Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[TisILeclerc]

I'm sure I saw a video on youtube where they were talking about Egyptian concrete.

And that Bosnian pyramid has concrete slabs all the way up it. They've had it analysed by a Dutch or Italian company and they've confirmed that it's artificial.

[Boreades]

There's the orthodox "experts" who say "Oh no it wasn't" (concrete).

Then there's the GeoPolymer people who say "Oh yes it was"
http://www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/p ... concrete-1

Then there's the "debunkers" who yell back "Oh no it wasn't"
http://www.fsteiger.com/Egyptian_concrete_theory.html
(but make fundamental mistakes about what the ingredients would have been)

Then there's professors of ceramics and materials science who say "Oh yes it was"
http://www.livescience.com/1554-surpris ... built.html
and
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world ... wanted=all

Aye laddie, a veritable pantomime.

[Boreades]

Prehistoric Guernsey surfaced again today, as a visiting journalist from Guernsey tells me there are definitely underwater neolithic/old remains around Guernsey that have survived several thousands of years of tide and storms. More to follow.

[Boreades]

Another Guernseyman by the name of Andy Fothergill (author of Megalithic Guernsey) has found remains offshore near Rousse.

[Boreades]

In today's post: a paper titled "A Non-local Source of Irish Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Gold", published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

It raises questions about the early Bronze Age gold hoards found in Ireland far more commonly than anywhere else in Europe. The research used a new technique (laser ablation mass spectrometry,) to measure the chemical composition of the gold. They concluded the objects were made from gold imported from Cornwall, not from native Irish gold.

Just because we haven't found comparable amounts of Cornish gold in Southern Britain doesn't mean the Irish took it all. But it does once again show trading by sea was well established early on in the Bronze Age.

Clickety-link.

[Mick Harper]

Phew! In TME, right on page one, I claimed that digging up any bronze implement would allow you to tell where both the tin and the copper came from. I hoped this was true. Re-Cornish gold. I would guess, since there is so little gold in Cornwall now, that the gold was produced as a by-product of tin/copper extraction. Perhaps the 'Plymouth Rias" technique we have discussed elsewhere.

[Boreades]

Yes, we've touched on this before. Sorry, can't remember which thread, but it was gold from Cornwall, and the metallurgists doing the analysis said the gold composition was unique to Devoran (mainly known for its copper and tin mining).

[Boreades]

No doubt there may be special reasons why folk in Ireland tended to bury Bronze Age gold hoards, and more so than anywhere else. Otherwise we might be tempted to conclude that perhaps Ireland in the Bronze Age was the wealthier place by trade, or the place that had control over the gold by other means?

[Mick Harper]

This is a good point. One of the themes of both THOBR and TME is that orthodoxy always puts development east-to-west. But over the last several decades, in fact since carbon-dating allowed a bit more objectivity, the trend is all the other way (not that orthodoxy has really noticed). However, Ireland tends to suffer from our own east-to-west bias and gets put behind Britain (even by radical revisionists).

In TME we pointed out that the Druids 'withdrew' to Ireland from Anglesey after the Roman invasion and kept Megalithic principles going until relaunching them across Europe via the so-called Celtic Renaissance. But there is no particular reason why Ireland was not the original Druid homeland. Or a Megalithic powerhouse. Or anything else you care to muse.

[Boreades]

As even the ortho archaeos say that Newgrange is older than Stonehenge, we don't need a Creation Myth to make Ireland the origin.