Ferrous metals are generally any metal containing Iron, found about everywhere, and about as commnon as dirt. It’s a very basic metal, such as pure iron, or processed steel.

The noble metals are those which resist corrosion, such as gold, platinum, or silver.

Precious metals are those which are rare, and therefore quite expensive. Some of these include gold, silver, platinum and palladium.

Let’s see… Cobalt output for the Democratic Republic of Congo was huge in 2011. I don’t have the numbers. Other high producers include Russia, Cuba, Canada, Brazil and parts of Africa. The lower producers were Australia, New Caledonia, Indonesia, China, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Titanium can be found just about everywhere, is processed all over the place, but the majority appears to come from China.

Cobalt and titanium are requirements for rockets and high-performance jets.

I’m just throwing out some ideas.

I recall there was an argument made, way back in the 70’s, that the next war would be a desert war, but one directed at embargoes on international mineral deposit operations, basically for fighter engine parts and such.

I had the midwatch at the helm, everyone else was asleep except the Captain, who had gotten up to call ahead and check conditions at the entrance to Morro Bay. There is a shallow bar at the harbor entrance there that can be extremely dangerous when the seas approach from certain directions. Lots of fishing boats and yachts had been lost in the breaking surf there. I was at the helm, alternating my gaze from the dimly glowing compass binnacle to the flash of the lighthouse marking the harbor entrance miles ahead. We were under power, sails furled, and the sea was flat and smooth, the sky overcast. I was struggling to stay awake by drinking stale thermos coffee and chain smoking cigarettes.

The music seemed to come from nowhere, a men’s choir singing the most beautiful song I had ever heard. It was something like a Gregorian chant, yet different, but there was no mistaking its power or its beauty. I have never heard music that wonderful ever, before or since. At first I wondered why the skipper would want to wake up the crew by playing a tape at this ungodly hour, the ghostly choir was so loud, surely everyone below was up by now. But no, the skipper was on deck, puttering about, and there was no sign of light or life from the cabin. And the skipper seemed to pay no notice to the music. I looked around, perhaps there was another boat nearby playing its stereo too loud. No, we were alone. But the bold voices went on, loud and breathtakingly beautiful. I never wanted it to stop.

And then, just as suddenly, the spooky music faded gradually to merge with the rumble of the diesel, the gurgle of the water, the slapping of the halyards against the mast. In a moment it was gone, and soon even the memory of the melody vanished, as does a dream. The skipper offered to relieve me at the helm, and I went below and crashed, wondering just what I had heard. An auditory hallucination, of course, provoked by fatigue and the monotonous rocking of the boat, the throbbing of the engine, and concentration on the glow of the compass and the flash of the lighthouse. I was reminded of the old Cream tune, Tales of Brave Ulysses… “How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing…”.

By the time I awoke the next morning we were tied up and the crew was getting ready to go out for a proper, hot sit-down breakfast. I brought up the little episode of the previous night and my shipmates were ready with answers, there was even a West Coast sailor’s term for it, “The boat fairies”. Fatigue and cold and monotonous watches led to self-hypnosis. It was not uncommon for yachtsmen, particularly solo sailors, to see and hear all sorts of creepy things out on the water. Everyone had a story.

Maybe. I took a stroll after breakfast to the quaint little town of Morro Bay. I found a monument there to sailors that had been lost on the harbor entrance bar when the big Pacific rollers hit it just right. Written down were the names of the mariners who had drowned there; by their names, I could see sometimes whole families at a time had perished. I paused for a moment and silently payed my respects.

Anyway, a very good read. The “Tales of Brave Ulysses” link is not iPhone compatable, so it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

As far as ancient history is conserned, we continue to dig up more and more. This will, of course, eventually die out, as we spread across the globe and trample evidence to dust, with new condos and new roads being built everywhere…

I have a question, though. I love the sea, but have never experienced the songs. I was wondering if their source had ever been traced to whales. My reading of them makes me believe they are.

Well, my thumb’s tired.

Thanx for the exchange, ER.

Like ancient Aesop and his many fables.

Just loving the classics.

Cheers to all here.

Gotta go.

You can browse around there for the following episodes.

We know from archaeological evidence that there was a Troy that commanded the strategic entrance to the Bosphorus for over a thousand years. This city was destroyed and rebuilt multiple times during the Bronze Age, because its location on the trade route into the Black Sea was so important.

The war mentioned by Homer coincides with one of these sieges, and appears to have been the result of Mycenaen maritime challenge to the Persian (Or Hittite, I’m not sure) Empire, of which Troy was a vassal state. In fact, I recall reading somewhere that diplomatic messages in cuneiform from Troy’s king to his boss in Turkey, appealing for help and reinforcements, have actually been found.

So the war probably was fought, but we don’t really know how long it lasted, or who specifically was involved, or even which war we are talking about. But all those Greek personalities and locations mentioned in Homer were not involved. Those people, the Achaeans, did not exist at the time, they were a successor civilization that replaced the Mycenaens, one which developed its own alphabet from Phoenician script much later. The Minoan/Mycenaen culture used a script called Linear Cretan B, which has only recently been deciphered. The Trojans and their Asiatic lords communicated in cuneiform.

Those stories are all very old, and haven been passed down from antiquity, changing a great deal in the process, until they were adopted by the Greeks as their own. The poetry was sung until the Greeks acquired the alphabet, when it was written down, after which a long period of editing and modification started until the current “canonical form” finally evolved, probably around 800 or 900 BC.

Needless to say, there is a lot of disagreement and controversy among scholars, both contemporary and ancient, as to the details. And remember, much of that controversy and the supporting documents did not survive our own Dark Ages. Much of the myths and legends of Troy that were available in Classical times are no longer around, survive only as brief quotations or references in other works and only Homer survives pretty much intact.

From this enormous puzzle arise numerous interpretations (even ancient Greek and Roman scholars had debates like the one we’re having right now!) I’ve heard all sorts of versions, one being that The Iliad describes a conflict that occured along the shores of the Baltic in prehistory and that the story somehow was transplanted to the Mediterranean. Another is the theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman, specifically, Nausikaa. Needless to say, these theories all sound very convincing, even though they are often contradictory and self-excluding. And then and again, a little factoid falls into place. The Iliad mentions that Odysseus wore a helmet made of boar’s tusks, and modern scholars couldn’t figure out just how they could be fashioned into headgear…until…a helmet just like the one described was found in a grave in modern day Turkey.

We’ll probably never know the whole story, at best we can eliminate some of the more obvious errors in our understanding. This is why I have proceeded in these notes from memory, rather than plunging into researching the internet trying to reconcile hundreds, even thousands of of conflicting theories and opinions.

What I take away from all this is that story survived, that it gives a blurry but very real glimpse into our Bronze Age past, and to the human drama and history that our ancestors revered and that affected and molded their own lives. It also tells us how similar documents, like the Old Testatment, also contain great wisdom, such as philosophy, history, religion, poetry, literature, but that they should not be taken too literally. There is a truth more important than dates and places and names.

I like to think instead of how the two major fountainheads of Western Civilization dealt with the problem of truth. The ancient Hebrews told of how God forbad Man to taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and that when he (and she) did so, it was the origin of all evil, sin and tribulation.

The Greek myth was very different. Odysseus has his men lash him to the mast of his ship so he can hear for himself the horrible sound of the Truth. “The Tales of Brave Ulysses…how his naked ears were tortured by the siren’s sweetly singing.”

I may be wrong, but I prefer to believe this refers to an actual incident, something that ocurred to a sailor thousands of years ago. I believe it because I too have heard the Sirens’ song from the deck of a small boat far out at sea. And once you’ve heard them singing for yourself, everything else falls right into place.

[youtube id="ekeIIyj8_2A" /]

You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.

And the colours of the sea bind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses,
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.

And you see a girl’s brown body dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.

The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses, how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.

The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekeIIyj8_2A

Quick, sporadic research here…

No, not a queen of Athens, sorry about that. She was Spartan, through and through.

It is believed that Troy was involved in anywhere from 2, to as many as 6 great wars that nearly destroyed the city. It seems the last one may have been the one that succeeded.

“Ancient Greek historians variously placed the Trojan War in the 12th, 13th, or 14th centuries BC: Eratosthenes to 1184 BC, Herodotus to 1250 BC, Duris of Samos to 1334 BC (www.wikipedia.org).”

Our great Homer (c. 800BCE) chose c. 1200BCE for supposedly his Iliad. I say supposedly because the Iliad is in fact an unsigned work. He — or whomever — professed to tell a story of historic value, but doubtless embellished quite a bit.

BTW:
“Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years (www.wikipedia.org).”

That’s 70 centuries of recorded history, or since approx. 6800BCE, well before the Bronze Age and into Mid-Stone Age.

Sparta became the dominant military power c. 600BCE, but was a militant community well before this, as far back as Homer (c. 800BCE, Late Iron Age), and likely further, possibly as long ago as 1200BCE (Early Iron Age).

According to Greek mythology, Helen of Troy was the daughter of the god Zeus and the mortal Leda. According to lore, she was considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War (the face that launched a thousand ships).

Her sister, Clytemnestra, was wife to King Agamemnon of ancient Mycenae (a city-state founded by Perseus, a son of Zeus and grandfather to the mighty Herikles). She is reported to have killed Agamemnon upon his return home from the war, as he had supposedly sacrificed their daughter to entice the wind spirits that took the fleet to Troy.

Written, the name Helen was unheard of until the time of Homer, when it first appeared in verse. I believe it is also the oldest woman’s name that has been in contiguous use since it first appeared. Helen of Troy, also known as Helen of Sparta and wife to King Menelaus of Sparta, was courted by many suitors in her youth, and great names of mythology are generally associated with hers, including Ajax and Odysseus. According to the Iliad, Odysseus accompanied Menelaus to Troy to attempt a more diplomatic settlement to the coming war, but failed. Dunno how true this could be, considering the distance involved, and the 10 years such a journey was said to have taken.

The fleet that attacked Troy was possibly on horseback, coming across Thrace and down through the Dardanels. Other reports are of foot soldiers trudging the same path, but most agree it to have been the most glorious fleet of fighting ships the world had ever seen, sailing straight across to Troy. The count was perhaps more than 1000 war vessels.

Interestingly enough, I believe the Iliad stated it took approx. 10 years to get to Troy, and another 10 years to bring down the city, with Odysseus taking yet another 10 years in his arduous odyssey home to his waiting Penelope and their son, Telemachus — as well as his faithful hunting dog… Navigation by stars was either in its very early stages, or utterly unknown. As I recall, I believe this 30-something dog finally died, upon seeing his master again. Well, upon his return, Odysseus was said to have killed his faithful wife’s suitors, purging his home of them by fire, and returned his kingdom to prosperity (AKA, they lived happily ever after).

As a footnote, we also have the first recorded draft dodgers:
Not wishing to miss the planting season, Odysseus feigned madness, sowing his fields with salt, and it seems Achilles’ mother disguised her eldest son as a woman, so he would not have to go to war. They went.

Some of the royalties involved in the Trojan War were:

Greek:
King Menelaus of Sparta (brother to Agamemnon of Mycenae)
King Odysseus of Ithaca
Queen Penelope of Ithaca (being Odysseus’ supportive wife)
King Agamemnon “the Lion” of Mycenae (brother to Menelaus of Sparta)
King Nestor of Pylos
Prince Mygdalion of Cyprus
Prince Idomeneus of Mycenae led the Cretan contingent
15-year-old Prince Achilles (later king of Myrmidon)
King Phoenix of Myrmidon (guardian to Achilles)

Trojan:
King Priam of Troy
Queen Hekabe of Troy (Priam’s wife)
Prince Hektor of Troy
Princess Andromache of Troy (Hektor’s wife)
Prince Paris of Troy (the crux of the matter)
Prince Polites of Troy
Prince Aeneas (a son of Aphrodite) of Dardania (north of Troy)
King Sarpedon of Lycia
The barbaric Carians
King Helikaon of The Seven Hills (in Italy, possibly the region now held by Rome)
Princess Andromache of Thebe (under Plakos, a city-state south of Troy)

Whether Helen was actually abducted, or merely found the stories told by visiting Paris, who was so handsome, btw, of the wealth of Troy and the nearby growing Hittite empire more enchanting than life with her totalitarian, military-minded husband, and therefore simply wishing to improve her political station in the world, remain in academic debate. The only facts we have for certain are that she was raised a Spartan and was therefore likely quite ambitious, and that Troy, and the Iliad, both existed, and this glorious city is now found to have been destroyed. Now whether this final destruction was by war, or by an ill-fated natural cataclysm, as with the ancient kingdoms of Knossos and Minos (today’s Crete) are unknown.

A lot of this is from my personal book-notes over the years, but is relatively accurate. …And there’s a lot more out there, with names and places by the boat-load, but that’s it from me.

Cheers.

Remember when Mauser thoroughly updated and perfected the bolt action for the military rifle? Not only did they sell every potential enemy nation in Europe the mechanism, they also sold off the manufacturing licensing rights so other countries could learn to mass produce Mauser bolt actions on their own.

Closer to home, one firm I worked for sold a fully configured image processing system (dedicated hardware and software) to the Red Chinese, thereby jump-starting the image processing/remote sensing industry and technology in that country.

Oh sure, they didn’t get any real secrets, everything they received was available in other countries, either because we had already sold it to our allies, or because they or the USSR had developed it on their own. But selling them a fully functional system with data, manuals, installation services and training, not to mention service, maintenance and update contracts, allowed them to immediately come up to full capability in a vital intelligence and reconaissance field without slowly and laboriously building up the human and technological infrastructure from scratch. I estimate we saved them ten years of development and engineering time.

Even so, much of the tech we sold them was considered “sensitive” in those days, both hardware and software, so it was necessary to get waivers from the government to sell the Chicoms a lot of this stuff. That proved no problem, we lobbied the Reagan administration and they were very cooperative. Everything was strictly legal, and aboveboard, and I’m sure it did wonders for our balance of trade figures. Still, it was essential to get those waivers, dot the i’s and cross the t’s, if for no other reason than “to keep the Democrats in Congress from making political hay out of it”. Also, we wanted to sell it to them before the French could sell them their IP tech. With their SPOT system, they were our big competitors.

So the Red Chinese didn’t get our latest hardware platforms, or some of our newest classified code and intelligence IP algorithms. But they did get a fully functional, fully factory-supported system they could reverse-engineer, quickly bring up to date and even improve. After all. There is no denying they are a clever people. They paid a premium price, but they saved themselves the time and expense of all the mistakes we had made devloping that technology.

Wasn’t it Mao who once said “The last capitalist will hang from a rope sold in his own store.”

Somehow this is relevant.

We think the war was fought sometime around 1300 BC, from archaeological evidence (I’m doing this from memory, so feel free to look it up and check the details), and probably represents a power struggle between a coalition of Mycenaen kingdoms with a Persian vassal state. We have no idea what the fight was about, but my guess is it was about trade. The story gelled into its present written form around 800-900 BC, during which time the Athenian and Spartan city-states arose and the Mycenaen empire collapsed, and even the ethnicity and language of the participants had changed.

A lot happened in between. The war was fought between Bronze Age pre-literate cultures (neither iron weapons nor writing are mentioned anywhere in Homer), and when the story finally stabilized into its present written form it was already very old, a relic of the ancient times before the Greek Dark Ages when barbarian invaders from the North moved in and filled the vacuum left by the vanished Mycenaens.

The war may have either been a single battle, or a campaign that lasted on and off for centuries. We simply don’t know for sure.

There are a lot of clues, but few hard facts in the narrative; but a few items give tantalizing glimpses into the dim past. For example, the Classical Greeks were a very misogynistic society, but Homer is full of wise, strong, independent women, both mortals and goddesses. Also consider how the kingship of Ithaka is determined by who marries Penelope–political power is transmitted by the female line, not the male issue. Its a matrilocal and matrilineal culture, Telemachus does not automatically become king just because Odysseus is supposedly dead.

To the ancient Greeks, the Iliad and Odyssey must have been like the legend of King Arthur is to us, an idealized look at a mythical past. Arthur would have been king of the Britons about 500 AD, but Geoffrey of Monmouth first writes about him 700 years later, and even his contemporaries thought Geoffrey was a liar and a fraud. The story finally stabilized into roughly its present form in the 1500s.