Grape seeds found in ancient Sri Lanka may have been imported by Roman merchants. ISTOCK.COM/RINOCDZ
Posted on 12/26/2018 12:28:49 AM PST by SunkenCiv
1500 years ago, Mantai was a bustling port where merchants traded their era’s most valuable commodities. Now, a study of ancient plant remains reveals traders from all corners of the world—including the Roman Empire—may have visited or even lived there... During that time, it would have been a nexus for the spice trade, which ferried Indonesian cloves and Indian peppercorns to Middle Eastern and Roman kitchens...“Because [spices] are so valuable, people in the past really made sure they didn’t lose them or burn them,” Kingwell-Banham says. “These things were worth more than gold.” The clove, in particular, must have made quite a journey—about 7000 kilometers from its native home in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia... Neither crop can grow in Sri Lanka’s wet, tropical climate, so they had to be imported, possibly from as far as Arabia or the Roman world. Kingwell-Banham says her team is studying the chemical isotopes absorbed by the plants to determine where they were grown.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
Grape seeds found in ancient Sri Lanka may have been imported by Roman merchants. ISTOCK.COM/RINOCDZ
SriLanka is the large island off the coast of India. During the time of the UK Vice Royalty it was known as Ceylon. The pastor of my local church St Joseph’s Catholic LaCrosse WI diocese comes from there. Which strongly suggests that Roman interchange (St Thomas) was going on then.
For some reason my comment why I posted the above is missing because it brought back family memories of my father who after attending our midnight mass would insist on staying for St Steven’s mass which would follow it in early morning.
OOOOps ! wrong thread..
Anno Domino
Fight anti-Christian BS every time.
Literary sources and many archeological discoveries show that Rome and India had extensive trade relations, with Roman citizens settling in India and tigers and Asian elephants appearing in Roman zoos and art. The flow of Roman gold and silver to pay for spices and silk was large enough to alarm Roman officials in that it deflated the supply of specie to the Roman economy. The difficulty of transporting grapes from the Mediterranean though makes me inclined to think that there may have been local cultivation. After all, grapes were known to ancient India and are documented in its art and literature.
Sounds like there is plenty more to excavate. According to Wiki (I know) much of the ancient city is, well, sunken.
Some enterprising merchant actually moved Tamil-speaking craftspeople to the Red Sea coast of Egypt, in order to produce the Indian wares which were popular in the Roman Empire. That circumvented the problem with the monsoon winds, which made it necessary to have but one round trip a year to India.
OMG, I see I posted to that thread 8 years ago!
Almost nine in this one:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2475027/posts?page=3#3
couple of related topics, some with links to still others:
Tamil Trade
INTAMM | 1997 | Xavier S. Thani Nayagam
Posted on 09/11/2004 8:07:01 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1213591/posts
A Roman Legion Lost in China? — Parts 1 & 2
Archnews UK | January/February 2011 | Paddy Lambert
Posted on 02/21/2011 4:33:46 AM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2677196/posts
Amazing. At its best, the Roman world provided a vast area in which it was safe to trade and to move about. This did not occur again until the height of the European empires in the 19th Century — conceived of and administered by men educated to revere Rome’s accomplishments.
Gunpowder was one of the keys — when the Turks came charging in and became an early customer for cannons, it allowed them to blow holes in the famous walls of Constantinople in the 15th century. The earliest recorded use of gunpowder to take a city was from China in the 12th century; mostly the adoption of gunpowder in weapons among the hidebound muzzie leaders was pretty slow (now they pretty much use it on everyone and everything, every day); in Europe it was already of interest in the 14th century, and used against the muzzie occupation of Iberia during the Reconquista; the presence of cannons led to the decline of curtain walls and in some extreme cases to the redesign and remodeling of entire towns in Europe; by the early 16th century European countries (including now-vanished and subsumed principalities and city-states) with navies had altered ship designs to accommodate the bronze cannon then in use; in England Henry VIII got a bug up his tail about the low reliability and short useful life of the bronze cannon on his ships, and recruited from various German states the coal miners and iron metallurgists that would allow for iron-based cannon on land and sea, and after some mishaps (like the Mary Rose capsizing) led to another redesign of naval vessels, Hank became the father of the modern British navy, and the late start at overseas colonization really took hold in Britain.
Superior firepower remains the reason there’s any persistent civilization on the Earth today. And sorry, any snowflakes tuning in late, I’m not sorry for pointing that out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_artillery_in_the_Middle_Ages
Romans in China, some posts:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1814182/posts?page=9#9
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1814182/posts?page=28#28
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1814182/posts?page=34#34
Oh, I replied to the end, first, and didn't get back to my original idea -- the Roman Empire failed for a number of reasons, mostly political, but one of the other reasons is, they no longer had a military advantage, and didn't adapt or co-opt new technology.
All too true. When barbarians, Muslims, or other enemies of the West get the upper hand in military power, civilization takes a step backward, sometimes for centuries. The decline of realism in American public life is an ominous trend that commonly leads to military budgets getting cut and a lessened emphasis on military effectiveness. I have no doubt that many of the people who are now outraged about our troop withdrawal from Syria will soon be demanding that the Pentagon’s spending be curtailed in favor of social programs.
All too true. When barbarians, Muslims, or other enemies of the West get the upper hand in military power, civilization takes a step backward, sometimes for centuries. The decline of realism in American public life is an ominous trend that commonly leads to military budgets getting cut and a lessened emphasis on military effectiveness. I have no doubt that many of the people who are now outraged about our troop withdrawal from Syria will soon be demanding that the Pentagon’s spending be curtailed in favor of social programs.
Nothing like a barley-based cereal with no grapes and no nuts in it. :^)
Well, they were going to do that anyway. Funny how neither the society nor the poor ever benefit from "social programs".
Actually, many social programs do work. For example, Medicare is popular and successful — so much so that it cannot be touched even though it is cratering the federal budget.
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