Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[TisILeclerc]

P.S. Where is your place?

Ah live in a hole in t'road. Ah were lucky bah gum.

SS Golden Rivet? Do you get many people wanting to see it?

[Boreades]

How the hell am I ever going to organise a TME cruise with this dismal response.

Ah were lucky

This is no time for false modesty, or hiding your bushel under a lamp. Step forward!

An old acquantance of your 'umble reporter (just re-met in the car park after #1 Son & I staggered clear of the mussel-scrapping and anti-fouling work party) once said "I am an Irish Geordie, but I've had electrocution lessons". He went on to be the captain of Ark Royal. So - you too can rise to great things.

Many people want to see our SS Golden Rivet, if only to wonder how it stays afloat.

[Boreades]

In search of Welsh suggestions, I am just going outside (of this forum) and may be some time.

It was a fool's errand.

I might not be Mick Sturbs, but even I can see there is blatant nonsense at work here:

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

Gold was mined at Dolaucothi prior to the invasion, but Roman engineering would be applied to greatly increase the amount extracted, and to extract huge amounts of the other metals.

Hmm, not sure it was all Roman engineering, but OK so far.

Modern scholars have made efforts to quantify the value of these extracted metals to the Roman economy, and to determine the point at which the Roman occupation of Britain was "profitable" to the Empire. While these efforts have not produced deterministic results, the benefits to Rome were substantial. The gold production at Dolaucothi alone may have been of economic significance.

Err, we don't know how much, but it must have been substantial? Well Ok, but who says so?

The production of goods for trade and export in Roman Britain was concentrated in the south and east, with virtually none situated in Wales.

Eh? What? But you just said it was substantial?

In Wales none of the needed materials were available in suitable combination, and the forested, mountainous countryside was not amenable to this kind of industrialisation.

Wales not suitable for industrialisation? Fuck me, this is getting ridiculous.

[TisILeclerc]

Italians are famous for looking for money

I've just been watching Minder on youtube so it must be true

Anyway ave a look a this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/site ... pper.shtml

They were everywhere.

[TisILeclerc]

Programme on the beeb tonight about how the BBC underestimated our ancestors.

Have we underestimated the first people to resettle Britain after the last Ice Age? Evidence from a variety of sources suggests that early Britons were more sophisticated than we could have imagined.

Better get the Empire trademarked or they'll be taking over.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33963372

[TisILeclerc]

Well, I watched it on the iplayer thingy after it was broadcast. It's nice to be reminded why I won't have a television in the house.

A continuous monotonous voice-over riddled with cliches interrupting the archaeologists whenever they were about to say something interesting.

Nothing that couldn't have been said in ten minutes and all backed with an equally monotonous musical recital.

Everything has been said before and in a much more interesting manner. We nearly got an explanation of who the 'first farmers' in Germany were because they have done dna testing on bones and have proved that the hunter gatherers were genetically different from the farmers. But they didn't say why. They didn't tell us whether the farmers had come from somewhere else or if the hunters were a relic from the past. Apparently they lived side by side. And that was that.

Well, for that matter so do poachers and the lords of the manor.

The Megalithic Empire is safe from a BBC takeover for the forseeable future.

They even went to Shetland to show us where the farmers used to live but nothing at all about Orkney.

[Mick Harper]

The 'best' theory was that a tsunami wiped out Doggerland and made Britain an island. Well, we've observed a whole bunch of tsunamis -- they come, they go, they leave the status quo ante. Except this one. But it's true this one was different -- not caused by an undersea earthquake as every tsunami we know about but ... wait for it .... some ice slipping down a mountainside in Norway. I think ... I too was nodding at this point.

[hvered]

There were a couple of moments when it teetered on the brink of being interesting. First, when archaeologists said early Britons 'knew about' wheat, at least in the Isle of Wight area, so they 'must have' engaged in long distance trade and then, after farming was more widespread, they decided to swap large aurochs for something more manageable and sheep suddenly appeared on the screen as if by magic.

[Boreades]

Tut, those immigrant sheeps, coming over here and taking our aurochs' jobs...

Or the aurochs' moved north?

Archaeologists working at the Links of Noltland, in Westray, have genetic proof that aurochs — the huge, prehistoric ancestor to modern cattle — were once found on the island.

http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/20 ... d-westray/

By the way...

Vikings did not replace Orkney population, concludes DNA study

A study into DNA across the UK has revealed that the Orkney samples were the most genetically distinct in the country...just 25 per cent of the Orcadian DNA was of Norwegian origin, showing “clearly that the Norse Viking invasion (9th century) did not simply replace the indigenous Orkney population".

http://www.orcadian.co.uk/2015/03/vikin ... dna-study/

.. which leaves folk like us with the job of figuring out where the other 75% of the Orkney population came from. Egypt?



edit : link
http://www.nature.com/news/uk-mapped-ou ... ry-1.17136

[Boreades]

I too was nodding at this point.

Nodding in agreement, or nodding as you fell asleep?