Posted on 06/01/2015 10:43:47 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Professor Elizabeth Lyding Will (1924 - 2009...) was one of the world's leading authorities on amphoras, an ancient two-handled container that her research demonstrated to be vitally important for tracing ancient trade patterns and for opening windows on tremendous amounts of information about ancient life and commerce.
In a 2000 article entitled "The Roman Amphora: learning from storage jars," she discusses the diverse uses of "the lowly Roman amphora -- a two-handled clay jar used by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans to ship goods," describing both its main usage for the transportation of liquids including wine, olive oil, and fish sauce, and its many other auxiliary uses, from funerary urn to acoustic enhancement device in theaters.
It makes fascinating reading, but the most intriguing aspect of the article, perhaps, comes in the final paragraph, in which Professor Lyding states that she has in her possession a fragment from one of the controversial amphoras found in Guanabara Bay outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and that she believes its characteristics may indicate a date of the third century AD.
This 1985 article from the New York Times explains that the bay is littered with shipwrecks, but that a particular submerged reef within the bay is known for the ancient jars that local fishermen have reported hauling up in their nets for years (hence the informal moniker, "Bay of Jars"). In the 1970s, the article reports, "a Brazilian diver brought up two complete jars with twin handles, tapering at the bottom, the kind that ancient Mediterranean peoples widely used for storage and are known as amphoras."
This piqued the interest of Florida author Robert Marx, who obtained permission to dive at the site in late 1982, and found the remains of over 200 broken amphoras as well as several complete amphoras.
(Excerpt) Read more at mathisencorollary.blogspot.com ...
I agree, the Brazil find is fascinating. Seems to be pretty good evidence that someone from the Mediterranean world got there.
An ancient shipwreck was discovered in the harbor of Starigrad, Croatia (ancient Pharos or Pharia). The archaeological museum in Starigrad has an exhibit where they show what the wreck looked like when it was discovered--hundreds of amphoras side by side. I think it is from the Roman period (it was originally a Greek colony founded in 384 B.C.).
And the two handles allowed a rope to be used to secure the jar to something that would keep it upright.
Wiki has a pic of how the amphoras were secured on a ship, which is too big for me to want to embed here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Amphorae_stacking.jpg
Tourist: What is that amphora?
Italian Guide: It is a for a to carry the wine!...........
>>Like the shape of a bird’s egg. The conical end can take more impact than the sides.
Yes, except that the egg shape allows greater impact ON the sides as well. A rectangular ceramic container will easily deform and break with an impact at the center of one of its rectangular sides. The stress vector is perpendicular to the plane of the rectangular side, the side deforms, pushes in and breaks. None of the stress is transferred laterally. With a cylinder you have laterally transferred stress in the plane of the curvature but not the the plane of the edge- better but you still get easy breakage with a side impact. With the compound curvature of the egg shape, the force of side impact is directed laterally into the clay walls in all planes, much harder to break.
The problem with earthenware is that is is slightly porous. In this case the thick walls of the amphora would prevent weeping or evaporation, but its porosity would also absorb some of the contents and thus contaminate the flavor of whatever other contents made its way inside, so you could get wine flavored olive oil and so on. There must have been some attention paid to always using the amphoras to carry a single liquid or other commodity.
;’) He was broadcasting his crap out of London, as self-appointed head of the govt-in-exile during the German occupation of France. His constant vicious criticism of the British gov’t (his hosts) resulted in a mock assassination attempt by the Brits just to pull him up by the short hairs. It worked. The fact that it was necessary at all tells all one needs to know about DeGaulle. :’)
The Aztecs had a prophecy about someone’s return from the east, in ships, and resume their former role, which to the ruling class means, ain’t never gonna happen. One reason Cortez and his rather small company so easily poleaxed the number one military power in Central America was that superstition.
One of the universities in Pennsylvania did a dig at Mystery Hill NH, which is really obviously a megalithic site (and large, there are “maze” paths defined by stones all around the apex of the hill), and found material from inside the passage chamber RC dated to 2000 BC. IOW, ain’t no “colonial root cellar”, regardless of what was later built on the ruins.
