700-year-old coins found in field

[Aragorn]

Three 700-year-old coins which were found in a field have been declared treasure by a coroner at Flint.

The silver pennies date back to between 1307 and 1314, to the reigns of both Edward I and his son Edward II.

Archaeology enthusiast Peter Jones, from Holywell, found a coin in 2006, then returned to the same spot a year later, when the other two were found.

The coins were analysed by experts at Cardiff's National Museum of Wales who discovered they were 90% silver.

Mr Jones regularly scours a field owned by his friend Ron Davies, for pre-historic items.

He said he has found hundreds of old tools, made from flint, some of which dated back thousands of years before Christ.

He told the inquest he did not usually use a metal detector and found the first coin in 2006 just "lying on the surface".

The following year he took a metal detector to the same spot, and again found two similar coins on the surface.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_west/7719768.stm

[Lenny]

This is the same way they discovered the Varus battlefield site at Kalkreise, Lower Saxony 20 years ago: Somebody found some Roman coins. Then a little digging, and all sorts of Roman military artifacts were found, in a long E-W line extending for miles, but not very wide. The line of finds extended in a V-shape eastward, tapering off after a ways.

Back in 9AD, the legions seeking to conquer Germania were marching through a difficult pass, with a hill on one side and a bog only 20 or 30 meters away on the other side. When the bulk of the invading army was passing through this pass, they were ambushed by tens of thousands of Germanic warriors. The "battle" quickly became a massacre, as the Romans were totally unable to maneuver in the terrain. A few tried to retreat in a diffuse manner toward their own rear [eastward], but they were all chased down and killed. Most of the Roman soldiers died in minutes, and almost the entirety of Varus' three legions was dead within an hour, with those at the far vanguard and far rear the only survivors (and even most of them were likely eventually found and killed). They mostly died pretty much where they stood in marching formation. The Germanics looted the battlefield of course, but when tens of thousands of fully-equipped men die in such close proximity and with dirt flying all over the place and so on, some things were left behind. The result: A several-mile-long narrow band of artifacts dating to around 0-10AD, some bearing legionary insignia of the lost legions.

[Jimbo Gomez]

They found some even older coins (Eburonic, that's from Caesar's age) not far from where I live recently. Probably some nobleman who hid his treasure after the Roman conquest.

I see my old friend Lenny has found us. Hello Lenny.

[Lenny]

They found some even older coins (Eburonic, that's from Caesar's age) not far from where I live recently. Probably some nobleman who hid his treasure after the Roman conquest.Back in the 1600s, the "first" white men to settle in what is now the northeastern USA were surprised to find that local Indians possessed a number of very strange coins: It turns out they were old Norse coins, minted 600 years earlier.

The "experts" have debated for years on exactly how New England's Indians came to possess them.



Even weirder is that Roman coins have been found at Central American Indian sites.

[Jimbo Gomez]

Yes, the Romans discovered the Americas before the Vikings Lenny, which proves that the ancestors of Europe's Catholics were more intelligent than the ancestors of Europe's protestants. :p

[Lenny]

There were likely cross-Atlantic and to a lesser extent cross-Pacific trips going back thousands of years.

[TheGreatest]

Hehe, we sure didn't have automobiles and airplanes back then. ;)



Everything was transported on a boat. Ever noticed why all our major cities were created on rivers? Because our ancestors were smart little bastards! :) It's much easier to float something on water, than it is to trek through hundreds of kilometers inland. :thumb001:


I imagine the quickest and most safest route to Europe would had been through the Mediterranean and during the Summer, when the Atlantic was most calm. The Vikings had no problem getting to Iceland and Newfoundland on these bad boys.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr
(It's such a small ship! They included a person as a size of comparison, that would had been scary on the Atlantic! :eek: But not a problem for the Vikings, Whiskey puts hair on yer chest and makes you brave :p ;) )


Traveling on the Amazonian Rivers would had been the easiest part. I imagine the Roman goods found in the Amazonian Rivers, were likely destined for groups such as the Chachapoyas in the Amazons.



((A little off-topic. But the Chachapoyan are one groups that interest me. Their architecture was a bit unusual, being circular and mason. Almost a bit Celtic; if you ask me. The Chachapoyan were known as being unusually light-skinned. But it was an extinct culture, with small -mixed- remnants when the Spaniards came.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazonas_before_the_Inca_Empire))


http://farm1.static.flickr.com/52/148405076_56a97a4e1a.jpg?v=0
http://www.southamericanexperience.co.uk/peru/images/peru_kuelap.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/St_Fagans_Celtic_Village_the_main_hut.jpg

[[Eh... See what I'm talking about?]]


[[And not to forget the mysterious ruins of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuelap

A Fortress? The Indians had no fortresses elsewhere...]]



[[But Peru wasn't the only example. Spaniards went into Mexico and found hundreds of ruins in the Jungle, having been long covered by vegetation and showing no signs of habitation for centuries. Indeed... I think both American Continents are largely a mystery. We don't know who built these ruins... And it's hard to imagine that the Amerindians did it all, and seemingly forgot this knowledge. Considering that except for the ones in the small Aztec Empire, most had lived in stone-aged tribes, like the ones in the North).

[Lenny]

But Peru wasn't the only example. Spaniards went into Mexico and found hundreds of ruins in the Jungle, having been long covered by vegetation and showing no signs of habitation for centuries. Indeed... I think both American Continents are largely a mystery. We don't know who built these ruins... And it's hard to imagine that the Amerindians did it all, and seemingly forgot this knowledge. Considering that except for the ones in the small Aztec Empire, most had lived in stone-aged tribes, like the ones in the North).

You're very right, TG. The preAmerindian inhabitants are a mystery. Many say they were racially "Australoid" (resembling today's Aboriginies), and that they were wiped out by the Siberian migrants [that we now call American-Indians] 10,000 years ago.

Another mystery, unrelated to the above: There are said to have been red-haired people in preInca South America, who kept to themselves as a separate "caste". For some reason they were eventually expelled from the empire by the majority darker race. The red-haired survivors took to boats and sailed towards the setting sun in terrible fear for their lives; at least some of them wound up on Easter Island! I am pretty sure I read that from Thor Heyerdahl.

These red-haired people were quite smart and developed skill at navigation. They eventually established contact with the Pacific Rim and brought in dark natives from there as laborers. Eventually the dark imported laborers subsumed the red-haired racial stock on Easter Island... even with only a single intermarriage every few generations, on an island of a few thousand people, that will do it. (Sounds awfully familiar to modern Europe, doesn't it). These red-haired "white" people are the reason why the Easter Island statues have red stone on the heads; why would people who only knew black hair conceive of putting RED to represent hair on a statue? Do we put blue on any statues' heads?