Medieval: transport

Showing posts with label transport. Show all posts

Navigation - celestial, lodestone, magnetic compasses

Navigation Using Stars > .
Viking Navigation Using Sunstones - Skjalden > .

Mapping Challenges ↠
Navigation - Natural ↠
Paper Towns & Cartographic Projections ↠

Lodestone & magnetic compasses
Lodestone (magnetite) is one of only a very few minerals that is found naturally magnetized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Magnetic_compass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotactic_bacteria

In Europe, the magnetic compass first appeared in Amalfi, Italy, around the turn of the 14th century. But it is not known if the magnetic compass was also invented in the West or if it migrated to Europe along trade routes from China. However, it is clear that because sea trade and military advantage were of far more strategic importance to Western nations, they pushed the technology of the magnetic compass far more intensely than did the Chinese. With the successive rise of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English empires, development of the compass shifted to the European nations facing the Atlantic Ocean.

Though the behavior of lodestone, a naturally magnetized piece of the mineral magnetite, was observed by the ancient Greek philosophers Thales of Miletus and Socrates, the evidence is clear that the idea for using it in a compass first appeared in China. There are allusions in the manuscript Wu Ching Tsung Yao, written in 1040, to “an iron fish” suspended in water that pointed to the south. And the earliest reference to a magnetic direction-finding device for land navigation is recorded in a Song Dynasty book dated to 1040-44.
http://theinstitute.ieee.org/tech-history/technology-history/a-history-of-the-magnetic-compass
https://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/compass2.html

The compass was invented more than 2,000 years ago. The first compasses were made of lodestone, a naturally magnetized ore of iron, in Han dynasty China between 300 and 200 BC. The compass was later used for navigation by the Song Dynasty. Later compasses were made of iron needles, magnetized by striking them with a lodestone. Dry compasses begin appearing around 1300 in Medieval Europe and the Medieval Islamic world. This was replaced in the early 20th century by the liquid-filled magnetic compass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_compass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Magnetic_compass

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birefringence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordierite

Homo 'navigatus'?: Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest: Prehistoric axes found on a Greek island suggest that seafaring existed in the Mediterranean more than a hundred thousand years earlier than thought"

"Providence College archaeologist Thomas Strasser and his team came across a whopping surprise—a sturdy 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) hand ax.

Knapped from a cobble of local quartz stone, the rough-looking tool resembled hand axes discovered in Africa and mainland Europe and used by human ancestors until about 175,000 years ago. This stone tool technology, which could have been useful for smashing bones and cutting flesh, had been relatively static for over a million years.

Crete has been surrounded by vast stretches of sea for some five million years. The discovery of the hand ax suggests that people besides technologically modern humans—possibly Homo heidelbergensis—island-hopped across the Mediterranean tens of thousands of millennia earlier than expected.

Many researchers have hypothesized that the early humans of this time period were not capable of devising boats or navigating across open water. But the new discoveries hint that these human ancestors were capable of much more sophisticated behavior than their relatively simple stone tools would suggest."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100217-crete-primitive-humans-mariners-seafarers-mediterranean-sea/
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""From The Trenches: Bon Voyage, Caveman"

"Strasser believes the earliest tools could have belonged to an island-hopping group of Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus."

"These ancient mariners would have crossed at least 40 miles of open sea. The sheer number of artifacts indicates that it was not just a one-time fluke, but required multiple crossings to establish a population. "We don't think it was just one guy hanging on a log," Strasser says, "but I doubt there was any sailing." The findings, which will be published in the journal Hesperia this year, add to a growing but controversial view that modern humans and their precursors traveled by sea. So far, the oldest evidence of seafaring by modern humans has come from Australia, which was colonized about 60,000 years ago. Other, potentially earlier, cases have been more speculative."
http://archive.archaeology.org/1005/trenches/voyage.html

http://plakiasstoneageproject.com/geoarchaeology/

Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest

Map & Compass
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtakTnKQQMCxMG4CwlrKxmbVdyikMUO3v

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1NfYYkezys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mheCw4lWEg

Natural Navigation - WoTV > .

