Quote:
Originally Posted by Rumil
Hi Tuor and Mith,
Agree that the East-West Dorwinion-Erebor-Lindon traderoute was significant, North-South there seems to be very little evidence, apart from Shire-Orthanc under Saruman, doesn't mean that it didn't happen however.
I think one plausible mechanism is one that's been proposed for bronze-age Europe, where occasional Greek artefacts turn up in Britain etc. This is the chain of trade, so for example an item made in the Shire could be sold by a hobbit in Bree, picked up as a curiosity by a trader at the Prancing Pony, stolen by the Dunlendings, given as tribute to Saruman, sold on to a Rohirric trader by one of Saruman's agents, who throws it in as a sweetener for a horse deal with a Gondorian, who sells it in the market at Minas Tirith to a noble who thinks its amusing, who notices the Steward looking at it and gifts it to the Steward as an outlandish curiosity.
Hey presto - Denethor with an Umbrella  |
Quite possible. It suprising how far those trade chains (often more like a web than a single chain) can reach. To use an example I am familar with from history (please forgive my little digression). One of the hot items in Alexandria, Egypt from the late Hellenistic to early Roman periods (say about 100BC to AD100) were glass mosaic picture canes and beads made thereof (what we now usually call "millefiori") of great complexity (so complex in fact, that it is only in this century that glassmakers (and then only those who do one of a kind "art glass work" of the kind that can fetch several hundred dollars a bead) have been able to replicate what appaer to have been basic "meat and potatoes" level" canes of the period). As these were really popular as a trade item (durable, took up little space and had an enormous size to value ratio) they tended to go really far in trade to the point where it is possilbe to find beads or raw cane chunks (both were trade items) taken from the same cane, not the same design the same ACTUAL cane (Without getting too, technical a mosaic cane is a bit like a a stick of "cut rock" candy or slice and bake cookies the design runs through the whole thing and so if you take slices or chunks off of it the degin is on each one ) from as far apart as a Frankish burial site and a tomb in the middle of India.