Simply red: samples of miltos, including a sixteenth century Ottoman example (e), and a control sample of yellow oxide (b). [E.Photos-Jones, et al]
Posted on 10/22/2018 4:35:27 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Greek and Roman writers record the use of a substance called miltos as a decoration, a medicine - and a handy way to repair a boat. Now scientists have worked out why. Andrew Masterson reports. From ancient Greek and Roman source texts it is possible to conclude that in the classical world a mineral, a powder known as miltos, was something of a wonder substance. Miltos - referred to in the works of writers such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Pliny - was red, fine-grained, and made up mostly of iron-oxide. By the time Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher and proto-botanist, wrote about it in the third century BCE, it was already a mineral validated by antiquity. Its use is attested to in Mycenaean clay tablets, inscribed in the script known as Linear B and dating from the second millennium BCE... The ancient texts made it clear that miltos, unlike some other types of mineral, could be found, and mined, in only a few places in Graeco-Roman world - namely Kea, in the Cyclades, Lemnos in the northeast Aegean, and Cappadocia in Turkey... To make their findings, the scientists analysed five samples: four obtained from Kea, and one originally from Lemnos that had been collected during the sixteenth or seventeenth century and is currently housed in the Pharmacy Museum of the University of Basel in Switzerland. No Turkish miltos was available. The samples were subjected to a battery of tests, including X-ray defraction, geochemical analysis, dynamic light scattering to probe nanoparticle structure, DNA sequencing to discover microbiological components, and anti-microbial tests.
(Excerpt) Read more at cosmosmagazine.com ...
Simply red: samples of miltos, including a sixteenth century Ottoman example (e), and a control sample of yellow oxide (b). [E.Photos-Jones, et al]
Interesting!
I’m not saying it was Martians, but ... it was Martians.
I think I dumped a box of that into my old Nova’s radiator to stop it from leaking.....
If this clay is particularly bioactive, then maybe this is where it all got started.
Kinda like the way we view duct tape
No, no, no!
Clearly, it must have been coffee grounds, everyone uses coffee grounds.
Except for the heathen few insistent on black pepper.
Any other concoctions are simply voodoo crap.
Heh, yeah, other than, I'm not sure duct tape is used as medicine. :^)
Someone added some milk and heat and made milto-meal.
Early Bondo.
Cover a wart with duct tape and it goes away.
He took a hundred pounds of clay
And then He said “Hey, listen”
“I’m gonna fix this-a world today”
“Because I know what’s missin’ “
Hmm, do I have to keep wearing the duct tape?
I may try that...
Figures, the danged Red Planet.
Also, primitive cultures throughout the world ritually used red ochre dust in burials. I've seem Amerindian burials that were obvious after the soil surface was scraped -- because the fill dirt was distinctly reddish due to included red ochre.
I also got in a heap o' trouble with a bunch of moms -- when I taught a batch of kids how to make "war paint" by grinding red ochre on a stone, and adding a little grease ("Vaseline").
It turns out the stuff is very difficult to remove -- and lots of kids went to school with red faces for the better part of a week... '-)
<GRIN>
TXnMA
LOL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
![[E.Photos-Jones, et al]](http://cosmos-images1.imgix.net/file/spina/photo/16766/181011-miltos-full.jpg)
