Tartessos? Help me defend Schulten's theories!

[Jay Bee]

Since our Tartessian debate has run out of fuel, we (both you and I) are just debating for the sake of it, uh Fiera? Most of what you've answered up there misinterprets my previous comments. But if I refute them, you will re-refute, etc, etc and we could go on an on for ever. Swiftly: it's not a matter of trust, trust is subjective, demonstrable facts are not. Any plans on getting into investigative journalism?

[Harlan]

Jesus,
I'm in a bit of a rush, so lets just say for now that we're in complete agreement .

[Jay Bee]

Ufff, glad to hear that Fiera and I do not disagree as much as it would seem at a first glance, it's just that we both like to get into neverending discussions from time to time

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by Jay Bee
About the Canaries, as I said to Fiera, this is another ancient mystery. The existence of strong currents surrounding the archipelago make it almost impossible to reach them from the coast just with a log. The Guanches did really have no clue about navigation. No contact had been made between tribes from different islands. Of course I am talking about the natives the Europeans found in the XIV century. How or why this knowledge was lost? Who knows.

Allow le Marquis to jump in to clarify yet another aside!

How can remote island dwellers possibly have no knowledge or even understanding of navigation? It sounds paradoxical, but there is anecdotal evidence! The Maori were among the peoples who spread across the Pacific. This obviously required very skilled navigators. Anyway, one group of Maori settled a remote island southeast of New Zealand - hundreds of miles from the nearest land. About 500 years later (19th century), the Maori went to the island in conquest. Same people, different historical paths. The cousins on the island (I forget its name) were primitive - no boats, crude tools, etc.

It turns out they regressed due to circumstance. Basically, no need to use navigation led to its loss. The island provided a self-sufficient existence, so trade with the main islands was not necessary. Navigation required knowledge of how to track stars across time. As with any practical knowledge, disuse leads to loss of a skill. If the chain of teaching is broken, it'd take generations to rebuild. With no need to do so, or no awareness of how it used to be done, this may simply never occur.

This could easily happen if the original group of people settling the Canaries relied on few individuals possessing knowledge that did not get passed on.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by Jay Bee
My point has always been that no ruins of the Tartessian capital have not been found and that casts obvious doubt as to the real existence of such a city. Isn't that logical? That for you is a tagential point in this discussion. ...

Yes, this is where your opinions diverge. But, no, not finding the city does not cast doubt on whether it existed or not. See my post about how historians reconstruct the past. A bad analagy - at a crime scene there are bullets, a shell case, incriminating hearsay, and a dead guy. It's enough to conclude there is a gun missing, despite absolutely no trace of the weapon. All the evidence points to there having been a centralized government in Tartessa. Where or how populous or important is unknown, yet its existence cannot be doubted. You are right, however, that the conjecture about what this government was, or anything about the size or grandeur of the city, cannot be accepted as truth... As you state later:

Originally posted by Jay Bee
What I have kept stressing to obviously no avail, is that without a Tartessos city, the claim that the political system in Tartessos was a highly-centralized kingdom cannot be verified. If a Tartessos City never existed, then the name of Tartessos may well come from a geographical landmark, and thus equating a Tartessian kingdom with the culture that fluorished in a Tartessian geographical location is wrong.

It seems your divergence of opinion is that Harlan argues what I just explained - did it exist, yes or no; JB asks what existed. In essence, JB is denying that what Harlan accepts as conjecture is truth. Two sides of the same coin, methinks...

[Harlan]

"without a Tartessos city, the claim that the political system in Tartessos was a highly-centralized kingdom cannot be verified."

Jesus, I think we still may disagree on this one. I don't see "Tartessos city" as being that essential to determining the political status of Tartessos. Look at the other nearby political entities of the time. What was the capital / main city of Etruscia? No capital, no one dominant city. How about for the early Greeks? No capital, no one dominant city. How about the Phoenicians prior to the rise of Carthage about 500 BC? No capital, no one dominant city. Yet all those were politically unified to various degrees (the Greeks obviously the loosest, though they rallied together admirably against the Persians in the late 400s BC).

Anyways, if one did find some big Tartessian city ruins tomorrow, how could one know that was the capital or what its significance was? Alternately, the capital and/or main city might already be discovered and yet we don't know it. It seems there's a large school of opinion who believe the Huelva ruins are it. In my opinion, the best we can hope for to settle these issues definitively is to find more Tartessian language samples, and translate them. Whether one can verify if Tartessos was "highly centralized" without this written evidence depends on your definition of highly centralized.

Fiera,
I think the reason I personally don't entirely trust Schulten is because he's thrown out some ideas that may be good ideas, but have no archeological backing. I'm thinking in particular of the Lydian and Minoan connections to Tartessos. These may well be true to a greater or lesser degree, but AFAIK not enough factual backing to move them beyond the realm of speculation, at least yet.

Marquis,
I actually was going to post a very similar yet different example from Polynesia of people losing their naval technology. This is a common enough phenomenon in nature, where island populations "regress" in their development, cos you jettison what you don't need.

I'm afraid though I didn't catch the meaning of this part - can you rephrase:

"It seems your divergence of opinion is that Harlan argues what I just explained - did it exist, yes or no; JB asks what existed. In essence, JB is denying that what Harlan accepts as conjecture is truth. Two sides of the same coin"

[Jay Bee]

Marquis,

Following your example, what if there is witnesses but not corpse or other physical evidence?

Harlan,

I do not think I understood your analogies. No capital, no dominant city but still a political union to a more or less degree. Had not we agreed on that already? We do not know for sure whether Argantonio was the ruler of all the Tartessian lands or just a local chieftain/viceroy. If the ruins of a big city were to be found, at least we could say there was a dominant city, which would clearly suggest the existence of a dominant political figure. Of course I agree that the significance of the findings depends on what exactly was to be found. In the end at least I seem to perceive that you accept now that there is lots of speculation revolving around Tartessos. I am not sure this was your stance when you first joined the thread.

