Ancient Civilization Found - Kyrgyzstan

[Digit]

The big but here Ish is that you, and me, learned about risks and danger, now a days youths and young adults do the daftest things and end up getting hurt or killed
They're like babies, no idea of what may hurt and what may not, half these kids who stab another probably don't intend to kill. They're used to re-running the programme from the start and nobody gets hurt.
It's a mad mad mad world!

[Ishtar]

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20071227/94372640.html

Some artifacts are stunning. A 2,500 year-old ritual bronze cauldron was found on the bottom of the lake. The subtlety of its craftsmanship is amazing. Such excellent quality of joining details together can be presently obtained by metalwork in an inert gas. How did ancient people achieve their high-tech perfection? Also of superb workmanship are bronze mirrors, festive horse harnesses and many other objects. Articles identified as the world's oldest extant coins were also found underwater-gold wire rings used as small change and a large hexahedral goldpiece.

Sorry to get back on topic but did anyone else read this bit and think 'Celt'? I know it's a lot to extropolate from so little, but cauldrons are definitely Celtic cult objects - they are the centre of the Celtic ritual - and I don't know of any culture that had them so centrally, in the same way.

[Ishtar]

It's a mad mad mad world!

I know. You wanna try living in Sevenoaks. It's gone from Blake's archetypal green and pleasant land to Shoot Out Central!

Never mind 'bring me my bow of burning gold'. More like, bring me my Beretta!

[kbs2244]

Well, they did call them Scythian burial mounds.
So we do have Celts in the mountains east of the Caspian.
I don’t know why not.
They and red ocher seem to pop up every where.
The Celt and the Scythian had very similar burial customs.
But I don’t know about any connection with the unique carving done on the “standing stones” of the European Celts and anything in this area.
Four cities. Maybe one for whatever culture the caravan felt comfortable with?
That would bring up the prospect of a local, inter-city trade. Interchanging things the long distance traders who felt comfortable with one culture bringing onto the market things some other long distance culture wanted but didn’t feel comfortable dealing direct for.
Each would have it’s own “comfort zone” of people they dealt with. And those people would deal among themselves.
But then we do have Tartan plaids in the burials in the high China desert don’t we? It would be on the way.
Maybe an early Celt outpost? The base from which some went farther East?

BTW, no real connection to the above, other than mankind’s never to be denied need to do trade with “the people on the other side of the mountain.”
This is a great website!

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2006/11 ... world.html

[john]

Well, they did call them Scythian burial mounds.
So we do have Celts in the mountains east of the Caspian.
I don’t know why not.
They and red ocher seem to pop up every where.
The Celt and the Scythian had very similar burial customs.
But I don’t know about any connection with the unique carving done on the “standing stones” of the European Celts and anything in this area.
Four cities. Maybe one for whatever culture the caravan felt comfortable with?
That would bring up the prospect of a local, inter-city trade. Interchanging things the long distance traders who felt comfortable with one culture bringing onto the market things some other long distance culture wanted but didn’t feel comfortable dealing direct for.
Each would have it’s own “comfort zone” of people they dealt with. And those people would deal among themselves.
But then we do have Tartan plaids in the burials in the high China desert don’t we? It would be on the way.
Maybe an early Celt outpost? The base from which some went farther East?

BTW, no real connection to the above, other than mankind’s never to be denied need to do trade with “the people on the other side of the mountain.”
This is a great website!

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2006/11 ... world.html

kbs2244 -

Cognition, communication, and the ability to travel.

Who is to say that anything - goods or people - HAD to move West to East or East to West, or, similarly, along the North/South axis.

I believe that thinking of that sort is simply cultural imperialism.

There is no reason I can find to dispute the possibility that a vast network of peoples traveled, traded and, yes, lived and communicated freely across the whole of Europe far earlier than we, in our vacuum of selfinflicted cutural hierarchy, are capable of perceiving.

For example, the Tocharians could just as easily be an early Northern people who found China compatible with their needs, then centuries or millenia later moved West along the trade lines. Or pasture lines. Whatever.

My overall point here is that almost anything "scientific" you read imposes both a temporal and cultural tyranny of suppositions, which, when you take out the connective tissue of convenient assumptions, is scientifically - and, by the way, logically - insupportable.

"Das Klub", anyone?


Try this with your five favorite cultural/linguistic/archaeological theses and tell me, honestly, your results.

john

[kbs2244]

I am afraid you are over my head here John.
I don’t get what you are trying to say.

