[cybalist] The Tin Islands

John and Piotr,

In the Alekseev Manuscript (lecture 13) Alekseev states:
"there are two bronze producing cultures in the former Soviet Union but
three bronze producing areas. The two cultures are 1) in the Caucasus
and 2) in the central Urals. In the Caucasus the bronzes are made with
copper and arsenic. In the Urals the bronzes are made with copper and
tin.

In the southern steppe area, bronzes are of Caucasus origin except the
Karasuk Culture where the origin is northern China. The bronzes from
the southern area are with arsenic. In the northern area, the bronze is
with tin. However, in several places in the southern steppe zone, the
bronze is with tin but we don't know if it is from the Urals or from the
Near East. In southern Siberia we don't know the content of the
bronzes; more study from excavations and the laboratory regarding the
chemical structures on the contents of the micro elements is needed.
Thus bronze with arsenic is located in the southern areas and comes from
the Caucasus and Near East. Bronze with tin is located in the northern
areas and comes from the Turbino Province of the Urals. In the
Caucasus, bronze is similar to bronze from Turkey. The arsenic
percentage is the same.

E.N. Chernykh claims the first metal using culture was the Afanasevo in
the Altai dating to the first half of the third millennium BC. However,
the Afanasevo only made beads, mostly of copper. The Okunev, on the
other hand, used tin bronzes. The Okunev were situated in a zone of
rich copper deposits in the Minusinsk Basin.

[1992 by E.N. Chernykh: Ancient metallurgy in the USSR; the early metal
age"; translated by Sarah Wright: Cambridge University Press].

In the Urals the culture being referred to is the Turbino which produces
excellent bronze tools and military weapons. Elsewhere, Alekseev
mentions two cultures in the Caucasus: the Kura-Araxes and the
Trialeti. Arutiunov confirms that both cultures produced bronzes.
Arutiunov has also confirmed that arsenic is present in the Caucasus.

John and Piotr, I hope this in some way helps both of you expand your
tin trade to include the former Soviet Union however I must mention that
this was the most difficult section of the manuscript to record. I
think the information is accurate; its the connections that I'm having
difficulty with.

Gerry
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John,

I've done some checking on early tin trade. It seems that the Cornish
tin deposits were almost unknown (except on a local scale) during the
Bronze Age. Bronze-making in continental Europe was dependent on tin
ores found in Erzgebirge, western Europe and (in small amounts) in
Etruria. Cornish tin was discovered by Phoenicians from Carthage or
Gadir (Gades, Cadiz), who reached the Scillies and Cornwall by an
open-sea route from north-west Spain. That was also the route taken by
Pytheas, who (according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary) sailed from
Gades, past Cape Ortegal, the Loire, NW France and Uxisame (Ushant),
visited the tin mines at Belerium (Land's End) and the tin depot at
Ictis (St. Michael's Mount; there were presumably similar depots in the
Scillies), before circumnavigating Britain.

The land route you describe was established in the 3rd c. BC by the
Massiliots, and became THEIR jealously guarded secret. It was only ca.
95 BC that a Roman administrator (governor?) in Spain, one C. Crassus,
made the tin routes generally known. After the Roman conquest of Britain
the Cornish mines, operated by the natives, continued to produce tin for
Rome until the discovery of superior deposits in Spain.

Piotr

John wrote:

Another "Tin Road" ran from the Scilly Isles to Amorica, south to
Burdigala, up along the Garonne and across to Marsala (Marseilles)
and thence East across the Mediterranean. This was certainly the
route that Pytheas took on his travels. This seems to be the route
taken by Egyptian faience beads from the eastern Mediterranean to the
Salisbury plain and points west and north, during the so
called "Bronze Age".