Page 277 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

o B.C.j
dreamt of their first voyage, and the young men resting between
voyages would gather round at a respectful distance as the old

men sat out by the boathouses on the long summer evenings, and
listen to the wide-ranging reminiscences—of the mighty queen of
Egypt, and of the chariots of Thothmes striking out into the Syr­
ian desert, of the great pillars of Britanny and the dolmen tombs

of Spain, of the white palaces of Knossos rising above the blue
Mediterranean, and of the embattled stronghold of Troy, of the
pirate nests of the Greek mainland and the fabulous amber route
along the rivers and through the forests and mountains of cen­

tral Europe. They had lived a rich life, these travelers of the mid­
dle of the millennium, and many were the pictures they carved
on the rocks above the valley, as thank-offerings to the gods who
had guided and protected them. And as the sun sloped slowly

down for its brief rest behind the northern hills, the old men
would wander up the valley to gaze once more on the picture
book of the rocks, where forever the great fleets they had carved
in their youth sailed onward over a calm sea of memory.

This chapter is fiction—as any account which attempts to

show the cutters of the Scandinavian rock carvings as personal­
ized individuals must be. But the background is authentic
enough. Not merely were Europe and the Middle East as here
portrayed in the middle years of the millennium, but they had in
truth the trade connections here described—and we have the

trade goods to prove it. Admittedly trade goods can pass through
many hands, and the presence of Baltic amber in Crete or Egyp­
tian faience beads in England does not necessitate the presence

of Scandinavians in Knossos or Egyptians in Wiltshire. But the
tendency must always be towards a progressive elimination of
middlemen; and in fact the archaeological evidence shows con­
tinuous contact between northern and western Europe and the

Mediterranean since before 2000 b.c., the authenticated occur­
rences of trade goods rising to a statistical climax in the period

1500—1475 b.c. It is therefore no revolutionary hypothesis, but
rather in agreement with the view of many distinguished archae­

ologists, to suggest that Swedish ships and sailors were not un­
known in the Mediterranean at the period of this chapter.