Re: Burgundy and Brits

["schulte-baeuminghaus" <cresscourt@xxxxxxxxx>]

Geoffrey,

This is absolutely fabulous. The range of your knowledge - and its
detail - are wonderful.
Have you put any of this into a book - so that lots of people
everywhere can read it? It would make even more fascinating reading
than TTM.
I'm not sure of the extent of its relevance to PKT, but its
significance to economic history is clearly great.
But all that you have to say goes far beyond that - it's just good to
read and ponder all these things.


James Cumes


----------
>From: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
>To: <GGard97342@xxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: Burgundy and Brits
>Date: Mon, Dec 18, 2000, 7:53 pm
>

> Geoffrey,
>       On the scholarly material, you are right and I
> am wrong.  I misremembered what I remembered.
> The Seine-Rhone trade link, which I do not dismiss
> so easily, I have seen the Seine be navigable at
> Chatillons-sur-Seine, even if it is not always so,
> was the other way supposedly.  It was the Cornish
> tin that was sent to the Med, not the other way around.
> By that theory, it was exporting tin (possibly also to
> the Black Sea or to others along on the Danube also)
> that lay at the base of the wealth of those who constructed
> Stonehenge.  But, of course, the trade that put a Phoenician
> glass object at Stonehenge might well have been oceanic.
>        I apologize for my forgetful confusion.
> Barkley Rosser
> -----Original Message-----
> From: GGard97342@xxxxxx <GGard97342@xxxxxx>
> To: rosserjb@xxxxxxx <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
> Date: Sunday, December 17, 2000 3:42 AM
> Subject: Burgundy and Brits
>
>
>>17 December 2000
>>
>>Dear Barkley,
>>
>>I managed to reduce the length of my latest epistle to PKT, though I admit
> is
>>still verbose and didactic. But you may find the longer version of
> interest,
>>so I set it out below.
>>
>>Do you know Burgundy? I love it. Fortunately a friend who knows my
>>predilections has given me a bottle of Clos de Vougeot to go with my
>>Christmas lunch. I do not drink a lot, but I enjoy fine Burgundy. Sadly I
> was
>>not able to visit France this year.
>>
>>Happy Christmas
>>
>>Geoffrey
>>
>>In a message dated 12/12/00 19:44:45 GMT Standard Time, rosserjb@xxxxxxx
>>writes:
>>
>>> It has been my understanding that the main source
>>>  of tin for British bronze was from the Mediterranean,
>>>  brought up the Rhone from Marseilles where the traders
>>>  would meet with traders coming up the Seine where they
>>>  would intersect near the divide in modern Burgundy.
>>
>>If you know of any scientific evidence in support of this I would be
>>delighted to know of it. I have been intending to read up all I can find
>>about tin routes but have not made much progress. I know of no
> Mediterranean
>>source of tin, unless you include the most southerly part of ancient Egypt.
>>
>>The Encyclopaedia Britannica suggests that the oldest tin mines were in
> Spain
>>and Cornwall. Spain is one of the two most likely places for the first
>>invention of bronze, but I believe the deposits were mainly in Galicia, the
>>north. Cornwall is said to hold the biggest tin ore reserves in the world,
>>but ancient tin extraction would have been of the alluvial deposits, and
> that
>>sort of working leaves little trace. We just do not know how early tin
>>extraction began in Cornwall. The usual conservative estimate is 3,000
> years
>>ago. That could be far too conservative, given the age of British
> settlements.
>>
>>The bronze axes found at Beeston were of the advanced design believed to
> date
>>from 900 to 500 BC. But a flat axe found at Deganwy in North Wales, and
>>another at Ullapool in the very far north of Scotland are of a design dated
>>from 2500 BC
>>
>>Myth suggests there was contact between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic
>>communities. To explain the origin of the Celts, Greek myth, among other
>>explanations, suggests they were descended from Hercules who on his
>>wanderings in the West, beyond the "Pillars of Hercules", that is the
> Straits
>>of Gibraltar, was seduced by Keltine, the daughter of King BRETANNOS. I
> trust
>>that name invokes some thoughts.
