Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#21

Post by lisper »

intergalplan wrote: post #3
ClosedPistachio wrote: post #2

>The tombs include 68 from the Buto period that began around 3300 B.C. and five from the Naqada III period, which was just before the emergence of Egypt's first dynasty around 3100 B.C., according to a statement from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. This is incredible. When you zoom out of your daily life, zoom out before smartphones, before electricity, before most modern countries exist... there were other…

Also, a bunch of stuff that seems super-old actually isn't. There were still lions in the Caucusus until the 10th century... CE, not BCE. A thousand years earlier they lived in Thrace, too. There were still some wooly mammoths alive when the Great Pyramids were being built. Similarly, living history can sometimes reach closer to the modern day than one might appreciate. There were (probably—some of the stories lack d…

The history of science is mostly recent too. The atomic theory, for example, was still controversial until just a little over 100 years ago. Turing's paper on universal computation and the halting problem was published less than 100 years ago. General relativity is almost exactly 100 years old. Werner Heisenberg died less than 50 years ago. Some of his students are still alive.

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#22

Post by ncmncm »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #15
ncmncm wrote: post #11

What is most amazing about that period is the thousands of carved stone bowls and jars, made from materials up to and including corundum–hard as ruby–machined with a precision that is wholly unaccountable, and all made before the pyramids. The interiors of these vessels show machining marks incompatible with the tools they are imagined to have been made with. It will be very interesting when Zawi Hawass retires and,…

> materials up to and including corundum–hard as ruby Corundum isn't just "hard as ruby", they are the same material.

That makes the comparison pretty exact.

But if you brought home any random chip of corundum and said, "look, a ruby", you might get funny looks. People can be pretty particular about their rubies and (not incidentally) sapphires.

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#23

Post by lastofthemojito »

intergalplan wrote: post #3
ClosedPistachio wrote: post #2

>The tombs include 68 from the Buto period that began around 3300 B.C. and five from the Naqada III period, which was just before the emergence of Egypt's first dynasty around 3100 B.C., according to a statement from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. This is incredible. When you zoom out of your daily life, zoom out before smartphones, before electricity, before most modern countries exist... there were other…

Also, a bunch of stuff that seems super-old actually isn't. There were still lions in the Caucusus until the 10th century... CE, not BCE. A thousand years earlier they lived in Thrace, too. There were still some wooly mammoths alive when the Great Pyramids were being built. Similarly, living history can sometimes reach closer to the modern day than one might appreciate. There were (probably—some of the stories lack d…

Apparently it was coined by Alger Hiss, but I've seen Jason Kottke use the term "The Great Span" to describe this phenomenon of a small number of generations spanning surprisingly long periods of time.

Looking at that tag on kottke.org, the top few results are a Civil War widow dying in 2020, John Tyler (president in 1841) having a living grandson, and a 2020 interview with the son of a formerly enslaved person. Wild stuff.

https://kottke.org/tag/The%20Great%20Span

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#24

Post by BurningFrog »

ncmncm wrote: post #20
throwaway17_17 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone who is unaware of Zawi Hawass and pretty uninformed about any serious Egyptology, can you explain what you mean. It seems a very interest topic for some medium reading while I wait in court tomorrow.

Zawi Hawass is like your over-zealous Wikipedia editor. He controls access to Egyptian antiquities. He has one story, and won't tolerate confusion. Everyone working has to be careful not to publish anything that might motivate him to exclude them. Not so different, really, from a lot of professors and Wikipedia editors, but with the power of the State behind his opinions.

So Egyptology isn't really a science today, and I should not trust what I hear too much?

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#25

Post by sewer_bird »

cheriot wrote: post #14
intergalplan wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, a bunch of stuff that seems super-old actually isn't. There were still lions in the Caucusus until the 10th century... CE, not BCE. A thousand years earlier they lived in Thrace, too. There were still some wooly mammoths alive when the Great Pyramids were being built. Similarly, living history can sometimes reach closer to the modern day than one might appreciate. There were (probably—some of the stories lack d…

I really good one I heard: Harriet Tubman was born into slavery when Thomas Jefferson was alive and died when Ronald Reagan was alive. The American experiment is still young.

This isnt true. She died in 1913.

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#26

Post by Finnucane »

sewer_bird wrote: post #25
cheriot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really good one I heard: Harriet Tubman was born into slavery when Thomas Jefferson was alive and died when Ronald Reagan was alive. The American experiment is still young.

This isnt true. She died in 1913.

Reagan was born in 1911. So just barely true.

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#28

Post by vmception »

martinflack wrote: post #7
ClosedPistachio wrote: post #2

>The tombs include 68 from the Buto period that began around 3300 B.C. and five from the Naqada III period, which was just before the emergence of Egypt's first dynasty around 3100 B.C., according to a statement from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. This is incredible. When you zoom out of your daily life, zoom out before smartphones, before electricity, before most modern countries exist... there were other…

My favorite fact that puts time in perspective is that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon Landing than the building of the great pyramids. (Also sometimes phrased as living closer in time to the first Pizza Hut instead of Moon Landing.) If you search it, you'll find listicles that go through a bunch of these fun facts.

The Pizza Hut is basically across the street from her home so that's pretty valid.

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#29

Post by tastyfreeze »

BurningFrog wrote: post #24
ncmncm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zawi Hawass is like your over-zealous Wikipedia editor. He controls access to Egyptian antiquities. He has one story, and won't tolerate confusion. Everyone working has to be careful not to publish anything that might motivate him to exclude them. Not so different, really, from a lot of professors and Wikipedia editors, but with the power of the State behind his opinions.

So Egyptology isn't really a science today, and I should not trust what I hear too much?

Yes, there are several artifacts that dont fit the Hawass history of Egypt. But attempts to change the known history have been stymied by Hawass.

Re: Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs

#30

Post by sintaxi »

BurningFrog wrote: post #24
ncmncm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zawi Hawass is like your over-zealous Wikipedia editor. He controls access to Egyptian antiquities. He has one story, and won't tolerate confusion. Everyone working has to be careful not to publish anything that might motivate him to exclude them. Not so different, really, from a lot of professors and Wikipedia editors, but with the power of the State behind his opinions.

So Egyptology isn't really a science today, and I should not trust what I hear too much?

Lots of amazing work is being done in Egypt right now most of it IMHO being done by Geologists because they are much less likely to have any attachment towards any established theory. Zawi Hawass seems to have contempt for anyone who comes to conclusions that doesn't align with the gated narrative even when those conclusion are very well reasoned (For example: water erosion around the Sphinx).

The official narrative that we were all taught in school of "Pyramids were built 4500 years ago as tombs by Khufu" I would say is understood to be highly inaccurate at this point by anyone outside of the Hawass circle.

Post reply on HN