We are wayfinders: Navigation and spatial awareness sustained humans for tens of thousands of years. Have we lost the trail in modern times? .

Ice Houses, Yakhchāl, Ice Merchants

.How people kept stuff cold before refrigerators > .

skip ad > .

An Ice house, or icehouse, is a building used to store ice throughout the year, commonly used prior to the invention of the refrigerator. Some were underground chambers, usually man-made, close to natural sources of winter ice such as freshwater lakes, but many were buildings with various types of insulation.

During the winter, ice and snow would be cut from lakes or rivers, taken into the ice house, and packed with insulation (often straw or sawdust). It would remain frozen for many months, often until the following winter, and could be used as a source of ice during the summer months. The main application of the ice was the storage of foods, but it could also be used simply to cool drinks, or in the preparation of ice-cream and sorbet desserts. During the heyday of the ice trade, a typical commercial ice house would store 2,700 tonnes (3,000 short tons) of ice in a 30-by-100-foot (9 by 30 m) and 14-metre-high (45 ft) building.

Yakhchāl (Persian: یخچال‎ "ice pit"; yakh meaning "ice" and chāl meaning "pit") is an ancient type of ice house that functions as an evaporative cooler. Above ground, the structure had a domed shape, but had a subterranean storage space. It was often used to store ice, but sometimes was used to store food as well. The subterranean space coupled with the thick heat-resistant construction material insulated the storage space year round. These structures were mainly built and used in Persia. Many that were built hundreds of years ago remain standing.

The ice trade, also known as the frozen water trade, was a 19th-century and early-20th-century industry, centring on the east coast of the United States and Norway, involving the large-scale harvesting, transport and sale of natural ice, and later the making and sale of artificial ice, for domestic consumption and commercial purposes. Ice was cut from the surface of ponds and streams, then stored in ice houses, before being sent on by ship, barge or railroad to its final destination around the world. Networks of ice wagons were typically used to distribute the product to the final domestic and smaller commercial customers. The ice trade revolutionised the U.S. meat, vegetable and fruit industries, enabled significant growth in the fishing industry, and encouraged the introduction of a range of new drinks and foods.

The trade was started by the New England businessman Frederic Tudor in 1806. Tudor shipped ice to the Caribbean island of Martinique, hoping to sell it to wealthy members of the European elite there, using an ice house he had built specially for the purpose. Over the coming years the trade widened to Cuba and Southern United States, with other merchants joining Tudor in harvesting and shipping ice from New England. During the 1830s and 1840s the ice trade expanded further, with shipments reaching England, India, South America, China and Australia. Tudor made a fortune from the India trade, while brand names such as Wenham Ice became famous in London.

Increasingly, however, the ice trade began to focus on supplying the growing cities on the east coast of the U.S. and the needs of businesses across the Midwest. The citizens of New York City and Philadelphia became huge consumers of ice during their long, hot summers, and additional ice was harvested from the Hudson River and Maine to fulfil the demand. Ice began to be used in refrigerator cars by the railroad industry, allowing the meat packing industry around Chicago and Cincinnati to slaughter cattle locally, sending dressed meat east for either the internal or overseas markets. Chilled refrigerator cars and ships created a national industry in vegetables and fruit that could previously only have been consumed locally. U.S. and British fishermen began to preserve their catches in ice, allowing longer voyages and bigger catches, and the brewing industry became operational all-year around. As U.S. ice exports diminished after 1870, Norway became a major player in the international market, shipping large quantities of ice to England and Germany.

At its peak at the end of the 19th century, the U.S. ice trade employed an estimated 90,000 people in an industry capitalised at $28 million ($660 million in 2010 terms), using ice houses capable of storing up to 250,000 tons (220 million kg) each; Norway exported a million tons (910 million kg) of ice a year, drawing on a network of artificial lakes. Competition had slowly been growing, however, in the form of artificially produced plant ice and mechanically chilled facilities. Unreliable and expensive at first, plant ice began to successfully compete with natural ice in Australia and India during the 1850s and 1870s respectively, until, by the outbreak of WW1 in 1914, more plant ice was being produced in the U.S. each year than naturally harvested ice. Despite a temporary increase in production in the U.S. during the war, the inter-war years saw the total collapse of the ice trade around the world. Today, ice is occasionally harvested for ice carving and ice festivals, but little remains of the 19th-century industrial network of ice houses and transport facilities. At least one New Hampshire campground still harvests ice to keep cabins cool during the summer.

