Tin Route

The Bronze Age corridors that carried Cornish tin to the Mediterranean and fed the ancient world's bronze industry.

Overview

Bronze needs copper plus tin, and tin was scarce. The richest western source was Cornwall and Devon in Britain, moved overland through Gaul by river and portage to the Mediterranean, with a sea leg along the Atlantic coast that Phoenician sailors kept deliberately vague behind tales of the Cassiterides, the mythical tin islands. Pytheas of Massalia described the direct route in the late 4th century BCE. The trade made bronze weapons and tools possible across Europe for two millennia before iron displaced it and Iberian and other mines diluted the Cornish advantage. It is one of the oldest documented strategic mineral trades.