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Coin found off northern Australia may be from pre-1400 Africa
- basicplus2 7y agoalternate explaination.. Yeh i collect coins and i dropped it.. its mine..
- maehwasu 7y agoThe misleading headline (likely not written by the author) is meant to imply the possibility of some sort of hitherto-unknown 1300s trade route. In fact, the article indicates that the most likely scenario is Portuguese traders blown off course from Timor in the 1500s, but the lede is buried quite far down. Very interesting nonetheless, but bs headlines and buried ledes piss me off.
- olivermarks 7y agoAgree, ridiculous and misleading headline. The coin's history will never be fully known but there are thousands of possibilities around how it ended up where it did
- ggm 7y agofive of them found on the beach in WWII
- sanxiyn 7y agoA similar case for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_penny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_penny
- bogidon 7y agoI feel like I learned something special about archeology from that. So cool to be able to dispute the comings and goings of civilizations.
- MentallyRetired 7y agoCould it be? A coin from Africa? But who put it there, and why? Could it have been the Knights Templar? For Rick, Marty, and the team, it's been a week filled with more questions and fewer answers.
- levlaz 7y agoPlot twist ... It was a Bitcoin.
- icholy 7y agoSave the jokes for reddit
- maimeowmeow 7y agoGreat minds think alike. Unfortunately we can only speculate.
- tr33house 7y agoIn case you have to check like I did, Kilwa is in present day Tanzania. The Portuguese colonized the east African coast but were run off by the Arabs and Africans in the region. Intermarriages between Arabs and the local Bantu led to the creation of a new tribe, the Swahili
- monus21 7y agoIt's more of the Portuguese Empire collapsed otherwise they'd still be around till today. FYI, the Arabs in question here were the Omani Sultanate who operated a gigantic slave trade on the East African coast.
- seventhtiger 7y agoNot commonly known, but the highest incidence of Arab genetic markers is in Yemen, followed closely by East Africa. Based only on genetics, an Ethiopian or Somali is much more Arab than an Egyptian, Syrian, or Iraqi. Although culturally speaking East Africa did not adopt/uphold Arabic language and culture as much as the Levant or Egypt. It's a tangent but I always found it fascinating.
- jayalpha 7y agoBeringer's Lying Stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringer%27s_Lying_Stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringer%27s_Lying_Stones
- flukus 7y agoThe whole article is full of sensationalism. 1. The only connection to Kilwa is the size and shape of the coin, that's flimsy at best. 2. It's not evidence of direct contact, there are plenty of instances of coins from one place ending up in another with no direct contact. 3. Trade between Northern Australia and Indonesia is already somewhat well established. 4. Similarly Indian ocean trade has been going on for thousands of years. This might be a cool find and further evidence of trade between Australia and Indonesia but it's not rewriting history.
- atroche 7y agoWell said.
- contingencies 7y agoOld news (~2013). Australian Geographic had a feature on it years ago. Here's one of their articles: https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2014/08/mystery-of-ancient-african-coins-found-in-australia/ https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-cultu... Apparently they also found Chinese coins https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2014/08/18th-century-chinese-coin-found-in-arnhem-land/ https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2014/08/18th-ce... Personally, having studied Chinese history, travelled the area fairly extensively, and read all of the Ming Dynasty texts around Zheng He's voyages (~1400s), I am sort of convinced it would have been unthinkable for the Chinese not to have visited northern Australia, since (a) presence of land should have been well known / established through local knowledge, currents, clouds, winds, and seabird migrations; (b) they went to so many other places, it seems insane they would stop just after the equator when they already had compass-aided navigation and strong (for the period) navigational astronomy. Still, stranger things have happened...
- netcan 7y agoWouldn't it be odd for the Ming fleet to have "found" Australia, but not have left surviving documentation? Is suppose they mightn't have realized the size of Australia.
- unixbeard1337 7y agoManuscripts had to be copied, and the copyists were Confucians who, as a class, had little interest in such things.
- Retric 7y agoThat or it may not have seemed like a valuable trade route. Trade requires both sides to have something the other wants that’s also worth transporting the distance.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gregn610 7y agothere's a fascinating audio book called 1434 putting together a pretty convincing argument that many of the European "discoveries" where predated by Chinese. http://www.gavinmenzies.net/ http://www.gavinmenzies.net/
- _ph_ 7y agoWhatever the significance of this coin found is, I find it extremely faszinating how many archeological finds turn up in recent years which show how much "globalization" existed in ancient times. Even without direct long distance connections, trade connected most human societies. But also individuals seem to have travelled further, than one would imagine in absence of travel infrastructure. It has been known for long time how the vikings traded with the mediterranean, but recent findings about stonehenge show, how big the sphere of contribution was. For all societies which had ocean-going ships doing off-costal travels, I would expect them to have occasionally travelled much further, than most history-writing accounts for. Besides the known viking settlements off the American coast, it would actually be quite surprising, if not a few ships had reached the mainland. So I would not be surprised about any artefacts being found in America, pointing at pre-columbian contacts.
- skookumchuck 7y ago> than most history-writing accounts for Historical accounts are necessarily a subset of actual history. Just like the fossil record is necessarily a subset of the actual flora and fauna. I'm sure there's an awful lot of important stuff we don't know about history, just because nobody bothered to write it down, or their manuscripts got lost. Nobody knows whether King Arthur existed or not, for example.
- _ph_ 7y agoYes, the known history is neccessarily a subset of the actual one - but I think we often don't imagine how large the gap is and also often make the mistake of assuming that this gap is smaller than it is. Consequentely, our "models" of ancient societies or the biology of the dinosaurs are far too limited.
- Mirioron 7y agoI think one reason for us not understanding this gap well is the way history is taught. We learn about the earliest civilizations. We assume that we know a comparable amount from later periods in other regions about other civilizations, but we often don't. In Europe we have a wealth of information about ancient Greece and the Roman Republic, but we know relatively little in comparison about Scandinavia even hundreds of years later.
- wtdata 7y agoI don't understand the sensationalism behind this news. Why couldn't the coin just have been taken there by someone long after it was minted?
- fastball 7y agoIs it completely impossible for a coin to fall into the ocean in Kilwa (Tanzania) and just get washed to NE Australia? 1000 years is a long time and could account for a lot of movement in the ocean.
- Retric 7y agoIf you mean by ocean currents then yes. Coins sink even in a fast flowing stream, ocean currents are slow. Beyond that it would effectively need to climb a mountain at the other side. A general idea was it was found on the top part of here: https://opentextbc.ca/geology/wp-content/uploads/sites/110/2015/08/Atlantic-Ocean-floor-within-300-km-of-Nova-Scotia.png https://opentextbc.ca/geology/wp-content/uploads/sites/110/2...
- User23 7y agoCoins last a very long time. A 2000 year old Roman coin could be lost by a Spaniard in the new world in the 16th century. The strike date only provides an upper bound on how long ago the coin was placed. The lower bound is the present.