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The Sweet Track (Megalithic)
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Mick Harper
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The whole purpose of Megalithic Empire is to solve the conundrum 'How did the Ancients move goods around on a grand scale, as the evidence shows they did?' Academics don't know and refuse to admit they don't know because of desperate expedients like this

ACADEMIA Letters The Gift Harry Freemantle, The University of Western Australia
The Gift - exemplied in a short book by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss that is the foundation of social theories of reciprocity and gift exchange. Mauss’s original piece was entitled Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques (”An essay on the gift: the form and reason of exchange in archaic societies”) and was originally published in L’Année Sociologique in 1925. A reciprocal gift-giving exercise that builds relationships between groups. There are obligations built into giving and receiving, and of crucial importance, reciprocating...

We call it trade but they can't because trade requires knowing where you are going and how to get back again. Doing it this way it's more... you know... neighbourly. Next summer the AEL is conducting an exercise to simulate getting copper from north Wales to Birmingham in the Bronze Age using this method. Actually several summers.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Some straws in the wind, and a convoluted tale.

A friend mentioned Paul and Rebecca Whitewick. They have an entertaining YouTube channel where they bumble about the countryside in an excited enthusiastic style, looking for disused railway stations and (more to the point) "Roman Roads" that aren't on the map as "Roman Roads".Friend had mentioned them because one of their videos featured roads that head in my direction. This one in fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHIV4q11s6w

The relevant part (for AEL) isn't in the video at all, it's a comment by someone with the tag "@mikesey" .

@mikesey commented thus:
All problems with "Roman Roads" ending up nowhere are solved when you realise that most of them were not Roman, but built probably in the Neolithic period, and excavations have shown road surfacing older than the Roman period. Early Roman engineers found a road system already in place. They merely straightened and metalled them for their Legions to get from A to B quickly. I made a considerable study of this for a degree.


@andrewwhelan7311 replied
"At last, someone who actually acknowledges pre Roman roads. Indigenous roads were ancient before the Romans got here. Good work Mike, but the truth will continue to be airbrushed as the establishment historians will continue to tell us that nothing happened before the Romans got here and civilized us. "


mikesey a.k.a. Mike C.
His bio says "Resident in Glastonbury, the ancient Isle of Avalon, SW England."
Sadly he neglected to say what degree or where, or what excavations. He also has a YT channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHf20DBSKK2wJQSYmHZ2JUQ

But I can't see anything that gives any clue about the alleged degree on Neolithic Roads.
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Mick Harper
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This is indeed good news and shows some of our ideas have percolated as far as Glastonbury if not other more conventional centres of learning. However even the finest road network is completely useless unless road-users can figure out what road they are supposed to be on. That is still the big difference between us and Glastonbury Man.

I will comment on the YouTubes when I have leisure to repent.
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Mick Harper
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A pretty good illustration of the distance between us and them was on show this week on Medium. An old sparring partner had posted this up

Could The Bronze Age Have Collapsed Along This Weak Link? A simple shift in resources Grant Piper
https://grantpiperwriting.medium.com/could-the-bronze-age-have-collapsed-along-this-weak-link-7bce1831d73d

which included an arresting sentence that I picked up on

"These mines required hundreds of miles of travel for the tin to reach smelters"
But how could they without maps, signposts etc? Not forgetting how they got the copper to the same place. Not forgetting the need to get the bronze goods to all the people who wanted to use them. Give us a clue at least, Grant.

Grant was silent on the point but another dude known only by his initials chimed in with this

gdp wrote:
Ancient people tended to travel and sail point-to-point along well-established land or coastal trade-routes. They probably did not think in terms of "maps", but instead in terms of "Itineraries", i.e. ordered lists of caravan-stops or coastal ports-of-call along an established route, plus the number of days it took to travel between them. See e.g.: https://worldhistory.medium.com/how-did-the-romans-map-their-empire-87d3ea7e78d4

I forbore to point out Romans had nothing to do with it but I kept it friendly

Ancient people have got the same problem as everyone else. They might be able to sail across the Med or join a caravan, as you say, but they've got to find exact places to get the copper, to get the tin, to bring them to a foundry, to take the bronze to a craftsman, to get the goods to the people who are going to use them. That's the problem that's always ignored.

