Pre-Greek sea trade with the Black Sea?

[Eleatic Guest]

Was there any substantial sea trade between the Med and the Black Sea before the Greeks? Or were Greeks ships the first to overcome the northern winds and strong surface currents which dominate the Bosporus and make a passage into the Black Sea so difficult? Both histories on the Black Sea I consulted begins with the feat of the Argonauts as if there was nothing comparable before.

It seems like the Greeks should get the credit for opening up the Black Sea to Mediterranean sea trade and thus connecting it to the ancient international sea lanes. If correct, this would be an epochal step in the history of navigation which has not been sufficiently appreciated.

[Epictetus]

I don't know about "substantial," but evidently such trade goes way back. The University of Pennsylvania has (had?) a program called the Black Sea Trade Project. Here's a little publication from it, with this pertinent quote:

These finds seem to indicate that the Black Sea already functioned as a crossroads of the ancient world by the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.

[Eleatic Guest]

publication

I have to say the quoted text, along with the rest of the article, does not weaken my hypothesis. The cross-trade it mentions seems to refer to intra-Black Sea trade, but not to the shipping of goods from the Black Sea to the Aegean, let alone in the other direction (which is much more difficult).

[Epictetus]

Well, I don't know. The publication is simply an overview, but it gives hints of Pre-Greek trade. It talks about trade routes from Sinope into the Bosphorus and Bronze Age pottery finds similar to those from the Troas.

I guess it depends exactly when is "before the Greeks" and what exactly is "substantial trade."

Perhaps some of those works cited could be of help?

[Eleatic Guest]

Certainly, it's only an overview but, as the other references I read, it is suspiciously diffuse about trade through the Bosporus:

West from Sinop, the trade routes would have led to the Bosporus and the maritime outlet to the Aegean and Mediterranean seas , as well as to the rich Balkan coast of the Black Sea

So no more than a possibility. And the Sinope evidence is no more clear in this respect:

The shipwrecks that we have found so far date to the Roman and Byzantine periods (Ballard, Hiebert, et al. 2001). However. it is likely that much older ships will also be found. In our recent excavations beneath the Hellenistic walls of the citadel of Sinop town, we found evidence of Bronze Age building levels , suggesting that seafaring was important thousands of years earlier than the Byzantine shipwreck that we found in this last year's survey.

Neither Charles King's The Black Sea: a history nor The Cambridge Ancient History have anything explicit to say about seafarers venturing through the Hellespont and Bosporus before the Argonauts and Greek colonists did. Minoan, Mycenaean, Phoenician evidence? Absent.

I am beginning to think this is a hot track. It were only the Greeks who connected the Black Sea to the Med, thereby opening it up for international trade. Who wants to take a bet? :mrgreen:

[Eleatic Guest]

Just got a good hint from an article on Troy. It says that during the Bronze Age ships could not beat against the wind, so they had to wait in Troy's harbour for the favourable, but much less frequent southernly winds. This theory has the beauty of explaining both Troy's exceptional economic and geopolitical importance and also giving due weight to the technological limitations of Bronze Age sailing ships.

So, my theory above would need to be modified to the effect that, while sea traffic occurred earlier between the two seas, it were only the Greeks who had sufficiently advanced sailing technology to transverse the Bosporus without the delay imposed on earlier seafaring cultures. The Athenian grain transports of the 5th century BC come to my mind which certainly would have been only effective if the route was safe and secure and convoys would arrive on time.