In our various postings
regarding what is called the European Bronze Age, a number of
conclusions are reached regarding key dates.
2420 BC. Great
Pyramid built and Lake Superior mining of native copper commences and
Bimini, Lewis Isle, Gibraltar great circle route commenced.
Connections from Bimini to Poverty Point in Mississippi, the Olmec
and soon into the Andes through Lake Maracaibo likely established.
Minoan transits of material from Gibraltar to Egypt and also onto
India. This all happened early because of the demand created in
Egypt and thus a global trade system emerged centered on a sea borne
trade empire not too unlike Britain.
1400 BC. Thera
blows and wipes out the Minoan heartland. Successor Mycenaeans
reoccupied the area of damage and dominated the Eastern
Mediterranean. The Mycenaeans were part of the same civilization and
trade continued although seriously weakened. By this time trade
communities have been established globally and are highly
sophisticated and used a common trade language and some form of
writing suitable for trade and emulated often.
1159BC. Hekla
event and tsunami wipes out Atlantic trade bases at Gibraltar and
Bimini. Plausibly Lyonese also subsided at this time and created a
huge wave of escaping sea peoples for whom we now have ample sources
of supply A dark age fell upon the Greeks and others as trade
collapsed and copper stopped moving from Lake Superior. One way or
the other copper became a glut in the market, most likely because of
population losses in northern Europe.
Throughout this 1500
years of development a global skein of trade factories were created
to handle the copper business in particular. Mycenae is a particular
example as is Athens. It is plausible that almost every city on the
Mediterranean littoral was so founded in cooperation with a friendly
tribe. The British did the same as did the Spanish and other
Europeans during the Age of Discovery. Seagoing was not an
indigenous habit anywhere.
My first assumption was
that the collapse of the copper trade was the end of it all in and
around 1159 BC, but that is not realistic at all. The successors of
this trade empire, or at least parts of it continued to operate at
first as the Phoenicians. It continued to operate into Roman times.
Memories were not lost and trade routes remained open but far less
frequented.
0 BC High Roman
times. Major changes now took place. Caesar conquered Gaul. This
included defeating a blue water fleet in the Bay of Biscay. It could
only have existed as part of a long time trading enterprise. The
ships were larger than any that the Mediterranean needed or used and
were higher walled. This also suggests that the Grand Banks fishery
may well have long predated all this since the capability was there
but possibly not the market.
Mauritania was plundered
by the Romans and the king sailed away to the west with the treasury
and never seen again.
All this meant that the
sea based peoples had scant love for the Romans and certainly did not
encourage curiosity regarding were the traders came from. This is
common sense and self preservation which sustained the Phoenicians
for centuries.
However, Rome
internalized communications, making it far less dependent on local
blue water seamanship. Then in the fifth century it all came apart
and the Mediterranean littoral became hostile to traders generally
and remained so through another dark age far worse than the previous
one. It remained hostile for several centuries and any remnant of
the Atlantic trade was suspended and forgotten. Thus all successor
societies founded and bound to these traders were on their own and
evolved away.
1492 AD
The Age of Discovery is fully launched in the public glare and the
former trade empire is relocated but not understood as enough time
had elapsed to absorb minorities into the general populations. Many
obvious anomalies were noted but not understood.
A
loss of cultural focus caused by the loss of the Minoan cities and
the loss of the Atlantic trade cities in combination with the secrecy
maintained by the traders allowed for the full extent of this trade
confederacy to remain hidden and ultimately lost. The printing press
prevented that from happening in Europe after 1492AD.
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