Time Team Special - the boats that made Britain - Brythonic Pirate Race?

over the inquisitive years, I've seen many (almost all) of the Time Team episodes, but not this one. And it's key to the whole WE ARE AN ISLAND RACE i.e. by necessity a nation of boat builders, an invaded place more importantly, an import/export country. Britannia rules the waves, and all that...

NB: dovetail joint for curving prow
This wooden prehistoric boat, discovered in September 1992, is thought to be some 3,000 years old. The boat's excavation was an internationally important archaeological discovery. After seven years of research and conservation, the Dover Boat is back in Dover and proudly on display at the Dover Museum. [source DOVER BRONZE AGE BOAT]

In the following Time Team special, they talk a lot about La Manche (aka the English Channel) being a connection between trading worlds not a barrier between England (Dover) and France (Calais). They mention the Rhein trade route. They mention a link to Spain. But they're loathe to navigate the Pillars of Hercules and discuss the Mediterranean where Enormous War Boats had dominated the bronze-age Trojan/Syrian sea conflicts for centuries.

The (dark skinned, curly haired) Britons that Caesar confronted in AD50 might not be British at all... these bronze-age peoples of the British Isles might indeed have built boats that could get them all the way to what we later called America. If a suitable boat can cross one stretch of sea, etc... Are we a race of People who are not from this Country, or this Locality? A race of Mediterranean war-mongering sea-farers, maybe? All speaking a common Bronze Age language, like Khumric, perhaps? Are our ancestors Mediterranean Pirates or remnants of these ancient Trojan Wars and their expelled Kings?








BOATLY UPDATE: which relates more to sculpture than boating, but you'll soon understand why I've included it. Simon Schama did a series called A History of Britain and in it he was talking about the trade in ancient artefacts from the Britons to the Romans of that 50 BC - 50 AD era. And what did he say? How did it tie in to the whole Coelbren i.e. Khumric people of the Mediterranean? I wonder if he even understood what he was revealing?

"Imagine the Romans looking upon this sculpture and thinking of such as they'd seen in Etruria" click the italicised phrase to be taken to the verbatim Schama quote in the opening episode of A History of Britain. He says reminiscent of... now, the British 'could have' traded for Etruscan art brought over by the Romans, sure. Or, the Etruscans could have brought their AI or Artistic Identity to our green -n- pleasant isle when they arrived in vast numbers of pirate ships in about 500 BC, via the Brutus of Troy legend.

I wonder....

Comments

dognamedblue said…
wish I wasn't dyslexic - there was a good talk about the phoenicians coming out of egypt across the med france spain britain oop north being the vikings (6-kings) tribes of dan onto iceland maybe across to the americas you get the route