History/Archaeology Thread
- Thread starter SteveJ
- Start date
I’m into season 10 now, getting interesting. Gold traces being found in high quantities in water testing, and some interesting clues/artefacts found. Bloody addictive
They’ve milked ten seasons out of that show? That’s incredible.
They’ve got 19 seasons out of Ancient Aliens and their ‘experts’ were contradicting themselves as early as season 2.
Article: The Astounding Origins of Chaco Canyon Timber – SAPIENSNature Briefing said:
Last edited:
The first water pumps and grain mills powered by wind-sails originated in Iran in the 6th and 7th centuries.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Should have sold them to the British Museum in the first. Probably would have been given knighthoods.
On a side note, the Treasure Act is pretty interesting. Didn't know that existed. Wonder how many people have found old coins that qualify and not declared them/handed them over?
Probably quite a lot but if you’re a licensed metal detectorist you will know about it.
Yeah, I'd imagine the treasure hunter types probably do. They'd be after the big hoards I assume rather than the odd Roman coin found in a field.
On the bolded - is that a thing? Apart from getting permission to do it on private land, surely anyone can do it if they have the equipment?
There are some areas such as London where you need to be licensed or have a permit to detect etc. There is also a metal detecting membership which insures people and has guides, forums and access to specific rallies for metal detectorists. PAS or a local heritage person will always try to be at a rally too so that detectorists can be informed about the laws regarding the treasure act or PAS.
I'm not a detectorist but I know the chairman of a club and they are absolutely scrupulous about recording and reporting. The thing is they have to spend a lot of time in gaining permission from landowners, and those who don't appear a hundred percent 'good guys' won't get anything like the number of permissions. Plus they mostly have a genuine interest in history and archaeology, and almost all finds are for interest rather than money. Not that they don't dream of finding a gold crown or something, but that's not what keeps them going.
It’s true and people in the heritage industry are still suspicious of metal detectorists so they’re looking for any chance to make it tougher for them despite how useful they can be to enhancing our HERs.
Wow, I didn't know about this guy. Just reading about him has made me wonder.
I'm trying to phrase this carefully, but why is Hitler considered the defacto most evil person in history when there's been countless others who have commited atrocities like this all throughout human history?
3 distinct types of detectorist in my opinion.
1. Love the outdoors and prefer to be 'doing' stuff rather than just sitting/walking, but don't enjoy fishing.
2. Enjoy the research/history and predominantly spend time in the library and on the internet. This is the type that will generally use hire cars and stuff when they go on the hunt, as locals will be looking out for their cars being gone.
3. Dreamers who want to find cool stuff. Often found on the beach at 4am.
1. Love the outdoors and prefer to be 'doing' stuff rather than just sitting/walking, but don't enjoy fishing.
2. Enjoy the research/history and predominantly spend time in the library and on the internet. This is the type that will generally use hire cars and stuff when they go on the hunt, as locals will be looking out for their cars being gone.
3. Dreamers who want to find cool stuff. Often found on the beach at 4am.
There have definitely been other absolute crazies in history, but I suppose Hitler stands out in getting millions murdered in an intentional genocidal scheme in the space of only a couple of years, which I think is an unparalleled level of scale, speed, and intentionality.
Of course, there also factors such as recency bias (there are still survivors alive), the way Nazi actions clashed with contemporary mentalities (colonial abuse wasn't as uncommon in Leopold's time - if not on his scale), Eurocentricity (Hitler doesn't have the same image around the world; Trevor Noah has a bit in his biography about people in the South African community where he grew up not really knowing about Hitler apart from that he was a strongman, and therefore named kids after him), and the detailed documentation of what happened (we simply don't know how evil e.g. leaders in Antiquity really were); but even with all those factors taken into account, I still think Hitler stands out in history for the reasons I mentioned before.
But yes, there have absolutely been total evil bastards in history that have nowhere near the reputation they really should have.
Last edited:
Recency bias + the effects of industrialization + better record keeping + the scale vs different ethnic groups for sure.There were certainly other murderous genocidal regimes, some even more recent. The fact that only 30 years later the world turned a blind eye to the Khmer Rouge is telling.
Brief account of the “Franks” from a 13th century Persian scholar:
9th century account of India and China, probably from a Persian merchant-traveler:
What's the book?Brief account of the “Franks” from a 13th century Persian scholar:
Very interesting!
Even 800 years ago they knew the French don't wash.Apologies, they are taken from this edited collection of primary sources:
Don't mean it of course, looks a really interesting book. Any more snippets would be appreciated by lazy me.
Underrated historical topic that: bathing. I recall it being scandalous that the local women (believe of Britain but could've been France?) preferred the Viking men who actually bothered to bathe and comb their hair.
I like this account of the Hanbalis spoiling all the fun for the people of 10th century Baghdad. Some things don’t change:
Funny how most old scholarly writings about other peoples can be boiled down to "They're ugly and dumb".
Here's an account of an Indian Muslim gentleman from Lucknow struggling to hack the sesh on a visit to Dublin back in 1799:
"Their [the Irish] great national defect, however, is excess in drinking. The rich expend a vast deal in wine; and the common people consume immence quantities of a fiery spirit, called whiskey, which is the peculiar manufacture of this country and part of Scotland.