>>
>>Marseilles (Massilia) was founded by the Phocaeans of Asia Minor about 600
>>BC. I seem to recall it was under Carthaginian (i.e. Phoenician) control
> from
>>570 to 540 BC. Cadiz, (Gadir) one the other hand, on the sea route to
>>Britain, claims to have been used as a depot by the Phoenicians from at
> least
>>1100 BC. Even this is too late to account for British bronze artefacts
> which
>>date from 2600 BC. Earlier this year I visited the museum at Dingwall in
> the
>>far north and saw the gold hoard found there, and which is believed to date
>>from 1000 BC. As the gold torques are unfinished, they could be local work.
>>Local researchers are confident that there were extensive trading networks
>>across all northern Europe by 1000 BC. The museum display highlights the
>>statement, "The sea was a highway, not a barrier."
>>
>>The supposed trade route Rhone-Saone-Seine does not seem early enough. The
>>present canalised route is Saone to the Loire via le Canal du Centre, and
>>from the Loire to the Yonne via le Canal Nivernais.
>>
>>Failing other evidence my guess is that the theory about the Saone/Seine
>>route derives from the fabulous discovery at Chatillon-sur-Seine in
> northern
>>Burgundy. In a magnificent sixth century BC burial of a Celtic (another
>>assumption?) princess was found, among things, the bronze Vase of Vix. The
>>designs on the vase are classical so it is assumed to have come from
> southern
>>Italy, in defiance of the knowledge that the Celts were superb craftsmen in
>>metals. (See Barry Cunliffe's book on the Celts.) It weighs 208 kilos, is
>>1.64 metres high, and 1.45 metres wide. It is well worth seeing, though the
>>Michelin Green Guide gives it only one star for "interessant." I would give
>>it three stars, "vaut le voyage." One wonders if such an object could be
>>designed and made to the same standard today.
>>
>>The fact that the headwaters of the Saone and Seine in Burgundy look very
>>close on the map is misleading. I visited Chatillon at the end of the hot
>>1982 summer and I could not have floated a Pooh stick on the Seine there.
> It
>>was completely dry. The Seine is only a big river at Paris because of its
>>tributary the Yonne, the really impressive Burgundian river.
>>
>>The notion of a Saone/Seine route looks like a bit of armchair theorising
>>from a Michelin map, not from an on the spot investigation, but I am
> prepared
>>to be wrong. The present dryness may be due to modern abstractions of
> water.
>>
>>I am amazed at how little attention archeologists pay to the asymmetry of
>>archeological evidence. Their ideal was a desert plain through which a
> great
>>river runs, with frequent changes of course so that it leaves whole cities
>>high and dry for future archeologists to explore and make very rich finds.
>>Then because they have found there in ideal conditions for preservation
>>things older than anywhere else they assume that that plain was the
>>birthplace of civilisation. Gordon Childe looked at all the evidence and
>>produced the diffusion theory, with Mesopotamia as an epicentre from which
> an
>>earthquake of human genius spread its tentacles. His best-selling popular
>>book, "What Happened in History," is probably still in print and is still
>>misleading everyone. Childe was a communist, and his scholarship sometimes
>>reflects that. His interpretation of human development became gospel. I was
>>brought up on it. According to the followers of Childe, Britain was the
> final
>>resting place of the savage hunter-gatherers, forced back by the advancing
>>agriculturalists, who are genetically distinct on twelve genetic criteria
>>from the hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer genes are commonest in Britain
> and
>>Portugal, so there is scientific support for the idea, but the
>>characterisation of hunter-gathers as dim savages, submerged by clever
>>agriculturalists does not quite fit. It was the Portuguese and the British
>>who took European trade around the globe, and Scotland, the farthest exile
>>from Mesopotamia, has produced more useful innovations for the world than
> any
>>population of comparable size. My guess is that one had to be very clever
> to
>>survive in the northern areas, and the genes are still around, though the
>>cleverest descendants of the ancient people of that area may have gone to
>>North America in the 19th century.
