Debunked: The Strange Tale of Pope Gregory and the Rabbits
- 6 years ago
Debunked: The Strange Tale of Pope Gregory and the Rabbits
Rabbits may have been domesticated around 600, he wrote, saying
that he found nothing in Dr. Larson’s paper to exclude the possibility that, papal edicts aside, "French monks or farmers in Southern France, because they loved rabbit meat, made a specific effort during a period of 50-100 years to establish tame rabbits that became the founding population for the domestic rabbit." Like the Science Times page on Facebook.
The problem began, he said, in 1936 when a German geneticist, Hans Nachtsheim, writing about domestication, said
that Saint Gregory of Tours (not Pope Gregory, a different person altogether) had written that fetal rabbits were popular during Lent.
Gregory becomes Pope Gregory and, finally, his manuscript becomes a papal edict." With
that story debunked, Dr. Larson says, the whole business of rabbit domestication is unclear.
Larson said that The whole thing is a house of cards,
" Mr. Irving-Pease said in an email, "the story takes on a life of its own, as further small details get embellished in each retelling."
In the end, he wrote, the "watery" environment of the womb made the fetal rabbits fish, "St. that From that point on,
For rabbits in particular, he said, that conclusion was "misleading." He said there is a consensus
that it happened in modern times and that his paper showed that domestic rabbits are more closely related to wild rabbits from southern France than to those from the Iberian Peninsula.
Rabbits may have been domesticated around 600, he wrote, saying
that he found nothing in Dr. Larson’s paper to exclude the possibility that, papal edicts aside, "French monks or farmers in Southern France, because they loved rabbit meat, made a specific effort during a period of 50-100 years to establish tame rabbits that became the founding population for the domestic rabbit." Like the Science Times page on Facebook.
The problem began, he said, in 1936 when a German geneticist, Hans Nachtsheim, writing about domestication, said
that Saint Gregory of Tours (not Pope Gregory, a different person altogether) had written that fetal rabbits were popular during Lent.
Gregory becomes Pope Gregory and, finally, his manuscript becomes a papal edict." With
that story debunked, Dr. Larson says, the whole business of rabbit domestication is unclear.
Larson said that The whole thing is a house of cards,
" Mr. Irving-Pease said in an email, "the story takes on a life of its own, as further small details get embellished in each retelling."
In the end, he wrote, the "watery" environment of the womb made the fetal rabbits fish, "St. that From that point on,
For rabbits in particular, he said, that conclusion was "misleading." He said there is a consensus
that it happened in modern times and that his paper showed that domestic rabbits are more closely related to wild rabbits from southern France than to those from the Iberian Peninsula.