Silver?

[JB]

I was reading Herodotus' Histories the other day and read that when Persian king would go to war he would only drink from the Choaspes River and when he was away from the river it would be carried in silver jars. Now, during the Age of Exploration the sailors would often have to throw away their water because it would spoil. I learned it would get parasites in it and it would often take on a strong oder. What I want to know is if the Silver that the Persian king used some how preserved the water. But this doesn't make any sense to me because if it did why didn't the explorers, during the Age of Exploration, use silver jars if it made a difference? They would have to have known about it, right?

[adam heinrich]

The period known as the Dark Ages happened between the Classical and Exploration periods. Much of the scientific and artistic knowledge of the earlier periods were lost and unknown to Europeans until everything was relearned during the Medieval/Renaissance period. I recall a story of a Medieval traveler wondering about the pipes he noticed sticking out of the ground at a Roman villa in England. He had no knowledge of plumbing since the practice was lost after Rome's fall. Perhaps the knowledge of silver was lost, or simply too expensive to put on every ship at sea. Then again, this is just a theory. Does silver even have sterile properties like gold?

[Ross]

i think there are a lot of myths around what you coin as the "dark ages". Plumbing did not disappear between late antiquity and the renaissance. Sure, there's a big lack of historical documentation across a lot of this period, but it's very old hat to still follow that Petrarchian view that there was a genuine decline through late antiquity and the medieval period through to the renaissance. I mean look at Byzantium, and later the construction of Gothic cathedrals in northern Europe. There might have been a change in methods of living in some places, but it's a bit outdated to think of the "decline" as such. Certainly in a lot of modern art historical thought, there's no consideration of a decline at all, there are a number of progressions stylistically and technologically, and it's the reasons behind the changes which are important.

I think you're maybe right about the cost implications of using silver for all water transport though, it's not very practical considering the value attributed to it. I could imagine a lot of piracy if every merchant ship in the ocean had a large quantity of silver!

[JB]

That's a possibility. All Herodotus says is that they kept the water in silver jars. Nothing about it being sterile. But I do know of Collodal Silver which is basicaly an antibiotic? My family used it all the time when we live in Africa. Instead of using the medicine we got there, which would not have helped us if they did even have the medicine, we would use Colloidal Silver to fight flu and fever symptoms. We used it for almost everything. It would clear up boils, pink eye, clean infections. I was using it for acne a little while back but stopped because we ran out of Silver rods. But It has something to do with electricity. We always hooked up 2 rods to batteries, I think D batteries, then let the rods sit in the water. Considering they didn't have electricity back then this probably would not have worked. Unless it doesn't have anything to do with electricity. In that case there might just be some purifying chemicals in Silver. Or Silver had nothing to do with it. This has really sparked my interest. I'm going to try to find out!!

[Nick Setten]

colloidal silver is awesome!

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/20/another-person-turns.html

[JB]

I wrote a Metal Expert about it and he said that the Navy is using Ag for water purification. What Ag is I do not know but I can try to find out. So obviously there was something about silver that keeps water's sanitized. I'm still curious to figure out why the people from the Age of Exploration didn't use it. The problem I have with the theory that they perhaps didn't have enough silver for the numerous jars it would take is that we're talking about some of the richest countries in the world at the time. France, England, Portugal, Spain: the whole nine yards. It's said that when Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa to get to India he came back with enough spices to pay for the trip 60 times over. If they had that much money in spices wouldn't they have atleast that much in silver?

[jimbojames]

'Ag' is the chemical symbol for Silver.

[jimbojames]

Oops, didn't mean to say the same thing twice.

[jimbojames]

What a great question to which I do not have the answer, but I wanted to say that I, too, once was reading Herodotus' Histories and asked a friend if he had read Herodotus' Histories and he said, who's Herodotus?

[JB]

Wow, really? That's kind of sad. I guess not everybody can be as intellectual as us. lol I'm just kidding. I never heard of him before about a year ago. That's kind of sad too I guess! :)

[jimbojames]

It's sad when anyone has not heard of Herodotus. I only recently read his Histories, and I sure am glad I did.

[JB]

Yea, I'm only in the second book so I have a good ways to go. I'v really enjoyed it though. There's so much information packed into that book! Do you know how big the actual book is? The one I'm reading is printed by the Pinguen Classics. It's still somewhere from 500 to 700 pages but I was wondering if that's still how long the original was.

[jimbojames]

I don't know the original. I know that I read-hang on-had 9 chapters so five to seven hundred pages sounds similar. It is a great read. Enjoy....