>>
>>The opposite to Mesopotamia is Flanders mud where after only 82 years most
> of
>>the evidence that it was the site of the bloodiest battles in world history
>>has already vanished. My garden is no better. In its acid soil I can grow
>>beautiful rhododendrons, but bury a bronze axe there and in no time there
>>will be nothing but metallic salts only identifiable by the most
>>sophisticated of scientific techniques. In the light chalk of the southern
>>uplands of Britain, prehistoric remains abound, and it was assumed that
> with
>>dear antlers one could not cultivate the heavier soils on lower ground.
>>Recent research have killed that assumption too. Three miles from where I
>>sit, a dig was started in 1980 to discover the mediaeval village of Tatton,
>>which was destroyed when the Egertons emparked the land on which it stood.
>>But the diggers - my younger son was one - found evidence of occupation
> going
>>back six thousand years, but the interpretation required archeological
>>techniques of great scientific sophistication, because the soil is acid.
> Then
>>a school boy playing by Tatton Mere found 9,000 flints from 4,000 BC.
>>Archeologists use the word "flint" to cover all hard stones, so they were
> not
>>necessarily flints in the strict sense. Those that were true flint would
> have
>>come a long way.
>>
>>Of course there was some diffusion from the Near East, especially of
>>agricultural techniques, but agriculture did not start in Mesopotamia; that
>>was not cultivable until several logistical problems had been solved. But
>>archeologists have found in Sumeria evidence of experimentation with tin
> and
>>copper, resulting eventually in the correct formula for bronze. The
> Sumerians
>>needed bronze far more than ancient Brits did; the Sumerians had no stone
> for
>>tools and weapons. So the textbooks tell you that the Sumerians invented
>>bronze. See page 87 of Jacquetta Hawkes "The Atlas of Early Man." The
>>Sumerians had no tin and no copper, so for them to have invented bronze
> would
>>have required divine intervention. Being British I am about 100 times more
>>sceptical about divine intervention than a Bible Belt American, so I look
> for
>>another explanation. The Hittites kept the secret of iron for centuries,
> and
>>no doubt the secret of bronze was carefully kept too by its originators.
> The
>>Sumerians no doubt learnt it existed and what it was made of, and then
>>reverse engineered bronze. That seems a very reasonable hypothesis. Their
>>copper came from down the Persian Gulf, isotopic analysis has shown that.
> The
>>origin of the tin may still be a mystery. Lots of small deposits of tin
> have
>>vanished without trace.
>>
>>Jacquetta Hawkes was a lovely lady and was Chairman of the Trustees of the
>>Antiquity Trust, which publishes the academic journal, "Antiquity." As
>>representative of the custodian trustee I met her at trustees' meetings
> which
>>always terminated with a long and well-lubricated lunch, as one would
> expect
>>with Professor Glyn Daniel as the host. At the first lunch I attended I was
>>explaining to the eminent archeologists that I was getting myself into
>>trouble by challenging large chunks of economic theory. "Oh I am doing the
>>same to archeology," said Colin Renfrew. "My research in Orkney has
>>completely upset the applecart." He had too! Colin is unusual. Many
>>archeologists are classical scholars without any knowledge of science
>>whatsoever, but Colin passed Part One of the Natural Sciences Tripos at
>>Cambridge before switching to "Arch and Anth." (Archeology and
> Anthropology.)
>>And in Arch and Anth he was a pupil of Glyn Daniel, a man with a far more
>>original mind than most. Glyn was indeed a genius, but he was hated by
> other
>>scholars because he made a lot of money from archeology by popularising it
> on
>>television. He was a founding director of Anglia Television when commercial
>>television was first allowed in Britain.
