\'The myth of Celtic and Roman Britain\'

[authun]

Pytheus was the first to mention trade with the island of britain, in fact, unless this was total fabrication, he was the first recorded person to discuss theexistance of Britian......he never seems to get a mention though. :?

It's probably because Pytheas' circumnavigation and naming of Britain is only available via later writers. Pliny wrote that Dicaearchus did not trust the stories of Pytheas whereas Strabo wrote that Timaeus believed Pytheas' story of the discovery of amber.

Pytheas' naming of Britain comes to us via Strabo, who uses the word Bretannike. Pliny uses the word Britannia. They're not using the same source and are drawing on two different sources. Some interpolation has crept in, so we can't be sure of what word Pytheas used exactly. If Herodotus knew of a place in the west where the tin came from, it does seem likely that Pytheas named it Britain, in one form or another, irrespective of whether or not he actually cirumnavigated it.

What does seem certain however is that even long before Herodotus, mariners sailed to Britain and along the continental north sea coast. One wonders what they called these places. That is of course if one accepts that people from the mediterranean sailed to collect the tin rather than the tin traders sailing from Britain to the mediterranean to sell the tin. That would have some interesting implications for state of boat design in the Bronze Age. The Ferriby boats are early bronze age and some estimates state that the method of construction would allow boats of upto 30m with a cargo carrying capacity of 30 - 50 tons to be constructed. Britain did export tin. The tin in the Nebra disc, as claimed by Pernicka, is supposed to have come from Cornwall, along with the gold, and not from central europe as had previously been thought.

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authun