Saddles, tack

Medieval Saddle > .
Medieval saddle: measuring horse's back > .

Medieval Saddle - Richard III > .

The Knight - Full Series >> .

Riding Side Saddle - The Victorian Way > .
Grooming a Horse - The Victorian Way > .
Driving a Cart - Victorian Way > .
Victorian Way >> .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLUm9j4rPFE .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAPdYOycF14 .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A0a6IzZl4w .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siFbuKaxNzo .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4ovVbk4hP0 .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle
http://www.solent-saddlery.com/Medaeval.html
http://www.limebrook.com/saddlehistory.html

Image
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a7/9e/6c/a79e6c9ecaf469c96f4786f73a383865.jpg

https://www.google.ca/search?q=medieval+english+saddle&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNhYLKtdHWAhVF8CYKHRPWAHEQsAQIJw&biw=1684&bih=926#imgrc=l3O7YiZa15Lc2M:

Forest Law & Forest of Dean

Magna Carta concession to forest access > .
Magna Carta accedes to dis-afforestation > .
What was the Charter of the Forest? | Magna Carta Series > .
Carta Foresta 1217 - TrId >> .

Ray Mears: Forest of Dean Wild Britain S01E01 Deciduous Forest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhnBhObR5QU

The Forest of Dean lies in west Gloucestershire in the angle formed by the rivers Severn and Wye as they approach their confluence. A large tract of woodland and waste land there was reserved for royal hunting before 1066 and survived into the modern period as one of the principal Crown forests in England, the largest after the New Forest. The name Forest of Dean was recorded from c. 1080 and was probably taken from the valley on the north-east of the area, where a manor called Dean was the Forest's administrative centre in the late 11th century.

In modern times the name Forest of Dean was sometimes used loosely for the part of Gloucestershire between the Severn and Wye, but all that land belonged to the Forest (used in the specific sense of the area subject to the forest law) only for a period in the early Middle Ages. In the 13th century the Forest's bounds were the two rivers and it extended northwards as far as Ross-on-Wye (Herefs.), Newent, and Gloucester; it then included 33 Gloucestershire and Herefordshire parishes, besides a central, uncultivated area which the Crown retained in demesne. Revised bounds, perambulated in 1300 and accepted by the Crown in 1327, reduced the extent of the Forest to the royal demesne and 14 parishes or parts of parishes, most of them, like the demesne itself, in St. Briavels hundred. The royal demesne remained extraparochial until the 1840s when, villages and hamlets having grown up within it, it was formed into the civil townships (later parishes) of East Dean and West Dean and into ecclesiastical districts.
......
The formerly extraparochial land of the Forest of Dean lies mainly at over 200 m. (656 ft.), reaching its highest point, 290 m. (951 ft.), at Ruardean hill in the north. Sometimes described as a plateau but actually comprising steep ridges and the valleys of streams draining to the Severn and Wye, its boundaries with the surrounding cultivated and ancient parochial lands are in most places defined by a scarp where the underlying carboniferous limestone of the region outcrops. On the west, however, the limestone outcrops at a shallower angle and there is a less obvious distinction in height between the Forest and the cultivated land of the large ancient parish of Newland. The long valley of Cannop brook, earlier called the Newerne stream, crosses the west part of the Forest from north to south, and a stream called in its northern part Cinderford brook and in its southern Soudley brook forms a long winding valley through the east part. Blackpool brook, so called by 1282, carves another deep valley through the south-eastern edge of the high land to meet Soudley brook at Blakeney below the Forest's scarp, and at the Forest's northern edge Greathough brook, formerly Lyd brook, descends a valley to the Wye. The streams were dammed in places for ironworks, notably in the Cannop valley where two large ponds were made in the 1820s to provide power for works at Parkend. Other large ponds on a tributary stream of Soudley brook at Sutton bottom, near Soudley, were built as fishponds in the mid 19th century for a privately-owned estate in that part of the Forest called Abbots wood. In the late 20th century the Forestry Commission maintained the Forest's ponds as nature reserves and as a public amenity; new ones were made at Woorgreen, near the centre of the Forest, as part of landscape restoration following opencast coal mining in the 1970s, and at Mallards Pike, near the head of Blackpool brook, in 1980.