>>
>>Colin used his scientific techniques on Orkney and proved that the masonry
>>buildings there are the oldest known ANYWHERE! Mind you, one would have to
> be
>>pretty pea-brained not to invent masonry there as the most perfect building
>>materials are lying around for the taking, chunks of sandstone the right
> size
>>and shape. But I noticed that the techniques of using the stone were quite
>>advanced. The Egyptian pyramids are built in horizontal layers. That is OK
> in
>>a dry climate, but in the British climate it leads to fast decay. Water
> will
>>not drain out of the masonry. It freezes, swells and breaks the rock. All
> the
>>famous dry stone walls of the Cotswolds and elsewhere are built so that the
>>layers of stone tilt down towards the outer face. The ancient Orcadians
>>herringboned the walls of their structures so that they drained. (My guess;
>>the archeologists think they were being artistic!) They failed to invent
> the
>>arch so they used corbelling for the roofs.
>>
>>The Orcadians also erected a large stone circle of 60 tall slabs, The Ring
> of
>>Brodgar. The top of each slab was cut off at an angle which would also have
>>helped preservation by making it easy for the water to run off. So after
>>5,000 years 28 stones are still standing.
>>
>>The fact that there are sixty is interesting. Is it Babylonian mathematics?
>>They counted in sixties.
>>
>>The Orcadians lived very well from fishing, animal rearing and arable
>>farming. The main island is very fertile, and the seas around were superb
>>fishing grounds. When Europeans reached the North West United States they
>>found that the Native Americans there were living richly from fish,
>>especially salmon, and did not need agriculture. The conditions of the
>>Atlantic Facade of Europe were identical in prehistory. The salmon have
> gone
>>but the sea still provides a large part of the protein for 500 million
> people.
>>
>>The further north one was the easier life was in some ways. There were more
>>cod, and they were easily preserved. Captain Birdseye did not invent freeze
>>drying; it was practised by the Vikings since time immemorial and before.
> The
>>secret of the Vikings' seafaring was dried cod. One could say their ships
>>were fuelled with "lutofisk," freeze dried cod. The cod is hung up on
>>frameworks and the frosty air does the rest. Still practised on the Lyngen
>>Peninsula in Norway, 69 degrees north. Lutofisk is a delicacy in Italy.
> Yuk!
>>
>>So the Atlantic Facade supported large populations. About 5,000 BC they
>>adopted agriculture, an agriculture on a scale never again seen till
>>recently, and produced the megalithic culture and masses of remarkable
>>monuments, including the most famous of all, Stonehenge. Then for reasons
>>unknown the population fell. Orkney was short of wood and was abandoned
> about
>>2,400 BC, about the time the first masonry buildings appear in Egypt.
>>
>>Copper mines are particularly common in my part of Britain. There are
> ancient
>>workings on display at Alderley Edge, south of Manchester. Parys Mountain
> on
>>Anglesey was made of very high grade copper so it is no longer a mountain
> and
>>the present mines go deep underground. It was always assumed that there was
>>no archeology in mines as modern workings destroyed the old. Yet another
>>totally wrong assumption. Before Newcomen engines were invented, miners did
>>not bring the spoil to the surface; they backfilled the workings, ground
>>water infiltrated calcite, and the solid mass preserved everything.
> Llandudno
>>Council in North Wales wanted to extend the car park at the beauty spot,
> the
>>Great Orme, a rocky peninsula sticking out from the north coast of Wales.
>>They knew the site they wanted to use was covered with the spoil from
> copper
>>mining which they had taken place from 1690 to 1860. They thought it was
> wise
>>to make sure there were no five hundred foot shafts to swallow cars, so
> they
>>hired a mining company to investigate. In 1990 the company revealed the
>>ancient workings, four miles of passages on nine levels. The calcite had
>>preserved the remains of the miners' fires - used to break the rock - and
>>carbon dating gave dates from 1860 BC to 600 BC. 2,500 stone tools were
> found
>>and 9,000 bone tools. Bronze axes of far older date have been found nearby,
>>so these are probably later workings than some in the area. Every previous
>>assumption about prehistoric Britain and metal working suddenly became
> utter
>>nonsense. Far from being an importer of metal, Britain - and possibly the
>>Great Orme mine alone - was producing a surplus!
>>
>>An isotopic analysis has been commissioned from Liverpool University but I
>>have not yet heard the result. That will enable them to discover where the
>>copper went to.
