
Tin Found in Israel from 3k Years Ago Comes from Cornwall - danans
https://www.archaeology-world.com/scientists-find-that-tin-found-in-israel-from-3000-years-ago-comes-from-cornwall/
======
avip
Weird article. It reads as-if it's a new discovery, yet the "tin comes from
England" meme appears in 2K yo maps
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides)).

In the "Haifa marine Museum" you've never heard of, there are tin pieces found
in Phoenician ships, that's ~3K yo and IIRC the sign even says the Tin is from
today's England.

[edit: of course this piece could be referencing new confirmation or new
methodology - we'll never know, as there are no references to anything of
substance. The research is from [https://www.researchgate.net/project/Bronze-
Age-tin-Tin-isot...](https://www.researchgate.net/project/Bronze-Age-tin-Tin-
isotopes-and-the-sources-of-Bronze-Age-tin-in-the-old-World-ERC-project)]

~~~
ncmncm
People have always suspected Bronze-age tin might have come from England, but
most historians never took it seriously because it implied a lot more long-
distance commerce than they believed was possible then.

Charred cloves from the Moluccas (south of the Philippines) were recently
found in in a jar in burnt-out remains of a 4000-year-old middle-class kitchen
in Syria.

~~~
everdrive
>Charred cloves from the Moluccas (south of the Philippines) were recently
found in in a jar in burnt-out remains of a 4000-year-old middle-class kitchen
in Syria.

This sounds amazing -- do you have a source for this?

~~~
n4r9
According to Wikipedia this is a misidentification (i.e. not actually a
clove), based on the following sources:

[http://theconversation.com/worlds-oldest-clove-heres-what-
ou...](http://theconversation.com/worlds-oldest-clove-heres-what-our-find-in-
sri-lanka-says-about-the-early-spice-trade-109686)

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/004382400409934](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/004382400409934)

------
netcan
It'll be interesting to find what follows.

3k ybp is a relatively unique timestamp for tin. This is during or shortly
after the bronze age collapse, where many mediterranean civilisations (greece,
egypt, assyria, hatti..) receded, and bronze (inc tin) trade receded with
them. Bronze presumably became scarce, and ironworking developed as the
eventual alternative.

The centuries of the last bronze dark age is the mythical period of iron age
cultures (eg the hero achilles, king david, Rome's founders Romulus &
Remus)...

In any case, it was a period of change... changing politics politics,
migrations, trade patterns & metallurgy/metal-trade.

Does anyone know if these are new methods for identifying origin? Should we
expect more artefacts? If so, we might find be able to identify all sorts of
new trade patterns, and see if they relate to political/population
chronologies... mythical characters may find themselves in a slightly more
historical context.

~~~
chrisco255
Climate change, too. The Minoan Warm Period ended around this time, and temps
would not return to their optimum until the Roman Warm Period almost 1000
years later. Had to have an effect on agriculture and trade.

~~~
netcan
There's evidence for climate changes, earthquakes, revolutions, invasions,
war, economic crisis, political crisis, ethnogenesis (both historiographical
like accounts of sea peoples & mythical like exodus)... all seemingly
substantial and concurrent.

..that's kinda why it's such an interesting and mysterious period. There's
tons of room for theories on causes, effects and incidentals.

~~~
pfdietz
I've wondered if there could have been origin and spread of new plant
pathogens.

------
DrScientist
Rather bizarre the article implies direct ships from Cornwall to the middle
east.

Surely much more likely a trading network, where things change hands multiple
times before reaching destination, probably with key trading hubs.

In fact the tin was found off the coast - just as likely to have been on route
to somewhere else.

~~~
wtracz
There has always been speculation that there was a Phoenician connection to
Cornwall, but not a lot of archeological evidence.

This stemmed from things like Cornish place names having an unusual number of
z's (a Phoenician letter) in them, and other similarities.

~~~
gbear605
I don’t want to discredit this, since I don’t know your source, but
linguistically that seems quite unlikely for a consonant introduced three
thousand years ago to have influence on the modern Cornish place names. Three
thousand years ago, the Celtic languages hadn’t even split from proto-Celtic,
so any influence on Cornish should have also had influenced on the rest of the
Celtic languages. In addition, the sound /z/ is a very common one across
languages (so it does indicated Phoenician influence), and they didn’t have a
script then to write the place names (so the orthographic letter z doesn’t
mean anything).

~~~
mprev
I’m not an expert so forgive what might be a naive question.

Even if the languages had not split, could there still not be regionalised
influences on place names?

~~~
gbear605
That’s true, but the long time change leaves it quite unlikely that the names
would leave enough of a remnant of a particular sounds that you could point to
a Phoenician influence.

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Schattenbaer
Those interested in (one of) the methods used to determine the origin of
archeological finds might find Neutron Activation Analysis
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation_analysis))
interesting.

Basically, fire neutrons into your item, and then look at how it [edit:
radioactively] decays to determine the constituent chemical elements.

My one beer-brewing book mentioned that they can trace some pot sherds to a
specific region of a specific river using this method. Very cool.

~~~
werds
unrelated, but what beer-brewing book includes this sort of information?

~~~
Schattenbaer
I can't remember exactly as I haven't made beer in years and sold all my books
and equipment - but - I _think_ it was _Uncorking the Past_ by Patrick
Mcgovern.

It could also have been John Palmer's _How to Brew_ too - I remember the
author goes into super interesting detail about metallurgy and similar topics.

------
hootbootscoot
Bronze-age collapse, the Sea Peoples
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples)
and Phoenician trade routes...

Trade is a given. Celtic (mode) jewelry found in near-eastern sites, riverine
trade routes littered with evidence from around 5-6k BCE indicating vast
ancient world trade networks.

