Trade Secrets

[TisILeclerc]

Looks pretty big to me. And all those ships had to be built somewhere. It looks like the Denyens were quite organised militarily taking on the Pharaoh and the Babylonians.

The King of Babylon Neriglissar described Pitusu as a ‘mountain in the middle of the sea.’ He said he attacked it and 6,000 soldiers on this small island resisted against him. The existence of those 6,000 people reveals that the island continued serving as a shipyard in the Iron Age too,” Öniz said.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/huge-a ... sCatID=375

Perhaps this is where the Tutha de Danaan came from?

As for tanks in the desert I think we should come back in three thousand years time and see what's left of them.

[hvered]

Looks pretty big to me. And all those ships had to be built somewhere.

Would a tiny island be a suitable site for the largest shipyard in the world? The bit about 270 slipways is so ludicrous, how much of the claim is credible depends on whether the Turkish archaeologists are to be relied on.

It looks like the Denyens were quite organised militarily taking on the Pharaoh and the Babylonians.

Maybe it was a Roman set-up? The island has signs of Roman settlement, as would be expected.

[Boreades]

Would a tiny island be a suitable site for the largest shipyard in the world?

Yes. Indeed, why not? Freeports and trade hubs usually are on convenient spots, like islands or peninsulas.

The bit about 270 slipways is so ludicrous.

Well, agreed it's an exceptionally large number. But pray tell, why ludicrous?

how much of the claim is credible depends on whether the Turkish archaeologists are to be relied on.

Should we rely on them less than Great British Archaeos and all their fantasies? (gawd bless 'em)

[Mick Harper]

Orkney in the news again

My guess is that all this Celtic curly-wurly stuff is 'Lord of the Isles' era. When the monks of the twelfth/thirteenth centuries (and later) wanted to evoke Columba and his time the only model they had of 'Celtic' art was this contemporaneous stuff from the highlands and islands. Since they were consciously producing eighth/ninth century material, and modern historians take them at their word, all of it gets shifted back in time. It will probably turn out to be the same story when it comes to ogham, runes and so forth.

[TisILeclerc]

In an age when a pair of glasses left in a gallery can be mistaken for 'art' it's understandable that we find it difficult to assess the art of the past. The glasses were a 'prank' but we do have the Tate Modern and local councils who have paid good money for 'artists' to walk around the streets with ladders on their shoulders or to sweep dust and leaves into artistic piles. And all the rest of course. Light goes on, light goes off. Perhaps our own lights have been switched off for the foreseeable future?

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... ebook-post



Funnily enough the Anglo Saxons, who didn't exist, went in for more mundane, less intellectually challenging art. Well they weren't clever and didn't have degrees did they?

And even stranger they also went in for the curly wurly stuff at an early period as can be seen from Sutton Hoo.



https://britishmuseumblog.files.wordpre ... 3_9601.jpg

https://blog.britishmuseum.org/2014/05/ ... saxon-art/

Long before the Lords of the Isles.

Was this piece of artwork stolen from the creative Irish? Was it traded? Did the Anglo Saxons make it themselves perhaps copied from the Irish or perhaps others or perhaps invented by themselves.

I would say that there was a lot of buzzing about on the high seas and the low seas and ideas and goods were traded.

As for the Picts, their art is very different, apart from the curly wurly bits which even they had early on.



These may not be curly wurly but they are representative of the symbolic nature of their art which nobody can agree upon. They still don't know what language these people spoke.

However this bloke has a good stab at interpreting the symbols and he puts it down to astronomy or astrology. Which makes sense if an original idea is perhaps misunderstood by later generations and symbols could become designs to be fiddled about with. We could do the same thing with the alphabet or even numbers today. Some people do and get paid by newspapers and book publishers for doing it.



And here we have the real thing. Well, a photo of the real thing. Or perhaps a link to a link of the real thing or photograph. Anyway it's got the curly wurlies along with the z rods and thingies.

https://lastofthedruids.com/

So it must be art.

[TisILeclerc]

Professor Russell Adams, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo is investigating what may be one of the first sites of copper smelting in southern Jordan. They've found evidence on an old dried up river bed.

'This region is home to the world's first industrial revolution,' said Professor Adams.

'This really was the centre of innovative technology'.

The increase of metal production led to growing amounts 'slag' - the waste product of smelting.

This contained various metals including copper, lead, zinc, cadmium, and even arsenic, mercury and thalium

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... tools.html

If this is where it all started it would easy to imagine the knowledge or the people moving further afield in search of new resources and it's not too far from Cyprus which would have not only given a boost to the copper smelting industry but to trading by sea.

[Boreades]

Professor Russell Adams, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo is investigating what may be one of the first sites of copper smelting in southern Jordan. They've found evidence on an old dried up river bed.

Is that the fabled King Solomon's Mines?

As always, you need tin or arsenic to go with the copper.

Tisi, was it your good self who mentioned ancient Turkey a while ago?

An unexpected new source of tin was recently located at Hisarcık, in the foothills of the Mount Erciyes volcano in the Kayseri Plain,close to the Bronze Age town of Kultepe, ancient Kanesh and home to a colony of Assyrian traders. Volcanoes in Turkey have always been associated with obsidian sources but were not known to be a major source of heavy metals, much less tin. X-ray fluorescence analyses of the Hisarcık ores revealed the presence of minerals suitable for the production of complex copper alloys, and sufficient tin and arsenic content to produce tin-bronze.

https://www.academia.edu/30147637/New_t ... _al._2015_

Hisarcık is in the Aegean region of Turkey, so handy for Mediterranean trade routes.

I imagine metal refining was dangerous enough without breathing in arsenic fumes as well. But that's what folk used when tin was in short supply. Not that stopped folk trading it in huge quantities.

Morwellham Quay in Devon is reported to have been:

the world's largest supplier of the mineral in the latter part of the century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morwellham_Quay

[Boreades]

Old "typewriter" bought in Romanian flea market for €100.
Sure enough, turns out to be a 1941 Enigma machine.
Sold at auction for €45,000.

The original story in Romanian is surprisingly understandable:
http://www.artmark.ro/masina-de-criptat ... -rara.html

Is Romanian a Romance language?
Does it seem vaguely familiar because of all the Latin words?
Or would Harpo say it's Lost British?

For those that want the story in English, try this:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-roma ... SKBN19W2M9

[Boreades]

#Forgery of the day
or
#Happy birthday Sid

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

[Mick Harper]

Good to have you aboard, Borry. Now the task is to find an unforged saint.