Local History

[DasBilligeAlien]

As most people are scattered through out the world working and enjoiing this game. I thought maybe you have some intressting thing to share about the ancient history of your hometown or region.

As i said before i live in germany. To be precisley in Offenbach near Frankfurt/ Main wich is the Center of the Rhain/ Main area. Most of our modern cities started or were heavly influenced by roman colonisation. There are still a lot of traces you can find till this day.

In Frankfurt itself there are some ruins in the center of the oldtown. (wikipedia

Unfortunatly only in german. But there are some pictures.)

The capital of Civitas Taunensium was just at the suburbs of todays Frankfurt.

Just 30 min by car along the Main is the City of Mainz. To quote wikipedia:

The Roman stronghold or castrum Mogontiacum, the precursor to Mainz, was founded by the Roman general Drusus perhaps as early as 13/12 BC.

When you drive from Frankfurt to the northwest into the Taunus Region you can find the Saalburg. A recreation of a roman castle. Official site(English)

This Museum is simply amazing. It has a enormus number of historical assets as well as replicas. There are festivals where you can try to live like romans for a day and such. If your are a history nut and ever visit germany. This could be an intresting place for you.

So back to Frankfurt and then straight north into the Wetterau region. This is where I was born and raised and has some intresting places to visit. First we stay with the romans. Just 10 min by foot from the House of my Parents there is a small Forest with remains of the Limes Germanicus.

There are traces of this border everywhere in the region.

Just 20min away from my paraents home you find the Glauberg. There is a grave of a Celtic King and remains of a fortified settlement. They have festivals in the summer where they show you how the celts lived and worked. I tried to play a carnyx once. These Instruments are very heavy and hard to play. (Celtic Healer Unit?)

So what ancient traces are in your area?

Edited March 13, 2013 by DasBilligeAlien

[Loki1950]

I guess this leaves us guys on the other side of the Atlantic out then as not much was happening in our time frame of reference

Enjoy the Choice

[Pureon]

Very interesting read, thanks for sharing those details with us DasBilligeAlien.

Here in the UK a bronze-age boat reconstruction was recently completed:

http://youtu.be/zM9tdqnYNLU

Sewn-plank boats were unique to the British Isles and were used from about 4000 years ago. More info here

[idanwin]

Very nice and interesting, Frankfurt seems like a very nice place to visit (writes "Frankfurt" in the Holiday planner). Where I live, the only things left are mounts of earth where once stood a fort, but then again, I live in the middle of nowhere.

[Pedro Falcão]

I live in the middle of nowhere.

Well, i guess your city isn't an oasis in a semi-desertic region. My city is a small city of 340k inhabitants, the biggest city of the interior of Brasil's northeastern region (besides each states' capitals), and is only 149 years old.

The only interesting (read funny) point is the paranoid theory of why it isn't a major cotton power in the world (was, back in 1919), along with Liverpool and New Orleans: according to some dubious (and paranoid) sources, our New Orleans' friends introduced a plague that consumed the whole cotton crop.

Edited March 12, 2013 by Pedro Falcão

[sanderd17]

Where I live, it was mostly swamp.

The only Celtic place quite near me is the Kemmelberg, where the celts probably had a power centre. The hill was quite new in that period though. A few thousand years before, Flanders was largely flooded, and the Kemmelberg comes from a dune.

But in the timeframe of 0AD, the Kemmelberg was believed to be a fortress of Celtic aristocrats, complete with dikes, dirt walls, and on some places stone and wood reinforcements. But as it was all dirt, there's not much left from it. And people just guess what has been there.

In any way, the Kemmelberg didn't become a city. Our medieval cities were mostly founded near rivers, and not on hills like the Celts did (which can also be a result of the changing water level).

[idanwin]

Well ... Belgium is very densely populated in general, so we don't actually have any middle of nowheres, at least not in the northern half (where I live), but since I live in a little village that has only one supermarket, a few bakeries, restaurants and pubs. In my Flemish dialect we would call such a place "''n boeren'ol" (which could be translated as 'a farmer's @#$%' but actually means 'an empty space where farmers live' or 'middle of nowhere' (but "Boerenhol" is also a placename). Where I live was mostly swamp as well.

An update on the fortress: it wasn't roman ... not sure whose it was, I'll look it up.

[plumo]

idanwin, which boerenhol are you referring to ?

[DasBilligeAlien]

I guess this leaves us guys on the other side of the Atlantic out then as not much was happening in our time frame of reference

Now I am curious. there is no research about ancient native(or not so native) inhabitants where you live?

Here in the UK a bronze-age boat reconstruction was recently completed:

That is amazing. I love projects like that. Reminds me of this guy

Very nice and interesting, Frankfurt seems like a very nice place to visit (writes "Frankfurt" in the Holiday planner). Where I live, the only things left are mounts of earth where once stood a fort, but then again, I live in the middle of nowhere.

Frankfurt is not very typiccally german. It has a strange international feel to it(thanks to the airport maybe?). but we have a lot museums and of course the stuff i mentioned above:)

if you really want to visit maybe i can give you shelter or guide you.

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Kemmelberg is this the hill? Intressting...

Edited March 13, 2013 by DasBilligeAlien

[Loki1950]

Lots of digs but very few accurate attributions to the various cultures as wood was the primary building material so all that can be found now is some flint,copper and very rotted wood(so rotted it's dirt) that and most of the native cultures were nomadic even the early farming cultures on the eastern coast practiced basic slash and burn agriculture so there villages moved every generation or so.Their where extensive trade networks though just no idea on how they worked.

Enjoy the Choice

[sanderd17]

Well ... Belgium is very densely populated in general, so we don't actually have any middle of nowheres,

They say there's only a single place in Belgium where the view isn't obscured by trees, and where you also can't see any buildings.

at least not in the northern half (where I live), but since I live in a little village that has only one supermarket, a few bakeries, restaurants and pubs. In my Flemish dialect we would call such a place "''n boeren'ol" (which could be translated as 'a farmer's @#$%' but actually means 'an empty space where farmers live' or 'middle of nowhere' (but "Boerenhol" is also a placename). Where I live was mostly swamp as well.

One supermarket, 3 bakeries, a handful of pubs but not a single butcher in my village. I'd also call it a Boeregat. We do have a lot of banks though, for some strange reason. On the other hand, the cities are so close to each other that everyone is near a city (for me, the closest city center is at 5km).

[idanwin]

idanwin, which boerenhol are you referring to ?

Eksoarde dorp xD

[Pureon]

Not at all local to me, but possibly relevant to our Mauryan faction:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/raipur/2500-year-old-city-discovered-in-Chhattisgarh/articleshow/18942752.cms

[MishFTW]

Ancient history in my portion of North America? No... I do however suggest reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann

[Loki1950]

Like I mentioned earlier their is very little in the 0 AD time frame the Mound Culture along the Mississippi is not dated until much later.

Enjoy the Choice

Edited March 15, 2013 by Loki1950

[fcxSanya]

City where I was born and currently live, Novocherkassk, has not so long history; as stated in the linked Wikipedia article, it "was founded in 1805 by Matvei Platov, as the administrative center of the Don Host Oblast, when the inhabitants of the stanitsa of Cherkassk were compelled to leave their abodes on the banks of the Don on account of the frequent floods."

But not too far from here lies the archaeological site of city of Tanais, which history fits into (or rather starts in) 0 A.D. timeframe: "founded late in the 3rd century BC, by merchant adventurers from Miletus, Tanais quickly developed into an emporium at the farthest northeastern extension of the Hellenic cultural sphere.":

[Pureon]

Here's an interesting project aiming to create an 'Atlas of Hillforts':

http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/hillforts-atlas.html

It's just been awarded almost 1 million British Pounds to record details of the 5,000 iron age hillforts dotted around Britain and Ireland.

[Unarmed]

I see myself as a Frysian, and so kind of a Frissii. I live in a very small village (if you talk about "boerengat"...) by the way, I'm pretty sure it was what we call in Dutch "woeste grond" meaning savage ground, since it has been "çivilised" only recently (18th century if I remember correctly, I have a book on it). I would say it would be forested bogs and swamps in Ancient times.

Now the ironic thing is, I kind of have this small distaste of French and English people (nothing extreme mind you). And guess what my family history goes back to the English (Cambridgeshire), which goes back to the French. That's my fathers side, my mothers side goes to the Dutch, that's all I know.

My mother side also had darkish gypsies, possibly Romani people, who can be traced back to India. So the history of my country is not the history of myself. And of course, almost everyone has some Genghis Khan genes.

I hope that wasn't too offtopic.

[Jubalbarca]

I'm from the border between Norfolk and Suffolk, near the main ford between the two which used to be a fairly major trade route; classic Iceni territory really, with valley fens along the rivers and flattish farmland in the surrounding area. There's a villa in my local village but it's never been fully excavated; the river valley has a lot of flints and so on, so it's been a settled area for a very long time. It's mostly just very rural nowadays.

At University where I spend the other half of the year I'm in Cambridge, which of course has a heck of a history though its most interesting bits are medieval onwards with the university. My college, Pembroke, is I think the third oldest, founded 1347 (the older ones being Peterhouse and Clare). An interesting fact there is that people from Pembroke College, Cambridge are not referred to as "Pembrokians" generally, and instead the term "Valencians" is used for Aymer de Valence, in whose memory the college was founded.