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Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

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Re: Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

#91

Post by simonh »

keiferski wrote: post #15
brian-armstrong wrote: post #7

You hear people today saying we live in a "global economy." It seems like that statement might be true of people hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

Eh, that’s a false equivalency. Ancient economies had far less impact on each other, even if they did trade some things occasionally. Today, economies are far more global in an interconnected sense; if America, China or the EU have a recession, the rest of the world probably does too. The same scenario would not be true a couple thousand years ago.

Several Roman emperors banned silk dresses because the silk trade was draining all the gold coinage out of the Imperial economy.

Re: Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

#92

Post by supernova87a »

Amazing to imagine how back then, there must've been brokers or imperial court wizards / Game of Thrones style, who were the few that knew about such places where magical materials would come from and only have the smallest inkling of what those properties meant. And those materials would travel thousands of miles secreted in pouches to find their way to someone worthy of the rarity.

And today, you can buy any of those things for a few $ off the internet and have it delivered to you.

Re: Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

#94

Post by dotancohen »

ocschwar wrote: post #68
DrScientist wrote: post #14

Rather bizarre the article implies direct ships from Cornwall to the middle east. Surely much more likely a trading network, where things change hands multiple times before reaching destination, probably with key trading hubs. In fact the tin was found off the coast - just as likely to have been on route to somewhere else.

Britain and Wales don't have a lot of evidence for a Phoenician presence, but interestingly, some place names on the west of the island have Semitic names, and those places make sense as locations where Phoenicians would be allowed to land to trade for the tin but not allowed to venture inland. Most interesting is Echri Island in the Severn river. It's the most inland island in the river, making it the last island a…

  > While I'm at this, it's no secret that coastal
  > cities in Spain have Phoenician names
Spain itself, España, comes from "Ei hashafanim" אי השפנים or "Island of bunny/hyrax", which once were abundant there.

Re: Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

#95

Post by shahar2k »

avip wrote: post #42

Weird article. It reads as-if it's a new discovery, yet the "tin comes from England" meme appears in 2K yo maps ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides ). In the "Haifa marine Museum" you've never heard of, there are tin pieces found in Phoenician ships, that's ~3K yo and IIRC the sign even says the Tin is from today's England. [edit: of course this piece could be referencing new confirmation or new methodology…

hah! my grandmother's house was right next to this museum, loved going in there and exploring the various ships. (right under the balls)

Re: Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

#96

Post by golemiprague »

netcan wrote: post #5

It'll be interesting to find what follows. 3k ybp is a relatively unique timestamp for tin. This is during or shortly after the bronze age collapse, where many mediterranean civilisations (greece, egypt, assyria, hatti..) receded, and bronze (inc tin) trade receded with them. Bronze presumably became scarce, and ironworking developed as the eventual alternative. The centuries of the last bronze dark age is the mythic…

King David is not necessarily mythical, some historians and archeologists think he existed especially after the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele in 1993 which mention the house of David.

Re: Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

#97

Post by asveikau »

dotancohen wrote: post #94
ocschwar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain and Wales don't have a lot of evidence for a Phoenician presence, but interestingly, some place names on the west of the island have Semitic names, and those places make sense as locations where Phoenicians would be allowed to land to trade for the tin but not allowed to venture inland. Most interesting is Echri Island in the Severn river. It's the most inland island in the river, making it the last island a…

> While I'm at this, it's no secret that coastal > cities in Spain have Phoenician names Spain itself, España, comes from "Ei hashafanim" אי השפנים or "Island of bunny/hyrax", which once were abundant there.

I think this is one theory among several:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispania#Etymology

One must also likely compare the proposed root with Latin Hispania rather than directly with modern España.

Re: Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

#99

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

hinkley wrote: post #88
peeters wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, and it's an article about an article about a study, but I think this is where the analysis would be mentioned: > According to Phys.org, the researchers used “lead and tin isotope data as well as trace element analysis” to identify where the metal was originally mined. What they found was totally unexpected. Phys.org article in question in here but says the same thing: https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bron…

Is this essentially a superset of the techniques they use to identify gold bullion? I understood they have a map of trace elements by mine so that gold isn’t really fungible (if stolen or used for criminal activity, they can figure out where it came from and connect the dots).

Yeah, it's not like you could melt it down and mix in anything you want

Re: Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall

#100

Post by infradig »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #13
chrisco255 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it unfeasible that the tin was traded from ancient Britain to ancient France to Ancient Greece to ancient Israel in sort of a chain rather than ships transporting them directly to Israel?

This over-land route was common, afaik. It may be one of the reasons the Greeks founded a colony near the Rhone delta: present day Marseille. Avoiding this route to sail directly to Northern Europe may also be why a Greek explorer from Marseille, Pytheas [1], gave us one of the first, if not the first, direct accounts of the British Isles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas

And Pytheas describes exactly how the tin got to the Mediterranean, at least in the 4th century BC.
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