Posted on 04/21/2006 11:03:33 AM PDT by blam
When in Vietnam, Build Boats as the Romans Do
Richard Stone
INDO-PACIFIC PREHISTORY ASSOCIATION CONGRESS, 20-26 MARCH 2006, MANILA
In December 2004, researchers drained a canal in northern Vietnam in search of ancient textiles from graves. They found that and a whole lot more.
Protruding from the canal bank at Dong Xa was a 2000-year-old log boat that had been used as a coffin. After a closer look at the woodwork, archaeologists Peter Bellwood and Judith Cameron of Australia National University in Canberra and their colleagues were astounded to find that the method for fitting planks to hull matched that used by the Roman Emperor Caligula and his contemporaries in the 1st century C.E. That shipwright technique was believed to be unique to the Mediterranean, several thousand kilometers to the west.
"It's very convincing," says Lucy Blue, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Southampton, U.K. "They are absolutely correct in their links with comparable material in the Greco-Roman world."
It's impossible to say, however, whether the boatmaking method is a case of technology transfer across vast distances or whether it arose independently in East Asia.
The Dong Xa boat yielded a trove of artifacts: a ramie burial shroud, a cord-marked pot next to the head of the corpse with a red lacquered cup inside, and a couple of Han Dynasty wushu coins, minted from 118 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. But the big discovery was courtesy of a remarkably well-preserved hull.
Along the gunwale of the 2-meter section are empty mortise and locking peg holes for attaching planks with rectangular fastenings called tenons. In this technique, planks are fitted together before a frame is added.
"The only place in the world where this construction is known is the Mediterranean," says Bellwood, who presented the find in Manila.
Shipwreck excavations show that several cultures, including the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, employed mortise-and-tenon technology from at least 3300 years ago until around the middle of the first millennium C.E.
Hunting for similar construction in Vietnam, Bellwood and his colleagues found a museum piece made from timbers bearing the same mortise-and-tenon technique.
The timbers, part of a mortuary house for an infant coffin made around 200 C.E., are planks from a boat scrapped for burial, Bellwood says.
Both the mortuary house and the Dong Xa boat were found in clay deposits near the Red River.
À la Caligula. An ancient boat from Vietnam was built using Roman techniques. CREDIT: COURTESY OF PETER BELLWOOD
Bellwood doubts that the two cultures ever met face to face. "I don't believe we have Romans sailing to Southeast Asia," he says.
"It would be nice to say it was invented independently," he adds, noting that the Chinese used mortise-and-tenon carpentry for houses in the Neolithic, centuries before the technique was applied to Mediterranean ships.
But how the ancient people near the Red River learned their boatmaking remains a mystery. "At present, there is just not enough evidence to support cultural influence in construction choice," says Blue.
Bellwood favors a series of transfers across the ancient world 2 millennia ago, when the Old World was entering its first phase of true globalization.
That's the "most attractive hypothesis" for now, he says--at least until a Chinese Neolithic log boat is discovered.
Looks like C.E. has replaced A.D. The purge of Christianity from the public square continues.
"... method for fitting planks to hull matched that used by the Roman Emperor Caligula and his contemporaries...."
Caligua was a boat builder? I thought he was known for other things.
There - fixed it!
What, you've got a problem with "Before Christ" and "Christ's Era"?
What, you've got a problem with "Before Christ's Era" and "Christ's Era"?
See my post #7.
"It's impossible to say, however, whether the boatmaking method is a case of technology transfer across vast distances or whether it arose independently in East Asia."
Or whether the Romans sailed to the Far East. I notice that mankind of my era are very impressed with twentieth and twenty-first century technology, so much so that we fail to give past civilizations much credit. Historians are constantly finding that world trade was much more active than we assume.
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There was extensive trade between India and Rome by then. Indo-China was a trading zone for India. When Rome collapsed India and Indo-China also collapsed. Prior to that, and prior to Alexander, the Persian Empire reached from Greece and Egypt to India and there was extensive trade with India and China.
A navis lapidaria at Kizilburun, TurkeyThe Roman emperor Augustus claimed to have found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble (Suet. Aug. 28). Indeed, the remains of more than a dozen stone cargoes in the shallow waters off Italy, France, and Spain attest to the Roman appetite for specialty stones – white marble from Greece and Asia Minor; yellow marble from Numidia; red and gray granite from Egypt. The vast majority of these cargoes, however, have not been treated as coherent archaeological sites; instead they are only superficially explored, their stones partly or wholly salvaged.
