7 ms·

Weird 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 ht

by avip 7y ago

Weird 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 ago
People 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 ago
    Sounds 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...
  - n4r9 7y ago
    According to Wikipedia this is a misidentification (i.e. not actually a clove), based on the following sources: http://theconversation.com/worlds-oldest-clove-heres-what-our-find-in-sri-lanka-says-about-the-early-spice-trade-109686 http://theconversation.com/worlds-oldest-clove-heres-what-ou... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/004382400409934 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/004382400409934
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mythrwy 7y ago
  I have no idea why that would be believed impossible. The Phoenicians are reported to have circumvented Africa and when the voyaging party returned they reported Phoenician colonies on the Atlantic coast of Africa before entering the Mediterranean. This was done under contract for an Egyptian pharaoh, and from what I understand, the claim that the sun was on their right side as they rounded the southern tip of Africa, although viewed with derision in the ancient world is now widely accepted as evidence they did indeed make this trip. At any rate, they were amazing sailors for the ancient world and it would be much harder to believe they didn't make the shortish trip up the coast of Europe to the British Isles then the reverse in my opinion. But as for tin, I thought it was well known tin came from the British Isles. Could this tin have been brought in earlier when Bronze Age commerce was at it's height? Did the Bronze Age collapse really collapse _all_ trade and commerce and travel? Doubtful. Anyway, interesting find but not really a novel story.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    It collapsed all record-keeping, anyway. The people who sacked the cities were probably very bad trading partners. It would not be safe to beach a ship. Trade with Egypt would still be possible, but stopovers elsewhere would be hazardous. There is no natural state of low-friction trade. It has to develop very slowly over centuries.
boomboomsubban 7y ago
> Weird article. It reads as-if it's a new discovery, yet the "tin comes from England" meme appear in 2K yo This is about tin from over a millennium before that map. > we'll never know, as there are no references to anything of substance The spectrometer, diffractomer, and xray analysis isn't substance?
- avip 7y ago
  I don't see any spectrometer, diffractomer, or xray analysis in that post. Did I miss it somehow ?
  - peeters 7y ago
    Not OP, and it's an article about an article about a study, but I think this is where the analysis would be mentioned: > According to Phys.org, the researchers used “lead and tin isotope data as well as trace element analysis” to identify where the metal was originally mined. What they found was totally unexpected. Phys.org article in question in here but says the same thing: https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html I don't have access to the actual study contents.
    - avip 7y ago
      I've linked to it above. It's in Dutch but the analysis is there.
      - boomboomsubban 7y ago
        The English copy is there too, though that site is a nightmare to navigate. Here's the direct link. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218326 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      > “lead and tin isotope data as well as trace element analysis” to identify where the metal was originally mined. A problem could be that metals scrappings can be recycled. Who grants that a tin was not part of a ship's hull before?
yread 7y ago
There is also this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disk Even though Germany is not as far, it's from 1600 BC
mcguire 7y ago
They mention phys.org (as well as the Daily Mail and Angle News), which has "The enigma of bronze age tin" (https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html), which points to PLOS One "Isotope systematics and chemical composition of tin ingots from Mochlos (Crete) and other Late Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: An ultimate key to tin provenance?" (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218326 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...). Abstract: "The origin of the tin used for the production of bronze in the Eurasian Bronze Age is still one of the mysteries in prehistoric archaeology. In the past, numerous studies were carried out on archaeological bronze and tin objects with the aim of determining the sources of tin, but all failed to find suitable fingerprints. In this paper we investigate a set of 27 tin ingots from well-known sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea (Mochlos, Uluburun, Hishuley Carmel, Kfar Samir south, Haifa) that had been the subject of previous archaeological and archaeometallurgical research. By using a combined approach of tin and lead isotopes together with trace elements it is possible to narrow down the potential sources of tin for the first time. The strongly radiogenic composition of lead in the tin ingots from Israel allows the calculation of a geological model age of the parental tin ores of 291 ± 17 Ma. This theoretical formation age excludes Anatolian, central Asian and Egyptian tin deposits as tin sources since they formed either much earlier or later. On the other hand, European tin deposits of the Variscan orogeny agree well with this time span so that an origin from European deposits is suggested. With the help of the tin isotope composition and the trace elements of the objects it is further possible to exclude many tin resources from the European continent and, considering the current state of knowledge and the available data, to conclude that Cornish tin mines are the most likely suppliers for the 13th–12th centuries tin ingots from Israel. Even though a different provenance seems to be suggested for the tin from Mochlos and Uluburun by the actual data, these findings are of great importance for the archaeological interpretation of the trade routes and the circulation of tin during the Late Bronze Age. They demonstrate that the trade networks between the eastern Mediterranean and some place in the east that are assumed for the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE (as indicated by textual evidence from Kültepe/Kaneš and Mari) did not exist in the same way towards the last quarter of the millennium." Archaeology World seems kind of sketchy.
shahar2k 7y ago
hah! my grandmother's house was right next to this museum, loved going in there and exploring the various ships. (right under the balls)
mikhailfranco 7y ago
The phrase 'Tin Isles' referring to Britain has a long history. An early reference is that inventor of 'History' himself [Herodotus, 430BC]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides The name 'Britain' comes from the Phoenician name 'Baratanac', which means 'Tin Isles'. The fact that they supplied tin to the Near East from their home in Tyre is provided in the Old Testament [Ezekiel, ~600BC]: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/istorijabalkana/baratanac-t2409.html https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/istorijabalkana/baratanac-t2...
- jovrtn 7y ago
  That etymology for 'Britain' doesn't seem to be referenced anywhere else—the link in the post you've linked to hasn't worked since 2003 and doesn't cite its source either. Seems the name derives from Brythonic (British Celtic) and meant "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk" rather than a reference to tin. The etymological path it took was (roughly): Brythonic -> Ancient Greek (by way of the Greek explorer Pytheas) -> Latin -> Old English/Middle English/Old French -> Modern English [0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_(place_name) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_(place_name) [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Britain https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Britain