>>
>>Research has been done at copper mines in Austria. At Muhlbach the 5,000
> year
>>old mine is now a museum. There is another mine of the same age at Dienten.
> I
>>expect there are many others, but these I have visited. There is tin, I
>>believe, not far away at in Bohemia. Much copper ore contains arsenic which
>>when alloyed with copper will also produce bronze. The hair of the Ice Man,
>>discovered in the Alps, was full of arsenic, seeming to indicate he had
> been
>>smelting copper. He was carrying a copper hammer. He died 5,000 years ago.
>>
>>The discovery of the Ice Man has put back the copper age in Europe by one
>>thousand years. On the other hand some traditional Egyptian dating is being
>>challenged. Rameses II comes forward from 1286 BC to 936 BC, if the claims
>>are correct. That brings forward the Iron Age.
>>
>>A bright suggestion: Stonehenge is a Babylonian calendar, which tells one
>>when it is the best time to take tin, the plutonium, of the ancient world,
>>across to the continent, up the Rhine, down the Danube, across the Black
> Sea
>>to Turkey, to trade at Kultepe with the Assyrian merchants. Sadly the
> records
>>found at Kultepe show the Assyrians swapping tin with the Hittites for
> silver
>>in 1800 BC, not the other way around. The word translated as tin is not
>>beyond doubt. At one time the accepted translation was lead, not tin. But
>>from where did the Assyrians get tin? The answer is usually, "It must have
>>come from the foothills of the mountains of Afghanistan." There is no tin
>>there now.
>>
>>Incidentally, the "blue stones" which are part of the Stonehenge monument
> are
>>believed to come from the Preseli Mountains in South West Wales. I notice
>>from the geological map that the geology there is the same as the tin
> bearing
>>structures in Cornwall. So was there once tin there too? And is there
> really
>>some connection between tin and Stonehenge?
>>
>>Of course when one armchair theory bites the dust, another from the other
>>extreme springs into life. Nationalistic Scots proceeded to read into the
>>evidence a new diffusion theory, which worked in the opposite direction. In
>>my original, slightly bibulous, conversation with Renfrew I tried to be
>>funny: "Of course it is obvious what happened. Climatic conditions changed
>>and the advanced people of the North of Scotland and Orkney removed
>>themselves to Egypt. But they missed the marvellous pyramidical and cone
>>shaped mountains of Sutherland and Wester Ross, Quinag, Canisp, Suilven,
> Stac
>>Pollaidh, Cul Mor, Cul Beag, and the Red and Black Cuillin of Skye, so they
>>built the pyramids." Renfrew replied, "You won't believe but people have
>>actually put that theory forward seriously!"
>>
>>In May this year I was on the western coast of the Applecross peninsula on
>>glorious sunny evening. For once there was not a cloud in the shy and the
>>lowering sun was lighting up the Cuillin, sharpening the outline
>>dramatically. One hill in particular showed up as an absolutely perfect
>>pyramid. The view was sublime. For further enjoyment we drove to the top of
>>the Bealach na Ba - the Pass of the Cattle - and to the West we could see
>>even the cone shaped hills on Uist, 53 miles away. It is a view which gives
>>me an ecstatic euphoria such as no other view can quite equal, and I am not
>>alone in that experience. It could easily inspire one to crazy theories.
>>
>>The extremes must be resisted. With luck we are now entering an era of
> truly
>>scientific archeology and anthropology which will give us some correct
>>answers, undistorted by asymmetrical evidence. Some of the results could be
>>quite surprising. Unfortunately progress is often hindered by nationalism.
>>The Chinese have refused to allow DNA analysis of the 4,000 year-old
> mummies
>>now in the Urumchi Museum in Xinjiang, seemingly for fear they prove to be
>>Irishmen, and some idiot westerners will claim that Chinese culture was
>>derived from the west. As one western writer, Steve Jones, has tabulated
> the
>>many ways in which the Chinese were technologically 1000 years ahead of
>>Europe this seems to be taking the Chinese dread of losing face to another
>>extreme.
>>
>>Geoffrey Gardiner
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>