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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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NAILED IT!!!
The key: celle=celtic (Hold your disbelieving horses, I'm using the Glasgow pronuciation)
OK life starts with a bunch of rock-salt workers in Austria, Czecko, Saxony, around there.
Now salt is valuable but bulky so only economic to trade by water. But this area has a number of rivers--Elbe, Oder, Danube going to interesting places. So they go to all these places stretching from Northern Anatolia to the West of Ireland, leaving (or trading) their defining artifacts (what archaeologists call the La Tene or Celtic culture).
This has nothing to do with language since the Saxons, like all traders, speak whatever it takes to trade. However, their chief base (at the mouth of the Elbe) is where they either speak (or invent) Anglo-Saxon. [Elbe=elbow=angle}
Now who else exists in this neck of the woods (to mix metaphors)? Why, the Goths and the Vikings. The Goths control the entrance into the Baltic (which is non-saline) and the Vikings the Skaggerak (remember, Norway doesn't have any saline beaches even).
What have Anglo-Saxon, Gothic and Old Norse got in common? They are all examples of early written "languages" that are not spoken by anyone presently. i.e. they are the northern equivalent of Greek, Latin and Punic, trading patois, simplified versions of German (Gothic=don't know) and Danish vernacular languages.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Ah-hah!
And THE classic Celtic artefact - the Gundestrup Cauldron - was found in Denmark.
Whataya gonna do now, take a letter to The Times?
Now for John Grigsby to work out the connection between "Celts", the preservative properties of salt and the preservative properties of peat bogs.
Old Norse not a natural language? What about Icelandic -- or does Icelandic differ from Old Norse by being the actual vernacular?
Celle = cell = underground room, as in a mine?
And leafing through a few books I didn't really know I had, what do I find?
i) A ready acceptance of (continental) Celts as Germans.
ii) Blah, blah...Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the development of international
trading ports such as Ipswich and Hamwic (Southampton)... blah, blah. Those salt-wiches again.
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AJMorton
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| DPCrisp wrote: | | we went without it (salt) for n-million years |
How d'ye know?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Excuse I, Tessie, but this is for you to answer not Dan. He is merely saying that we only have evidence of a salt trade for the last few thousand years. Before that we presumably did what most animals did and relied on it being in our diet. Unless you wanna explore the question of salt-licks and geophagy.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Humans were saltless before this time. Must argue with that.
I had to ask how he knew we went without salt for n-million years (something which is impossible by the way). |
Dan very seldom says things which are impossible. His meaning is perfectly plain -- that humans never ate what we call salt. That is the whitish granular stuff. No doubt he is aware that the human body, like all animal bodies, requires what chemists call 'salts'.
But since we're on the subject of long, long ago, don't forget that human beings being aquatic apes evolved in the sea and that their chief problem was getting rid of salt. Animals sweat to lose heat but we sweat to lose salt. I expect..
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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I shouldn't have said "how d'ye know?".
Instead I should have wrote "No, that's impossible. The human body needs salt to live...". |
Both cases spoken as though "scientific theories [are] inviolable laws".
| I leaped upon it as if he were an Ortho (old habit). |
You leapt upon it as if you were an Ortho! This begs for a whole afternoon's lecture on A-E, A.J., but let's let this suffice: the 'it' we went without, in the context of a discussion of the salt trade that included "we can skip the discussion of biological factors", is salt as a commodity, a food additive and so on.
Give us 20 press-ups and we'll say no more about it.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| DPCrisp wrote: | | the 'it' we went without, in the context of a discussion of the salt trade that included "we can skip the discussion of biological factors", is salt as a commodity, a food additive and so on. |
This statement violates the most fundamental of AE principles: What is is what was.
In the absence of evidence, you are not permitted to assume a change of state. Continuity of the evidenced period into the unevidenced period is the presumed default position -- even (and especially) backward in time.
Therefore, unless there is evidence (which means you must build a case) that the salt trade began at some point, or was absent at an earlier point, you must assume there was always a salt trade, even in periods where there is no evidence for it.
Where there is no evidence of change, we assume stasis.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is quite correct and, in my opinion, puts the salt trade back into great, great antiquity beyond stuff like hand axes. However, part of this argument is about the time before trade is feasible, when human beings are more animal in nature and animals don't trade (do they?... I can't think of an example beyond the mere ant/aphid level ...quite an interesting proposition though). The point being that human beings can exist without salt (in the commodity sense).
