Origin of Mysterious 2,700-Year-Old Gold Treasure Revealed

National Geographic ^ | April 10, 2018 | unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

...a magnificent hoard of ancient gold objects discovered by Spanish construction workers near Seville in 1958... 2,700-year-old treasure... sparked speculation and debate about Tartessos, a civilization that thrived in southern Spain between the ninth and sixth centuries B.C... That wealth, and the fact that the Tartessians seemingly 'disappear' from history about 2,500 years ago... Another side of the debate held that the jewelry came with the Phoenicians – a Semitic, seafaring culture from the Near East which first arrived in the western Mediterranean in the eighth century B.C. and established a trading port at what is now modern-day Cadiz... The treasure includes gold plaques in the shape of rectangles and ox hides, and weighs more than five pounds... research team used chemical and isotopic analysis to examine tiny gold fragments that had broken off from one of the pieces of jewelry. The analysis revealed that the material likely came from the same mines associated with monumental underground tombs at Valencina de la Concepcion, which date to the third millennium B.C. and are also located near Seville. The authors of the paper assert that the jewelry of the Carambolo Treasure marks the end of a continuous gold-processing tradition that began some 2,000 years earlier with Valencina de la Concepcion... Perea commends the new study in general terms, especially as isotopic and chemical analyses of gold objects are relatively rare in Spain. But she takes issue with the attempt to draw a direct association between the culture surrounding the Carambolo artifacts and that surrounding the earlier Valencina discoveries. “This line doesn’t exist. The only line that connects both worlds, may I say, is the material,” she says.

[wildbill]

You have to read the Masters of Rome series in order, number 1 being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Man_in_Rome_(novel)

It is about the rise of Marius and Sulla.

[SunkenCiv]

Tarshish
by Immanuel Velikovsky

References to the ships of Tarshish and to a place of that name, in the Old Testament, beginning with the time of Solomon (10th century), to the time of the prophets of the 8th and 7th centuries, make me think that by this designation the Cretan navigators and Crete itself were meant. The Minoan civilization survived until the great catastrophes of the 8th century and it would be strange if it and its maritive activities remained unmentioned in the Old Testament.

The usual explanation puts Tarshish in Spain, though other identifications are offered, like Tarsus, in Asia Minor. One of the old names for Knossos sounds like Tarshish.