Roman jewelry found in 5th Century Japanese tomb

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Thread: Roman jewelry found in 5th Century Japanese tomb

Brandy Blue 01:28 06-23-2012

Very cool if true. Of course some Asian goods made it to Rome, so the reverse is not too unplausible.

http://news.yahoo.com/roman-jeweller...163550978.html

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus 01:08 06-27-2012

Originally Posted by Brandy Blue:
Very cool if true. Of course some Asian goods made it to Rome, so the reverse is not too unplausible.

http://news.yahoo.com/roman-jeweller...163550978.html

I confess that my knowledge of Roman Jewelry is quite limited, but I recall that besides the Silk Road there is a theory that after the Partians defeated Crassus' Legions the captured prisoners were sent to China as soldiers based on roughly contemporous reports of "mercenary" units in China.

Although the transfer would have been indirect it's not impossible by any stretch - especially if the goods passed accross Asia over a generation or so, going through different owners.

Brandy Blue 06:10 07-03-2012

I think I heard somewhere about those Roman mercs in China too. I don't know if the evidence is good or not.

Fisherking 17:00 07-03-2012

An easier explanation is that Rome traded regularly with the Indian Sub Continent by land and sea. India traded with China and so on. For a time Rome was also trading directly with China via the silk road.

It is not too surprising that something made its way to Japan.

gaelic cowboy 14:49 07-05-2012

The tomb is 5th century but I bet the jewelery is not, given a long enough time scale you could get any amount of stuff traded all over the place.

wangchang 04:19 07-09-2012

Well I think it confirms what I always thought : people travelled more and farther than we think.

Even more awesome is the theory made by some well known scientists, archeologists, explorers... that some of the early egyptians elite knew that there was another continent out there (america), and that they had long time established contact with the empires out there (the ancestors of the mayan...). But knowledge was lost during the long centuries of massive (really massive) political turmoil in egypt, which lead to some regression in the egyptian advancement (you can't really study when the library is on fire and troops are trying to kill you).
Even if the egyptians were not well known navigators, I don't think it's impossible. I mean, I herd of a guy that crossed the atlantic with juste a raft (and survived). And Columbus boat wasn't impressive either.
So this theory could make some sense, and it could also explain some of the striking similarities between the mayan and the egyptians.

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