Where sharks met humans: The Mediterranean Sea, history and myth of an ancient interaction between two dominant predators

From a historical point of view, the Mediterranean Sea represents one of the areas in which the most ancient evidences of interaction between humans and sharks are available for a long period of time. The first evidence can be, in fact, identified in the early Bronze age with the development of fishing communities in the eastern Mediterranean, whose fishing techniques may have allowed the capture of elasmobranchs, similarly to others geographical sectors (like East and South East Asia, Oceania, and others), Later, interactions between humans and sharks become more evident, as demonstrated by the “Crater” of the sinking, a painted vase of the VIII century BC coming from the necropolis of Pithecusa, on the island of Ischia. In the Roman age, sharks entered in many artistic representations of fishing, as in the two ancient mosaics in Pompei, where catsharks (Scyliorhinus spp.) are depicted among the coastal marine fauna. After the end of the Roman Empire naturalistic observations were replaced by renewed mysticism and superstition. During the Renaissance, a more scholarly observation of nature began anew, including the study of sharks and their relatives, mainly thanks to the contribution of important natural philosophers, like Guillaume Rondelet. From this period of renewed scientific interest, it is worth noting the presence of a sawfish rostrum, Pristis sp., in the Basilica del Carmine Maggiore, in Naples. Overall, this paper shows how interactions between humans and elasmobranchs has been a constant feature for human coastal communities, although changing over time as a consequence of human cultural evolution. Furthermore, the importance of historical ecology as a tool to better protect and manage the actual living resources is here emphasized, mostly for those groups that are at a high risk of extinction, such as chondrichthyans.