"Important discoveries over the past 15 years in the coastal area between Huelva and Málaga in Spain have illuminated the beginnings of the eighth-century BC Phoenician diaspora into the Western Mediterranean. Here, the authors combine Bayesian modelling of recently published radiocarbon dates with the latest archaeological data to investigate the Phoenician presence in southern Iberia. Their assessment of its significance for the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in the Western Mediterranean contributes not only to understanding the integration of the Phoenicians into local communities, but also to apprehending the mechanisms of colonisation and pre-colonial situations elsewhere in protohistoric Europe and other world contexts." Source: Antiquity (2021).
"Some scholars suggest there is evidence for a Semitic dispersal to the fertile crescent circa 2500 BC; others believe the Phoenicians originated from an admixture of previous non-Semitic inhabitants with the Semitic arrivals. Herodotus believed that the Phoenicians originated from Bahrain, a view shared centuries later by the historian Strabo. The people of modern Tyre in Lebanon, have particularly long maintained Persian Gulf origins. The Dilmun civilization thrived in Bahrain during the period 2200–1600 BC, as shown by excavations of settlements and the Dilmun burial mounds. However, recent genetic researches have shown that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population." (Wikipedia)
"The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (or Maphungubgwe) (c. 1075–c. 1220) was a medieval state in South Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The name is derived from either TjiKalanga and Tshivenda. The name might mean 'Hill of Jackals'. The kingdom was the first stage in a development that would culminate in the creation of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe in the 13th century, and with gold trading links to Rhapta and Kilwa Kisiwani on the African east coast. The Kingdom of Mapungubwe lasted about 80 years, and at its height the capital's population was about 5000 people." (Wikipedia) Note: I'm not sure which capital this refers to.
Mapungubwe hill. Around 24 human skeletons were discovered here and later reburied. Video from 2010.
The central area of Mapungubwe covered around 30,000 hectares (around 74,000 acres), according to the UNESCO World Heritage List. That's something like 109 square miles, I believe, and the kingdom had a much larger buffer zone, so its territory was fairly large for that period. Over the course of its history, Mapungubwe had three capitals -- "Schroda; Leopard’s Kopje; and the final one located around Mapungubwe hill - and their satellite settlements and lands around the confluence of the Limpopo and the Shashe rivers whose fertility supported a large population within the kingdom."
The kingdom's location allowed it grow rich from trade with the outside world:
"Mapungubwe's position at the crossing of the north/south and east/west routes in southern Africa also enabled it to control trade, through the East African ports to India and China, and throughout southern Africa. From its hinterland it harvested gold and ivory - commodities in scarce supply elsewhere – and this brought it great wealth as displayed through imports such as Chinese porcelain and Persian glass beads." (UNESCO)
Salt flats and brine water, Yucatan. Video from 2011.
"Maya archaeologists have excavated salt kitchens where brine was boiled in clay pots over fires in pole and thatch buildings preserved in oxygen-free sediment below the sea floor in Belize. But where these salt workers lived has been elusive, leaving possible interpretations of daily or seasonal workers from the coast or even inland." Source: Science Daily.
Note: "The sources of salt are mainly along the coast, including salt flats on the Yucatan coast and brine-boiling along the coast of Belize, where it rains a lot." These workers apparently were part of an (seasonal?) industry which distributed salt to communities along the coast and perhaps into the interior, but archaeologists are still working to discover more about how the network operated.
I'm not sure how salt is harvested from a salt flat, but I suppose it's just a matter of separating the salt from all the other sediments. The next video shows how to make salt by boiling brine water using primitive tools.
"Dr. Olivia Munoz, a researcher at France’s Nationwide Center for Scientific Analysis headed a team of international archaeologists from France, Saudi Arabia and Italy who discovered a vast 35-meter-long triangular ritual platform buried at the oasis settlement of Dûmat al-Jandal in northern Saudi Arabia."
Archaeologists also found "monumental ruins" at the ancient site, which dates back to the 10th century BC. The discovery of Egyptian artifacts "reveals that there were old trading relations between the inhabitants of Dûmat al-Jandal and ancient Egyptian New Kingdom, which dominated from the 16th to the 11th century BC."
"Socotra Archipelago, in the northwest Indian Ocean near the Gulf of Aden, is 250 km long and comprises four islands and two rocky islets which appear as a prolongation of the Horn of Africa. The site is of universal importance because of its biodiversity with rich and distinct flora and fauna..." Source: UNESCO.
Socotra was called Dioskouridou ('of the Dioscurides') or Dioscorida in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first century AD shipping manual. According to the author of the Periplus, "Dioscorida ... is very large but desert and marshy, having rivers in it and crocodiles and many snakes and great lizards, of which the flesh is eaten and the fat melted and used instead of olive oil." Source: Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks (paragraph 30).
