Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[Mick Harper]

The Knaresborough imbroglio seems a straightforward battle for control of the local pilgrim trade. Profits from which could just as well go to ransoming Christians as any other purpose. Interesting the one-third that goes to the ostensible purpose of the Order -- this is roughly in line with modern charities so is a point in their favour. On the other hand, was there a Charities Commission to monitor the claim? The Templars allegedly started to forget their original purpose.

What I find a little suspicious is the geographical spread. How many Luxembourgeois were captured by Barbary pirates? But then again this might be down to Christian solidarity.

[Boreades]

How many Yorkshire-folk were captured by Barbary pirates?

But then again, maybe the Trinitarians had diversified into the Baltic Slave Trade as well? Via York & Hull?

If we take St Robert's warning at face value, then clearly the Trinitarians already had some notoriety, keen to deal in dead bodies as well as the living. "Wanted, dead or alive". And sometimes the dead are less trouble than the live.

[hvered]

Wiki says

The word cattle is derived from Old North French catel

and online etymology says 'catel' is Anglo-French, adding (in brackets) (Old North French catel, Old French chatel) .

It sounds like castle, chateau, chatel/catel denoted cattle-place, to start with. Might cattle, or kine, have been used for trading in exchange for, say, copper or tin by Saharan pastoralists?

[Boreades]

TME regulars may remember the many times we've talked about ancient ports in Britain. There's been a fairly regular pattern to the discussion.
1) we've noted that the ancient ports can be several miles inland from the current coastal ports
2) we have often accepted the orthodox explanation that the ports have all moved due to silting-up of the rivers.

I for one have been guilty of suggesting exactly that for ports in Devon and Cornwall.

Curiously, the same is said about many ancient ports all around the Meditteranean.

For example,

the ancient city of Ephesus was an important port city and commercial hub from the Bronze Age to the Minoan Warm period, and continuing through the Roman Empire. An historic map shows its location right on the sea.



But today, in modern-day Turkey, Ephesus is 5 km from the Mediterranean. Some historians erroneously claim “river silting” caused the change, but the real “culprit” was sea level change.

The same is said to be true for many more old ports.

Sea level was 400 feet lower at the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age, 18,000 years ago. Sea levels rose rapidly until 8,000 years ago. As recently as 1066, when the Normans conquered England, sea levels were quite a bit higher than today. During the Little Ice Age, 1300 to 1850 – when temperatures were the coldest during any time in the past 10,000 years – snow and ice accumulated in Greenland, Antarctica, Europe and glaciers worldwide. As a consequence, sea levels fell so much that important Roman Era and Medieval port cities (like Ephesus, Ostia Antica and Pisa) were left miles from the Mediterranean. Since the Little Ice Age ended about 160 years ago, tide gauges show that sea level has risen at a steady rate.

So the rising sea-levels we are now experiencing are actually restoring levels to those experienced c.2,000 years ago.

This might have implications for our understanding (or perception) of megalithic shipping and trade-routes.

[Mick Harper]

The problem with this thesis is that every single port in the world should be affected in exactly the same way. It seems to me that you have been, shall we say, a bit selective in your evidence.

[Boreades]

Good grief, the pot calls the kettle black?
How about selecting some evidence of your own then?
It will be more interesting than the poo-pooing.

[Mick Harper]

Yes, sorry. It is an AE rule that new theories are not to be pooh-poohed until they are reasonably established. Tell me what kind of evidence you need and I will endeavour to produce it.

[Boreades]

Sharp-witted readers will have noted that we haven't claimed this is the case for all ancient ports all over the world.

Here's an example, of one other claimed cause :

There is a gradual rising of the Pacific coast of Central America as the Cocos continental plate continues to go under the Caribbean plate, which contains all of El Salvador and most of Central America. The western edge of the Caribbean plate, near the Pacific coast, continues to rise through this process. This leads to many earthquakes and volcanos as well as an ocean that appears to be falling.

[Mick Harper]

Surely plate tectonics is an established theory and I can rubbish that. This is meant to happen over millions of years. Hardly enough to unsink the Cinque ports.

[TisILeclerc]

It's said that two billiard balls on a snooker table will eventually move towards each other because of gravity or something like that. Or if someone gives one of the balls a whack with a stick the fatal attraction will occur much quicker.

For a planet that has been bombarded from the beginning with all sorts of things that are bigger than billiard balls it would be surprising to find that the earth's crust had not been fractured or disturbed in some way.

It may be just a theory by geologists who think they are scientists but they seem to have this idea that the crust of the earth does move. And it can move up, or down, or sideways and probably in other ways no-one has thought of yet.



This one is an orange grove planted on the San Andreas fault. It appears to have moved sideways since the grove was planted. Unless the farmer went in for crazy planting patterns. An early crop circle maker who preferred straight lines perhaps. I don't think it was planted millions of years ago but I might be wrong.



Here's one that goes up and down. The land not the lady.



And a curly wurly one.

http://saturniancosmology.org/files/geo ... t2_1a.html

Even the Canadians get in on the act with their famous Rockies.

Sedimentary rocks have a unique method of deposition – one layer on top of another. This seemingly simple arrangement can be extrapolated to assume that the rocks nearest the surface will always be younger than rocks deeper down. Digging through the layers, geologists can analyze their composition, and determine much about the climate and landscape during the time of their formation.

In the mountains, this organized arrangement has been shattered. Older rocks have been piled up on top of their younger neighbours. They have been bent, folded, cracked, and eroded. The original order is often impossible to determine, however geologists have done an amazing job of reconstructing the various layers. By knowing the formations, they can estimate the age of the rocks, anticipate how they will react to erosion, and get a better understanding of why the landscape looks the way it does

http://www.mountainnature.com/geology/Deposition.htm

Of course it's all theory. And we would have to wait for millions of years for something to happen. Unless we were in Italy or on a coast somewhere in Asia wondering why the sea seemed to be getting higher. Water doesn't do that does it?

Of course as I know we are all flying on the back of a turtle I can say that all this plate tectonics is a load of rubbish. And as for the San Andreas fault, that's just a crack in the shell of the turtle. Quite normal and a feature of the glorious beast.