Posted on 09/28/2016 8:40:35 AM PDT by Theoria
Leaving open the possibility that the Romans had a mint in the Ryukyu Islands?
Finding earlier coins than expected being found in a site doesn’t mean much. They might have been left there centuries after they were minted.
Maybe the coins were used to buy Chinese silk and then got from China to Okinawa.
Japaneze Reverse Engineering
“Researchers were left scratching their heads about how the coins ended up at the castle in faraway Okinawa,”
Silk remnants were found in Roman graves in Britian.
It isnt like the two places are on different planets.
It’s likely that the coins were just used as payment along a chain of buyers and sellers until they reached there.
Being made from real precious metals, they still had value no matter where they were used even if they came from some weird place that the final holder had never heard of.
Cool find. I don’t know how many travellers are recorded between the Far East and Rome; there was one well known Chinese visitor in, iirc, the first century, but I don’t think I’ve heard of others. Most would presumably have been merchants and would not have left a trace. And then there’s the likelihood that the coins were simply in a bag of mixed currency that made its way across Asia. They may have ended up misplaced and ultimately buried in the castle precisely because they were not easily spent locally,
In those days you could assess the value of a coin by weighing it. That facilitated trade, because they were using genuine money.
join the army.....see the world
Yeah....right
Roman coins in a Japanese castle......
Most 4th century Roman coins weren’t made from precious metals (with the exception of the gold used to pay the army). The article says these were copper and bronze. Smaller and thiner than a dime. The Romans did “wash” them in silver to make them look more valuable than they really were. Kind of like when the silver disappeared from US coins in 1965.
I spent two years in Okinawa at Kadena AFB and I never knew there was a Castle there.I was also drunk for two years,so maybe that was the problem
...so, when someone says that the Yakuza is the Mafia, BELIEVE THEM. When they make you an offer you can’t refuse...take it!
That’s true! I remember reading that this was happening in the late western period.
I guess the more things change ...
No, but it's a long walk from London to Japan.
A tourist just back from visiting Italy accidentally drops coins on ground. Mystery solved.
Possible that they were buried there during the war by some collector?
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