Involuntary introductions in the ancient Mediterranean

This article considers the movements of animal species in Antiquity which took place without intentional human intervention. After establishing the context of limited human control over the many species which exploited the towns and settlements I focus on two groups of animals, rodents and insects. Both the house mouse (Mus musculus) and the black rat (Rattus rattus) were accidentally introduced to the Western Mediterranean, the former as a result of Phoenician and Greek maritime trade in the Iron Age and the black rat as a consequence of trade from Egypt under the Roman Empire, while two of the most damaging grain pests in antiquity, the saw-toothed grain beetle (Oryzaephilus surinamensis) and the grain weevil (Sitophilus granarius), were similarly unwittingly introduced to the Mediterranean and Europe via the movement of infested grain at the end of the 1st millennium BC. These movements offer a salutary reminder that ancient humans were not masters of the zoosphere which they inhabited, but merely one component part of a complex web of relationships.