Figure 21. Summary of European Bronze Age trading routes.
This plan shows the Bronze Age trading routes across Europe in 1,500BCE.
Whilst we today value gold much more than copper most ancient civilisations didn’t value gold but valued copper for making ornaments and implements.
From the various commodities traded we can see that Britain traded with Portugal, Spain traded with Scandinavia and Italy traded with France, Spain and Britain.
How much before 1,500 BCE were these trade routes active?
I went back through records of depictions of ancient ships and boats to see how far back large craft existed that could sail around the coast (see lower left of figure 21).
Norwegian craft existed back to 9,000 BCE, Mesopotamian craft existed back to 8,000 BCE and even the Australian aboriginal population had large boats to get across the at least 150 km of open ocean as far back as 40-60,000 years and again about 8,000 years ago.
This is quite contrary to how we generally think of our ancestors of 12,000 years ago. We generally think of them as land bound hunter-gatherers. Nothing could be further from the truth!
These large boats of antiquity suggests that the maritime skills and technology of those societies was more advanced than we currently assume.
Europe would have been covered with forests and virtually impossible for regular overland trading – apart from tribal boundaries causing problems. Thus it would be maritime trading that would mainly carry these goods from one country to another.
This – and the abundant underwater ruins – lends credence to the hypothesis that the earliest land civilisations were offshoots of a Maritime Trading Civilisation that flooded during the ice age waning from 12,000 BCE to 7,000 BCE.
Why would copper mining have anything to do with kickstarting civilisation?
Because, ‘human nature’ never changes and ‘greed’ is one of the prime traits of human nature and thus civilisation. I will use the example of Alexander when he took 4,700 tons of gold from Darius’ Persepolis.
What was the main purpose of Alexander invading Persia?
Darius’s treasure kickstarted the Macedonian Greek civilisation!
All of the great empires have kickstarted their empire by capturing the wealth of the neighbouring empire. Prior to capturing Darius’ treasure the Greek empire was only small but expanded to cover half of the western world within 10 years, because of this captured wealth.
All of the ancient civilisations’, and modern civilisations’, main aim in conquering other people is to gain their wealth!
These days the invading is done by ‘trading monopolies’ by the biggest nations! I’m sure it worked the same 8,000 BCE.
The acquisition of high value metals gives those civilisations an advantage – they could acquire labourers, pay for infrastructure, education and, most importantly, a large army to augment and protect their gains.
Most importantly from a geoscience point of view all of the successful empires in antiquity had professional prospectors and geologists to find their mines in the captured territory and in their own land. They appreciated the value of metal mining to the country’s economy. This does not currently apply in Australia!
Current world events of Russia invading Ukraine are a testement to this still occurring!. Is Russia invading Ukraine because they despise the Ukrainian people? No, they are invading Ukraine because it is the ‘granary of Europe’ and has good natural resources. Russia will be greatly enriched!
WW1 and WW2 were fought for the same reasons. It’s that simple, but this greed motive is rarely mentioned in the news! We don’t like to think about our greedy natures!
Happy thinking 🙂
Bob Watchorn
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