Geology has given the Forest its rich industrial history. The land is formed of basin-shaped strata of the Carboniferous series. Underlying and outcropping at the rim are limestones which, especially the stratum called Crease Limestone, contain deposits of iron ore. Above are beds of sandstone, shale, and coal. The lowest bed of sandstone is known by the local name of Drybrook Sandstone, and the highest is the Pennant Sandstone. There are over 20 separate coal seams, varying in thickness from a few inches to 5 ft., the highest yielding being the Coleford High Delf which rises close to the surface near the rim of the Forest. Surface workings, shallow pits, or levels driven into the hillsides were the means of winning the iron ore and coal until the late 18th century when deeper mines were sunk. There were also numerous quarries, notably those in the Pennant Sandstone at Bixhead and elsewhere on the west side of the Cannop valley; that stone, which varies in colour but is mainly dark grey, was the principal building material used in the Forest's 19th-century industrial hamlets.

The Forest was most significant as a producer of oak timber, which was the principal reason for its survival in the modern period. Until the early 17th century, however, there was as much beech as oak among its large timber trees, and chestnut trees once grew in profusion on the north-east side of the Forest near Flaxley and gave the name by 1282 to a wood called the Chestnuts. The underwood was composed of a variety of small species such as hazel, birch, sallow, holly, and alder. The ancient forest contained many open areas. In 1282 various 'lands', or forest glades, maintained by the Crown presumably as grazing for the deer, included several with names later familiar in the Forest's history, Kensley, Moseley, Cannop, Crump meadow, and Whitemead (later a part of Newland parish). Numerous smaller clearings called 'trenches' had also been made as corridors alongside roads for securing travellers against ambush or for the grazing and passage of the deer. Larger areas of waste, or 'meends', such as Clearwell Meend and Mitcheldean Meend, lay on the borders adjoining the manorial lands, whose inhabitants used them for commoning their animals.

Although the royal demesne land was without permanent habitation until the early modern period, it was crossed by many ancient tracks, used by ironworkers, miners, and charcoal burners; large numbers, many termed 'mersty' (meaning a boundary path), were recorded in 1282 in a perambulation of the Forest bailiwicks, its administrative divisions. One of the more important ancient routes, known as the Dean road, had a pitched stone surface and borders of kerbstones. It ran between Lydney and Mitcheldean across the eastern part of the demesne by way of Oldcroft, a crossing of Blackpool brook, recorded as Blackpool ford in 1282, and a crossing of Soudley brook at Upper Soudley. The survival of much pitching and kerbing after the road went out of use in the turnpike era, and the possibility that it had linked two important Roman sites at Lydney and Ariconium, in Weston under Penyard (Herefs.), has led to the suggestion that it was a Roman road, though much of the stonework probably dates from the medieval and early modern periods; an estimate was made for renewing long stretches of the road, including the provision of new border stones, as late as the 1760s.

