Interesting, and cheers. I did think we'd eventually rediscover it, as it was too widespread to be completely gone (although those are famous last words of conservationists throughout history)

From your points, while the link says it is slow growing, only .1 really would excuse it going completely extinct, as if it reproduced by asexual budding then any buds in the soil would have long-since died. But from the link, it does seem seed-based and therefore it'd be odd to be completely extinct

Not sure who you were replying to, but I never mentioned apples :-P

> good luck planting every seed from every archeological site in the Roman empire to see which is silphium

This is more the problem. But could be worth it, bearing in mind how historically important it was. We may have modern equivalents, but I bet that the medicinal value in modern times would be quite high too tbh

Doubt that. Most/all natural plants have seeds and to my knowledge this one was just a default herb-like plant, so should have some seeds

Also the fact that it was cultivated suggests that it had a normal plant lifecycle. We can make seedless fruits but not so much for herbs and such

Don't we know some major islands which were giant farms for the stuff? And maybe the plant is valuable enough to fund the digs to find the seeds

> it went the way of the
>
>silphium

I've been thinking about this recently. I doubt it is fully extinct? Surely we could excavate and try to find a seed? This was a common plant all over the med, so why would it be completely gone without a single surviving seed?

True, but they are grouped together in the pre-colombian era, like the Med is for all 0AD info outside of China/East, or like Medieval tends to mean Europe not Africa or Asia

*Whispers. I'm tapping out. My knowledge isn't enough

But I did hear that maybe Satellite X-Ray scanning has shown an even more ancient civilisation/Stonehenge-like religious place along the Amazon, which makes more sense as long river like the Nile. Might have been more a seasonal giant religious/trade gathering though

BUT, I'll trust you. Maybe Guatemala would have been the Silk Road/Constantinople analogue between North and South America, like Constantinople/Istanbul/Byzantium was for the other giant continent

>Hansen has been arguing the need for increased archeology in this region for nearly 20 years

Let's be honest we should do that for more of the world in general. But yep, the South American civilisations haven't nearly been chronicled enough