Posted on 06/21/2018 12:08:22 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Monte Kronio rises 1,300 feet above the geothermally active landscape of southwestern Sicily. Hidden in its bowels is a labyrinthine system of caves, filled with hot sulfuric vapors. At lower levels, these caves average 99 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 percent humidity. Human sweat cannot evaporate and heat stroke can result in less than 20 minutes of exposure to these underground conditions. Nonetheless, people have been visiting the caves of Monte Kronio since as far back as 8,000 years ago. They’ve left behind vessels from the Copper Age (early sixth to early third millennium B.C.) as well as various sizes of ceramic storage jars, jugs and basins. In the deepest cavities of the mountain these artifacts sometimes lie with human skeletons... At the end of 2017, research similar to ours using Neolithic ceramic samples from Georgia pushed back the discovery of trace of pure grape wine even further, to 6,000-5,800 B.C... From an economic standpoint, the evidence of wine implies that people at [Monte Kronio] were cultivating grapevines. Viticulture requires specific terrains, climates and irrigation systems. Archaeologists hadn’t, up to this point, included all these agricultural strategies in their theories about settlement patterns in these Copper Age Sicilian communities... Sicily completely lacks metal ores. But the discovery of little copper artifacts -- things like daggers, chisels and pins had been found at several sites -- shows that Sicilians somehow developed metallurgy by the Copper Age... The lure of wine, though, might have been what brought the Aegeans to Sicily... the discovery of wine remnants near gaseous crevices deep inside Monte Kronio adds more support to the hypothesis that the mountain was a sort of prehistoric sanctuary where purification or oracular practices were carried out...
(Excerpt) Read more at theconversation.com ...
Yeah BC. That was good. Wiley with the peg leg. I had a best of collection of them back in the 60s.
If finding one thing forces a “rethink,” then they had based their knowledge on very poor evidence.
Flag_This wrote: “If they found artifacts in an inaccessible cave, I guess it was only mostly inaccessible.”
I had the same thought. Then I saw the accompanying photo of the archeologists in the jacket and long sleeves looking fairly comfortable in the 99F temperature and 100% humidity cave mentioned in the article. Human sweat, it said, won’t even evaporate.
Still, all in all, an interesting article, even with the disconnects.
I love Sicily! Such a wonderful and tragic history.
I was stationed there in the mid-70’s. A great time for a young sailor.
Still working on my dream to open a Krispy Kreme store in Taormina, Sicily.
Oh, you mean like Summer in Alabama?
That was about what it was yesterday at my place.
I concur. :)
That was spring.
By coincidence, I’m sitting here finishing some spaghetti bolognese and drinking some ‘Etna Rosso’ from Sicily. My wife’s family is from Palermo.
No, it means they based their knowledge on evidence, instead of relying on old campfire stories.
It belongs to that skeleton over in the corner. ;^)
Thanks, wholeheartedly!
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