Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

Whatever the significance of this coin found is, I find it extremely faszinating how many archeological finds turn up in recent years which show how much "globalization" existed in ancient times. Even without direct long distance connections, trade connected most human societies.

But also individuals seem to have travelled further, than one would imagine in absence of travel infrastructure. It has been known for long time how the vikings traded with the mediterranean, but recent findings about stonehenge show, how big the sphere of contribution was.

For all societies which had ocean-going ships doing off-costal travels, I would expect them to have occasionally travelled much further, than most history-writing accounts for. Besides the known viking settlements off the American coast, it would actually be quite surprising, if not a few ships had reached the mainland. So I would not be surprised about any artefacts being found in America, pointing at pre-columbian contacts.

Inevitably I am unfamiliar with the vast majority of the historical literature. However, the historiography of late antiquity and the early middle ages features very much debate as to how much people travelled; the possibility of travel is always entertained.

As for Stonehenge, I am unaware of any substantial connexion with the Vikings. I am aware of recent findings concerning the DNA of those who built it, but the raid on Lindisfarne is separated by at least a millennium from the latest posited dates of construction of Stonehenge.

The monographs I have read concerning Byzantium do not refer to the Vikings particularly frequently. This is unsurprising. The Vikings were important, but not sufficiently important to merit repeated and deliberate reference without some other obvious justification.

> than most history-writing accounts for

Historical accounts are necessarily a subset of actual history. Just like the fossil record is necessarily a subset of the actual flora and fauna.

I'm sure there's an awful lot of important stuff we don't know about history, just because nobody bothered to write it down, or their manuscripts got lost.

Nobody knows whether King Arthur existed or not, for example.

Yes, the known history is neccessarily a subset of the actual one - but I think we often don't imagine how large the gap is and also often make the mistake of assuming that this gap is smaller than it is. Consequentely, our "models" of ancient societies or the biology of the dinosaurs are far too limited.

I think one reason for us not understanding this gap well is the way history is taught. We learn about the earliest civilizations. We assume that we know a comparable amount from later periods in other regions about other civilizations, but we often don't. In Europe we have a wealth of information about ancient Greece and the Roman Republic, but we know relatively little in comparison about Scandinavia even hundreds of years later.

I was with you until you mentioned King Arthur. We might as well wonder if Gilgamesh and Beowulf were real people, at that point - at least they were local tales.

King Arthur is illustrative of the yawning gap in our knowledge of British history after the Romans left, because nobody there at the time seems to have written anything down.

I understand, but my point is that it's not even a local legend - it's a French story written for French audiences, mostly for entertainment purposes, so there is no point considering it in a historical context. It's like wondering whether Othello was a real Venetian general.

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