Here’s an interesting page, has some additional info about the current topic as well.
http://davidpratt.info/americas1.htm
[snip] Phoenicians
Much of Egypt’s trade was handled by the Phoenicians, who were known in the Old Testament as Canaanites; they lived in Canaan, the ‘land of purple’, a title that translates into Greek as Phoenicia. The name is a reference to the purple dye that the Phoenicians extracted from shellfish. Shellfish purple was also used in the pre-Columbian New World, from Mexico to Ecuador. As in the Mediterranean, the colour purple was equated with wealth, status and fertility in Mesoamerica and northern South America. Extracting and processing the dye was an extremely laborious process, and the Phoenicians may have introduced it to the New World.1
After the Spanish had invaded Peru in the 1530s, the Spanish historian Joseph de Acosta became convinced that the Spaniards had found the lost site of King Solomon’s mines. Gunnar Thompson argues that the empty mine shafts they found had been made by the Phoenicians. The Peruvians gained a portion of the gold extracted in addition to imported metal tools and textiles. They learned the Phoenician secrets of alloying copper and tin to make bronze, and acquired a variety of metal casting techniques for manufacturing weapons and jewellery. The Phoenicians also left behind a few inscriptions.2
In 1787 workmen unearthed a hoard of coins in Massachusetts, minted in the 3rd century BC, which bore short inscriptions in Kufic, a script used by the Carthaginians (Phoenicians who settled in the western Mediterranean). Further early Carthaginian coins have been found in more recent times. In New Hampshire an eastern Mediterranean oil lamp, dated to the 3rd century BC, was found at an Amerindian site, and an ancient Iberian short iron sword blade was uncovered bearing an Iberian inscription.3
[/snip]
I’m sorry too, you inferred right, imho the grain went right into the “hollow ship” and was used to nest the amphorae, lower the center of gravity, stabilize the ship, and increase the proceeds on the voyage. The neck holes were indeed “corked” and sealed, and the captain and crew would deal off the amphorae to whomever came by and was interested. The buyer lugged the product after sale. Probably very few whole-cargo sales, unless loaded with a homogeneous cargo that was in demand right then.
Rome banned the daytime use of carts because the city (unlike its colonies) was an unplanned warren of narrow alleys and streets, so cargo in Rome itself would move at night.
The racks idea looks great until the liquid shifting inside each jug worsens the rolling of the ship, not to mention that the weight of the contents of the jugs (as well as the rather heavy jugs themselves) would break or break out of the proposed flimsy (and as far as I know, unattested) frames. As TigersEye noted above, some amphorae held 80 gallons or more, hence over 600 pounds of liquid.
Thanks to all, *great* discussion so far, nice pics, and ‘Civ kisses to GraceG and Red Badger. ;’)
In the story of Jonah, the captain ordered all cargo to be thrown off the ship in order to lighten it and maybe save themselves. the storm got worse, then they found out that Jonah was fleeing from his God’s orders and then they threw him off the ship and the storm immediately subsided. Whereupon they all converted to Judaism...........
I’m going to have to throw in with Covenantor on this one, SC. Loose grain in the hold of a wooden ship, on a voyage of any length, would turn into a nasty batch of sour mash IMO. Even barring leaks in the hull I think humidity would be enough to start the spoilage.
I’ve got a rebuttal for sloshing liquid inside the amphorae too. I suspect they were filled to capacity for the most part. Also the narrow vertical design would limit slosh.
Are you aware of any evidence from the Europe/Africa side of the ocean of Phoenician visits to the Americas?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrenia_ship
Ten different types of amphorae were discovered in the wreck called the Kyrenia ship. A good deal more about the ship and its intact cargo is available there.
They were able to salvage a large portion of the ship, sufficient in fact to build several replicas.
So it seems as the methods of securing the amphorae varied.
Now as to those found in Brazil...drunken space cadets on leave might not be so outlandish after all.
;>)
Well, those aren’t secured at all, so the possible grate system above might be a better solution.
While that thwart board holds that last rank of jugs upright, we have to keep in mind that it’s only a display cross section indicating hull construction primarily.
There are some interesting under water videos of the Kyrenia wreck that show the large number of jugs tightly clustered and toppled over? Worth a few minutes. I”ve put off searching for the full size sailing replicas of the Kryenia ship for later.
Then again, could you build half the amphora with the points down and the handles and plug “up”, and half with the points up and the bottom wide and rounded (egg-shaped as mentioned above) with a small lid and handles “up” ?
8<)
Not that we ever found any that way ....
And coal found a mine in Rhode Island was found in a Greenlandic Viking settlement.
Interesting!
> Other than brief references by the saga men and rune carvers, we are left with a few Atlantic coast clam shells found in a Danish midden, a chunk of Rhode Island anthracite coal found in Greenland, a Norse penny in a native context in Maine and a Norse spindle whorl in the artifact collection unearthed at L’Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland... in the 1830’s... Carl Christian Rafn, Danish antiquarian, scholar, professor, Royal Councilor and possessor of formidable knowledge of the repertoire of Old Norse literature, published his Antiquae Americanae. In it, he presented a forceful case for Norse presence along the New England coast which included the Dighton writing rock and the Newport Tower.
(in the 1940s a one world runic inscription was found carved into a stone of the Newport Round Tower)
The great fish then swam back to the point of departure, went “Ptui!”, and Jonah came flying out, covered with fish guts. Lucky bastard.
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