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the "viking buddha" is another fine example of robust trade networks during the migration period. Material goods get around! http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/1
by hprotagonist 9y ago
the "viking buddha" is another fine example of robust trade networks during the migration period. Material goods get around!
http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viking-age-buddha/ http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viki...
This goes both ways, of course. A Varangian Guards carved "halfdan was here" on the hagia sophia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_Sophia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_So...
- senatorobama 9y agoWhat about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii_Lakshmi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii_Lakshmi
- hprotagonist 9y agoanother good one: the Hallstatt salt mines in what is now Austria have been around since the late Iron Age. I recall but cannot currently find studies that have found bags of the mined salt in graves and digs all along the silk road over a time period of millennia. "The Dark Ages" is a horrible name. It was coined to denote "a period that we, historians, don't know much about because we don't have nearly as many anal romans writing everything down and taking notes for us", but it was commonly understood as "a bad, barbaric time when civilization collapsed." It's increasingly clear that nothing so apocalyptic happened. Trade routes survived and even thrived.
- saimiam 9y agoDark ages => ages we are in the dark about (Tongue well in cheek).
- hprotagonist 9y agono, really, that’s what the people who coined the term meant.
- posterboy 9y ago> we don't have nearly as many anal romans writing everything down Please, they burned books simply because those didn't suit thier idea of history.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoTo go even further afield, Roman coins have turned up in the ruins of a 12th Century castle in Okinawa. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/science/japan-archaeology-roman-coins.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/science/japan-archaeology...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- craftyguy 9y agoRobust trade, or spoils of conquest/pillaging. In either case, it's not totally surprising that good from half a world away would end up in some viking longhouse.
- pilsetnieks 9y agoIt's doubtful they were especially more keen on raiding and pillaging than other cultures of the time. They were some of the last pagans of Europe and they didn't shy away from raiding churches and monasteries. Monks were almost the only people who could write about it, and their bias influences their accounts. It's not that vikings were especially nice and peaceable people but neither was anyone then.
- craftyguy 9y agodefinitely. but they seemed to be one of the most well-traveled (as an ethnicity), hence why they may have acquired objects from distant lands more easily than others. those things could have come into posession by visiting (either peacefully or forefully) less distant lands that traded with more distant lands for those objects.