Only two villages, for instance, reported seeing the zebro, an ancient wild “donkey horse” that had stripes similar to today’s zebras but gray hair reminiscent of donkeys and horses. Some animals never made it to modern day. The European eel, for example, is categorized as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, whereas the Cantabrian brown bear is classified as vulnerable, so scientists may be able to use its historical whereabouts to increase protections. Knowing the ecological history of different species could shape how conservationists approach their efforts, Viana said. For example, some species thought to be native to Spain, such as freshwater crayfish, didn’t seem to be present in the 16th century, which is consistent with the fact that some species were only introduced in Spain much later. The European eel ( Anguilla anguilla) was distributed across all of Spain’s principal bodies of water, but construction projects in these bodies of water meant eels today have been trapped and confined to only Spain’s estuaries.īut other findings served to reinforce present-day knowledge. They found that in the 16th century, the Cantabrian brown bear and Iberian wolf both used to live in central Spain, which has a different climate and habitat than their present-day habitat of northern Spain.
In all, the team collected 7309 records of 75 wild plants, 89 wild animals, and 60 domesticated plants and animals. They also considered dangerous species such as wolves and bears. The team’s focus also included natural resources important in 16th century Spain, such as animals the villagers could hunt or fish and ones that had medicinal uses, such as leeches. The researchers focused their inventory on flora and fauna deemed important to be able to re-create 16th century habitats, such ase the Cantabrian brown bear, Iberian wolf, and the holm oak tree ( Quercus ilex or Quercus rotundifolia), which are all considered national species in Spain. Viana and his team mostly used these transcriptions to make sense of the old documents. Then, early 20th century historians translated these responses into modern Spanish. The locals, who may not have been literate, likely told their responses to the surveyors, who wrote them down in old Castilian. King Philip II had villagers in the kingdom answer questions about plants and animals, how people made a living, available natural resources such as wood, and social organization, including the number of households in a given village. Viana’s team chose to analyze questionnaires from 1574, 1575, and 1578. For instance, researchers in 2018 gathered ecological information from 400 years ago using a 17th century natural history text from Scotland, but that text was also a science text, Viana explains, making his team’s work-using a document that was not an obvious work of science-unique. Other similar inventories based on historical documents do exist, Viana says. In their work, published recently in Ecology, they found various animals that lived and roamed across central Spain are now restricted to the north of Spain, whereas some plants that are abundant in the country now weren’t around in the 16th century. They used the answers to the king’s questionnaires and transcriptions from historians to create a list of plants, animals, and their respective ecological niches, providing an environmental snapshot of Castile, a large kingdom that was in modern-day central and southern Spain, from nearly 500 years ago. The new work was done by Duarte Viana, an ecologist at the Doñana Biological Station (part of Spain’s National Research Council), and his colleagues. “The survey was a historical document and now it becomes ecological data.” “I think it’s brilliant,” said Ana Rodrigues, a conservation biologist at the Center of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in France who was not part of the research. Gaston Phebus © Bibliotheque Mazarine/© Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images This 15th century drawing of bears in the wild represents what newly studied questionnaires reveal about the ecology, including the presence of brown bears, in historic Spain.
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