Ancient Roman coins found buried under ruins of Japanese castle leave archaeologists baffled
Its possible that roman coins made their way across the silk road into china and then across the sea of japan into some rich guys coin collection
I left them there.
Sorry.
Pretty much this.
Overuse of the word "baffled" is very annoying.
The Jews put them there to test our faith in the contemporary timetable of "history" that's being taught
They found Swahili coins in Australia and Buddha statues in Scandinavia
People like curiosities
It makes for good headlines.
In reality, I doubt any archaeologists would actually be baffled by a find like that. Trade networks have always been much more intensive than most people seem to realize. It's easy to assume that ancient people didn't interact with each other, but in reality, pretty much everyone that were linked somewhat by geography (so, all of the old world, and most of the new world) were all linked by trade networks.
This is a cool find, but not baffling. The silk road existed, and Japan had trade ties to China.
>intensive
and extensive :D~~
Romans wanted in on the Silk Road and its trade routes; they often went to war with the Parthians Persians over it. Persians would often win these wars and trade those coins through India and into China. China had a large economic and cultural exchange influencing Japan up to the 8th to 10th century AD, which corresponds with said Roman-Persian wars.
Not that surprising.
Fucking autocorrect. There must be something wrong with how I type; even Microsoft Word does shit like that to me.
Silk road.
It's really comfy to imagine a hoard of Roman coins being passed eastward, through multiple holders, breaking up and splitting off, some of it reaching a Japanese castle
These coins are about 1000 years older then this Japanese castle. More then enough time for this journey.
This. The Silk Road is one of the comfiest thing I can imagine. Just peaceful trade, huge caravans in the steppes of Central Asia, the slow spread of culture, merchants telling each other stories of their homeland at night, in a small caravanserail somewhere in Iran.
I love early contacts between distant cultures: things like the idea of Chinese silk harvested in Nanjing ending up on some Roman senator's wife maybe decades or more later, or these coins travelling back up the road.
It was burgler alley and murder/rape hallway until the Mongols and then subsequent civs secured the area.
What the fuck does comfy mean anymore?
They found Ottoman coins in the same stash, so they probably got there after 1400, with a collector
i'm damn sure no caravan of importance would travel without a sufficient and effective guard.
bible proven right again
Probably just from Dutch traders desu
Central Asia is the furthest thing from comfy I can imagine. Trecking through there to get to Persia or China must have been hell on Earth.
It's a kind of psychological comfy I think
But user it wont be just trekking, which was lets face it bacd EVERYWHERE, there were plenty of cities in the way and afghanistan was buddhist/hindu then and north was scythians then replaced by hunnic and turkic tribes who simply assimilated into the iranic cities and settlments that dotted the land, Tocharians and Kushans had large nations subsistent on trade so usually had way stops trade cities and such.
In all it is more of a dangerous adventure where you need to be armed, but the cities werent as bad as the outside if trading only.
The kingdoms of the Ryukyus had direct trade relations with China, this isn't that surprising.
Couldn't the Portuguese have brought these coins? The castle itself apparently was built on the 13-14th century.
>Sultanate of Rum having trade with their fellow Altaic speakers
what a shocker
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I disagree. I've been to Uzbekistan. While I'm sure slowly making your way between cities like Samarkand, Kokand, Bukhara or Merv must have difficult because of wild animals and nomad raids, it's honestly not a bad place. Of course there's the Kyzylkum desert, but the Silk Road didn't go through it.
Now, the Taklamakan desert that's another story. That's pretty close to Hell, and the Road went right through it. But even then caravans went from oasis city to oasis city, it's not like they tried to trek the whole thing in one go.
I know!
they were found with 17th century turk currency in similar locations.
obvious the collection came from the the 17-18th centuries. because japanese history pre 17th century is virtually nonexistent
this is because the japanese are a very tribal, primitive culture despite everyone thinking they are deep
welcome to 4chip
>they were found with 17th century turk currency in similar locations.
>turk currency
Huh, really makes those neurons fire
That's nice. You're retarded if you think you can ever have enough guards to be completely safe from attack and still complete the journey, much less turn a profit, but that's nice.
Since it's Okinawa, It's more Ryukyu Kingdom than the Shogunate of the main islands. They do trade with outside people. Especially through the Indian Ocean trade via Malacca. That explains the Ottoman coins.
As for the Roman coins, I heard some Romans did explore way further than their known world. Especially the east. But mostly on small groups. Chances are, they might discover Okinawa there.
Okinawa, or rather the Ryukyu Kingdom was a major trading power and had connections with Japan, Korea, China, Indonesia, Thailand, and possibly India and Sri Lanka.
>until the Mongols
The mongols reverted back to being the problem.
Ackshully between Persia and China during the 200s BC-400s AD there were still city states in between: either founded by Greeks or Indo-Iranian nomads that settled down. So it was still dangerous but manageable.
The real shittening happened with the Turkics and Mongols. More on the Mongols since those assholes were fond of levelling Central Asian cities. While some of teh Turkics simply replaced the leadership of the places they conquered and settled down (i.e. Uighurs).
Actually, a lot of people did it.
Which is why it was so famous and well-used.
History even gave it a name:
The Silk Road
tl;dr -> You're a moron
>As for the Roman coins, I heard some Romans did explore way further than their known world. Especially the east. But mostly on small groups. Chances are, they might discover Okinawa there.
I can guarantee that these Roman coins were not brought to Okinawa by Romans. For that matter, I highly doubt they were even brought to Okinawa in the same millennium they were minted
WE WUZ ROMANS DESU
We wuz Samriez n shiet
Romans were aliens confirmed
Rome > Silk Road > China > Japan
A Chinese merchant probably found himself exiled there
>Silk Road
not likely
the silk road generally wouldnt have much of anything land in Japan, more likely from the sea, arab, chinese, SEAsians, or swahili traders
Gold is gold m8. Some trader isn't going to give a shit if an ounce of gold has Hadrian's face on it or an invocation to Allah as long as it weighs up right.
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