While first discovered writing on clay tablets in Mesopotamia are first
SURVIVING samples of writing, this doesn't preclude cellulose-based writing
media (paper) that simply rotted. Harrappan and early Sumerian trade has been
also archeologically demonstrated, as well as Harrappan and <name of Anatolian
city complexes recently found I forget...> trade routes, based upon found
artifacts likely origins.

~~~
hootbootscoot
Humans have likely been trading, boating, and migrating since we stood upright
on some African savannah so many hundreds of thousands of years ago.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Boating probably came a little later than that.

------
1wd
From a 2016 talk: "Possible some came from Cornwall though I rather doubt they
went up there more than once in a blue moon. There are some tin mines in
southern Turkey but not enough. The vast majority came from Afghanistan.
Specifically the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-
ysocX4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-
ysocX4&feature=youtu.be&t=1039)

~~~
chrisco255
Is it unfeasible that the tin was traded from ancient Britain to ancient
France to Ancient Greece to ancient Israel in sort of a chain rather than
ships transporting them directly to Israel?

~~~
leoc
I'm not an expert, but I think it's a given that high-value durable goods like
this could change hands many times. For example, probably no-one travelled all
the way with the Indian metal objects which have been found in Britain:
[https://www.caitlingreen.org/2014/12/indian-silver-coins-
in-...](https://www.caitlingreen.org/2014/12/indian-silver-coins-in-viking-
age.html) .

------
brian-armstrong
You hear people today saying we live in a "global economy." It seems like that
statement might be true of people hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

~~~
mhh__
True but what magnitude?

On the one hand, I'm always surprised by (say) how many thousands of gallons
of beer could be produced by a victorian brewery but equally, we make a hell
of a lot more now.

~~~
Retric
A large chunk of that is simply differences in population sizes. The current
US population is likely larger than the global population in 1,000 CE.
Further, children used to make up a larger chunk of the population
exaggerating the differences.

So, it was often possible to scale up production even more, but there where
not enough customers to justify it.

~~~
rmah
The vast majority of limited trade during pre-industrial times is due to the
inefficiency of (i.e. cost) of long range transportation. A single modern
cargo ship can carry more cargo in a single voyage than an entire years worth
of the entire medieval world's cargo fleets. And at a price that is few orders
of magnitude cheaper (per ton).

Not that it mattered since production of everything was, by today's standards,
a few orders of magnitude less efficient. It's often difficult to fully grasp
how inefficient and slow everything was in pre-industrial times until you dig
into the details.

------
supernova87a
Amazing to imagine how back then, there must've been brokers or imperial court
wizards / Game of Thrones style, who were the few that knew about such places
where magical materials would come from and only have the smallest inkling of
what those properties meant. And those materials would travel thousands of
miles secreted in pouches to find their way to someone worthy of the rarity.

And today, you can buy any of those things for a few $ off the internet and
have it delivered to you.

------
arethuza
This reminds me of:

 _" And did those feet in ancient time. Walk upon Englands mountains green"_

Referring to the myth/legend that Jesus visited England with Joseph of
Arimathea:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35304508](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35304508)

------
hprotagonist
The salt mines in Hallstatt germany date back to about that period too, and
have longer trade route reach than was previously believed as well.

We’ve been pretty good at selling stuff for a while, I suspect.

~~~
Turing_Machine
> We’ve been pretty good at selling stuff for a while, I suspect.

Indeed. There were similar trade routes in North America, likely using the
Mississippi River for transportation.

Ocean shells in the Midwest. Object made from Michigan copper all over the
continent. Likewise tools made from obsidian from the west.

Our ancestors were collectively as smart and motivated as we are.

~~~
hprotagonist
I've come to think of this as "the ancient world bucket brigade".

------
tssva
During the run of the British archeology TV show "Time Team" they examined a
couple of sites in Cornwall associated with tin. In each episode they discuss
the far reaching international trade for tin from Cornwall during the bronze
age including as far as to locations in Africa, so while adding to
archaeological knowledge this find doesn't seem to be breaking new ground.

~~~
rmah
The new ground is that the tin is dated from apx 1000 BCE rather than 2000 BCE
to 1500 BCE when the trade from the now british isles to the near east
cultures was well established. These trade routes were thought to be disrupted
during the bronze age collapse which, IIRC, started around 1500 BCE.

~~~
ocschwar
We don't know exactly why the Bronze Age collapse happened, but it's likely
that copper was what was disrupted, because copper smelting results in
deforestation.So a perfectly functioning and open tin trading route meeting a
society that can't find copper any more would explain this find.

~~~
jaratec
Copper was readily availble in cyprus. So, no, that's not what happened.

~~~
ocschwar
Copper was available so long as firewood was available. Copper ore without
firewood is of no use.

------
INTPenis
This is so interesting because one of my favorite books is Island in the Sea
of Time by S. M. Stirling.

It's an alternative history sci-fi book where the author proposes that greeks
are sending envoys to britain in 1250bc for trade.

To be precise, Iberian greek colonies are sending these envoys but they speak
a common language being ancient greek.

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Gravityloss
If you visit the Heraklion archeological museum on Crete, they have an
astonishingly good timeline of the development of the Minoans (how they are
called nowadays). Starting from stone age, and how they entered the bronze
age. They were very established by 1700 BC. They were selling olive oil and
pottery (at least) and importing tin and copper far and wide. You can see the
bronze saws that were used to build ships and create a naval power and ability
to trade.

I can also recommend visiting Knossos and hiring a local guide. It is not
crowded and not too hot off season.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxhide_ingot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxhide_ingot)

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1wd
The research paper:
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0218326)

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vfclists
How about the bronzes of Sanxingdui?

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edsonmedina
"according to the Daily Mail".

The tabloid.

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acvny
We got it all wrong. People migrated from the North Pole towards Africa not
the other wy around.