Note: I'm not sure about this, but I think the Erythraean Sea is the old name for the Red Sea and at least part (?) of the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean. A map of the Erythraean Sea drawn in 169 BC by the Greek historian and geographer Agatharchides of Cnidus, can be found here. Socotra (lower right at the bottom of the map) was ideally located to be a jumping-off point for voyages to India.
Socotra has been called "the world's strangest place" with good reason. The plants on Socotra are truly bizarre, as can be seen in these pictures. The island's spectacular and alien landscape looks like something out of a science-fiction movie.
The ancient history of Socotra is obscure, but its inhabitants traded spices and the sap of their Dragon's Blood trees to Egypt and Rome. Its location near the mouth of the Red Sea made it an important stopover for cargo ships involved in the thriving maritime trade with the far east.
"The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all tapped the treasures of Socotra’s natural world: aromatic resins such as frankincense, medicinal aloe extract, and the dark red sap of the dragon’s blood tree, used for healing and as an artist’s color. Adventurers came to harvest the island’s wealth, despite stories that it was guarded by giant snakes living in its caves. The Queen of Sheba, Alexander the Great, and Marco Polo were among those who coveted Socotra’s riches." Source: National Geographic.
"The value of incense and dragon’s blood peaked during the time of the Roman Empire. Afterward, the island served mostly as a way station for traders, passing centuries in relative cultural isolation. Socotra’s residents lived generation after generation as their ancestors had: the mountain Bedouin minding their goats, the coastal residents fishing, and everyone harvesting dates. Island history was passed down through poetry, recited in the Socotri language."
According to Socotra Eco-Tours, Aristotle, Alexander the Great's tutor, selected a group of colonists to settle on Socotra. The idea was to harvest its myrhh, valued for its medicinal properties, and turn the island into a base for Alexander's invasion of India. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st cent BC) mentions Socotra as a major source of myrhh, labdanum (a kind of resin) and various aromatic plants. The island was an important way station where "[s]ailors and tradesmen not only bought precious resins and medical herbs...which they later on sold at markets in the Roman empire or the Indian kingdoms, but also gained strength and supplies necessary for their long journeys to the African coast, Madagascar or to Persia." Inscriptions in various languages have been found inside Hoq cave on the island. (See video below)
Considering the island's strategic location and valuable resources, I imagine it was fought over repeatedly by various empires in the ancient world. Most of this history, unfortunately, has been lost forever.
Note: "In 1834, the East India Company, in the expectation that the Mahra sultan of Qishn and Socotra, who resided at Qishn on the mainland [southern coast of modern Yemen], would accept an offer to sell the island, stationed a garrison on Socotra. Faced with the unexpected firm refusal of the sultan to sell, however, as well as the lack of good anchorages for a coaling station to be used by the new steamship line being put into service on the Suez-Bombay route, the British left in 1835." (Wikipedia)
"The Kingdom of Mapungubwe ... (c.1075–1220) was a medieval state in South Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The name is derived from either TjiKalanga and Tshivenda [Bantu languages]. The name might mean 'Hill of Jackals'. The kingdom was the first stage in a development that would culminate in the creation of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe in the 13th century, and with gold trading links to Rhapta and Kilwa Kisiwani on the African east coast. The Kingdom of Mapungubwe lasted about 80 years, and at its height the capital's population was about 5000 people." (Wikipedia)
The Limpopo River, a major trade route from the African interior to the Arab trading ports on the coast of the Indian Ocean during the time of Mapungubwe.
The people who built Mapungubwe were apparently part of the Leopard's Kopje culture, named after an archaeological site from the Middle Iron Age in modern Zimbabwe. As far as I can tell, the "kingdom of Mapungubwe," located on a promontory named Mapungubwe Hill, was basically just a small city that briefly controlled a fairly extensive trade network:
"Mapungubwe flourished as a city and trading center from 1220 to 1290/1300," according to the Metropolitan Museum. "Considered by some as the capital of southern Africa’s first state, Mapungubwe may have reached a population of 5,000. The city grew in part because of its access to the Limpopo River, which connected the region through trade to the ports of Kilwa and other sites along the Indian Ocean. This new trade was grafted onto existing regional networks along which salt, cattle, fish, metals, chert, ostrich-eggshell beads, and other items had been flowing for centuries. New prestige items, including glass beads and cloth, were introduced through the Swahili trade and were likely exchanged for gold, ivory, and other locally produced goods."
