The oldest coin available today was discovered in Efesos, an ancient city and prosperous trading center on the coast of Anatolia (Turkey). The 1/6 stater, pictured below, is more than 2,700 years old, making it one of the very earliest coins. Made from electrum, a natural occuring alloy of gold and silver, the coin originated in the area of Lydia.
It had a design on one side only, a result of the primitive method of manufacture. This ancient stater was hand struck. A die with a design (in this case a lion's head) for the obverse (front) of the coin was placed on an anvil. A blank piece of metal was placed on top of the die, and a punch hammered onto the reverse. The result was a coin with an image on one side and a punch mark on the other.
The earliest issues, thought to date from the reign of Alyattes (about 700 - 660 BC) or perhaps his predecessor Sadyattes - both of the Mermnad dynasty - feature the Lydian kings' emblem of a roaring lion, almost always with a curious knob, often called a "nose wart," on its forehead.
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Good thread Mike. I can imagine hundreds of these coins stoled away in some safe deposit box in New York, owned by some ugly ass old Jewish bitch.
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Just as the rulers of the Middle East today have become wealthy from oil, so the ancient Lydian kings became rich by accumulating and minting coins from electrum. The capital city of ancient Lydia was Sardis, and it was a major commercial center linking the Asian kingdoms of the east with the coastal Greek cities of Ionia, including Miletus. It is not an accident that the first coins appeared in the important commercial centers of Lydia and adjacent Ionia, nor that the first system of bimetallic currency - the first system of interrelated gold and silver issues - was also developed there. As the 19th century German historian Ernst R. Curtius wrote, "The Lydians became on land what the Phoenicians were by sea, the mediators between Hellas and Asia."
Scientists discover how and why first coins came to be invented.
Scientists at the British Museum have discovered how and why coins were first made.
The earliest known coins - minted more than 2,600 years ago in what is now Turkey - were invented as a way of guaranteeing an exact balance between gold and silver in a naturally occurring alloy.
The world's first coinmakers had to add varying amounts of silver to the molten alloy called electrum. Up to around 620BC all non-barter commercial transactions were made using weighed quantities of relatively pure scrap silver or scrap gold, but one state - the Kingdom of Lydia in what is now western Turkey - had vast natural reserves of electrum.
However, it had a big problem - the electrum was not of a constant consistency.
The British Museum research - directed by the museum's chief metallurgist, Paul Craddock - reveals how the invention of coins solved this problem. The early coin makers added extra silver to achieve a consistent balance in the electrum of 55 per cent gold to 45 per cent silver. They then put a guarantee stamp on each lump - and the world's first coins were created.
Very quickly electrum coinage began to spread from Lydia to the Greek city-states of what is now the Aegean coast of Turkey. But further afield electrum as a means of exchange never caught on. Using an alloy - and getting people to treat a local Lydian stamp of guarantee - could not compete as a means of exchange against weighed quantities of gold or silver.
Archaeologists believe the Lydians then created the world's first gold refinery - at Sardis, the ancient capital - to improve the quality of the coins. The craftsmen mixed natural electrum dust and salt in a clay pot, then heated the mixture to a relatively constant 750C - 250 degrees below the alloy's melting point. The iron minerals from the clay of the pot reacted with the salt to produce ferric chloride and chlorine gasses, which in turn reacted with the silver in the electrum to form gaseous silver chloride. Using this method, it would have taken up to three days to extract the silver from five kilos of electrum - leaving behind pure gold.
The Lydian electrum from which they made their refined gold came from a river associated with classical mythology's most famous gold-related personality - King Midas.
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In Ancient Greece, the Partheniae or Parthenians (literally “sons of virgins”) are a lower ranking Spartiate population which, according to tradition, left Laconia to go to Magna Graecia and founded Taras, modern Taranto, in the current region of Apulia, in southern Italy.
Re the thread: "The Afro-Turks – The Africans of Turkey".
These poor people, having lost their history, are now prey to their invaders - the Turks - telling them that their presence in THEIR country "Turkey" is the result of them being brought to Turkey as Slaves.
ARE THE REST OF US SO DIFFERENT? How much do WE know?
THE SPARTANS
The Spartiates or Homoioi (Greek "those who are alike") were the males of Spartais known to the spartans as "peers" or "men of equal status". From a young age, male Spartiates were trained for battle and put through grueling challenges intended to craft them into fearless warriors. In battle, they had the reputation of being the best soldiers in Greece, and the strength of Sparta's hoplite forces let the city become the dominant state in Greece throughout most of the Hellenic period. No other City-state would dare to attack Sparta even though it only could muster a force of about 8000 Spartiates during the zenith of its dominance.
"WE" have been told that Greek "Black figure Pottery" is merely an artistic "STYLE" and not an accurate depiction of the people. And just like those poor ignorant Black Anatolians, we have believed it.
Depiction of a pottery kiln on a Corinthian pinax, c. 575/550 B.C.
Oinochoe depicting a hoplite wearing his armour, 550-525 BCE
Tydeus and Ismene on an amphora by the Tydeus Painter, ca. 560 BC
Greek amphora from Attica 515 and 500 B.C.
Heracles and Geryon. Side B from an Attic black-figure amphora, ca. 540 BC. From Vulci.
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