Only to walk into a firestorm...
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Mick Harper
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It is important to bear in mind the psychology here. Gdp has not considered the problem before but assumes it has been dealt with ad nauseam by academics, and assumes I'm a bit of a dummy who doesn't know the basics. He has done what everyone does, describes 'routes', forgetting that, say, being in possession of a working knowledge of British motorways would not allow you to make any actual journeys apart from getting to your local market and back. He now describes how people get to markets and back.

Gdp wrote:
The locals know what stuff is in their area, and they bring stuff they find or make to market to trade. Stuff trades well, they bring more of it, because "profit motive". The traveling traders will quickly learn what things trade well at each stop along their route, else they will not be trading for long --- and they also deal in information and gossip, not just goods and material. You can be certain that each trader will be diligently looking for places where elsewhere-scarce goods and resources like tin and copper are relatively abundant, because it's their business to do so.

They find a market at a trade-stop where tin or copper goods or ingots are relatively abundant, they are going to pay attention to that fact, barter for those goods and materials, and they are going to come back on their next trip for more, because "profit motive". The rest is a classic process of market and trade self-organization.

This is a classic method of dealing with a persistent -- because insoluble -- anomaly. Hurl vast chunks of information at everything pertaining to but not dealing with the problem in the hope that nobody will notice the tiny black hole at the centre. We find this constantly with, say, Anglo-Saxon churches. I contended myself with a mild observation

And how do you find these locals of yours?

which really got his goat. He started piling up so much stuff round the black hole even a twat like me would get the message (no need to plough through it, just feel the width)

The. Locals. Come. To. The. Local. Market. With. Stuff. They. Hope. To. Trade. Because. PROFIT. Likewise, The. Traders. Stop. At. Each. Local. Market. Along. Their. Route. Diligently. Looking. For. Valuable. Trade-Items. Because. PROFIT. You sound like you think the locals were all hiding under rocks and had to be hunted down; but nothing could be further from reality.

Go to any town or city in the "Non-industrialized World" or to any town or city being excavated by archeologists, and you will find a marketplace near its center --- because that was half the point of having towns and cities: Having a central location where all the locals can go to to buy and trade stuff. Everything that could be found or produced in the surrounding area in greater abundance than the finder or maker needed for their own near-term use and is worth carrying in to town will be brought to the local market, to be sold or bartered for items that the finder does not have enough of.

The traders and the locals were not idiots. They knew that EVERY town back then had a marketplace, and that the marketplace is where you go to trade stuff. And in seaport towns, the traders didn't even have to look very far for tradegoods or customers, because the docks of every seaport would evolve into a marketplace, since nobody ships stuff long-distance unless it's worth buying or trading for.

The "locals" were not at all hard to find. They came willingly to the same marketplace that the traders went to, with a load of stuff they were hoping to swap. Because that's what EVERYONE did back then, unless they were a subsistence farmer living in the boonies. And tin and copper miners are NOT subsistence farmers --- they are going to have to bring their ore or ingots into town to trade for food and basic necessities, because one cannot live on ore alone
.

But he had given me an opening for exercising the AE technique of "Is it true of you?" ...
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Mick Harper
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You persist in missing the point. Just tell me how you would get to, say, a Cornish tin mine and take tin to, let's say, Birmingham, and then take bronze goods to, let's say, Newcastle and then get home. Right now but without any written aids. You can ask locals anything you like but they haven't got any written aids either.

This is the classic enquiry which normally sends experts into a frenzy of "The Ancients did things we don't do". To give the guy his due, he really went to town on this one, so I'll itemise them: here's Method One

The same way humans have been getting around for Tens of Thousands of Years: By Memorizing the Route. How did people go to places the places you needed to get to before GPS? Did they wander around aimlessly until they stumbled across their destination by accident? No! They memorized a sequence of waypoints, and which turn to take at each waypoint.

