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Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall
- hootbootscoot 7y agoBronze-age collapse, the Sea Peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 cellulose-based writing media (paper) that simply rotted. Harrappan and early Sumerian trade has been also archeologically demonstrated, as well as Harrappan and <name of Anatolian city complexes recently found I forget...> trade routes, based upon found artifacts likely origins.
- hootbootscoot 7y agoHumans have likely been trading, boating, and migrating since we stood upright on some African savannah so many hundreds of thousands of years ago.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoBoating probably came a little later than that.
- guerrilla 7y agodid you mean Gobeki Tepi?
- contingencies 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
- mcguire 7y agoIf I'm reading that correctly, then not Göbekli Tepe; the two phases there are paleolithic-neolithic and "classical".
- 1wd 7y agoFrom 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&t=1039 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4&feature=youtu.be...
- chrisco255 7y agoIs 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?
- mytailorisrich 7y agoThis 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas
- infradig 7y agoAnd Pytheas describes exactly how the tin got to the Mediterranean, at least in the 4th century BC.
- leoc 7y agoI'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-viking-age.html https://www.caitlingreen.org/2014/12/indian-silver-coins-in-... .
- deleted 7y ago
- netcan 7y agoIt'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 mythical period of iron age cultures (eg the hero achilles, king david, Rome's founders Romulus & Remus)... In any case, it was a period of change... changing politics politics, migrations, trade patterns & metallurgy/metal-trade. Does anyone know if these are new methods for identifying origin? Should we expect more artefacts? If so, we might find be able to identify all sorts of new trade patterns, and see if they relate to political/population chronologies... mythical characters may find themselves in a slightly more historical context.
- chrisco255 7y agoClimate change, too. The Minoan Warm Period ended around this time, and temps would not return to their optimum until the Roman Warm Period almost 1000 years later. Had to have an effect on agriculture and trade.
- netcan 7y agoThere's evidence for climate changes, earthquakes, revolutions, invasions, war, economic crisis, political crisis, ethnogenesis (both historiographical like accounts of sea peoples & mythical like exodus)... all seemingly substantial and concurrent. ..that's kinda why it's such an interesting and mysterious period. There's tons of room for theories on causes, effects and incidentals.
- pfdietz 7y agoI've wondered if there could have been origin and spread of new plant pathogens.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago>This is during or shortly after the bronze age collapse, where many mediterranean civilisations All the tin in this study is from the centuries before the collapse, 1530-~1200 >Does anyone know if these are new methods for identifying origin? Most of this tin was taken from shipwrecks, and the dating method is derived from there. I believe trace elements have been able to tie metal to a mining location for a while.
- 1wd 7y agoThe research paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218326 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- brian-armstrong 7y agoYou 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.
- h2odragon 7y agoLook at how metals were traded in that time. "Bullhide ingots" are not uncommon and are widespread, Certainly people copied good ideas and used them locally, too; but I've always thought that evidence of some clever (and tough!) folks doing a lot of running all over the ancient world.
- ballooney 7y agoIt'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').
- keiferski 7y agoEh, 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.
- simonh 7y agoSeveral Roman emperors banned silk dresses because the silk trade was draining all the gold coinage out of the Imperial economy.
- keiferski 7y agoSure, but when the Roman Empire collapsed, it didn’t take the rest of the world with it. If the US went through a similar scenario, it would have a dramatic impact on pretty much everyone.
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- DrScientist 7y agoRather 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.
- chippy 7y agoFrom 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.pone.0218326 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- wtracz 7y agoThere has always been speculation that there was a Phoenician connection to Cornwall, but not a lot of archeological evidence. This stemmed from things like Cornish place names having an unusual number of z's (a Phoenician letter) in them, and other similarities.
- jaratec 7y agoCan you point me to the information sources for this theory?
- gbear605 7y agoI don’t want to discredit this, since I don’t know your source, but linguistically that seems quite unlikely for a consonant introduced three thousand years ago to have influence on the modern Cornish place names. Three thousand years ago, the Celtic languages hadn’t even split from proto-Celtic, so any influence on Cornish should have also had influenced on the rest of the Celtic languages. In addition, the sound /z/ is a very common one across languages (so it does indicated Phoenician influence), and they didn’t have a script then to write the place names (so the orthographic letter z doesn’t mean anything).
- tssva 7y agoDuring the run of the British archeology TV show "Time Team" they examined a couple of sites in Cornwall associated with tin. In each episode they discuss the far reaching international trade for tin from Cornwall during the bronze age including as far as to locations in Africa, so while adding to archaeological knowledge this find doesn't seem to be breaking new ground.
- rmah 7y agoThe new ground is that the tin is dated from apx 1000 BCE rather than 2000 BCE to 1500 BCE when the trade from the now british isles to the near east cultures was well established. These trade routes were thought to be disrupted during the bronze age collapse which, IIRC, started around 1500 BCE.
- ocschwar 7y agoWe don't know exactly why the Bronze Age collapse happened, but it's likely that copper was what was disrupted, because copper smelting results in deforestation.So a perfectly functioning and open tin trading route meeting a society that can't find copper any more would explain this find.
- ncmncm 7y agoThe new ground is that isotopic analysis established beyond doubt the source of tin used in the overwhelming majority of pre-2000 BC bronze, overcoming historians's skepticism about non-contemporaneous sources.