Two main routes crossed the extraparochial Forest from north-east to south-west and on them were sited the principal points of reference in a terrain with few landmarks. A route from the Severn crossing at Newnham to Monmouth recorded in 1255, when 'trenches' were ordered to be made beside it, was presumably that through Littledean, the central Forest, and Coleford. It entered over a high ridge west of Littledean, where a hermitage of St. White had been founded by 1225, and crossed Soudley (or Cinderford) brook at the place called Cinder ford in 1258, long before its name was taken by the principal settlement of the extraparochial Forest that formed on the hillside to the north-east of the crossing. Further west, near the centre of the Forest, the road passed the clearing called Kensley, where a courthouse stood by 1338 close to the site of the later Speech House, and crossed Newerne (or Cannop) brook at Cannop. The road emerged into the cultivated land of Coleford tithing at a place later called Broadwell Lane End, where a tree called Woolman oak in 1608 (fn. 34) was probably the 'W(o)lfmyen' oak which in 1282 was a landmark at the boundary of four of the Forest's bailiwicks. The other main route, recorded in 1282 as the high road to Monmouth, was that crossing the high north-western part of the extraparochial land from Mitcheldean, by way of Nailbridge, Brierley, Mirystock, where it crossed a tributary of Cannop brook above Lydbrook, to Coleford. The two remained the principal routes through the Forest but the northern one, described in the 1760s as the great road through the Forest from Gloucester to South Wales, was much altered in its course by later improvements.

The rivers Severn and Wye played a vital role in the development of Dean's industry but few of the various tracks and hollow ways that led from the central Forest to riverside landing-places and ferries were usable other than by packhorses before the 19th century. One of the few routes negotiable by wagons and timber rigs was the central main road out to Littledean with its branch down to Newnham; that was the usual route for carrying timber out of the Forest in 1737 when the Crown was asked to assist Newnham parish to repair part of it. Later in the 18th century a road leading from the south part of the woodlands by way of Parkend and Viney Hill to Gatcombe and Purton on the Severn became the principal route for timber destined for the naval dockyards.

The Crown's hunting rights, which provided the original motive for the Forest's preservation, were much used in the 13th century. The frequent orders made at the period for taking deer for gifts by the Crown and to meet the needs of the royal household suggest that fallow deer were the majority species in Dean, with red deer and roe present in smaller numbers. In 1278 the Forest was sufficiently well stocked for royal huntsmen to take 100 fallow bucks. At that period all three species of deer were classed as beasts of the forest, reserved for the exclusive use of the Crown, but roe were not classified as such after 1340.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp285-294

Forest of Dean: Forest administration
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp354-377

Forest of Dean: search
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/search?query=forest%20of%20dean

Forest of Dean: Introduction | British History Online

Hanseatic League

Hansa - Northern Silk Road - Economic History - K&G > .

Life of a Hansa Merchant : Hanseatic League History - Laser > .

The Hanseatic League > .

History Network Podcast >> .

Hanseatic League

Fair Trade?: A Look at the Hanseatic League

Here's a quick look at the rise and fall of the one of the most powerful organizations of the Late Middle Ages...

Fair Trade?: A Look at the Hanseatic League - Medievalists.net .

Hanseatic League - London Kontor

Close to the present-day Cannon Street station sat the London base of the Hanseatic League - a powerful trading network for hundreds of years, stretching all the way from the East of England to the heart of Russia. It was one of the most successful trade alliances in history - at its height the League could count on the allegiance of nearly 200 towns across northern Europe.

London was never formally one of the Hanseatic cities, but it was a crucial link in the chain - known as a kontor or trading post. The community of German merchants who lived on the banks of the Thames were exempt from customs duties and certain taxes.

“At any given time they probably had about 15% market share of English imports and exports.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/A2MFANtn3Z/hanseatic_league .

Hansa - Northern Silk Road - Economic History - K&G > .

The Hanseatic League > .

History Network Podcast >> .

Trade - Romans to Coronavirus

SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 disruption - FiIn > .
Romans > .
Europe after decline of Western Roman Empire > .
Mongols & Silk Road - Pax Mongolicā > .
Pax Mongolica to Europa Universalis: Mackinder 4/5 - Geop > .Black Death & retreat of China > .
New trade routes in 15thC, 16thC > .
New technologies in 19thC > .
Gold Standard & 1st Golden Age of Trade (1880s - 1914) > .
Great War, Spanish Flu, Great Depression, Russian Revolution > .
Post-WW2 > .

Before the Mongols' rise, the Old World system consisted of isolated imperial systems.

The Pax Mongolica ("Mongol Peace"), less often known as Pax Tatarica ("Tatar Peace"), is a historiographical term modelled after the original phrase Pax Romana which describes the stabilizing effects of the conquests of the Mongol Empire on the social, cultural and economic life of the inhabitants of the vast Eurasian territory that the Mongols conquered in the 13th and 14th centuries. The term is used to describe the eased communication and commerce the unified administration helped to create and the period of relative peace that followed the Mongols' vast conquests.
...

At its height, the Mongolian empire stretched from Shanhaiguan in the east to Budapest in the west, from Rus' in the north to Tibet in the south. This meant that an extremely large part of the continent was united under one political authority. As a result, the trade routes used by merchants became safe for travel, resulting in an overall growth and expansion of trade from China in the east to Britain in the west. Thus, the Pax Mongolica greatly influenced many civilizations in Eurasia during the 13th and 14th centuries.

Under the Mongols new technologies and commodities were exchanged across the Old World, particularly Eurasia. Thomas T. Allsen noted many personnel exchanges occurred during the Mongol period. There were many significant developments in economy (especially trade and public finance), military, medicine, agriculture, cuisine, astronomy, printing, geography, and historiography, which were not limited to Eurasia but also included North Africa.

The new Mongol empire amalgamated the once isolated civilizations into a new continental system, and re-established the Silk Road as a dominant method of transportation. The unification of Eurasia under the Mongols greatly diminished the number of competing tribute gatherers throughout the trade network and assured greater safety and security in travel. During the Pax Mongolica, European merchants like Marco Polo made their way from Europe to China on the well-maintained and well travelled roads that linked Anatolia to China.

On the Silk Road caravans with Chinese silk; pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg came to the West from the Spice Islands via the transcontinental trade routes. Eastern diets were introduced to Europeans as well. Indian muslins, cottons, pearls, and precious stones were sold in Europe, as well as weapons, carpets, and leather goods from Iran. Gunpowder was also introduced to Europe from China.

In the opposite direction, Europeans sent silver, fine cloth, horses, linen, and other goods to the near and far East. Increasing trade and commerce meant that the respective nations and societies increased their exposure to new goods and markets, thus increasing the GDP of each nation or society that was involved in the trade system. Μany of the cities participating in the 13th century world trade system grew rapidly in size.

Along with land trade routes, a Maritime Silk Road contributed to the flow of goods and establishment of a Pax Mongolica. This Maritime Silk Road started with short coastal routes in Southern China. As technology and navigation progressed these routes developed into a high-seas route into the Indian Ocean. Eventually these routes further developed encompassing the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and the sea off East Africa.

Along with tangible goods, people, techniques, information, and ideas moved lucidly across the Eurasian landmass for the first time. For example, John of Montecorvino, archbishop of Beijing founded Roman Catholic missions in India and China and also translated the New Testament into the Mongolian language. Long-distance trade brought new methods of doing business from the far East to Europe; bills of exchange, deposit banking, and insurance were introduced to Europe during the Pax Mongolica. Bills of exchange made it significantly easier to travel long distances because a traveller would not be burdened by the weight of metal coins.

Islamic methods of mathematics, astronomy, and science made their way to Africa, East Asia and Europe during the Pax Mongolica. Methods of paper-making and printing made their way from China to Europe. Mongol elements including the ʼPhags-pa script made numerous appearances in western art (see Mongol elements in Western medieval art). Rudimentary banking systems were established, and money changing and credit extension were common, resulting in large amounts of merchant wealth.

...
The conquests of Genghis Khan (r. 1206–1227) and his successors, spanning from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe, effectively connected the Eastern world with the Western world. The Silk Road, connecting trade centres across Asia and Europe, came under the sole rule of the Mongol Empire. It was commonly said that "a maiden bearing a nugget of gold on her head could wander safely throughout the realm". Despite the political fragmentation of the Mongol Empire into four khanates (Yuan dynasty, Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate and Ilkhanate), nearly a century of conquest and civil war was followed by relative stability in the early 14th century. The end of the Pax Mongolica was marked by the disintegration of the khanates and the outbreak of the Black Death in Asia which spread along trade routes to much of the world in the mid-14th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Mongolica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road .