One evening that I dined in a large company we sat down to table at six o'clock: the master of the house immediately commenced asking us to drink wine, and, under various pretences, replenished our glasses; but perceiving that I was backward in emptying mine, he called for two water glasses, and, having filled them with claret, insisted upon my taking one of them. After the table-cloth was removed, he first drank the health of the King, then of the Queen; after which he toasted a number of beautiful young ladies with whom I as acquainted, none of which I dared to refuse. Thus the time passed till two o'clock in the morning; and we had been sitting for eight hours; he then called to his servants to bring a fresh supply of wine. Although I was so much intoxicated that I could scarcely walk, yet on hearing this order, I was so frightened, that I arose, and requested permission to retire. He said he was sorry I should think of going away so soon; that he wished I would stay till the wine was finished, after which he would call for tea and coffee. I had heard from Englishmen, that the Irish, after they drunk at the table, quarrel, and kill each other in duels; but I must declare, that I never saw them guilty of any rudeness, or of the smallest impropriety."
This is from The Travels of MIrza Abu Taleb Khan - read here. It has a really good account of Ireland and Britain from a unusual perspective.Brief account of the “Franks” from a 13th century Persian scholar:
Did he travel everywhere or is it based on other accounts? I'm reading a book on the Silk Road right now and am struck by the enormous distances and difficult terrain, causing a trip from China to India to take many months even in good conditions - so I'm curious what this author did.9th century account of India and China, probably from a Persian merchant-traveler:
Last edited:
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Hussain is correct. I have a 1956 translated copy of Zurayk's book Ma'na al-Nakbah. The title of the translated text isThe meaning of the Disaster.
I wonder when catastrophe was first used as the word is understood today ?
Pol Pot says hold my beer, while Stalin shouts me first!
Probably worth noting that he and his organisation are pretty pro Israel and part of the Israel lobby in the US. To my knowledge the palestinians have simply co-opted the word 'Nakba' to a meaning of their choice, and that's what it means to them now. Much like "Palestinians" who obviously exist as a people, but have little to do with the ancient land.
It's an ancient Greek word that was used multiple times by Greek and other historians.
I don't care if he's pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. The information is verifiable.
Except it wasn't. Zureiq used it in his book to describe the ongoing war and aftermath as the effect on the Palestinians, but Ām al-Nakba was originally 1920.
He's using a clear pro Israel slant to say that it described the failure of war and destruction of Israel, rather than the disaster for the people there.
There's a couple of decent chapters in this book on the topic of the shifting role and meaning of the nakba in Palestinian nationalist discourse over the decades, unfortunately I can't find it online to share. On the origins of the term itself, as it pertains to Palestine, Esther Webman writes:
"The coining of the term “Nakba” is attributed to the Syrian scholar Qustantin Zurayq, who used it in his book The Meaning of the Nakba, published in August 1948, that is, even before the real dimensions of the Arab defeat in Palestine had become evident. However, perusing Egyptian papers from 1945 reveals that Egyptian intellectuals were already using the term to describe the evolving political situation in Palestine. Indeed, Ibrahim ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini blamed British policy for the catastrophe befalling Palestine and other Arab countries, and Mahmud ‘Izzat ‘Arfa reflected on the evolving Palestinian tragedy, comparing it to the historical Arab Nakba in Spain—a comparison that was to be made frequently in the discourse of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1936, on the eve of the 1936–39 Arab revolt, Sulayman Taji al-Faruqi, the editor of the daily al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya, disseminated a leaflet warning Muslims that Palestine’s fate might be similar to that of Spain if they did not unite to confront the dangerous situation evolving there. Although words such as ma’asa, karitha, naksa, hazima were also used to describe the 1948 defeat, the term “Nakba” took root in the Palestinian and Arab discourse to mark the uniqueness of the Palestinian tragedy."
Those are two different Persians! You can read about al-Qazwini here, where it argues he was a compiler and plagiarist. The latter work is thought by most to be authored by a Persian Merchant from the Gulf coast called Sulayman al-Tajir. But very little is known about him. I don't know if you can access academia.edu but there's a chapter on the work available to read here.
What's the book you're reading?
Ha, clearly I should have paid better attention!
I do have access to academia.edu (I vainly didn't want to delete my profile after I left academia, so people could continue to access my obviously invalueable articles ), so I'll be looking at that - thanks!I'm reading Valerie Hansen's The Silk Road: A New History, from 2012. It's a little disappointing actually: I was looking for a more general overview of silk road history, but this one is rather based on case-studies of sites around the Taklamakan Desert from 300-800 CE (ish). It is also poorly written in the sense that her (large) chapters are long series of paragraphs without subdivisions, in which she frequently gets lost in details, and keeps jumping from subject to subject without much indication of her overall narrative direction and why or how individuals bits are relevant to her overall story. All the same, I knew next to nothing about the silk road, and even less about this region (I had never even heard of that desert!), so as such, it's really interesting, with a ton of socio-economic and related detail.
Just to point out that the word 'catastrophe' appears to be largely irrelevant here; it's just the translation of 'nakba', which 2cents pointed out does have a very specific history and meaning:
Which was my initial point. The meaning [of a pretty well recycled word] was co-opted by the Palestinian cause, and not in the way that tweet inferred.
Ah right, I thought it might be the Peter Frankopan book from a few years ago that got a lot of attention.
Definitely a really interesting subject, if I could go back in time and master Persian I would focus my studies on medieval Khorasan, can’t get enough of it.
Ooh - that sounds interesting! Is it any good? Looks like the book I meant to get - and should have read before getting into details with Valerie Hansen's one. (Which I found based on a review in Nature I think, which made it sound much more like a general history than it really is.)