by avip 7y ago

ncmncm 7y ago

People 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 ago
  Sounds 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...
- n4r9 7y ago
  According to Wikipedia this is a misidentification (i.e. not actually a clove), based on the following sources: http://theconversation.com/worlds-oldest-clove-heres-what-our-find-in-sri-lanka-says-about-the-early-spice-trade-109686 http://theconversation.com/worlds-oldest-clove-heres-what-ou... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/004382400409934 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/004382400409934
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mythrwy 7y ago
I have no idea why that would be believed impossible. The Phoenicians are reported to have circumvented Africa and when the voyaging party returned they reported Phoenician colonies on the Atlantic coast of Africa before entering the Mediterranean. This was done under contract for an Egyptian pharaoh, and from what I understand, the claim that the sun was on their right side as they rounded the southern tip of Africa, although viewed with derision in the ancient world is now widely accepted as evidence they did indeed make this trip. At any rate, they were amazing sailors for the ancient world and it would be much harder to believe they didn't make the shortish trip up the coast of Europe to the British Isles then the reverse in my opinion. But as for tin, I thought it was well known tin came from the British Isles. Could this tin have been brought in earlier when Bronze Age commerce was at it's height? Did the Bronze Age collapse really collapse _all_ trade and commerce and travel? Doubtful. Anyway, interesting find but not really a novel story.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  It collapsed all record-keeping, anyway. The people who sacked the cities were probably very bad trading partners. It would not be safe to beach a ship. Trade with Egypt would still be possible, but stopovers elsewhere would be hazardous. There is no natural state of low-friction trade. It has to develop very slowly over centuries.

boomboomsubban 7y ago

> Weird article. It reads as-if it's a new discovery, yet the "tin comes from England" meme appear in 2K yo This is about tin from over a millennium before that map. > we'll never know, as there are no references to anything of substance The spectrometer, diffractomer, and xray analysis isn't substance?

