Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Current topics

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby hvered » 3:39 pm

'Sea people' have got a bad name, among prehistorians at least. Apparently they were responsible for 'the collapse of the Bronze Age' (how tin, a vital component of bronze, managed to reach inland destinations without 'sea people' isn't clear). Anyway, it's all been laid out in stone and translated for non-Luwian speakers

Ancient symbols on a 3,200-year-old stone slab have been deciphered by researchers who say they could solve "one of the greatest puzzles of Mediterranean archaeology".

The 29-metre limestone frieze, found in 1878, in what is now modern Turkey, bears the longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age. Only a handful of scholars worldwide, can read its ancient Luwian language.

The first translation has offered an explanation for the collapse of the Bronze Age's powerful and advanced civilizations.

'Luwians', whose origins can only be guessed at by scholars, lived in Anatolia mostly, also north-western Levant, during the Bronze and Iron ages. Then, it is said, their states were destroyed by, or incorporated into, 'the Neo-Assyrian Empire' because they completely vanished.

If these mysterious hieroglyphs are right, the Luwians and fellow-Anatolians were first-rate seafarers and presumably not bad on land either

The text suggests the kingdom and other Anatolian states invaded ancient Egypt and other regions of the east Mediterranean before and during the fall of the Bronze Age.


There is a bit of a problem though because it doesn't seem to be the original after all
The 35cm-tall, 10-metre-long limestone slab was found 1878 in the village of Beyköy, 34 kilometres north of Afyonkarahisar in modern Turkey. French archaeologist George Perrot copied the inscription before the stone was used by villagers as building material for the foundation of a mosque.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 92141.html

This copy was apparently kept under wraps by none other than James Mellaart.
The copy was rediscovered in the estate of English prehistorian James Mellaart after his death in 2012 and was handed over by his son to Dr Eberhard Zangger, president of the Luwian Studies foundation, to study.

Mellaart was famous for discovering Catalhoyuk but perhaps not always entirely trustworthy; as Wiki puts it

James Mellaart FBA was a British archaeologist and author who is noted for his discovery of the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. He was expelled from Turkey when he was suspected of involvement with the antiquities black market.
hvered
 
Posts: 855
Joined: 10:22 pm

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby Boreades » 11:31 pm

The Sea People getting a mention in passing in this:

The Peculiar Greek Roots Of Modern Conflict

The First War for Western Civilization, a time when history became legend. The Greco-Persian War has given us some of the most iconic moments in history such as Leonidas and the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, the Marathon Run and a huge legacy today in politics and many other areas. However, other than the 3 days of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, the remainder of the 49 year war between Persia and Greece has been almost completely overlooked, and has never appeared in a documentary. It covers the full story from the Ionian Revolt (497BC) to the Peace of Callias (449BC) also known as the Peace of Kimon, and includes a detailed introduction, the birth of Democracy and the aftermath and the legacy of the period.

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/10/1 ... -conflict/


You've got yer'actual Greeks. Except they weren't Greeks, they were Dorians and Ionians and Spartans and so on.

According to the scholar H. Michell: “If we assume that the Dorian invasion took place some time in the twelfth century, we certainly know nothing of them for the next hundred years.” Blegen admitted that in the sub-Mycenaean period following 1200: “the whole area seems to have been sparsely populated or almost deserted.”


All kinds of Dark Ages, coinciding with climate changes.

Image
Boreades
 
Posts: 2081
Joined: 2:35 pm

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby Mick Harper » 5:28 pm

Browsing this thread for housekeeping purposes I came across this exchange

Boreades: What am I offered for the idea that it was the same kind of unusual seismic activity that "did" for Sodom and Gomorrah? Fire and brimstone from some volcano somewhere nearby?

Hatty: There are no volcanoes, not even extinct ones, in the area (only the Golan Heights which are much further north). All that salt... the residue of a 'dead sea' not lava.

The light bulb came on. The Dead Sea is an ex-open cast salt mine.
Mick Harper
 
Posts: 910
Joined: 10:28 am

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby hvered » 8:31 pm

The Dead Sea viewed from Mount Sodom looks like a series of salt pans

Image

Mount Sodom is a hill or maybe 'slag heap' of salt.

Image
The hillside has been mined surely. The cave is also a sign of human workmanship

Image
hvered
 
Posts: 855
Joined: 10:22 pm

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby TisILeclerc » 3:39 pm

Study coauthor Professor Colin Renfrew suggested the islet, with its narrow causeway to the main island, 'may have become a focus because it formed the best natural harbour on Keros, and had an excellent view of the north, south and west Aegean'.

The headland was naturally shaped like a pyramid, and the skilled builders of Dhaskalio enhanced this shape by creating a series of massive terrace walls.


