Megalithic mapping

[Boreades]

We noted earlier that Sardinia had the "Nuragic culture" with their Nuraghe megalithic towers,

Dating to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the nuraghe, which evolved from the previous proto-nuraghe, are megalithic towers with a truncated cone shape; every Nuragic tower had at least an inner tholos chamber and the biggest towers could have up to three superimposed tholos chambers. They are widespread in the whole of Sardinia, about one nuraghe every three square kilometers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuraghe

Which, we are assured by the ortho-archeos are "unique to Sardinia" and exist nowhere else in the world. Except for (cough) the broch towers in Scotland.

A broch is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure of a type found only in Scotland.

I'd let that sit as a historical curiosity. And yet, only this week did it occur to me : 4,000+ years ago, when the Nuragics started building those Nuraghe, sea levels were lower, and Sardinia and Corsica might still have been joined as a single island. So, onto the next and bleeding-obvious question - did Corsica have anything like the Nuraghe megalithic towers?

The Torrean civilization was a Bronze Age megalithic civilization that developed in Southern Corsica ... The characteristic buildings of this culture are the torri ("towers"), megalithic structures similar to the Sardinian nuraghes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrean_civilization

Oh, right, now you tell me. A map of the locations of these torri shows them in the south of Corsica, nearest their Sardinian Nuraghe neighbours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrean_c ... orsica.svg

With some delightful synchronicity, another old article resurfaced yesterday, also connecting Corsica with Scotland:

The family of Napoleon Bonaparte, one of France's greatest rulers, may have come from a tiny Scottish village, according to new research published yesterday.

That's "yesterday", 22nd February 1999

Evidence that Napoleon's grandfather came from Balloch, near the Scottish town of Crieff in Perthshire, has been uncovered by a local historian, Mr Robert Torrens. He found an account in a book published more than a century ago of how a labourer named William Bayne left Balloch shortly after the collapse of the Jacobite uprising of 1745. He and his family were shipwrecked in a storm and landed in Corsica, where they were hospitably received, according to Mr Torrens. "They were known as Bayne, or Buon, and his party," he told the Daily Telegraph. "In course of time, his sons were called Buon-departy. "His grandson was named Buon-de-party and now figures in history as the great Napoleon," Mr Torrens said.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/napoleo ... s-1.155832

Crieff has a "Brochel Castle", but not to be confused with the more famous version on Raasay
https://www.isleofraasay.com/index.php/ ... el-castle/

[Mick Harper]

All highly fascinating but what does it all mean? Leaving aside Monsewer Buonaparte (better translated surely as 'well-departed') we have this

every Nuragic tower had at least an inner tholos chamber and the biggest towers could have up to three superimposed tholos chambers.

Megalithic Empire principles demand a utilitarian explanation for this. Storage would appear to fit the bill but extravagant if they are just for drying wheat or glorified turnip clamps. But whatever they are, there is

one every three square kilometres

which means they are less than two miles apart (check my math, Griselda) so we're looking at sub-village level. Even archaeology's favourites 'high status people' don't come in this abundance. Come on, Borry, off with your Phrygian bonnet and on with your thinking cap.

[Mick Harper]

As you are one of the few people who has yet to buy (or request a free copy of) Revisionist Historiography, this is what it has to say about Sardinia

-------------------

Another Mediterranean island was seeking British assistance. According to puzzled locals, artefacts found at Santa Maria in the north of Sardinia could be dated to anywhere between the thirteenth and the eight century BC. The British Museum sent in a crack team who concluded they were probably collected over a two-hundred-year time span. This was a poor effort. Two hundred years went nowhere near to filling the gap and anyway, who collects things for two hundred years?

