains of the farmhouse were well-preserved because Romans who later colonized the area built a structure on top of it.
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The name Tossal de Baltarga refers to a small hill at high elevation in the Pyrenees mountain range. It is shown here during the winter.
Although household fervency were plebeian in the Iron Age , they usually pretend only a single room . But in this case , the fervour destroyed the integral house and there is evidence of such a blast in many of the colonisation ’s other buildings , Olesti Vila said .
In add-on , the fact that the animals were penned in the lower base of the business firm instead of roaming in outdoor pastures was evidence that the people of the colonisation were expecting some form of attack . Plus , the burned remain of a dog , which had believably been tied up , were found in the remains of another building .
The single Au earring , too , seems to have been deliberately hidden inside a little pot on the second floor of the menage , which could be further grounds that the householders suspect trouble , Olesti Vila said .
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