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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 ci

by tremon 7y ago

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.

keiferski 7y ago
Yeah, I don't know much about the actual trade routes, I was more pointing out that 'stuff from northern Europe' made it to Israel / the Levant. In any case, I don't think it's much more of a detour though, especially if we assume that it wasn't a specific journey, but a chain of multiple cultures interacting with each other. It doesn't seem implausible to me that tin went from Britain to Scandinavia then down the Amber Road, but I'm not a historian.
BurningFrog 7y ago
I assume "trade routes" are emergent things. As in: Nobody decided "let's start a trade route from Egypt to Scandinavia!". Far more likely, people traded with their neighbors, and market forces led to goods step by step traveling to where they were most valued. Probably without Egyptians and Scandinavians ever having a clue the other group existed.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  I buy tin in one market town and sell it for 5% more at the market town a week's journey away. Or I load up my ship with tin in one port town and sell it for 20% more at the port town a month's journey away. That tin can go quite a distance without any one captain having to load up in Penzance and do a long haul all the way to the terminal end of the Mediterranean. But even that would have been possible, if anyone had enough knowledge of enough prices for common trade goods at enough of the ports along the way. One trip would make the owner, captain, and crew rich enough for it to be worth the risk.

by tremon 7y ago

keiferski 7y ago

Yeah, I don't know much about the actual trade routes, I was more pointing out that 'stuff from northern Europe' made it to Israel / the Levant. In any case, I don't think it's much more of a detour though, especially if we assume that it wasn't a specific journey, but a chain of multiple cultures interacting with each other. It doesn't seem implausible to me that tin went from Britain to Scandinavia then down the Amber Road, but I'm not a historian.

BurningFrog 7y ago

I assume "trade routes" are emergent things. As in: Nobody decided "let's start a trade route from Egypt to Scandinavia!". Far more likely, people traded with their neighbors, and market forces led to goods step by step traveling to where they were most valued. Probably without Egyptians and Scandinavians ever having a clue the other group existed.

logfromblammo 7y ago
I buy tin in one market town and sell it for 5% more at the market town a week's journey away. Or I load up my ship with tin in one port town and sell it for 20% more at the port town a month's journey away. That tin can go quite a distance without any one captain having to load up in Penzance and do a long haul all the way to the terminal end of the Mediterranean. But even that would have been possible, if anyone had enough knowledge of enough prices for common trade goods at enough of the ports along the way. One trip would make the owner, captain, and crew rich enough for it to be worth the risk.