Trade Routes - Ancient to Modern

.History of the Major Trade Routes - Geo History > .

Silk Road - The World's Nervous System - Geographics > . skip ad > .

Silk Road ➧

Longships

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aTzNoo-hxY

Draken - atlatli
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL64-uvJRwJ5mrCDwzpavpJb1qLmht4tFX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29mOXuVoE3o

Building of East Indiaman Götheborghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w04CpOl94Sc

Shipbuilding - wood

Viking-age smiths used the process known as riving to reduce a tree trunk to planks or to other useful articles. Rather than sawing the wood, they split it. As a result, the grain of the wood follows the piece being fabricated, creating a much stronger item than if it had been sawn. It's one of several reasons why thin-hulled Viking ships could withstand the rough seas of the North Atlantic. The process repeatedly splits the log, first into halves, then quarters, then eighths.
http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/viking_woodworking_riving.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT9Qf6md-oc .

Battleship - 18th C ..

𝕸 Animals, Livestock

Cattle, Oxen, Dairy ↬

Chickens, Poultry ↬

Dogs, Hounds ↬

Equines - Medieval ..
Farrier ..

Goats ↬

Horses ↬

Horses & Horsemanship ..

Horse-drawn ↬

Icelandic horse - ambling gait ↬

Life - Medieval Peasants ..

Mules ..

Mules, Hinnies ..
Needle from Bone ..

Pets ..

Pigeon - Rock dove ..

Pig routeways, pannage ↬

Pigs ↬

Ploughing ↬

Sheep ↬

Falconry

Tudor Xmas ..

● Agriculture, Forestry - Crops, Livestock, Timber ..
● Animals, Livestock ..

● Hunting, Forests, Leisure ..

Mules

Shape of mules' backs - Modern History TV > .

Training a mule for medieval war - Modern History TV > .

Mule History, Origins > .

𝕸 Transport, Travel

Battleship - 18th C ..

Beachley Peninsula, Severn Estuary ..

Bristol, River Avon ..

Daily Life ..

Equines - Medieval ..

Europe-Asia - Geographic Boundaries ➧

Global Empires ..

Gloucester, River Severn ..

Handcart ..

Inns, Taverns, Alehouses ..

Journeys ➧

London, River Thames ..

Magellan - Age of Exploration ..

Navigation - lodestone & magnetic compasses ..

Peregrination & Pilgrimage ..

Pigmentation →

River Crossings ..

Rivers - Major Rivers of England ..

Rivers of Midlands ..

Saddles, tack ..

Severn Bore ..
Shipbuilding - wood ..

Silk Road ➧

Society & Raids - Viking ➧

Terrain→Technology - Impact on Travel ⇼
Thames Sailing Barge ..

Trade Routes - Ancient to Modern ..

Transport ..

Trow ..

Mapping Challenges ↠
Navigation - Natural ↠
Paper Towns & Cartographic Projections ↠

Terrain

● Chokepoints - Trade, Resource Logistics ..

Battleship - 18th C

18th Century Sailing Battleship - Animagraffs > .

Coracle building

. Making Coracle .

Coracles (from the Welsh "cwrwgl") have a history dating back thousands of years. The coracle was originally covered with animal skins and in some countries they are still made this way. In Wales they are now skinned with calico which is waterproofed using a bitumastic paint.

http://www.data-wales.co.uk/coracle1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coracle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiBUCPHjU_8

Rivers of Midlands

Severn
1 - Tern?
2 - Cound Brook?
3 - Worfe
4 - Mor Brook? Borle Brook
5 - Stour
6 - Salwarpe
7 - Teme
Warwickshire Avon
8 - Arrow?
9 - Stour?
10 - Alne?
Severn
11 - Chelt?
12 - Leadon
Thames (Isis)
13 - Coln
14 - Leech
15 - Windrush
16 - Evenlode
17 - Cherwell
18 - Thame

River Crossings

Importance of river crossings in the olden days - Lindy > .

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