Posted on 05/12/2016 8:35:00 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Bronze tools found in Sweden dating from 3,600 years ago were made using copper from the Mediterranean, archaeologists have shown. They now also believe that rock carvings of ships found in Bohuslan, Sweden were visual documentation of trade between ancient Scandinavia and the Mediterranean.
Most of the copper circulating in Bronze Age Europe apparently originated from Sicily, Sardinia, the Iberian peninsula - and Cyprus, going by isotope analysis...
The precious copper was exchanged for Nordic amber, which was as cherished as gold in Mycenaean Greece and in the prehistoric Middle East...
The ancient Cypriot copper industry produced relatively pure stuff, which was smelted into "oxhide ingots"... Bronze Age copper slabs that looked like nothing so much as stretched hides, with four extruding corners that were used to carry them... about 37 kilos each.
Vast quantities of ingots have been found in Cyprus, Sardinia, mainland Greece and Crete. The biggest collection was found in the "Uluburun shipwreck," that sank in the late 14th century BCE off Turkey. Underwater excavation shows that the ship carried 10 tons of ingots, all of which seem to have originated in Cyprus...
Isotope analysis of some 70 bronze daggers and axes from Bronze Age Sweden by scientists from Sweden's University of Gothenburg, headed by Dr. Johan Ling, proved that at least some originated in Cypriot copper mines. Most probably, it was traded for amber.
"Bronze was as valuable a raw material as oil is today," says Prof. Kristian Kristiansen of the University of Gothenburg´s archaeological department. It and amber were the twin engines of the Bronze Age economy, to the extent that marriage alliances are believed to have been forged between powerful families in ancient Europe in order to secure the amber trade.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
With so many warships lost in combat there must be quite an amount of metal remnants remaining, especially rams, but you never hear of any active search for such. I think about six rams in a variety of sizes are in museums. Over centuries with different yards and different sizes of ships maybe each one was custom moulded for each vessel.
Dang it, is a sick world wherein I am not a bzillionaire.
I hope that some day a lost copper loaded merchantman or maybe Norse knarr will be found in the Great Lakes or Hudson Bay.
My expectations that isotopes from Great Lakes copper will be found in Europe are slipping....terribly.
World trade without borders is okay, so long as it took place long before anyone alive today was born. ;’)
I'd love it if the Bay of Jars (Brazil) were mapped, surveyed, and excavated. It's an ancient merchant ship loaded with (you guessed it) amphora. There's some simpleton liar who claimed to have "salted" the site with a couple of modern fakes, but the Bay of Jars name dates back well into the 19th century, probably long before the simpleton's grandparents were born.
I’ve heard some ruminations that Baldur might be related to the Phonecian Ba’al.
Is that the Roman wreck where fisherman were dragging up amphorae and the “authorities” refuse to allow exploration of the site?
In a different place, I saw where a fishing boat in the 1930s brought up a Roman era container from the Porcupine ridge area a hundred miles west of Ireland. Too bad no one knows the exact site now.
Nice!
Spreading civilization requires math, but they were able to *handle* it, with adze and subtracts.
Right, sub-tracts, that’s where the first suburbs were
discovered. And everyone thought it was in New Jersey....
Spreading civilization requires math, but they were able to *handle* it, with adze and subtracts.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And besides, they have been burying their hatchets ever since!One wonders why the socialists actually tolerate modern muslim rape of Swedish women. Could it be because there are no virgins at all among them, let alone, say 72?
Viking has become biking.
The virgins are all 99 years old. Oh, and they’re actually raisins.
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