If Mapungubwe was the capital of sub-Saharan Africa's first state, it only retained that status for about ten years (1290 - 1300 AD). Climate change supposedly led to its decline and Great Zimbabwe (the second oldest city after Mapungubwe) soon became the most important center in the region.
These cities thrived, at least for a while, because they had river access to ports on the Indian Ocean. These coastal ports had been established and were controlled by the Arabs. Kilwa Kisiwani, for instance, "was the center of the Kilwa Sultanate, a medieval sultanate whose authority at its height in the 13th-15th centuries stretched the entire length of the Swahili Coast." (Wikipedia)
Kilwa Kisiwani, a major trading port on the east coast of Africa.
The east coast of Africa was part of the Mediterranean and Arab worlds to a large extent. Back in the Classical world, for instance, the Romans had an extensive network of ports along the Red Sea coast that served as collection points for all sorts of commodities from the African interior. Local African chiefs grew rich and powerful as suppliers for the lucrative trade with the Far East and set themselves up as petty kings lording it over their subjects:
"Mapungubwe is the earliest known site in southern Africa where the leaders were spatially separated from their followers, reflecting the evolution of a class-based society. The homes, diet, and elaborate burials of the wealthy and privileged elite, contrast to those of the commoners, who lived at the foot of Mapungubwe and the surrounding plateau. The settlement at Mapungubwe reflects the earliest evidence of what was a very uneven but significant set of economic and social transformations notable in several sites in the region. The distinctive stone wall architecture, a symbolic expression of differential status, was carried out to its fullest extent at Great Zimbabwe." (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Note: The Rhodesians believed that Great Zimbabwe (and probably Mapungubwe as well, though I'm not sure about that) were actually built by the Arabs, but this theory has been widely dismissed these days.
The common picture of the Middle Ages as being a time of grinding poverty, illiteracy and subsistence living when the peasants spent their lives digging up filth in the fields is all wrong:
"Medieval England was not only far more prosperous than previously believed, it also actually boasted an average income that would be more than double the average per capita income of the world’s poorest nations today." Source: Science Daily (2010).
"... [This] research provides the first annual estimates of GDP for England between 1270 and 1700 and for Great Britain between 1700 and 1870. Far more data are available for the pre-1870 period than is widely realised. Britain after the Norman conquest (11th century) was a literate and numerate society that generated substantial written records, many of which have survived. As a result, the research was aided by a wide variety of records -- among them manorial records, tithes, farming records, and probate records."
Wars and outbreaks of disease disrupted the economy in certain places and times, just like they do today, but medieval Europe in general was much more prosperous than commonly believed:
"Trade and commerce in the medieval world developed to such an extent that even relatively small communities had access to weekly markets and, perhaps a day’s travel away, larger but less frequent fairs, where the full range of consumer goods of the period was set out to tempt the shopper and small retailer. Markets and fairs were organised by large estate owners, town councils, and some churches and monasteries, who, granted a license to do so by their sovereign, hoped to gain revenue from stall holder fees and boost the local economy as shoppers used peripheral services. International trade had been present since Roman times but improvements in transportation and banking, as well as the economic development of northern Europe, caused a boom from the 9th century CE." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)
The market as an institution dates back to the 8th century BC in Greece, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary.
With an estimated per capita annual income of around $1000 (1990 dollars), medieval England was much better off than places like modern Zaire, Haiti, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, just to name a few of the countries listed for comparison purposes in this study:
According to the researchers, "Our work sheds new light on England's economic past, revealing that per capita incomes in medieval England were substantially higher than the 'bare bones subsistence' levels experienced by people living in poor countries in our modern world. The majority of the British population in medieval times could afford to consume what we call a 'respectability basket' of consumer goods that allowed for occasional luxuries. By the late Middle Ages, the English people were in a position to afford a varied diet including meat, dairy produce and ale, as well as the less highly processed grain products that comprised the bulk of the 'bare bones subsistence' diet."
Note how the Medieval Warm Period led to an economic boom. According to modern climate alarmists, global warming would be a disaster. The truth, of course, is just the opposite.
The Roman Empire had extensive trade networks with countries as far away as India and China. When the western empire collapsed in the fifth century AD, the disruption of trade and central government plunged Europe into the so-called Dark Ages, but Europe with its relentless industry gradually recovered and the re-establishment of trade on both the local and global levels led to a rise in general prosperity which in turn led to the Industrial Revolution. According to the researchers who conducted this 2010 study, "the Industrial Revolution did not come out of the blue. Rather, it was the culmination of a long period of economic development stretching back as far as the late medieval period."
