--- In cybalist@..., "Rex H. McTyeire" <rexbo@...> wrote:
>
> Our differences remain the same on Cimmerians: Start point,
route, and
> Impact enroute (combining several of the last few posts on the
subject).
>
> On geography, you go to great lengths to explain the difficulty of
the
> Caucasus route, then close with:
>
> " I don't know about you, but I would ride off into Rumania or
Poland
> before I went south."
Now why would a people so obsessed with rivers and passages want
to "ride" somewhere (having to leave their belongings behind)?
>
> Then it follows that Scythians pursuing the disrupted and
baseless
> Cimmerians would have retraced known routes and supply lines,
allied forces,
> known territory and avoided sorting through all those other
Thracians to get
> to Phrygia.
>
One thing strikes me in these discussions of escape routes: It seems
everyone assumes that while escaping these peoples were in uncharted
waters, areas that were frigtening and hostile. But if there had been
trade along those rivers for thousands of years, doesn't it follow
that to at least some of the people these waters were well known,
since they had been there before with cargo? I am reminded of the
neglected status of the study of Roman shipping, compared to other
subjects, when in actual fact this was the one thing that was the
raison d' of the Roman Empire. And also of the fact, that in the good
old days, when I was a child, there was common and university
knowledge, and then there was sailor's knowledge, which was a totally
different thing. Eg.: When medieval chroniclers assure us that there
was nothing beyond the sea, who knows what the sailors said then? And
how much of Herodotus was sailors' tales which were traditionally (by
learned stay-at-homes) deemed untrustworthy?
> You and Torsten can argue over Homer's passage and whether he meant
the N.
> Black Sea coast, or the North Sea..But I have an advantage..I
already know
> Torsten favors the Ukraine as a source for his northward movement
from the
> area into Jutland. ( I am positionless on the point :-)
Not really. They might have followed the same route as Odin did
later: Up the Danube, then across the divide into the Elbe or Oder
river system into the Czech lands (there are plans for a canal syetem
there now so the area should be passable). Coming out of the Elbe,
there is a day's passage along the coast to the Limfjord.
>
> Rex H. McTyeire
> Bucharest, Romania
Torsten