I am a great believer in prehistoric trade. I feel it is one of the most under appreciated areas of study.

My pet method in the Eastern Hemisphere is the reed boat. The Eastern Med, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Sea, all have scattered evidence that no one follows up on.

When they find obsidian from Yosemite in graves in Ohio and Lake Superior copper at Poverty Point in Louisiana it sure points to long distance trade in NA.

I can see the logic in the argument that there wasn't enough copper in the Eastern Hemisphere to make all the bronze used in the Bronze Age. Thus the need for all that Lake Superior copper, that had to go somewhere, coming to the Med. That trade would have lasted untill the discovery of iron working making bronze obsolete.

No, I think people have been going "over the mountian" and "across the water" for a real long time.

[Rokcet Scientist]

And don't forget the heroin, cannabis, tobacco, and cocaïne found in about 1/3rd of ancient Egyptian mummies! Which indicate not just trade, but global, and regular trade!

[john]

And don't forget the heroin, cannabis, tobacco, and cocaïne found in about 1/3rd of ancient Egyptian mummies! Which indicate not just trade, but global, and regular trade!

Rokcet -

I can run with the presence of opiates and hemp. However, both tobacco and coca are from the Americas; their presence in Egyptian mummies would be interesting indeed!

Source research/papers?

john

[Minimalist]

I guess he means this, John.

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf111/sf111p01.htm

[john]

Minimalist -

Hey, hey; didn't know about that one........

So it would be useful to look for a peculiarly Egyptian spp. in the Americas.

To see if trade was outbound, inbound, or both.


john

[kbs2244]

Sadly, “trade” doesn’t have to be two way. Sometimes it is just plain looting.
The Spanish in the Caribbean and SA are a classic example. Those fleets were meant only to bring back gold. On the way out, all they carried were paving stones.
I don’t know of any evidence of Egyptians in Central or South America. There is scattered evidence along the southern coast of North America, and then up the Mississippi, Arkansas, and Ohio Rivers. But that is not coca country.
Given their interest in geography ( the Mississippi delta is at the same latitude as the Nile) and interest in big rivers, North America makes sense.
Maybe there was a third party for the coca trade? Or maybe the Spanish destroyed the evidence as “pagan?”
I don’t know what they would have had to “trade” other than technical expertise. The Western Hemisphere had pretty much everything it needed.
Maybe grain? Is there any evidence of the sudden appearance of wheat, barly, etc in the Americas?

[Minimalist]

The Egyptians were never known as great sailors, though.

That doesn't mean that it didn't happen, another group could have done the importing and transhipped to Egypt, but the whole idea of this "study" seems a bit shaky. Why haven't others even tried to confirm the results?

[Beagle]

I guess he means this, John.

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf111/sf111p01.htm

I sure wish that Discovery channel would show "Curse of the Cocaine Mummies" again.

[kbs2244]

Egyptian sailing interest seems to have changed with the Pharaoh of the day.
Herodotus credits Necos with sponsoring the first around Africa trip. (Admittedly with Phoenician sailors.) This would have been around 650 BC I believe.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/anc-nafrica.html

If Necos was the first to do this is open to some debate. Careful readers of the Old Testament will tell you the Solomon was the money man behind the same 3 year trips made by the sailors of the Tyre king Hiram. (1Kings 9:26-28 and 2 Chronicles 9:21) Eziongeber is on the Red Sea. Note the cargo they brought back. This would be about 1000 BC.

It seems to have been a common trip. Jehoshaphat partnered with Ahaziah a few years latter for the same reason. 2 Chronicles 20:36 says they made the ships at Eziongeber to go to Tarshish. If Tarshish is Spain and Eziongeber is on the Red Sea, it seems clockwise around Africa is the way to go. About 900-930 BC.

Even with Phoenicians as the sailing experts, I would expect some Egyptian priests, astronomers, scribes, etc along to record the ride. If they were willing to go around Africa on a 3 year trip, a few weeks to get to the Americas doesn’t seem all that unbelievable.

[Minimalist]

The "trading networks" are one of the major anachronisms which archaeology has detected in the OT story. Basically, the evidence shows that Jerusalem only became part of the trading network under the Assyrians, after 722 BC.

The assertion of 7th century trade in the 9th and 10th centuries is one of the red herrings about the story that triggered the revision of "history."