Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[Boreades]

The pre-Roman parts were described as roundhouses and warehouses. So a trade and storage area of sorts? Thank goodness for some archeos who don't call it all ritual.

[hvered]

The Campello peninsula is called La Illeta, i.e. Islet, presumably the road is a modern construction.



At the end of the peninsula is a rockpool called Los Banos de la Reina (Queen's Pool),



that's deep enough for snorkelling, not sure about swimming.

It's said to be part of a Roman fish farm.



and certainly looks man- or woman-made though the peninsula is supposed to have separated from the mainland as the result of an earthquake, i.e. naturally.

[Mick Harper]

This is a most valuable discovery. At first sight it would appear to be a classic Megalithic site, a tidal island with a causeway and a Venus Pool. And as such would be our first inside the Mediterranean. However, the Mediterranean is tideless so there can be neither tidal islands nor Venus Pools. But there they are ... sort of ...

[hvered]

The Baños de la Reina are said to be named for a Moorish queen which might indicate a Phoenician, or Carthaginian, origin since there are well-known Phoenician cities around the Mediterranean that were for some reason connected to offshore islands or islets.

We still don't know the purpose of causewayed islands though we haven't ruled out a Phoenician origin, perhaps as part of a trading network. For most of history sarsen stones seem to have been attributed to 'Saracens' or Moors.

On the other hand, Phoenician traders must have encountered causewayed islands, of which there are several extant examples off the coast of Britain and on the Atlantic seaboard, and might have adopted the concept for their trading centres in the Mediterranean. It's not uncommon for technology devised, say, for the military to be taken up for other, usually commercial, purposes.

Pools may be recreational now but seem to originally have been fish-farms or for breeding fish commercially, hence piscina, piscine etc. (and fiscal, or fisc 'money bag', 'treasury').

[Boreades]

I'd like to encourage some exploration of the tradition of Free Ports.
i.e. ports where trade could be conducted freely, without interfering locals imposing local taxes.

[TisILeclerc]

It wasn't just locals imposing taxes.

Hartlepool once had the wool export trade for the north of England until Newcastle bribed the king or his friends to get some sort of corporation status as a port and then was awarded the monopoly of the wool export trade for the north of England.

Hartlepool is a real port, Newcastle is on a river. It's all about brown cowhide envelopes. I don't think it goes on today.

[Boreades]

Please pretend we're stupid, please explain about the brown cowhide envelopes.

[TisILeclerc]

They didn't have brown paper envelopes in the middle ages.

I assume therefore that for helping politicians to make their minds up they stuffed cowhides with the dosh. I may be wrong though.

Basically it was a stitch up job to cripple Hartlepool so that Newcastle could get the monopoly. They're still at it. They want to be some kind of north eastern kingdom in charge of everyone. They can't even speak English.

[Boreades]

At the end of the peninsula is a rockpool called Los Banos de la Reina (Queen's Pool), ... It's said to be part of a Roman fish farm...and certainly looks man- or woman-made though the peninsula is supposed to have separated from the mainland as the result of an earthquake, i.e. naturally.

It certainly looked far too regular to be natural. It looked more like Roman concrete to me.

[TisILeclerc]

Ye mariners all.

Here's an interesting video of the discovery of Heraclean off the coast of Egypt, complete with shipwrecks on the sea bed.

Not quite megalithic but quite probably the son of megalithic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_nr2OdM0YI

Discovered not by an archaeologist but by a mathematician with an interest in archaeology.