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

It looks like mainstream archaeology has been reading up on man made causeways and islands.

A remote Greek island known as the 'world's oldest maritime sanctuary' was once covered in complex monuments built using stone dug up six miles (10 km) away.

Excavations around the island of Keros have revealed the technological prowess of the small group of Greeks who lived there 4,500 years ago.

Researchers found the remains of massive terraced walls and giant gleaming structures on a tiny islet that was once attached to Keros.

The structures were built using 1,000 tons of stone, turning the headland, which measures just 500 ft (150 m) across, into a single, giant monument.

The researchers say the remains make the island one of the most impressive archaeological sites of the Aegean Sea during the Early Bronze Age.


Image


Image

Will they be taking another look at our own tidal islands?
TisILeclerc
 
Posts: 790
Joined: 11:40 am

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby Mick Harper » 4:01 pm

Great spot! What about Mount Athos and other such 'medieval' survivals? Also the Corinth peninsula looks to be a ringer. And that place where they dug a tunnel allegedly to do something or other mathematical. Greeks! Always nicking our ideas.
Mick Harper
 
Posts: 910
Joined: 10:28 am

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby Boreades » 3:06 pm

Here's a very nice article on modern co-op-style shipping the old-fashioned way. That is, slowly in small boats with sails. As such, it might be a good proxy for how it would have been done for millennia? It mentions delivery to Cornwall as well as Newhaven.

How we got olive oil from a small farm in Portugal brought over in a sailboat by a co-operative based in Brighton – and how you can do the same

https://www.lowimpact.org/how-we-got-ol ... -the-same/


Deliveries available by bicycle to Croydon, Hackney, Brighton and other neo-hippie-commune areas.

I'll not be mentioning it to M'Lady Boreades. It will only give her ideas of sending me by sail on her Annual Booze Cruise to the Medoc. As in, I do the hard work and sail across and collect the cargo. While she stays at home and "manages" the operation.

To Falmouth For Orders.
Boreades
 
Posts: 2081
Joined: 2:35 pm

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby Mick Harper » 7:05 am

A fellow-researcher is currently in Cadiz armed with a camera and an enquiring mind. Has anyone anything specific he can have a look at on our behalf? It's chocko with Megalithia but nowadays mostly, I think, the sight lines from the entrance of the harbour to various (artificial, but not recognised as such) features.
Mick Harper
 
Posts: 910
Joined: 10:28 am

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby TisILeclerc » 9:16 am

If I may play my Joker for ten he could perhaps check out Wilkens's theory that Cadiz was the Ithaca mentioned by Homer and the birthplace of Odysseus.

Ithaca (Cadiz) elaborated in full detail as it played a major role in the Bronze Age.


19 Odysseus Finally Returns to Ithaca (Cadiz, south-west Spain)


http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/where- ... -stood.htm

The 28 allies of Agamemnon came from regions as far apart as southern Spain and southern Scandinavia. Among those from Spain were Odysseus - whose real name was Nanus according to the 11th century Byzantine scholar Tzetzes - whose island kingdom was in the present province of Cadiz where all the islands are now part of the mainland due to the silting up of the coastal areas by the Guadalquivir and Guadalete rivers. Of all the allies, only Odysseus was reticent to participte in the war which is understandable for the king of the strategically best situated port in Europe, Cadiz, as he expected to always be able to acquire some tin from seafarers stopping over in the harbour of Ithaca.

Among Odysseus' neighbours were Nestor, king of Pylos - now called Pilas - who was nicknamed 'the Horseman of Gerenia' after the present town of Gerena in the same region. Menelaus, king of Sparta, lived in a town at the foot of the Esparteros mountain, this town being renamed Moron by the Moors. Further south we find Homer's Sidon, presently Medina Sidonia, which is Arab for 'town of Sidon'. To the north, another famous ally of Agamemnon was Achilles, prince of 'deep-soiled Phthia' in the Low Countries where is the fertile delta of the Rhine, Meuse and Schelde rivers. On ancient maps, the name of the Schelde is spelled as 'Scelt', a name cognate with 'Celts' according to some researchers. They may well be right, as we find also a village called 'Galatea' on ancient maps of the region, after the mythological mother of the Celts, whose name means 'Milkwhite'.


http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/trojan ... ngland.htm
TisILeclerc
 
Posts: 790
Joined: 11:40 am

Re: Megalithic shipping and trade routes

Postby Boreades » 3:18 pm

Mick Harper wrote: A fellow-researcher is currently in Cadiz armed with a camera and an enquiring mind. Has anyone anything specific he can have a look at on our behalf?


Can he find any Phoenicians? Or their remains/remnants/writings?
Boreades
 
Posts: 2081
Joined: 2:35 pm

PreviousNext

Return to Index

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 117 guests