Dating back to at least 2,000 BC, the history of Nubia is confusing because several ancient kingdoms rose and fell in this part of Africa and the term "Nubia" is sometimes used to refer to one or more of these early kingdoms while at other times it just refers to the region as a whole. Complicating matters even more, the ancient Egyptians referred to their Nubian neighbors as Kushites, a kingdom in Nubia, and some sources use the term "Kush" to refer to the entire area.
The Nubian people were apparently descendants of the "the Noba people, nomads who settled the area in the 4th century [BC] following the collapse of the kingdom of Meroë," a city located on the east bank of the Nile, (Wikipedia).
The most well-known civilization of the Nubians was the previously mentioned Kingdom of Kush, which came into existence after the Bronze Age collapse (~1200 - 1150 BC) and fall of the Egyptian New Kingdom (~11th century BC). This is another source of confusion -- for me -- because at least one source I've found says that the Nubians didn't take over the region until after the fall of the Kingdom of Kush. Most of the sources, however, say that it was a Nubian kingdom, so I'll leave it at that.
Egypt had a complex and volatile relationship with Nubia. During the Early Dynastic Period (c3100 - 2686? BC), Egypt traded with Nubia, but "none of these trading expeditions, it seems, was aggressive in character, though the Egyptians occasionally had cause to protect themselves against the local populations," according to The Penguin Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations. During the Old Kingdom (c2613 - 2160 BC), Egyptian expeditions "were regularly sent through Nubia to obtain exotic products such as incense, ivory and panther skins. These expeditions were not without incident." (Ibid)
This trade between Egypt and Nubia continued for millennia. Wars sometimes broke out and traders were sometimes killed, apparently by local tribes, during these trade expeditions, but "relations between the two peoples also show peaceful cultural interchange and cooperation, including mixed marriages," (Wikipedia). Egypt's southern borders shifted back and forth as Egyptian power waxed and waned, and over time it appears that the two populations became thoroughly mixed.
The history of the relationship between Egypt and Nubia is long and complex, with Egypt conquering Nubia several times and Nubia conquering Egypt around 760 BC. After they defeated their northern neighbor, the Nubians established the short-lived 25th Dynasty - sometimes referred to as the Nubian Dynasty or the Kushite Empire. The Black Pharaohs didn't last very long, however. They were conquered by the Assyrians around 656 BC.
The Romans carried on a thriving trade with India. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), "the principal imports [from India] to Rome were perfumes, spices (especially pepper), gems, ivory, pearls, Indian textiles, and Chinese silk. The Romans exported linen, coral, glass, base metals, 'Arretine' tableware, wine in amphorae, etc., and also sent large quantities of gold and silver (and later copper) coins, of which large hoards have been found in south Indian and the eastern Deccan as well as some clay bullae ('amulets') of Roman coins."
This trade made the empire rich, but it also caused serious problems. The Romans were mostly importing luxury items from India -- items which would have sold almost exclusively to the upper classes who could afford them -- and the importers were paying hard cash for a lot of this merchandise. Back in the days of real money, this would have led to currency shortages. Payments in coin would have caused a significant outflow of money from the Roman economy and Roman emperors such as Augustus made periodic attempts to discourage excessive luxury spending by the aristocracy. Getting the nobility to curb their spending was difficult to do, however, because such spending was a sign of status among the Roman elites.
The coin shortages produced by the Roman aristocracy's taste for luxury goods from the East are a classic example of the problems a state can run into when it uses precious metals for its money. Gold and silver coins can't be created out of nothing like a fiat currency. There's always a limited supply of these coins in circulation and the India trade removed a lot of money from the Roman economy. Some of these coins must have trickled back in one form or another through the complex network of trade that was carried on back then, but the problem was serious enough for Augustus to try to put the brakes on luxury spending in Rome. Managing the Roman economy was a tricky business. The stability of the system depended in large part on the discovery of new mines and the competence of the empire's administrators:
"The monetary system of the Roman Empire always operated on very narrow margins. It is possible to calculate that in normal times perhaps 80 percent of the imperial budget was covered by tax revenues, the rest by the topping up of what came in with coins minted from newly mined metal. Prudent emperors managed; the less prudent did not." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary.
Note:The Roman trade with India began to decline after around 200 AD when "communications with India passed into the hands of intermediaries (Arabians, Axumites[1], Sasanid Persians), and India again became a land of fable to the Mediterranean world." (OCD)
[1] "The Kingdom of Aksum, also known as the Kingdom of Axum or the Aksumite Empire, was an ancient kingdom centered in what is now Eritrea and the Tigray Region of northern Ethiopia." (Wikipedia) The strategically important Aksum was heavily involved in the ivory trade and controlled both banks of the Red Sea near its outlet into the Indian Ocean. All the sea traffic between Rome and India would have had to pass through the kingdom's zone of influence.