Shekel found in MA coast mud

[kbs2244]

Ah, indeed!
How did it get there?
It is not the kind of thing a fisherman would carry around.

http://www.salemnews.com/local/x1247802 ... -the-shore

Manchester is on the Atlantic coast, NE of Boston.
It doesn’t have a river like Boston, but it does have a nice little bay that is a protection from the open ocean.

This address is pretty ritzy.
High bay front bluffs.

With current water levels they anchor in deep water or build docks.
With water levels of 2000 years ago they may have been able to beach at the base of the cliffs.

[Minimalist]

The home was built in 1890 and its first owners owned the Waltham Watch Co., which may have had a connection to coin collecting, she said.

Occam's Razor strikes!

[uniface]

If so, it strikes you.

There have been too many similar coin finds on record. This is not an isolated case.

[Minimalist]

Must be one of them-thar "miracles" huh?

[Rokcet Scientist]

Yeah, too much room for fumbling here.

While we're on the subject of miracles: have you seen the stats for miracles in Lourdes over the past century, with over 1.5 million pilgrims a year appealing to Mary, Mother of God* for a cure of their ailments? They're appalling! The odds of a miracle happening to you in your backyard are twice as good! In Lourdes the sick contaminate the water that the healthy ingest too. It's a perfect germ farm...

*An all too familiar roman catholic flouting of their own second, third, and fourth commandments. As they do all the others of course, only not as ostentatiously.

[kbs2244]

I don’t know about the coin collector idea.

This was found in the shore line mud.
That is not a very common place for a collector to take a coin.

[E.P. Grondine]

Perhaps it is time for some serious metal detecting, both on shore and off shore.

PS - sorry to be away - I have a new pamphlet, a "Guide to Serpent Mound" which I did with Fletcher Wilson, one of Ohio's leading naked eye astronomers, and we have a boatload of work to do now with other members of our team on another project.

[Cognito]

This is my all-time favorite dumbass remark from the article:

Brewer-Siljeholm noted the harbor is very close to where the coin was found and thought that the Phoenicians may have came here to trade with the Vikings. "The Phoenicians were great sailors," she said.

[Rokcet Scientist]

, yeah!

"The Phoenicians were great sailors,"

Maybe the Vikings were too, and met the Levantines halfway...

I don’t know about the coin collector idea.

This was found in the shore line mud.
That is not a very common place for a collector to take a coin.

Anything could have made it get there of course. Like a coin collector. Or an ice cream vendor who lost what he had inherited from an uncle who recently died. And, and, and.
But you've got to admit that it also at least seems to tie the Levant of 2KYA to North America, doesn't it?
Looong before the Irish monks, the Vikings, or Columbus...

And since nobody's come up with a plausible, better, alternative I'll go with the evidence and basic reasoning until proven otherwise.
If the NA Indians had been seafarers they could have gone and gotten it too, of course. But I've never heard of seafaring – a.k.a. 'pelagic' – NA indians.

[Digit]

One question I would ask is why would a Shekel be carried to the New World 2000 yrs ago?
Was the owner heading for Walmart? Surely the most precious trade material at that time would have been Iron, not Silver?

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

One question I would ask is why would a Shekel be carried to the New World 2000 yrs ago?
Was the owner heading for Walmart? Surely the most precious trade material at that time would have been Iron, not Silver?

No, the most precious trade material at that time, pound for pound, would have been, as today, drugs.

[Digit]

Other direction RS.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Other direction RS.

OK, then put it this way: what did the NA indians have that the Levantines would have wanted? Afaik they didn't have gold, silver or drugs for trade. And if the NA indians did have something Levantines of the day would have wanted, then what would NA indians have done with silver shekels?

[Digit]

I think you've missed my point.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I think you've missed my point.

Your point, as I interpret it, was: why would Phoenicians have gone to MA? What would they have been trading? The indians didn't have gold, silver, or drugs to trade, while the Phoenicians, it looks like, had only silver shekels. Useless and worthless to the indians.
So it looks like the Levantines, IF they went to MA, must have done so for another reason than trade. Maybe the reason was, as so often, simple exploration. Maybe they were looking for the (in)famous north-west passage and only landed in MA to replenish supplies and potable water on their way north. So maybe MA was just one waypoint of many in their journey.