Asterix and Obelisk ping!
Posted on 05/11/2007 4:02:01 PM PDT by blam
Spaniards search for legendary Tartessos in a marsh
By Sinikka Tarvainen May 11, 2007, 11:28 GMT
Madrid - Where was the capital of Tartessos, the legendary pre-Roman civilization which once existed on the Iberian Peninsula?
The culture which flourished from around 800 to 500 BC is believed to have been located mainly around the present-day cities of Cadiz, Seville and Huelva in southern Spain, but no traces of a major urban settlement have been found.
Now, however, scientists have discovered surprising clues to where a major Tartessian city may have been, the daily El Pais reported.
Its ruins could lie in the subsoil of a marsh area known as the Marisma de Hinojos in the Donana National Park near Seville, according to the daily.
Chief researcher Sebastian Celestino declined to comment on the report. His team will give details once the investigation is finished, a representative of the Superior Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC) told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
For years, satellite and aerial images of the Marisma de Hinojos have revealed strange circular structures of different sizes - up to 200 metres in diameter - and rectangular forms.
The area is under water in wintertime, and until now, scientists had thought it had always been inundated.
That had made most of them skeptical of the possibility that the forms visible from the air could be remains of a human settlement buried in the subsoil.
Yet new evidence has now emerged, with electro-magnetic tests indicating that the area may have experienced long dry periods, according to El Pais.
In the bottom of the marsh, there are layers that appear to contain concentrated sand, the daily quoted researcher Antonio Rodriguez as saying.
If the area had always been submerged, the subsoil would only contain mud instead of sand.
Scientists think they stand a fair chance of finding archaeological remains in the marsh, though the link with Tartessos remains a mere hypothesis for the time being.
Knowledge about Tartessos had so far been based mainly on Greek and Latin literary sources, which described it as a civilization on the edge of the known world.
Often identified with Tarshish mentioned in the Bible, the kingdom traded profitably with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and may even have discovered a route to Britain.
Some researchers equate Tartessos with Atlantis, the utopia described by the Greek philosopher Plato, which is said to have sunk into the sea.
Tartessos disappeared mysteriously around 500 BC. Some believe it was destroyed by the Carthaginians, but the new geological evidence from the Marisma de Hinojos makes it look possible that two tsunamis wiped out the settlement located there, according to El Pais.
Some remains identified with Tartessos have been found, including a palace-sanctuary near Badajoz and a necropolis in Huelva, but no major urban settlement.
As the next step, scientists intend to make a hole 7 metres deep into the marshland to see what - if anything - lies underneath.
If the remains of a Tartessian city were found, that might bring invaluable information to historians divided over whether Tartessos had an identity of its own, or whether it was just an extension of the Phoenician civilization.
GGG Ping.
“Yet new evidence has now emerged, with electro-magnetic tests indicating that the area may have experienced long dry periods, according to El Pais.”
I wonder if they will claim this was due to Global Cooling or Global Warming!
Cooling is associated with dry and warming with wet.
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Sacred Precincts: A Tartessian Sanctuary in Ancient Spain
Archaeology Odyssey (via Web Archive) | December 2003 | by Sebasti·n Celestino and Carolina L?-Ruiz
Posted on 12/12/2004 12:20:39 AM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1299589/posts
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tartessos.html
The Myth Of Tartessos.
The Greeks were fascinated by the notion of a mythical and fabulously wealthy kingdom in the far west beyond the Pillars of Hercules. It was a rich emporium of valuable and precious metals and the luxurious lives led by its inhabitants linked it in their minds to the legends of Atlantis and Hesperides, the Isles of the Blessed, which were located in the same direction and were maybe even in the same place. They called it Tartessos...
Atlantis?
The HistoriesNow the Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks who performed long voyages, and it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with the Adriatic and with Tyrrhenia, with Iberia, and the city of Tartessus. The vessel which they used in their voyages was not the round-built merchant-ship, but the long penteconter. On their arrival at Tartessus, the king of the country, whose name was Arganthonius, took a liking to them. This monarch reigned over the Tartessians for eighty years, and lived to be a hundred and twenty years old. He regarded the Phocaeans with so much favour as, at first, to beg them to quit Ionia and settle in whatever part of his country they liked. Afterwards, finding that he could not prevail upon them to agree to this, and hearing that the Mede was growing great in their neighbourhood, he gave them money to build a wall about their town, and certainly he must have given it with a bountiful hand, for the town is many furlongs in circuit, and the wall is built entirely of great blocks of stone skilfully fitted together. The wall, then, was built by his aid.
by Herodotus
tr by George Rawlinson
Book I, ClioBook IV, Melpomene...a Samian vessel, under the command of a man named Colaeus, which, on its way to Egypt, was forced to put in at Platea... They themselves quitted the island; and, anxious to reach Egypt, made sail in that direction, but were carried out of their course by a gale of wind from the east. The storm not abating, they were driven past the Pillars of Hercules, and at last, by some special guiding providence, reached Tartessus. This trading town was in those days a virgin port, unfrequented by the merchants. The Samians, in consequence, made by the return voyage a profit greater than any Greeks before their day, excepting Sostratus, son of Laodamas, an Eginetan, with whom no one else can compare. From the tenth part of their gains, amounting to six talents, the Samians made a brazen vessel, in shape like an Argive wine-bowl, adorned with the heads of griffins standing out in high relief. This bowl, supported by three kneeling colossal figures in bronze, of the height of seven cubits, was placed as an offering in the temple of Juno at Samos.
Weasels also are found in the Silphium region, much like the Tartessian. So many, therefore, are the animals belonging to the land of the wandering Libyans, in so far at least as my researches have been able to reach.
Kinda funny that it took three years to make the trip, if it was just in SW Spain, eh? :’)
while I’m not a fan of the idea of Tartessos having been Atlantis (America, maybe, but not Atlantis), here’s a live one:
The Lost City Of Tartessus
by Steven A. Arts
http://www.anomalist.com/features/tartessus.html
...Weasels also are found in the Silphium region, much like the Tartessian...
http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/07/01/fennel/
...the amazing silphion plant, a form of giant fennel, which grew in a limited band along the Libyan coast...
methinks there's a geographic clue in there somewhere.
thanks. Here’s that East wind again:
Then we come to a quote from Psalms 48:7, which says: “Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.”
Obviously the destruction of Tarshish came from the east. Some natural calamity, perhaps? Again a tie-in with Atlantis.
http://www.greatdreams.com/atlnorth.jpg
If an East Wind blew them through the Pillars of Hercules, there’s no way they could end up in Spain IMO.
Perhaps Lixus, or some point south of there.
Aha. Stuck in a quagmire with no exit strategy.
That’s just the world according to Herodotus according to someone modern. :’) Herodotus didn’t need no steeenkeeng map.
Tarshish / Tharshish and Tartessos were not the same thing. :’)
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