Posted on 10/18/2016 7:08:04 PM PDT by Olog-hai
The eyes of a visiting archaeologist lit up when he was shown the 10 tiny, tarnished discs that had sat unnoticed in storage for two and a half years at a dig on a southern Japan island. He had been to archaeological sites in Italy and Egypt, and recognized the little round things as old coins, including a few likely dating to the Roman Empire. I was so excited I almost forgot what I was there for, and the coins were all we talked about, said Toshio Tsukamoto of the Gangoji Institute for Research of Cultural Property in Nara, an ancient Japanese capital near Kyoto. [ ]
The 10 copper coins were unearthed in December 2013 at the 12th-15th century Katsuren Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage site, during an annual excavation for study and tourism promotion by the board of education in Uruma, a city in central Okinawa. [ ]
Four of the coins are from the third to fourth-century Roman Empire, and a fifth one from the 17th-century Ottoman Empire. The remaining five are still being examined.
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Sailors traveled and they bring with them all kind of nuggets including coins. Enough said
UNESCO hasn't declared it a Muslim holy site yet?
Let them know over at the Gangoji Institute. Some people still think these days that sailing from millennia ago was all short-range stuff limited to a thousand miles or less.
They’re still working on Jewish/Christian sites for now. They’re a bit busy. But later sometime this decade . . . now that there is that Ottoman connection . . .
At the fall of the Roman empire, some Roman soldiers went east to become mercenaries, acc. to an audiobook by historian Robert Tombs on the History of Britain.
My guess would be Rome.
Of possible interest
Transoceanic travel was perfected, but still very dangerous.
Roman sailors were boiled alive when they landed by the Shogun, just like they did Engleis pirates and castaways.
Roamin’ Romans?
Obviously, they were left there by early tourists, who found them useless in Japan.
They must have traveled forward in time, what with the coins being from the fourth century and the first Japanese military nobles to bear the title “Shogun” in the late eighth.
I was reading about a movie that’s coming out soon starring Matt Damon involving the Great Wall of China. I did some reading on Wikipedia and saw that there was trade between the Romans and the Chinese. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think that some of the Denari (I believe that’s what the coins were called) made their way a little further east.
Must be bad pennies - they keep turning up.
Roman coins are found all over the place.
Note: this topic is from . Thanks Olog-hai.
The Suzhou museum in China has lots of European coins as far back as Roman times that made their way to China along the Silk Road. Maybe the coins found in Japan came through China in some way.
Romans in Okinawa - Japan? | Dr Raoul McLaughlin
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