Your definition about the Schulten is exactly like mine, only that you phrased it much more objetively than me. What puzzles me however that you buy the theory that there was a Tartessos destruction war.

[Harlan]

Now suddenly I'm becoming more skeptical than you! Large city does not always equal dominant city - just look at ancient Greece, where the dominant city shifted from city to city down the decades, and population was only one factor involved. Sparta was dang tiny (more of a village, really) and yet the dominant city for quite a time, for instance.

I think I came into this thread from a completely different place than everyone else here - I'd heard much about the Tartessos controversy, but I'd never even heard of Schulten! I've done a good amount of data gathering on Tartessos since, and his name still has hardly come up at all in the things I've read. Maybe he's much more known in the Spanish language.[/quote]

I wouldn't say I completely "buy" that theory. But in the scenario I have to go with something, and given the ancient Greeks mention that and thus its not just an idle Schulten musing, I would give it the better than 50/50 rating.[/quote]


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EDIT. I am so sorry Harlan I pressed 'edit' instead of 'reply with quote' and thus edited your post. Fortunately I managed to recover it almost completely. Sorry again The regulars of this forum are already used to my slopiness

[Jay Bee]

Now suddenly I'm becoming more skeptical than you! Large city does not always equal dominant city - just look at ancient Greece, where the dominant city shifted from city to city down the decades, and population was only one factor involved. Sparta was dang tiny (more of a village, really) and yet the dominant city for quite a time, for instance.

he, he, yes, you definitely are coming to the skeptical side. That is not what the ancient texts suggest for Tartessos

I think I came into this thread from a completely different place than everyone else here - I'd heard much about the Tartessos controversy, but I'd never even heard of Schulten! I've done a good amount of data gathering on Tartessos since, and his name still has hardly come up at all in the things I've read. Maybe he's much more known in the Spanish language.

I could give you a very cogent reason why, but Fiera would not like it Despite that, no one can deny that Schulten was the pioneer. Misguided or not, without him we would not not what we know today about the Tartessian cultural ambit.

I wouldn't say I completely "buy" that theory. But in the scenario I have to go with something, and given the ancient Greeks mention that and thus its not just an idle Schulten musing, I would give it the better than 50/50 rating.

Still puzzled. This is one particular point where all the sources I have consulted definitely agree on, and the agreement is that the splendor of Tartessos came to an end due to economical reasons (I'm talking about books written by scholars, not encyclopaedias). Anyway, this is another of those matters of faith I guess

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by Jay Bee
Marquis,
Following your example, what if there is witnesses but not corpse or other physical evidence?

Then its existence would not be proven, of course. But in the case of Tartessos (if what I've learned in this thread is true, anyway), there is archaeological evidence. Without that, it would just be another legend.

Originally posted by Marquis
It seems your divergence of opinion is that Harlan argues what I just explained - did it exist, yes or no; JB asks what existed. In essence, JB is denying that what Harlan accepts as conjecture is truth. Two sides of the same coin, methinks...

Harlan, you want some clarification on this. It seems that you are arguing about whether or not we can accept that Tartessos really did exist. You do, and also happen to accept some historical reconstruction based on other clues.
JB argues that anything beyond its existence is either guesswork or suggested. He rejects accepting what Tartessos is guessed to have been like - not that its existence is unacceptable. But without anything beyond the yes/no of Tartessos existing, the "truth" ends there.
Basically, you seem to be arguing about two different aspects of the same topic. You are trying to convince him of something he already believes. BUT - you say 'based on this inferred evidence, Tartessos was real.' He says 'Tartessos was real, but I want proof that the inferred evidence is correct.'
I hope that didn't just make it more confusing...

[Harlan]

Jay Bee,
I thought the ancient writers were generally quite coy about Tartessos city as such. As you've said before, when they say Tartessos its often quite unclear if they're talking about a city, a kingdom, a region, or what. Maybe it was Schulten who started to make a big deal about finding Tartessos City, and now you've been caught up into his mindset.

Also, if you have information about an economic decline theory for Tartessos, please present it. Of course military and economic theories may not be mutually exclusive, and chances are a big economic change would have military effects, and vice versa.

Marquis,
Thanks for the clarification.

[Fiera]

Since I've been out of the discussion for a while, there are several things that I would like to reply to before than this, but just for a quick clarification...

Originally posted by Harlan
I thought the ancient writers were generally quite coy about Tartessos city as such. As you've said before, when they say Tartessos its often quite unclear if they're talking about a city, a kingdom, a region, or what. Maybe it was Schulten who started to make a big deal about finding Tartessos City, and now you've been caught up into his mindset.

There are descriptions of the City of Tartessos, as such, in several ancient authors, Avienus being the most prominent.

All of these authors point out that Tartessos (the city) was located in an island in the Tartessos (Guadalquivir) river. Avienus also said that it took five days to make the journey from Tartessos to Mainaké (located at today's Málaga).

[Fiera]

Originally posted by Jay Bee
Swiftly: it's not a matter of trust, trust is subjective, demonstrable facts are not.

Right, "trust" was a bad word choice. However, are you sure you are not putting Schulten and ancient texts under a subjective (read: biased) judgement? Again, I want to let everybody here about the fact that, after Schliemman's Troy unveiling, it was proved that the Ilium had given surprinsingly accurate descriptions, but no one had taken them seriously before!

Any plans on getting into investigative journalism?

He, he, as a matter of a fact, I've got plans on getting into historical research and essay writing.