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Purple dye extracted from sea snails made the Phoenicians rich traders (2020)
- throwaway6734 5y agohttps://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/how-textiles-made-modern-world https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/how-te... A really interesting podcast about this! Apparently the dye absolutely STUNK,
- egberts1 5y agoA good read about how a conquered civilization can lose their trade secrets.
- EricE 5y agoI love articles like this - it's easy to think of ancient peoples as being dumb, but I'm always amused when you come across stuff like this and find there is more in common with them than we often think.
- agumonkey 5y agoI have a feeling that since the industrial days we're also very removed from physical reality and only skilled at handling forms and vague concepts. People back in the day had first-hand knowledge of lots of thing in the world.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoA lot of that is just propaganda. The last 1000 years of western intellectual tradition has be marked by the present zeitgeist propagandizing against the previous zeitgeist. The western dark ages weren't all that dark, nobody thought the world was flat, Giordano Bruno was an occultist and not champion of natural science, nailing your theses to a church door wasn't a mic drop thing but more like making a forum post, there's even nuance to the Spanish inquisition.
- homonculus1 5y agoAnd it gets even spicier the more recently you look!
- petercooper 5y agoYou know when people ask hypotheticals like "if you were transported to medieval times, had to live there, and can take one thing with you" and you realize how useless computers, phones, or light bulbs would be? I think my new answer is a bottle of exotically colored dye!
- tmchu 5y agoYou would make good money by just peddling the bottle themselves for majority of history. Glassware, fine China and other vessels that can contain your dyes are not cheap before the industrial revolution.
- daniel-cussen 5y agoNo, not that much, they knew how to make glass since way long ago. I guess in the Americas you could, they apparently either had not much glass or it wasn't viable (like the wheel, which was for children's toys mostly).
- ch4s3 5y agoI've always wondered how things would have played out in the americas if someone had invented something like the Chinese wheelbarrow[1] which is meant to work something like a human powered cart. [1]https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-wheelbarrow.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-wheelbar...
- jmkb 5y agoI've always imagined a solar-powered scientific calculator.
- distances 5y agoAnd my usual thought is to bring bag full of ibuprofen and peddle that as a pricy hangover cure for the nobility. Truth be told, I doubt I would get anyone to even try my pills.
- anonu 5y agoThere is speculation that the Phoenicians made it to present day USA thanks to their advanced seafaring capabilities. [1] Nonetheless, the same Phonenician explorer spirit contributed to the shaping of what is modern day Lebanon today. The Lebanese, as early as the 1500s and 1600s had strong ties to the regions of Italy and France. This is why Lebanon has been more on the West-leaning side than other Middle Eastern countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Phoenician_discovery_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Phoenician_discovery...
- JunkEmu 5y agoRelevant: https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/video/the-monologues-blindboy-boatclub-christs-foreskin https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/video/the-monologues-blin...
- texan 5y agoWhile this article focuses on Nouira’s rediscovery of this process, much research has been done on how to consistently create specific colors long before his quest began. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekhelet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekhelet https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/what-color-was-tekhelet/ https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/w...
- Ballu 5y agoThe prohibitive cost was one of the reason purple is used only in 2 countries flags, Its even once banned by British royalty except royals to reduce expenditure by commoners. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/country-flags-with-purple.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/country-flags-with-purpl...
- wara23arish 5y agoI’m from where the Phonecians originated. It makes me sad to see the state Lebanon is today, but ironically part of the reason of the Phonecians’ demise was they didn’t have a strong enough army, relied on mercenaries and ultimately the major city states were not unified. Funny (sadly) enough, all of the conditions above remain true. Damn you Alexander