Cyrene's, an ancient Greek city on the north African coast, entire economy was based on growing silphium, and the heart shaped icon of its seeds can be seen on its coins.
Silphium is often refered to as laser in Latin books such as the famous De Re Coquinara. There's a very close substitute spice originally from Persia but now more widely used in India called asafoetida named for its stench. Apparently the taste is very similar, but the intense smell isn't! Though it only reeks uncooked. By the late republic to early empire (which happens to be the primary time period we have for extant literature) Silphium had already become rare and soon died out. Though there's reports of early church monks sending each other seeds & stalks.
It's too bad Libya is a warzone in our time, and the area comprising the ruined Cyrene was recently under ISIS control. I wonder if there was any damage or looting at the site.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170907-the-mystery-of-t...
Would be like finding a californian dwarf elephant again.
Any measurement can have errors of methodology, and a wrong measurement does not have any value. Don't worship numbers just because they seem fancy or fit with a narrative. They are just that, a number.
Without a genetical analysis we can not know if a plant variety is lost, or just forgotten, or a clone of a extant variety buried ten years ago. Show me the analysis before to start talking abour old ruins, caravans and lost cities.
(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium