The Argonauts - A Modern Investigation of the Mythical “Gold Sands“

Okrostsvaridze, Avtandil (2017) The Argonauts - A Modern Investigation of the Mythical “Gold Sands“. LAMBERT Academic Publishing.

ტექსტი ARGONAUTS, LAMBERT BOOK-2017.pdf Download (23MB)

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The legend of the heroic quest of Argonauts is one of the oldest and widely known myths of our civilization and the Golden Fleece is probably the most enigmatic phenomenon. For more than 2000 years already, an enormous volume of scientific research and pieces of art has been dedicated to this legend, with little to no truly reliable information found so far, though. The topic has been and is still being studied by historians, archaeologists and writers, but no one has yet studied it from geological point of view. In the meantime, the geological argumentation may well prove crucial, as far as, if the Argonauts voyage has really happened and if the Golden Fleece is somehow linked to the gold mining technology, that might mean that the Argonauts have carried out one of the first geological expeditions in the history of our civilization. That is why, we thought worth examining this ancient scientific dispute from the geological perspective too. For this reason we decided to carry out this unusual geological research, carefully comparing the conclusions with the extant historical and archaeological data. Need to underscore here, that recently, with advent of the modern technologies; the efficacy of the geological research has increased dramatically, making the findings way more reliable. In our research, we have used the latest methods of the sample chemical analysis, more specifically, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS), Remote Sensing of the Chemical Content of Bedrock and Placers (Aster Mineral Alteration Mapping), Radiometric Dating (U-Pb dating of zircons by LA-ICP-MS), Electronic Microscope Scanning of Gold particles, etc. Apart from the obtained geological information, we have built upon the extant data on the Santorin Island catastrophe in Aegean Sea near the Crete, radiometric dating of the eruption consequences, in particular. Beside the geological data, we have worked with the Greek and Roman ample written sources regarding the ancient Kingdom of Colchis and also obtained some fresh archaeological and ethnographic data on Svaneti and matching up these all enabled us to judge upon the probability of Argonauts real voyage to the Kingdom of Colchis, the findings whereof we offer in the present book. In order to form our own opinion, we decided to study the territory of the ancient Colchis kingdom geologically, in order to find the areas where mining gold from alluvial placers could have taken place i.e. a place where the Argonauts could have extracted gold and come to know the ancient mining technologies of this particular region. For this purpose, our group has carried research for more than 20 years in the western part of the Republic of Georgia, around the regions of Abkhazia, Samegrelo, Imereti, Svaneti, Racha, Guria and Adjara. Our work has confirmed that Svaneti is a region, uniquely, where the locals still wash gold from alluvial placers through modern domestic, wooden vessels or pans with holes in the bottom and unto a sheepskin or a fleece, which collects the fine particulate gold; where it is still possible to wash gold from the sand placers; where one can still find archaeological artifacts and ethnographical information about the Golden Fleece. From what we were able to conclude after matching our geological findings with the existing Greek and Roman written sources, the voyage of Argonauts, a small team of Greek mythological heroes to the ancient kingdom of Colchis appears to have really happened. It is highly probable that the voyage has taken place before the eruption of the Santorini volcano, between 1570-1580 BC, since Argonauts represented the Minoan civilization and were in the least likely to be capable of carrying out an expedition of this scale after the disaster.We assert that the main purpose of this mission was to obtain gold and gold mining technology from those who were working along the river sands of the Kingdom of Colchis. As for the Golden Fleece phenomenon, according to our research, it is connected with the sheepskin (fleece) technique of gold recovering, which later on resulted in formation of the romantic concept of the Golden Fleece, that has existed in the civilized world ever since Homer’s time.

ობიექტის ტიპი:	წიგნი
თემატიკა:	Q Science Q Science > QE Geology
განმათავსებელი მომხმარებელი:	ავთანდილ ოქროსცვარიძე
განთავსების თარიღი:	03 აპრილი 2023 07:30
ბოლო ცვლილება:	03 აპრილი 2023 07:30
URI:	http://eprints.iliauni.edu.ge/id/eprint/11818

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