- Schattenbaer 7y agoThose interested in (one of) the methods used to determine the origin of archeological finds might find Neutron Activation Analysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation_analysis) interesting. Basically, fire neutrons into your item, and then look at how it [edit: radioactively] decays to determine the constituent chemical elements. My one beer-brewing book mentioned that they can trace some pot sherds to a specific region of a specific river using this method. Very cool.
- werds 7y agounrelated, but what beer-brewing book includes this sort of information?
- Schattenbaer 7y agoI can't remember exactly as I haven't made beer in years and sold all my books and equipment - but - I think it was _Uncorking the Past_ by Patrick Mcgovern. It could also have been John Palmer's _How to Brew_ too - I remember the author goes into super interesting detail about metallurgy and similar topics.
- kassas 7y agoFunny. There was no "Israel" 3000 years ago, it is called "Palestine". Zionists invaded and occupied Palestine.
- boudewijnrempt 7y agoWhat the place was called 3000 years ago is irrelevant; today it's called Israel, and that's where the archaeologists have digged it up. The article actually says "modern-day Israel" and "modern-day Britain" in places. (Because, of course, 3000 years ago what's now called Great Britain wasn't called that either...)
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- bserfaty 7y agoThe name "Palestine" was given by the Romans. The area was known to it's inhabitants as Judea. During the iron age the kingdoms of Judea and Israel existed in the area. The name "Israel" first appears in the Merneptah Stele c. 1209 BCE: "Israel is laid waste and his seed is no more."
- jaratec 7y agoThe name is older, it comes from the philistines, one of the people that emerged after the bronze age colapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines
- turkthrower123 7y agoCareful. It is against forum rules to ever criticize zionists or israeli's brutal invasion and enslavement of Palestine
- lucozade 7y agoA suggestion. If you're going to troll on HN, at least do a modicum of research. Otherwise you just come across as an ignorant tosser.
- INTPenis 7y agoThis is so interesting because one of my favorite books is Island in the Sea of Time by S. M. Stirling. It's an alternative history sci-fi book where the author proposes that greeks are sending envoys to britain in 1250bc for trade. To be precise, Iberian greek colonies are sending these envoys but they speak a common language being ancient greek.
- hprotagonist 7y agoThe salt mines in Hallstatt germany date back to about that period too, and have longer trade route reach than was previously believed as well. We’ve been pretty good at selling stuff for a while, I suspect.
- Turing_Machine 7y ago> We’ve been pretty good at selling stuff for a while, I suspect. Indeed. There were similar trade routes in North America, likely using the Mississippi River for transportation. Ocean shells in the Midwest. Object made from Michigan copper all over the continent. Likewise tools made from obsidian from the west. Our ancestors were collectively as smart and motivated as we are.
- hprotagonist 7y agoI've come to think of this as "the ancient world bucket brigade".
- avip 7y agoWeird 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 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 - we'll never know, as there are no references to anything of substance. The research is from https://www.researchgate.net/project/Bronze-Age-tin-Tin-isotopes-and-the-sources-of-Bronze-Age-tin-in-the-old-World-ERC-project https://www.researchgate.net/project/Bronze-Age-tin-Tin-isot...]
- ncmncm 7y agoPeople have always suspected Bronze-age tin might have come from England, but most historians never took it seriously because it implied a lot more long-distance commerce than they believed was possible then. Charred cloves from the Moluccas (south of the Philippines) were recently found in in a jar in burnt-out remains of a 4000-year-old middle-class kitchen in Syria.
- everdrive 7y ago>Charred cloves from the Moluccas (south of the Philippines) were recently found in in a jar in burnt-out remains of a 4000-year-old middle-class kitchen in Syria. This sounds amazing -- do you have a source for this?
- swampangel 7y agoSounds like: https://boroughmarket.org.uk/articles/the-spice-series-cinnamon-cassia-bark-and-cloves https://boroughmarket.org.uk/articles/the-spice-series-cinna... https://books.google.ca/books?id=SpmdDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT75&lpg=PT75&dq=Charred+cloves+from+the+Moluccas+in+syria&source=bl&ots=clgbMnffeS&sig=ACfU3U0jqXCmnLSGNyrILlVRIBWDycBvJg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjam9-MwpfnAhXjlOAKHYuoDQkQ6AEwDXoECA8QAQ#v=onepage&q=Charred%20cloves%20from%20the%20Moluccas%20in%20syria&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=SpmdDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT75&lpg=PT...
- arethuza 7y agoThis reminds me of: "And did those feet in ancient time. Walk upon Englands mountains green" Referring to the myth/legend that Jesus visited England with Joseph of Arimathea: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35304508 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35304508
- acvny 7y agoWe got it all wrong. People migrated from the North Pole towards Africa not the other wy around.
- supernova87a 7y agoAmazing 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.
- vfclists 7y agoHow about the bronzes of Sanxingdui?
- edsonmedina 7y ago"according to the Daily Mail". The tabloid.
- Gravityloss 7y agoIf you visit the Heraklion archeological museum on Crete, they have an astonishingly good timeline of the development of the Minoans (how they are called nowadays). Starting from stone age, and how they entered the bronze age. They were very established by 1700 BC. They were selling olive oil and pottery (at least) and importing tin and copper far and wide. You can see the bronze saws that were used to build ships and create a naval power and ability to trade. I can also recommend visiting Knossos and hiring a local guide. It is not crowded and not too hot off season. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxhide_ingot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxhide_ingot