Leiden Archaeology department looks at video games and archaeology quite a bit. I recently saw a few PhDs they advertised about the archaeology of video games with Assassin's Creed cited as one of the games. They've also been working on Minecraft stuff for a good few years now.
History/Archaeology Thread
- Thread starter SteveJ
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Very cool. Maybe you will find this interesting too.
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2019/11/rebuilding-palmyra-in-minecraft
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/e...irtual-building-blocks-bring-the-past-to-life
Absolutely, that’s really great. Food for thought.
Some Dutch dude built a full 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan and surroundings:
https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/
This is the former Aztec capital, which was located at the site of what's now Mexico City. We of course don't know the full lay-out of the old city, so there is a fair bit of assumption going on, and part of the neighbourhoods has been generated automatically (which is very sensible for a city this size); but apparently this is pretty accurate insofar as we currently know. Really impressive and quite cool!
https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/
This is the former Aztec capital, which was located at the site of what's now Mexico City. We of course don't know the full lay-out of the old city, so there is a fair bit of assumption going on, and part of the neighbourhoods has been generated automatically (which is very sensible for a city this size); but apparently this is pretty accurate insofar as we currently know. Really impressive and quite cool!
That is really impressive. The comparison slider images are brilliant.
That's great.
Yeah, it's really cool! It also shows me how far these reproductions have come since I last saw one.... uhm... decades ago...?
I guess that mostly shows how out of touch I am with the world, but anyway!
Archaeologists in Egypt unearth section of large Ramses II statue
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https://www.reuters.com/science/arc...th-section-large-ramses-ii-statue-2024-03-04/
https://www.reuters.com/science/arc...th-section-large-ramses-ii-statue-2024-03-04/
Top 3 on my list, maybe number 1, of where I’m going (restricted to human history) when I finally invent my time machine is Cortez waltzing into Tenochtitlan.
- above
- Julius Caesar vs Vercingetorix and the wall within a wall at Alesia.
- Battle of Myeongnyang
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See also the brief article in Nature and the scientific paper.
It's kinda wild if true, but I suppose it just isn't...
Been retracted. Who would have thunk it.
I'm quite disappointed, I thought he'd built it in his back garden.
Pardon my ignorance but why was the round city so important?A proposed map of the fabled Round City of Baghdad drawn up by the British orientalist Guy Le Strange in his 1900 publication Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate:
As no trace of the Round City survives today, and no archaeological excavations have as of yet been conducted at the probable site in modern-day Baghdad, Le Strange drafted this map on the basis of several Arabic literary sources, all of which date to the period after the Round City declined and deteriorated. I was surprised to learn that it only remained the centre of Abbasid Baghdad for a period of roughly 50 years (AD 763-813), after which it was largely abandoned by the dynasty following the infamous civil war of the two brothers, Al-Amin and Al-Mamun, with court life in Baghdad shifting across to the east bank of the Tigris.
In terms of the Round City's location in modern-day Baghdad, Le Strange states that the shrine of Maruf al-Karkhi "lay outside the Basrah Gate of the Round City" (#5 on the map above in the southeast corner of the Round City), and suggests that, given his estimated distances of 2,500 yards from gate to gate around the external wall (so a circumference of 10,000 yards), and 3,200 yards diameter for the Round City as a whole, we can get a very good idea of its fixed location.
That bridge is insane considering the time period in which it was built. I'd love to know how they built it with the resources they had available back then.
It was the original city of Baghdad and capital of the Abbasid Caliphate during most of that empire’s peak (late 8th/early 9th centuries), being the centre of probably the world’s greatest civilization at that moment in history. Its completion in the 760s is considered to have kicked off the so-called “Golden Age” of Islamic history. It was also considered a rather unique architectural achievement relative to the times, and has a legendary status in Arab-Islamic folklore due to its association with fabled figures such as Harun al-Rashid.
When's the last time you saw a round city?
That would be the "Shaharah Bridge", built around the 17th century with limestock stones and literally joining two mountains. It was made with traditional building tools just after Yemen regained its independence after roughly a century of domination by the Ottoman Empire. The bridge was to be destroyed in case of an invasion.
"No one really knows exactly how the bridge was built especially at that time, but a few legends try to offer some explanations. One story goes that several bridges were built below the major bridge to help with the transfer of supplies up the rugged terrain. Remnants of the minor bridges are still present today. Another legend explains that al-Yaman is credited with building only ten meters [32.5 feet] of the bridge and the remaining ten meters [32.5 feet] were believed to have been completed by an unknown person from the adjacent mountain.” (Khalife, 2015)."
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I am sure that they are around
Interesting. Even the multiple bridge theory is pretty incredible, as the bridges below would still need to be substantial to carry the weight of the materials and laborers. I'd love to know how they did it.That would be the "Shaharah Bridge", built around the 17th century with limestock stones and literally joining two mountains. It was built with traditional building tools after Yemen which just regained their independence after roughly a century of domination by the Ottoman Empire. The bridge was to be destroyed in case of an invasion.
"No one really knows exactly how the bridge was built especially at that time, but a few legends try to offer some explanations. One story goes that several bridges were built below the major bridge to help with the transfer of supplies up the rugged terrain. Remnants of the minor bridges are still present today. Another legend explains that al-Yaman is credited with building only ten meters [32.5 feet] of the bridge and the remaining ten meters [32.5 feet] were believed to have been completed by an unknown person from the adjacent mountain.” (Khalife, 2015)."
You and me both.
A Bolshevik pamphlet distributed in Baghdad and throughout Iraq in 1919/20. It was authored by an Indian Muslim dissident who had spent the war years in Afghanistan agitating against the British, before eventually making his way to Moscow after the revolution. According to the scholar Hanna Batatu, it represents “one of the earliest attempts to create sympathy among the Moslem peoples for the Bolshevik Revolution.” It’s taken from the appendices of his massive book The Old Social Classes and Revolutionary Movements of Iraq:
