/int/ - International

How did they decline to a degree where even their location is a mistery?

This whole region preceding the Arab conquests, too. Herodotus called in the land of a thousand golden cities. Greeks had their own kingdom there for a couple of centuries. Little has been excavated, in significant part because a large part of it is in Afghanistan. Maybe if that place unfucks itself in the next 100 years there will be progress, but even then, a lack of surviving documents and other written evidence will always leave a very incomplete picture. Sogdians were also an interesting bunch. Very trade focused Iranic people, which makes sense given their position at the gates to the Tarim basin. And let's not get into the earlier Tocharians just to their east...

>>11083 The most likely candidate is some form of natural disaster, but that's pure speculation. This article deals with one Tartessian site discovered deeper inland: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tartessos-casas-del-turunuelo It's dated approximately towards the end of the civilization's existence, featuring mass animal sacrifice followed by burying the place. Heavily suggests a society experiencing extreme stress.

>>11078 This is what makes the bronze age so fascinating for me. There are cultures that we know pretty much nothing about, all we found are some pottery shards, bones, and then stuff like huge golden hats, astronomical artifacts, some huge graves with horses and chariots and thats pretty much it. No writings, no images, no clothing, nothing, just these bizarre and mystical things.

>>11094 Even Bronze-age northern Germany features surprises: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollense_valley_battlefield One day, in 1300BC, 4000 men there decided to kill each other. For whom or what, no one has any clue. But the sheer scale shocked archeologists since it was assumed that the whole region was too sparsely populated to allow mustering that many men.

Lots of such places along the med sea probably simply lost importance once they ran out of whatever metal they were mining. That's the issue with bronze age metals. Iron age is different because Iron is abundant. I think in this case the biggest limiting factor is supply of wood for furnaces on top of all other uses wood already had back then.

Damn.

>>11261 I don't think in their case it was ore depletion that did them in. Ephorus' reference to "...much tin carried by river, as well as gold and copper" was at least in part a certain reference to Rio Tinto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_(river) It has been mined for copper and gold long after their disappearance, including by the Romans. In fact, gold and copper were mined there until the 20th century. Tin would have been found more up north out of the bounds of their territory, but there too extraction continued well into the Roman period.

>>11264 The bracelets are very nice too.

Back in bronze age Austrian hallstatt culture had a fetish for wagons. R8.

>>11268 Pretty cool. They almost look like goblins.

>>11268 It is beyond Bernds comprehension how the Hallstatt Culture and others had wagons centuries before Christ, but the Aztecs, Inca, and Maya hadn't even invented the wheel two thousand years after them. Like they didn't just fail to invent it for transportation, they had zero wheels, not even for construction (block and tackle, cranes etc.), making pottery, weaving and such. As if circles were somehow forbidden for religious reasons, like in that science-fiction story whose name I can't recall.

>>11268 Rated pretty metal. Visited a local museum and saw some cool muskets up to WW1 firearms today. From then on, most history presentable for tourists seems to appear hazy... Some painted portraits of later local war heroes were snug in tho, far up and in the edges.

>>11275 Culture of mountains and no cattle, only llamas

>>11275 Mesoamerican civs are the most bizarre ones. Only civ without domesticated animals. The general theory goes that agriculture and sedentary life started out around flood rivers in deserts because these are naturally refertilized. Agriculture outside of such areas always empoverished the soil and eventually vanished. It only became permanent when they started using manure to refertilize the soil. Domesticated animals provided animal protein, manure and draft force, on top of also being used for travel and trade. Mesoamericans started out straight in volcanic soil and managed to survive with just that.

>>11301 > Only civ without domesticated animals I'll take "What are Chihuahua dogs and turkeys" for 400

>>11302 Chihuahuas are useless. Didn't know about turkey.

>>11303 They also had the Xoloitzcuintle and about ten other dog breeds, some of them even used as food.

>>11275 >but the Aztecs, Inca, and Maya hadn't even invented the wheel two thousand years after them. That's factually wrong though. They had wheeled toys, so both the concept and it's potential applicability was known. There simply was no tangible UTILITY for it though.

>>11305 > There simply was no tangible UTILITY for it though. That's very hard to believe since they had to transport a lot of stuff across vast distances (the Inca road system alone stretched across 40.000 kilometers and the Aztec Caminos Reales went all across what is now Mexico), built very large buildings out of heavy stones, had invented paved roads and some of them also posessed draft animals. At least one person across all of Meso- and South America must have thought "Wait a moment, that toy is very easy to move around considering its weight, what if we make something like that but bigger and with more cargo space?" There absolutely must be some other strange aspect we don't know about. Like the theory that these figurines were not actually toys, but sacred items, and therefore wheels were somehow protected or maybe even taboo. Or that they were unable to build wheels large enough to make actually usable carts for some reason. As far as I know all pre-Columbian cultures in the Americas only ever managed to manufacture gold, silver, copper or bronze items up to a specific size. Maybe they simply didn't have anything large and strong enough to hold a larger wheel together over a significant distance. The only place where native ironwork seeems to have been found is in the Pacific Northwest all the way up basically in Canada, and those items are thought to have been created from iron swept over on shipwrecks from Japan only during the 17th century.

>>11304 My parents had a Xolo. I loved him. Such a smart and majestic animal. He had always this attitude of staying above things and was calm.

>>11301 Didn't they have Llamas and Alpacas?

>>11268 Looks like something from Africa.

>>11305 this is some kind of spic test on the conscious of mind. a circular stone is not a flour mill or wagon... lets try again, if they didnt have bronze or iron working, what age were they in?

Let me guess, Muslims ruined it

>>11336 Middle East was a shitfest back then with many wars. So many almost forgotten peoples. That was before muslims.

>>11329 Yes, the were domesticated so early they're not the same species anymore. >Four camelids are recognized in South America today, two wild and two domesticated. The two wild forms, the larger guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and the daintier vicuña (Vicugna vicugna) diverged from a common ancestor some two million years ago. Genetic research indicates that the alpaca (Lama pacos L.), is the domesticated version of the the vicuña; while the llama (Lama glama L) is the domesticated form of the guanaco.>>11329

For me it's Alt Clut

>>11329 >>11339 He specificall said Mesoamerica, which only includes Central America and therefore no llamas and alpacas. I nearly fell for that trap myself.

kek

I didn't want to make a separate thread, so I'm just posting it here. I, for an embarrassing amount of time, thought that Leipzig was spelled Leizipig and pronounced ''lazy pig''. That is all, carry on.

>>11478 U guys worshipped the swamp in bronze age. We did as well. The swamp gives, the swamp takes.