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One idea that’s been around for a while is that Jason’s “golden fleece” refers to the practice up there to use a sheep hide to “pan” the gold flecks, as the water would run through, leaving the flecks behind. At some point the hide would be burned to collect the gold. The Argonaut epic comes from the Mycenaean era, and mostly refers to life at that time. The Argolid hit its prime before the Trojan War; Argos’ harbor was excellent for its time; the story of Jason doesn’t actually take place in Argos, and even in ancient times there was controversy over why the ship was named Argo. :’)

The Argonaut topic link in msg 7 is also related:

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: International Trade and the Late Bronze Age Aegean
George Washington University | 1994 | Eric H. Cline
Posted on 08/28/2004 7:49:39 PM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1201978/posts

Herodotus recounts a story he heard in Egypt about how a Pharaoh wanted to find out which was the oldest language. The experiment sounds kinda implausible, but hey, what the Pharaoh wanted, the Pharaoh got. Anyway, the result of this whoop-dee-doo experiment was that Phrygian was found to be the oldest language — and the Phrygians crossed into Anatolia from the west and established their shortlived kingdom not an awfully long time before Herodotus was born. The language persisted after the kingdom fell, but you’d be hard pressed to find Phrygians around today, even though it was a spoken language in his time.

These next two links are just interesting, not related per se;

On a mission to explore deepest Lycia Where Greek language has left its mark
Ekathimerini (english edition) | Dec 30 2005 | Christina Kokkinia
Posted on 12/30/2005 2:40:22 PM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1549447/posts

Lycian Influence To The Indian Cave Temples
The Guide to the Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent
spring of 2000 | Takeo Kamiya
Posted on 07/12/2005 1:37:19 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1440990/posts