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

archaeology-world.com

11–20 of 107 posts

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

#11

Bronze-age collapse, the Sea Peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples and Phoenician trade routes... Trade is a given. Celtic (mode) jewelry found in near-eastern sites, riverine trade routes littered with evidence from around 5-6k BCE indicating vast ancient world trade networks. While first discovered writing on clay tablets in Mesopotamia are first SURVIVING samples of writing, this doesn't preclude cellu…

did you mean Gobeki Tepi?

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

#12

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.

It's certainly, unambiguously, true (the Silk Roads were roughly 200AD onwards, and the Roman Empire was trading for centuries before that for smaller values of 'global').

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

#13
post #4

From a 2016 talk: "Possible some came from Cornwall though I rather doubt they went up there more than once in a blue moon. There are some tin mines in southern Turkey but not enough. The vast majority came from Afghanistan. Specifically the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4&feature=youtu.be...

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

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

#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.

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

#15

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.

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

#16
post #4

From a 2016 talk: "Possible some came from Cornwall though I rather doubt they went up there more than once in a blue moon. There are some tin mines in southern Turkey but not enough. The vast majority came from Afghanistan. Specifically the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4&feature=youtu.be...

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?

I'm not an expert, but I think it's a given that high-value durable goods like this could change hands many times. For example, probably no-one travelled all the way with the Indian metal objects which have been found in Britain: https://www.caitlingreen.org/2014/12/indian-silver-coins-in-... .

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

#17
post #4

From a 2016 talk: "Possible some came from Cornwall though I rather doubt they went up there more than once in a blue moon. There are some tin mines in southern Turkey but not enough. The vast majority came from Afghanistan. Specifically the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4&feature=youtu.be...

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?

The Amber Road is also a possibility:

From at least the 16th century BC, amber was moved from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean area.[2][3] The breast ornament of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen (c. 1333–1324 BC) contains large Baltic amber beads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Road

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

#18

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.

True but what magnitude?

On the one hand, I'm always surprised by (say) how many thousands of gallons of beer could be produced by a victorian brewery but equally, we make a hell of a lot more now.

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

#19

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.

From the article: "Given the limited technology at the time and the lack of roads, the most plausible way for the ingots to have reached modern-day Israel was by sea"

From the paper: "Direct contacts between the British Isles and the Eastern Mediterranean are not assured at present, while inter-regional and international trade networks between the latter and northern and central Europe seem to be well documented for the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE [145–148]. "

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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

#20

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?

The Amber Road is also a possibility: From at least the 16th century BC, amber was moved from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean area.[2][3] The breast ornament of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen (c. 1333–1324 BC) contains large Baltic amber beads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Road

Using the amber road would be quite a detour here, I imagine. That would mean that instead of crossing the channel and traveling through France and Italy, or circumnavigating the Iberian peninsula, you think it's more likely the tin traveled from Britain, across Scandinavia, then to the Baltics, and from there southwards across Eastern Europe?

Not that I have any knowledge of ancient trade routes, but to me having a trade route from Britain towards the northeast instead of southeast feels weird.

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