Yet another discovery dying a slow death

[Sam Salmon]

(As I write that I am remembering that London was a tin exporting town.)

London? Weren't the tin mines in Cornwall?

I've wondered how the Phoenicians learned that tin was available there.

Yes Tin must have been traded out of Cornwall for a long time before the Phoenicians for word of it to spread south.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Tin must have been traded out of Cornwall for a long time before the Phoenicians for word of it to spread south.

I don't agree, Sam: all it took was one observant entrepreneur. Actual trade could be set up within a few years. Afaik there's no telling how long before the trade with the Phoenicians the Cornish Celts were mining, let alone exporting tin. Or even IF they did at all!

[kbs2244]

Good point on Cornwall.
I am not all that sharp on Brit mapping.
I guess it wouldn't matter where the port was though.
You would have gotten a trading mentality going anywhere along the coast.

Good question on the Phoenicians.
Legend has it they sure wanted to keep their source secret.
Wasn't some captain supposed to have run his ship onto the Bay of Biscay beach when he realized he was being followed?

I suppose tin is a useful enough metal by itself.
But its value really went up when they learned to mix it with copper.

Maybe some early, off and on, trader realized what his beer mug was made of on one of his trips?

[jw1815]

Wasn't some captain supposed to have run his ship onto the Bay of Biscay beach when he realized he was being followed?

Haven't heard about that, but I did read something about tin ingots being found in the mouth of the Erme River, near Plymouth (England, not MA).

Carthaginians - a Phoenician colony - were accomplished sailors. If the Cornwall miners exported tin across the Channel to the Gauls, and the Carthaginians traded with southern Gauls across the Mediterranean, I guess they could have found out where the tin came from for Gaulic bronze items.

RE: British geography. Not so good at it myself, but Cornwall is in the southwest. London's in the southeast.

[Rokcet Scientist]

If the Cornwall miners exported tin across the Channel to the Gauls, and the Carthaginians traded with southern Gauls across the Mediterranean, I guess they could have found out where the tin came from for Gaulic bronze items

Bronze wasn't invented by the Gauls. Or by the English Celts. According to Wikipedia:

Origins

The place and time of the invention of bronze are controversial. It is possible that bronzing was invented independently in the Maykop culture in the North Caucasus as far back as the mid 4th millennium BCE, which would make them the makers of the oldest known bronze; but others date the same Maykop artifacts to the mid 3rd millennium BCE. However, the Maykop culture only had arsenic bronze, which is a naturally occurring alloy. Tin bronze, which developed later, requires more sophisticated production techniques; tin has to be mined (mainly as the tin ore cassiterite) and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make the bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of heavy metal usage.

So the Phoenicians/Carthaginians probably acquired the technology from the east, and found out that one of the ingredients, tin, could be gotten from Cornwall/the Scilly isles. And they put two and two together and started a trade.

[jw1815]

Bronze wasn't invented by the Gauls. Or by the English Celts.

I didn’t say that it was, RS. I wasn’t referring to the invention of bronze, or to Celts, but to the trade in bronze and tin that developed once the Bronze Age had reached Europe.

Extensive trading spread bronze into various parts of Europe. One dispersion route was via the Danube into central Europe, then to the north in the Baltic Sea region, prompting various central and northern European societies to assimilate it into their own cultures, manufacture it themselves, and trade finished bronze products and the metals used in making it. One northern European group, called the Bell Beaker culture by archaeologists, carried the technology with them when they migrated across the North Sea to Britain, where they found rich sources of tin. Tin was then exported back to the mainland, on the Atlantic coast regions of Gaul and Iberia. From there, trade in bronze and tin extended inland and southward to the Mediterranean coasts of Gaul and Iberia, across the Sea from Carthage. I was speculating on whether the Phoenicians/Carthaginians learned about Britain as a source of tin through a northern voyage of their own in the Atlantic, or through their trade relations with people around the Mediterranean. I suggested the Mediterranean coast of Gaul, but, now think that the Tartessos on the southern Atlantic coast of Iberia would have been more likely, if Phoenicians learned about Cornish tin mines through their Mediterranean trade.

Whichever was the case, Phoenicians/Carthaginians maintained a monopoly on the tin trade from Britain once they did become aware of those mines.

And yes, of course the Phoenicians had bronze in their eastern homeland before the establishment of their colony at Carthage.

[Minimalist]

Probably more than anyone wants to know about Ancient Egyptian mining of both copper and tin...


http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/Timna.html

[Rokcet Scientist]

One northern European group, called the Bell Beaker culture by archaeologists

Indeed: I've got Bell Beaker Culture burial mounds not 200 meters from my house.

carried the technology with them when they migrated across the North Sea to Britain, where they found rich sources of tin. Tin was then exported back to the mainland, on the Atlantic coast regions of Gaul and Iberia. From there, trade in bronze and tin extended inland and southward to the Mediterranean coasts of Gaul and Iberia, across the Sea from Carthage. I was speculating on whether the Phoenicians/Carthaginians learned about Britain as a source of tin through a northern voyage of their own in the Atlantic, or through their trade relations with people around the Mediterranean. I suggested the Mediterranean coast of Gaul, but, now think that the Tartessos on the southern Atlantic coast of Iberia would have been more likely, if Phoenicians learned about Cornish tin mines through their Mediterranean trade.

Whichever was the case, Phoenicians/Carthaginians maintained a monopoly on the tin trade from Britain once they did become aware of those mines.

And yes, of course the Phoenicians had bronze in their eastern homeland before the establishment of their colony at Carthage.

One needs to keep in mind, though, that Carthage was 'only' founded in 814 BC, while Cadiz was founded 300 years earlier: in 1104 BC. It was not a Carthaginian/Phoenician port/settlement then. Carthage only got control of Cadiz around 500 BC, around which time nearby Tartessos disappeared completely, and mysteriously, from the face of the earth