Re: [cybalist] The Tin Islands.

----- Original Message -----

From: Dennis Poulter

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 3:20 PM

Subject: Re: [cybalist] The Tin Islands.

But Cornish tin, as far as I'm aware, was mined, smelted and brought to southern Europe not during the bronze age, where other local deposits were exploited, but many centuries after 1200 BC, especially by the Carthaginians, who of course imported it to the Mediterranean by sea, not by land routes. Quite understandably, they did not go about informing everybody about the location of their strategic resources (bronze was still a very important material), which is why few Greeks ever saw the British Isles and Herodotus could doubt their very existence. Pytheas of Massalia visited the Cornish tin mines ca. 325 BC, almost exactly a century after Herodotus' death.

 

Piotr

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, 08 May, 2000 5:53 AM

Subject: [cybalist] The Tin Islands.

Piotr posted Herodotus' comments about the amber route and the tine route.

 

The Tin Islands are usually identified as the Scilly Isles off Great Britain.

 

My understanding, from my reading, is that the Iron Age gets it main impetus from a shortage of tin sometime before 1200 BCE. I get the idea the Hittites forged iron swords out of necessity rather than any desire to improve their armament.

 

What caused the 'shortage' of tin?. Movements of IE peoples? Proto-Celts? Inter-ethnic chaos on the plains of Hungary? Or was it that the mines were mined out, and no one had found a replacement.

 

And what can be said about 'the Tin Road' a la 'the Amber Road' or 'the Silk Road'. The Tin Road would have been east west, from the Seine to the upper Danube and thence east and south.