Dec 16, 2020 01:30 AM
The Dead Cities
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/12/th...ies/136473
INTRO: The Dead Cities, also called the “Forgotten Cities,” are a series of ancient towns, monuments, and settlements located in North-Western Syria on the Aleppo plateau. The Dead Cities consists of over 40 largely preserved settlements and around 700 lesser sites, founded between the 1st and 7th century AD during Late antiquity in the Roman and Byzantine periods (a period of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages)... (MORE - images)
Unearthed: The dawn of counterfeit "dirty money"
https://www.livescience.com/ancient-egyp...money.html
EXCERPTS: A shortage of silver caused by the collapse of leading Bronze Age civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean about 1200 B.C. resulted in the original "dirty money" — several hundreds of years before coins had been invented.
[...] In eight of the hoards — dating from the time of the "Late Bronze Age collapse," when the region's most powerful kingdoms suffered often-violent demises — had been deliberately debased, with cheaper alloys of copper substituted for much of the silver and an outer surface that looked like pure silver.
Because the hoards date back to the time when the region, then known as Canaan, was ruled by ancient Egypt, the researchers think this deception originated with the Egyptian rulers, possibly to disguise the fact that their supplies of the precious silver widely used as currency were failing. [...] the nearby kingdoms started collapsing between about 1200 and 1150 B.C. "There was a shortage of silver, probably related to the Late Bronze Age collapse ... [Counterfeiting] continued after the Egyptians left Canaan, but they were probably the ones who initiated it."
[...] The ancient practice of cutting into silver ingots also appears at around the same time, and it may have been a way to check if the ingots were silver all the way through and not copper at their cores... Almost three centuries later, as new powers like the Neo-Assyrians, Persians and Greek colonies started to take control of the region, the raw silver used as currency regained its purity, according to the study.
[...] The reasons for the Late Bronze Age collapse about 3,200 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean are hotly debated. Economic disruptions, droughts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and piracy have all been blamed for the sudden end of many powerful kingdoms in the region... (MORE - details)
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/12/th...ies/136473
INTRO: The Dead Cities, also called the “Forgotten Cities,” are a series of ancient towns, monuments, and settlements located in North-Western Syria on the Aleppo plateau. The Dead Cities consists of over 40 largely preserved settlements and around 700 lesser sites, founded between the 1st and 7th century AD during Late antiquity in the Roman and Byzantine periods (a period of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages)... (MORE - images)
Unearthed: The dawn of counterfeit "dirty money"
https://www.livescience.com/ancient-egyp...money.html
EXCERPTS: A shortage of silver caused by the collapse of leading Bronze Age civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean about 1200 B.C. resulted in the original "dirty money" — several hundreds of years before coins had been invented.
[...] In eight of the hoards — dating from the time of the "Late Bronze Age collapse," when the region's most powerful kingdoms suffered often-violent demises — had been deliberately debased, with cheaper alloys of copper substituted for much of the silver and an outer surface that looked like pure silver.
Because the hoards date back to the time when the region, then known as Canaan, was ruled by ancient Egypt, the researchers think this deception originated with the Egyptian rulers, possibly to disguise the fact that their supplies of the precious silver widely used as currency were failing. [...] the nearby kingdoms started collapsing between about 1200 and 1150 B.C. "There was a shortage of silver, probably related to the Late Bronze Age collapse ... [Counterfeiting] continued after the Egyptians left Canaan, but they were probably the ones who initiated it."
[...] The ancient practice of cutting into silver ingots also appears at around the same time, and it may have been a way to check if the ingots were silver all the way through and not copper at their cores... Almost three centuries later, as new powers like the Neo-Assyrians, Persians and Greek colonies started to take control of the region, the raw silver used as currency regained its purity, according to the study.
[...] The reasons for the Late Bronze Age collapse about 3,200 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean are hotly debated. Economic disruptions, droughts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and piracy have all been blamed for the sudden end of many powerful kingdoms in the region... (MORE - details)