Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[Boreades]

So - we've set up a megalithic supermarket (a.k.a. Carnac). Every year, loads of punters turn up looking for the latest fashion in henge-ware and signposts. Haggling is done and deals are agreed. Phoenician goodies swapped for megalithic/Celtic manufacturing. Lovely jubbly, as some traders would say. Next, how to get your shopping home?

Many traditional archeological (TA) people have obsessed ad-nauseum about how huge stones could have been moved many miles (see Bluestones, Stonehenge, etc). But they're not engineers are they? In truth, across land, it's really not difficult, even when they weigh tonnes. Ask any child who's played on a playground see-saw or roundabout, they will have an instinctive knowlege of the way fulcrums and pivots reduce large deadweights to objects that can be turned with very little force. A Google search easily turns up Youtube video demonstrations of that being done with very big stones.

So, c/o the local megalithic movers, you've got your shopping to the nearest port. From Carnac, that's got to be in Quiberon Bay or the Gulf of Morbihan. Counter-balanced cranes can easily lift your newly acquired stoneware onto your boat ready to ship home.

Ah, but this is where it does gets tricky! Anyone who's sailed any distance in a boat offshore will know that things have a habit of moving around with the motion of the boat. Annoying if it's your dinner on the plates on the table. A bit more serious if it's a 20 tonne lump of stone.

So - megalithic stone movers would need seriously big strong boats. What we need is some evidence that people in the Quiberon area were producing big cargo vessels that could handle large volumes. The blessed TA's will object at this point, saying there is no record from these megalithic people of how they could have done this. I'm glad to say Oh yes there is. For that, we need to turn to none other than Julius Caesar. See his account in his Gallic Wars, Volume Three, in which he describes the Veneti defending their homeland from the invading Roman Navy.

'The Gauls' [Veneti] ships were made with much flatter bottoms [than Roman ships] to help them ride shallow water caused by shoals or ebb tides. Exceptionally high bows and sterns fitted them for use in heavy seas and violent gales, and the hulls were made entirely of oak, to enable them to stand any amount of shock and rough usage. The cross-timbers, which consisted of beams a foot wide, were fastened with iron bolts as thick as a man's thumb. The anchors were secured with chains instead of ropes. They used sails of raw hides or thin leather, either because they had no flax and were ignorant of its use, or more probably because they thought that ordinary sails would not stand the violent storms and squalls of the Atlantic and were not suitable for such heavy vessels … adapted for sailing such treacherous and stormy waters. We could not injure them by ramming because they were so solidly built, and their height made it difficult to reach them with missiles or board them with grappling irons. Moreover, when it began to blow hard and they were running before the wind, they weathered the storm more easily; they could bring in to shallow water with greater safety, and when left aground by the tide had nothing to fear from reefs or pointed rocks.'

i.e. these "illiterate Celtic barbarians" had superior technology to the Romans. They had c.200 big ships compared to c.100 smaller ships for the Romans. But the reason the Romans beat them so easily in a naval battle was that these were trade ships, not warships.

See for a reconstruction of what the Veneti ships may have looked like.

See also the "" found in St Peter Port. Bob Dean concludes it was based on the pre-Roman Venetic ships, and quotes the same passage from Caesar. It had a cargo hold of c. 200 cubic metres. For comparison, the capacity of a full-size modern shipping container is c. 67 cu.metres. i.e. these Veneti trading ships were big.

It seems fairly clear that Veneti were inventive and pragmatic maritime traders, operating via a network of related Celtic clans all up & down the West coast of Europe. Somewhere on the trading route they must have met and traded with the Phoenicians trader. I imagine that any canny Celtic trader meeting his Phoenician counterpart might get asked "Where's the tin from?" - in their shoes I would protect my sources and say something vague like "Oh, further north". So only a vague story gets carried back to the likes of Ptolemy in Alexandria.

The Veneti, their Celtic clan brethren, and their ancestors back to megalithic times had been trading backwards and forwards across the Channel and up & down coats for millennia. From the vague written records of Greeks etc who heard where the tin came from, and Ictis is a name that gets mentioned.

I wonder if Ictis could be a generic name for any suitable trading island/port/harbour in Devon and Cornwall? Just as we had several Stannery Towns in Devon & Cornwall , why should we force ourselves into thinking all the exported tin etc came from only one Ictis, and then argue about where it was?

The stannery towns I know of in Devon are Chagford, Ashburton, Plympton and Tavistock.
In Cornwall, Penwith Tywarnhaile Blackmore Foweymore

Each of those maps easily to a coastal island or port.
Chagford -> Teignmouth (pronounced Tin-mouth by all locals)
Ashburton -> Dartmouth (safe deep water port)
Plympton -> Mount Batten (was an island before a causeway was filled in)
Tavistock -> Tamar (Tamaris according to Ptolemy's Geographica)
Penwith -> St.Michael's Mount (Cornwall)
Tywarnhaile -> Tintagel (island, and a major archaeo source of 6th C Med. pottery)
Blackmore -> St Austell
Foweymore -> Fowey (safe deep water port)

Loads to choose from!

I agree Burgh Island was a St Michael's Island and it could have been a small port, but let's not get hung up on one spot. I've sailed past there many times and never wanted to stay there in bad weather. Given the size of the Veneti ships, I'm sure they would have preferred more sheltered and deeper water ports like Falmouth, Fowey, the Tamar, Dartmouth etc. Anyway we know for sure that smaller boats were involved in moving trade goods all along the coast. e.g. the . That's one that got caught out , perhaps by bad weather when they were trying to catch a tide to meet a Veneti ship along the coast.

As a footnote, Quiberon and the Gulf of Morbihan were right at the heart of Veneti shipping and shipbuilding. There's a great continuity there as well, as the Celtic tradition of building big fast ships is still alive and well. For a great example , see the website of the Round The World Race, happening right now. Nearly all the boats in the race are built in Brittany.

More later.

[hvered]

[Rocky]

[hvered]

[Rocky]

[Penny]

According to certain Greek sources (e.g. Strabo), the Phoenicians moved to the Med from the Persian Gulf - and possibly earlier still from North West India. If so, this would tie in with their involvement in the tin trade, since the earliest known source is said to have come from somewhere in Central India. As that supply became exhausted, the Caucasian supply would have come into its own - particularly since by then a demand for tin was developing in the West.

This would explain the Phs' motive for setting up colonies on the Levantine coast. In contrast to the beliefs of most modern scholars (who insist that they were indigenous peoples, who acquired their sea-going skills from the Greeks) the Greeks themselves believed Tyre to have been around for 3,000 years before they themselves settled the region. Their version makes better sense of accounts of Phoenician mining activities in the Greek Islands. Why, for example, would the Greeks have allowed the Phs to systematically demolish the island of Thasos for its mineral wealth if it was already a Greek territory? The fact that their work apparently went unhindered suggests that the Greeks had yet to become a force to be reckoned with.

Which leads on to why the Phs went on to push ever further west. As the reserves began to run low, Phoenician fortunes could only be maintained by the discovery of new mineral-rich regions.

[Boreades]

I tend to agree with Penny.

I've understood that the very earliest of "proto-Celtic" folks came from an area in the Middle East, around the Caspian Sea. They were pressurised to move by other folks crowding in from further north. (Why? Willing to discuss reaons for that separately)

What we call Celts seem to have split in two streams, one went east into northern India and beyond (see Tocharians). The other stream turned west and became "us", via Zoroastrians, Phoenicians, etc.

[Iona]

Celts (like Saxons) may be a generic term for salt-trader or salt-miner rather than a racial group as such which could explain their apparent geographical spread?

[Jools]

[hvered]