Coin from Byzantion

THRACE, Byzantion C. 340-320 BC. Heifer standing on dolphin; trident head below raised foreleg...

Why? Well it's all about climate which determines the sailing season in Eastern Mediterranean, and lifecycles of wild Eurasian cattle and dolphins...

So why Poseidon's trident? Remember this: Ever wondered why Phoenician, Greek and Roman sea gods were associated with horses? 

Because the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean coincides with the mating season of horses. I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse"...

The natural breeding season of horses, characterised by vicious stallion fights, typically begins around mid-April and finishes around mid September...

According to Hesiod, the sailing season in Ancient Greece was between April and September...

So. No horses on this coin??? Well, the beginning of the mating season of the wild horses overlaps with the beginning of the calving season of the wild Eurasian cattle. A very important time of the year. Which is why it is marked with Taurus (Apr/May)...I talked about this in my post "Ram and bull"...

Summer (May,Jun,Jul), which starts with calving of the wild Eurasian cattle (Apr/May), ends with mating of the wild Eurasian cattle (Jul/Aug), characterised by vicious bull fights...

BTW, Aurcochs, Wild Eurasian Cattle are extinct, so I used pics of domestic cattle as illustrations...

Which is why bull, cattle, is the symbol of summer...You can read more about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

What about dolphins? "Shallow waters of the north Black Sea coast are known as important breeding, calving and feeding grounds for Black Sea dolphins during warm season"...

"Female fertility peaks in June, male fertility peaks in July"..."Gestation last 12 months"...Which means that it is June-July when most dolphin babies are born too...Not something you would easily miss, if you are a sailor or a fisherman...

There is one other thing that happens to dolphins during the summer. In 2017 a study of Black Sea dolphins was being conducted in Ukraine...And some very very weird things were observed...

115 cases of dolphin strandings were registered, starting from late March and peaking in May (48), June (40) and July (43). The number of reported cases significantly decreased since the early August...Wow...

Why all these dolphins were getting stranded, no one really knows...But this data helps us to understand coins like these, depicting white tailed eagle feasting on a dolphin, also from the Black Sea region, this one minted in Istros...I talked about it in my post "Eagle eating dolphin"…

This data also shows that the main dolphin stranding season coincides with the main dolphin mating and calving season, which coincides with with summer, main calving and mating season of wild Eurasian cattle, which coincides with the main sailing season in Byzantion...

And all this was "encrypted" on this Byzantion coin... 🙂 

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...