Except....is this true? If we were aquatic apes, maybe our systems can't exist without physical salt (ie taking it as a supplement over and above what is in our ordinary diet) once we hoisted ourselves onto land. After all the only place where physical salt is available in widespread and obvious quantities is on the sea-shore where it exists in its evaporative state at various levels of the tide. So it's worthwhile connecting the salt-trade (whatever that means in this context) with our very earliest origins as a terrestrial mammal.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I need to know whether there is any population on earth that lives without salt ie on just the salt that is present in their natural diet. But I also need to know whether a population that lived more or less solely on grains and pulses ie without meat on a regular basis would be able to survive without salt ie whether grains and pulses contain enough salt to keep the human body going.
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As this is my first post I trust that I have the style correct.
Working at the Durrington walls excavations on Living History displays for the c2400 BC period we were involved with discussions with the archaeologists.
It is now relatively common knowledge that the pigs slaughtered by bow and arrow were fed a great deal of honey, from their rotten teeth. Apart from the feast days the area is likely have had many pigs available at other times.
Where you have pigs you need salt if the product of a non-feasting slaughter isn't to largely go to waste. Adjoining Durrington walls and Stonehenge is the course of the River Avon which was and is navigable ( modern fisheries interests permitting).
At the seaward end of the river on nearby coastal areas there is evidence of salt production by evaporation.
Honey and salt, you have two almost perfect trading commodities. Both of high value and in an unsophisticated palate area, highly addictive and non-perishable with reasonable care.
I have no evidence for the required linkage necessary to prove that the trade existed in that crossover point between Neolithic and bronze Age but the entrepreneurs of the time would have to be even stupider than we are not to have seized to opportunity.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Hi-ho, Eddo!
| Where you have pigs you need salt if the product of a non-feasting slaughter isn't to largely go to waste. |
Drying in the wind works too, does it not? It always strikes me that salt is quite expensive -- wherever you are -- and should not therefore be assumed to be routine for preservation. Prodigious quantities are needed if modern slather-it-all-over techniques were used in yesteryear.
| Honey and salt, you have two almost perfect trading commodities. |
Is not honey itself a preservative? It is after all used as a bactericide in wound management. To be produced in trading quantities, domestication of the honey-bee is required. What is the evidence for this in the time of Durrington?
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Mmmmm! Honey roast ham.
Yes, honey is a preservative and an antiseptic, as is salt. I agree that the excess we use in salting stuff would be a luxury back then but a brine steep would not use so much and it improves the smoking and eventual preservation outcomes.
Of course, it is suggested that the indigenous development of the "Neolithic Revolution" in Britain came from the Mesolithic way of life with some input of ideas and species from abroad.
If this is so then maybe one's larder was kept stocked mostly by animals on the hoof. Far easier to move around and constantly fresh.
Given this then salt is there for savour and immediate preservation of individual animals not batches of them. Lower key trade but the potential for elite control of such a desirable item is enhanced.
Incidentally Pygmies in the Congo were wooed by missionaries with gifts of sweets and salt. Also cigarettes but no fag ends found at Durrington or Stonehenge.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Large parts of the forthcoming epic The Megalithic Empire is based on the proposition that animals on the hoof are a cheap'n'easy means of shifting stuff (including the meat!). Many coastal 'hillforts' are in fact abattoirs for the processing of meat exports. As is the Megalithic port of Ramsgate next to Mar (=sea)gate at the end of the Pilgrims' Way. Yes, sheep are True Believers too!
Interestingly in very modern times (like the last thirty years) animals on the hoof were exported solely so that French butchers could claim they were selling French meat. It was actually cheaper to kill here and export in refrigerated lorries. The animal-lovers put an end to the cruel practice of 'droving' live animals. I am assuming this is in fact still true but one doesn't trust the French in these matters.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| But since we're on the subject of long, long ago, don't forget that human beings being aquatic apes evolved in the sea and that their chief problem was getting rid of salt. Animals sweat to lose heat but we sweat to lose salt. I expect.. |
That doesn't quite add up we need sodium for muscle function and hydration, without it we'd die according to biologists, and we don't seem to have evolved to cope with loss of salt (sweat and urine).
There might be a connection with salt as a natural antifreeze and fish in Arctic and Antarctic waters. Perhaps aquatic man who'd have been constantly taking in salt molecules had a similar antifreeze?
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