I've had a bit of fun with this in RevHist, pointing out you had to memorise the route before doing the journey the first time and having a hard time doing it second time. Gdp had thought of that

And to get to someplace they hadn't been to before, They Asked Someone For Directions, and that person either recited a sequence of waypoints and how to turn at each waypoint, or they told you "I've never been there myself, but go talk to Aelfric --- he knows the route."

Aelfric had done the Cornwall/Birmingham route so often that not only has he memorised it he is prepared to teach you how to memorise it. With only natural features to go on, and there being rather a lot of natural features between Cornwall and Birmingham, the two of you had better settle down for a long session. Method Two is probably better

Or they joined a caravan led by an experienced guide who had memorized the route. There is an entire art and skillset for such mental navigation --- it's called "Wayfinding", it's been practiced by humans for Tens of Thousands of Years, and people still practice it (often without realizing it), even in the age of maps and GPS.

Let's hope there's a caravan setting off from that part of Cornwall fairly soon and let's hope it's going through the West Midlands, and let's hope the experienced caravan guide knows where to drop you off for Birmingham. But you might not need a caravan after all

As for "Written Aids", humans can exhibit prodigious memories for what they find important --- and for most of human history it has been without the crutch of written aids. In most "non-modern" cultures, people routinely remember long poems, and sagas, and genealogies and oral histories going back for generations, and they teach them to their children, who teach the to their children, and so on, and so on.

And in case I was under the misapprehension the Ancients were different from our goodselves

And even in quite recent "modern" times, cabbies were required to and succeeded in memorizing all 25,000-plus streets within a six-mile radius of London center during their 4-year apprenticeship before they could get their "Black Cabbie" license. London cabbies call it "The Knowledge", and they are still required to learn it in order to get a "Black Cab" license https://medium.com/knowledge-stew/possibly-the-most-difficult-test-in-the-world-83dcd12152b8

Anyone heard of this "Knowledge" of his? Sounds Masonic to me. But anyway it's time for Gdp to start wrapping things up

So if someone in ancient times before GPS and maps and writing needed to go Cornwall and Newcastle, they either found someone who could tell them the waypoints and turns which they then memorized, or they joined a caravan led by an experienced guide who knew the way from Cornwall and Newcastle every bit as intimately as you have probably memorized the route you take to your office, or the supermarket, or the local gas-stations.

That's true. I can't remember how I managed early doors so maybe it was passed down to me through family elders or something like that. Gdp makes it clear he's not 'family'

I'm not going to bother responding to this thread further --- you sound like one of those "I can't imagine how I'd do it, so it must have been impossible for the ancients" types.

Damn, I thought I had built my working life arguing the exact opposite. Gdp relents with a helping hand

If you really care, Do Your Own Research. You might be surprised at how much ordinary people are able to learn and memorize "without written aids" if sufficiently motivated. Try starting with "Mnemonic Techniques". And I've already told you about "Wayfinding". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-use-mnemonic-techniques 

I'm afraid I confirmed his worst suspicions.
You wouldn't get five miles.

To which, being as good as his word, Gdp made no reply.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
Anyone heard of this "Knowledge" of his? Sounds Masonic to me. But anyway it's time for Gdp to start wrapping things up

Wiley has, it is the subject of a Jack Rosental comedy drama. It's all about 4 wannabe cabbies who have to learn "the Knowledge", ie they have to contend with learning the 15,842 streets and 468 set routes to drive a cab in central london. The examiner, Mr Burgess, played by Nigel Hawthorne, is outwardly a sadist who enjoys humiliating them for their lack of said "Knowledge." It's sort of a Canterbury Tales set in 1970's London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHPT48ppcAM
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Mick Harper
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I've told the story before but my best mate's father -- a Jew but of the opposite persuasion from Jack Rosenthal -- passed after eighteen months, a record apparently. Luckily he had a long and successful career as a black cabbie (he was a bit swarthy) before Uber made the (average, I'm told) seven years acquiring the Knowledge a wasting asset.

PS Trying to acquire the Knowledge the way Gdp is advocating, as opposed to from an A to Z strapped to the handlebars of your noddy-bike and a clipboard and pen round your neck, is something to wonder at.

PPS I found the film funny but a bit heartbreaking.
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