Who did they think the ancient Sards were, the French asked, the British Museum de ses jours? And sent in their own man, Michel Gras, Director of the Ecole Française in Rome, to sort it out. He came up with an equally lame explanation: the artefacts were Etrurian, had been preserved as heirlooms, then buried. The Bloomsbury group were just about to blow a raspberry in the direction of this cockamamie theory when they realised it was better than their own cockamamie theory

They saw Gras’ heirloom model as a “desperate measure, as its author properly recognises... but one that is rendered inevitable”

Francesca Ridgway, a leading scholar of Etruscan and Italian archaeology at the Institute of Classical Studies in London, was trying to be helpful

Gras has shown convincingly how the 700 – 500 BC contexts for some of the model boats in tombs ... must be regarded as heirlooms because the production of these bronzes cannot have gone on too long

No, Fran, pointing out they were all made at the same time might be School of the Bleedin’ Obvious but it can’t be taught at the College for Stitching Up Faulty Chronologies, can it? And that’s not me telling you, it’s your old man

David Ridgway claimed craftsmen from Cyprus settled in Sardinia in 1150 – 950 BC and continued to make bronzes in the Cypriot tradition.

Your teas’s on the table, pet. Isn’t it strange though

they seem to have been remarkably inactive for the first two or three centuries

I suppose it would be too much to ask for a period of inactivity from the academics.

[Boreades]

Anyone fancy a trip to Mallorca?

The Talaiotic Culture arose at the same time that the crisis caused by the Sea Peoples was occurring, which had revolutionized societies in this part of the Mediterranean until the 13th century BC. These theories were based mainly on architectonic remains that exist in abundance on Majorca and Menorca. The Talaiotic people were considered a warlike race due to the abundance of talaiots or defensive towers and the existence of walled towns. In addition, the talaiots were similar in many respects to the nuraghes of Sardinia, which lends credence to the theory that the Talaiotic people were of Sardinian origin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talaiotic_culture

"So what?" - you might well say.

The nuraghes of Sardinia are said to be "unique" to Sardinia. Except that they're the same as Scottish Brochs.

There is one more feature that connects Mallorca, Sardinia and Scotland. The ‘fart bags’.

Aragón, Catalunya and the Balearic Island of Mallorca also have an indigenous tradition of bagpiping. The Catalan bagpipes are called sacs de gemecs which can be literally translated as the charming sounding ‘fart bags’.

https://newsnet.scot/archive/scottish-bagpipes/

The Mallorcan bagpipes are called the xeremia and are of great interest to historians of music as they are an especially primitive type of bagpipe which is not too far removed from what must have been the original form of the instrument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeremia

[Mick Harper]

Intriguing. I cannot give it my best attention at the moment but feel free to wax eloquently.

[Boreades]

Joining the dots perhaps...

#1 Son for one year lived and worked in Galicia. Not one of those boozy Brits tourist destinations, it was one of the parts of Spain that occasionally wear kilts and plays the bagpipes. #1 Son says the indigenous locals, proud of their history and heritage, would be indignant if you called them Spanish. And said that they had bagpipes before the Scots. Or so they claimed.

Anyway, the migration route of these Sea People appears to have possibly been Western Med islands, then up the Western Atlantic coast to Portugal, North West Spain, Britanny in France (Carnac etc) and then the western side of the British Isles.

The most historic landmark in A Coruna in Galicia is the Tower of Hercules, a famous lighthouse that dates back to Roman times at least. Its location, and the light it issued, only makes sense for shipping on a due north-south route, heading towards Britanny, Britain and Ireland. Not east-west along the north coast of Spain.

Although why anyone living on the Western Med islands, Portugal, North West Spain, or Britanny would want to emigrate north to the west of Scotland is beyond me. Cold, dreich and full of midges. There was even a documentary on the BBC all about them just last night.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06jh4ss

On a personal note, 200 year ago, great-great-grandfather MacBoreades was one of the kind of Scots that had a positive attitude and "get-up-and-go". So he had got up and was gone from Scotland. Clan Boreades has for the last four generations been trying to move ever further south, perhaps back to where their DNA originally came from.

[Mick Harper]

Why there are midges in Scotland but no such biting insects in England is an important matter. There seems no climatic rhyme or reason for it. My guess is that there was a deliberate change in human activity to be rid of them. They figure quite a lot in Lappish culture because reindeer will do anything not to be plagued by them.

The bagpipe evidence is quite persuasive. The Irish think blowing through pipes is cheating and do everything from the power of the arm squeezing the bag.