Gsell refers to the wealth of Amsterdam built on barrels of herrings and claims in the same way that the wealth of Leptis, attributable before this time to olives, henceforth rested on the carcasses of camels.
-The Camel in Roman Tripolitania, Olwen Brogan, Papers of the British School at Rome, 1954
I visited Leptis Magna when Qaddafi was still in power and I don’t recall seeing any olive pits or camel bones scattered about. But I know that Palmyra’s equally grand ruins were the backdrop to ISIS mass executions, and that the hunt for their deposed Leader led Libyans to all kinds of similar excess, so it is possible that Professor Gsell was right, that Leptis rests on the carcasses of one sort or another.