SoylentNews

The Golden Fleece may have Basis in Fact

posted by LaminatorX on Sunday November 30 2014, @10:42AM   
from the Medea-literacy dept.

frojack writes:

The Greek legend of Jason and his Argonauts may have a grain of truth to it, as well as more than a few grains of gold.

According to story on 1ClickNews, Scientists from Ilia State University, Georgia, claim that villagers in the Svaneti region of modern Georgia used fleece to help them extract gold and some still do it today.

Ancient villagers used sheepskins to line stream beds in the Svaneti region of the Southern Caucasus in northwest Georgia. Gold flakes washing from mountain streams became ingrained on the fleeces, which scientists believe led to the rise of the myth surrounding the Golden Fleece.

The technique is not dissimilar to small scale placer miners where the sluice box is lined with burlap to entrap the fine flake gold in the gravel.

Geological surveys by Dr Okrostsvaridze and his team reveal that gold deposits in many areas that were historically mined have been replenished as streams have continued to wash them down the mountainsides, and some locals still use traditional techniques to obtain gold from the rivers in the area.

They claim that villagers that were part of the wealthy Kingdom of Colchis, which existed from the sixth to the first centuries BC, used sheepskin to capture gold from mountain streams in the area.

The fleece was used to line the bottom of the sandy stream beds, trapping any tiny grains of gold that built up there. The technique is a variation on panning used elsewhere in the world.

This, they say, would have lead to sheepskins that were imprinted with flakes of gold and could have given rise to stories of a golden fleece.

• Re:Old news? (Score: 2) by zocalo on Sunday November 30 2014, @11:57PM

  by zocalo (302) on Sunday November 30 2014, @11:57PM (#121358)

  You're probably right about the media build-up, but not on the "finally studied" bit. Quoting from my second link above:

  And a report for the Georgian Academy of Sciences in 1946 said geologists were finding 5.3 grams (0.17 troy oz) of gold per one tonne (32,150 troy oz) of sand in the rivers. The description of recovery could have been written three thousand years ago. "Gold is obtained by means of sheepskins. A sheepskin, stretched over a board or flattened in some way, was placed in the river, fixing it so as not to be carried away by the stream, with the fleece on the upper side. The soaked fleece trapped the gold particles. After some time the skin was withdrawn and spread on the ground to dry; the dried skin was beaten to shake out the grains of gold."

  There's actually nothing new at all in this latest research that I can see, so it looks more like just another case of researchers not realising that someone else had already done the work (from the same small country, no less!) and people who were also unaware erroneously believing that it's a new discovery. Not the first time that's happened, and certainly not going to be the last...

  --
  UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		2