As a result, archaeologists know regrettably little about the construction and lading of ancient stone carriers, which must represent some of the most sophisticated technological achievements of the ancient world. It was precisely such ships that brought 16 enormous monolithic granite columns, each nearly 40 feet tall, from Alexandria to Rome for the façade of Hadrian's Pantheon. A century earlier, the emperor Caligula arranged for the transport to Rome of a massive 320-ton obelisk. The historian Pliny, upon viewing the ship that delivered the obelisk, described it as "the most amazing vessel that had ever been seen on the sea (NH 36.70)."At Empire's Edge:[at] Qusier al-Qadim, from the first and second centuries A.D... were inscribed with Tamil graffiti in the Brahmi script and likely came from Arikamedu in southern India (not far from the modern town of Pondicherry). These constitute the first Indian Tamil inscriptions ever found in Egypt, and their discovery, next to a small iron forge, raises the possibility that a small community of Indian merchants or metalworkers lived at Qusier al-Qadim... researchers found items typical of the east, for example, teak and cloth made from jute. [pp 82-83]
Exploring Rome's Egyptian Frontier
by Robert B. JacksonRome's East India CompanyA sturdy 100-foot-long Roman trading vessel bound for India foundered off the Red Sea port of Quseir, Egypt. The ship settled 200 feet below the surface, where it remained undisturbed until a group of British and American archaeologists discovered it in 1993. Douglas Haldane believes the ship was part of a fleet sent by the Roman emperor Augustus -- who seized control of Egypt after the naval battle of Actium in 31 B.C. -- to control trade in the Indian Ocean. He predicts that gold, silver and other precious metals used as currency will be found on board, as well as wine from the Campania region of southern Italy.
[Field Notes]Arts of the Silk RoadsA mirror from India with an ivory handle carved in the shape of a female fertility deity was buried under volcanic ash at Pompeii in 79 CE. Among the first images of Buddhist deities in human form were those carved in the province of Gandhara (present-day Pakistan) in the 2nd century CE. Unlike anthropomorphic Buddhist images carved farther south in India, these Gandharan figures, which were based on provincial Roman models, wear heavy, toga-like robes and have wavy hair. The figural tradition of Buddhist art spread through Central and East Asia and also to Southeast Asia, taking on local and regional characteristics.
by John Major
Asia Society
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1619016/posts?page=14#14
and:
1,700-Year-Old 'Roman Glass' Discovered In East China
Xinhua/China.org | 11-20-2005
Posted on 11/20/2005 4:31:32 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1525734/posts
Tamil Trade
INTAMM | 1997 | Xavier S. Thani Nayagam
Posted on 09/11/2004 11:07:01 PM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1213591/posts
Yeah,whats up with that crap?Its like I have to learn a new metric system!We know how the metric system worked so well!
I wonder why no-one even considers that the technology may have gone from east to west?
At Empire's Edge:Pliny the Elder also added a warning: "The subject is one well worthy of our notice, seeing that in no year does India drain us of less than 550,000,000 sesterces giving back her own wares, which are sold among us at fully 100 percent their first cost." Romans were not the only ones to comment on the nature of their trade with India. A Tamil poem from the second or third century A.D. includes the following passage: "The beautiful vessels, the masterpieces of the Yavanas [Westerners], stir white foam on the Periyar, river of Kerala, arriving with gold and departing with pepper." Despite the discovery in southern India of some six thousand silver denarii and gold aurei, which seems to corroborate these statements, scholars disagree about whether such an economic imbalance actually occurred. Certainly the Romans spent vast sums of money on Asian luxuries, but they might also have used a barter system. Roman amphora, pottery, glass, lamps, and other items have been excavated in India, Sri Lanka, and Arabia, and Roman beads (gold or silver, set in glass) have been uncovered in the Rufiji Delta of Tanzania... In addition, the Greek/Egyptian author of Periplus Maris Erythraei (Circumnavigation of the Red Sea) identifies specific places where bartering was or was not possible. [pp 88-89]
Exploring Rome's Egyptian Frontier
by Robert B. Jackson
Roman period maritime artefactsDozens of classical wrecks excavated in the Mediterranean have produced a clear development of hull construction although little is preserved of their rigging. With no wrecks excavated in the Erythraean Sea the vehicles of the Roman trade are not represented in the archaeological record. Papyrological records detailing receipts and trading activity on the Nile mention Greek vessels called hellenikon, large river vessels which sailed the Nile (Lewis 1983: 143; Bagnall 1983: 35). These records give some detail of the rig, which may have been utilised on the Red Sea, this includes linen sails, ‘rings’ and blocks. As ancient sources suggest (Herodotus 2.36) Egyptian type vessels were quite different from specifically sea-going vessels, although a range of technologies may have been utilised by the Romans. However there is no published archaeological evidence for the type of craft referred to as ‘the good vessels, masterpieces of the Yavanas (westerners)’ (Sidebotham 1986: 23) mentioned in the c. 150 AD Tamil poetry of the Kauliliya Arthasastra. This referred to the arrival of Yavanas to the Malbar coast port of Muziris.
Univ of Southampton
2001
Long before the Romans hit the water, the Etruscans were coastal pirates, and the Phoenicians were going on the open sea. At that time the trade between Egypt/Somalia and India was extensive, and that is open ocean sailing. By the time the Romans began sailing the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf they would have found excellent boatmakers locally. It is very possible the Romans brought some boatbuilding technique back from the East.
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