avip 7y ago
I don't see any spectrometer, diffractomer, or xray analysis in that post. Did I miss it somehow ?
- peeters 7y ago
  Not OP, and it's an article about an article about a study, but I think this is where the analysis would be mentioned: > According to Phys.org, the researchers used “lead and tin isotope data as well as trace element analysis” to identify where the metal was originally mined. What they found was totally unexpected. Phys.org article in question in here but says the same thing: https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html I don't have access to the actual study contents.
  - avip 7y ago
    I've linked to it above. It's in Dutch but the analysis is there.
    - boomboomsubban 7y ago
      The English copy is there too, though that site is a nightmare to navigate. Here's the direct link. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218326 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    > “lead and tin isotope data as well as trace element analysis” to identify where the metal was originally mined. A problem could be that metals scrappings can be recycled. Who grants that a tin was not part of a ship's hull before?

yread 7y ago

There is also this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disk Even though Germany is not as far, it's from 1600 BC

mcguire 7y ago

They mention phys.org (as well as the Daily Mail and Angle News), which has "The enigma of bronze age tin" (https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html), which points to PLOS One "Isotope systematics and chemical composition of tin ingots from Mochlos (Crete) and other Late Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: An ultimate key to tin provenance?" (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218326 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...). Abstract: "The origin of the tin used for the production of bronze in the Eurasian Bronze Age is still one of the mysteries in prehistoric archaeology. In the past, numerous studies were carried out on archaeological bronze and tin objects with the aim of determining the sources of tin, but all failed to find suitable fingerprints. In this paper we investigate a set of 27 tin ingots from well-known sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea (Mochlos, Uluburun, Hishuley Carmel, Kfar Samir south, Haifa) that had been the subject of previous archaeological and archaeometallurgical research. By using a combined approach of tin and lead isotopes together with trace elements it is possible to narrow down the potential sources of tin for the first time. The strongly radiogenic composition of lead in the tin ingots from Israel allows the calculation of a geological model age of the parental tin ores of 291 ± 17 Ma. This theoretical formation age excludes Anatolian, central Asian and Egyptian tin deposits as tin sources since they formed either much earlier or later. On the other hand, European tin deposits of the Variscan orogeny agree well with this time span so that an origin from European deposits is suggested. With the help of the tin isotope composition and the trace elements of the objects it is further possible to exclude many tin resources from the European continent and, considering the current state of knowledge and the available data, to conclude that Cornish tin mines are the most likely suppliers for the 13th–12th centuries tin ingots from Israel. Even though a different provenance seems to be suggested for the tin from Mochlos and Uluburun by the actual data, these findings are of great importance for the archaeological interpretation of the trade routes and the circulation of tin during the Late Bronze Age. They demonstrate that the trade networks between the eastern Mediterranean and some place in the east that are assumed for the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE (as indicated by textual evidence from Kültepe/Kaneš and Mari) did not exist in the same way towards the last quarter of the millennium." Archaeology World seems kind of sketchy.

shahar2k 7y ago

hah! my grandmother's house was right next to this museum, loved going in there and exploring the various ships. (right under the balls)

mikhailfranco 7y ago

The phrase 'Tin Isles' referring to Britain has a long history. An early reference is that inventor of 'History' himself [Herodotus, 430BC]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides The name 'Britain' comes from the Phoenician name 'Baratanac', which means 'Tin Isles'. The fact that they supplied tin to the Near East from their home in Tyre is provided in the Old Testament [Ezekiel, ~600BC]: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/istorijabalkana/baratanac-t2409.html https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/istorijabalkana/baratanac-t2...

jovrtn 7y ago
That etymology for 'Britain' doesn't seem to be referenced anywhere else—the link in the post you've linked to hasn't worked since 2003 and doesn't cite its source either. Seems the name derives from Brythonic (British Celtic) and meant "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk" rather than a reference to tin. The etymological path it took was (roughly): Brythonic -> Ancient Greek (by way of the Greek explorer Pytheas) -> Latin -> Old English/Middle English/Old French -> Modern English [0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_(place_name) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_(place_name) [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Britain https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Britain