Percy:  In 635 the Jezreel Valley, along with the rest of the Levant, was conquered by the Islamic Empire.  Here's the Quadrant on the Big Screen.  But we also have a major structural issue.

Red:  What's that?

Percy:  The location of the silver and gold mines.   For a thousand years the most prolific mines in Eurasian trade had constantly moved westward, from the Anatolian to the Balkan and then Iberian Peninsula.  But then the script flipped.  The main stocks of precious metals were now on the backside of the Great Alpide Belt, in the Caucasus.  And then the Islamic Empire opened huge mining complexes in Central Asia.   The upshot is that the Eastern Mediterranean was no longer the intake valve for western metals.  It was a minor appendage to an international trading system centered on the famous trading cities of the Islamic Golden Age. 

Red:  And your source for this is Wikipedia?

Percy:  No.  I referenced "Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages, Vol. 1: Asiatic Supremacy, 425-1125," by British academic Ian Blanchard.   The paucity of mainstream information on this dramatic shift in the location of the mines is telling.   When we eventually plot coordinates for the Roman Empire with the GT-Mandelbrot, I suspect we will find some interesting patterns regarding the establishment of the of eastern empire, the fall of the western empire and the wars with Persia that presaged the rise of Islam.  For mining production cycles appear to underpin many of these famous events. 

Red:  So what are we going to do?

Percy:  Move on to the next Screen. 

Red: But Islam is a huge part of today's propaganda system. 

Percy:  I know.  And I am sure we will find another way back to it.  It just doesn't fit within the Armageddon Gateway, which focuses on the antecedents of Anglo-American Empire within the Concept/Object pair of the Bible and Jezreel Valley.   The next Screen, however, brings us right back in.  Let's head over to Room 5 and see what we find.

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