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Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

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Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#81

Post by thaumasiotes »

Torkel wrote: post #72
mothballed wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a phrase "Shoot, shovel, shutup" used in the US whenever anything is found on private property (usually endangered animals) that the government has an interest in protecting/restricting. The owners will destroy it immediately and before anyone finds out so that they don't lose their property rights. Thus you have the unintended consequences that these regulations accelerate rather than mitigate their destruc…

Fun fact: back in 1600s the Swedish government wanted to make our old history grander than perhaps it had been. As part of that they instituted a law that if you find gold or ancient things on your grounds you would be paid more than the worth of it if you brought it in: https://www.icomos.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1666-Placat... It lead to many treasures reaching museums etc instead of being melted down! It's st…

> As part of that they instituted a law that if you find gold or ancient things on your grounds you would be paid more than the worth of it if you brought it in

> It's still in effect, and still pays higher-than-melting prices

But the melting price of an ancient bronze sword is nothing. Most ancient artifacts have no material value.

Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#82

Post by thaumasiotes »

stephenhuey wrote: post #26
DougN7 wrote: post #21

As an American, where we have comparatively little history (we’re celebrating 250 years - some folks in Europe live in houses older than that!) visiting Rome is almost mind blowing to see SO MUCH ancient history right there, and almost everywhere. So cool!

Comparatively few historical ruins built out of materials that would have lasted this long, but a long history, actually, and some you can still see... Mexico City is a quick plane ride from the USA, and while some of their ruins are buried, you can hop a short bus ride outside the city to walk among standing ruins of Teotihuacan, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at the time Jesus walked on the Earth. It wa…

> Teotihuacan, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at the time Jesus walked on the Earth. It was 20 square kilometers whereas Rome at the height of the empire had only 14 square kilometers within the Aurelian Walls.

...so what? Why would you compare "the size of Teotihuacan" to "the area enclosed in the Aurelian Walls"? Why not compare it to "the size of Rome"?

I can think of one reason you'd do this...

Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#83

Post by jimbokun »

RetroTechie wrote: post #15
al_borland wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited Rome last year. There was a lot of talk about how long it was taking to build a new subway line, because they kept running into ancient artifacts. It was also commonly said that the city was like a lasagna, with layers upon layers of history under everything. Building that were originally built elevated are now at street level. It almost seems hard not to find ancient ruins. It then becomes a question of pr…

If they're so common, why not incorporate into the construction project? Walk through a modern subway, see bits & pieces of ancient history all over the place. Buy icecream, sit on a bench that labourers hacked out of stone 2ky ago.

> If they're so common, why not incorporate into the construction project?

If it's the same one I read about, they did.

Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#84

Post by WalterBright »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #76
WalterBright wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the American Indians did not have writing, and so the histories of the tribes is pretty murky. For example, most of what is known about the Commanches comes from letters and diaries of white people who were in contact with them, or were enslaved by them. See "Empire of the Summer Moon" by Gwynne. https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful... It's a fantastic account, and I'm amazed no…

"Writing" is a tricky term. Indigenous groups in what's now the US had property records, laws, and symbolically represented stories that could be read by others. What they didn't have was a system of symbols that can fully encode human speech (and vice versa). The latter is the typical definition of "writing" and it's not required to have the former. On an unrelated note, Gwynne's book is fine as a fantasy story, but…

I ordered the book, thank you!

As evidence of the paucity of historical knowledge of the Indian peoples, estimates of the pre-Columbian population vary from 10 million to 100 million.

I know about the various rock paintings with symbols, but there isn't enough of that to represent much of anything.

Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#85

Post by al_borland »

WalterBright wrote: post #68
al_borland wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited Rome last year. There was a lot of talk about how long it was taking to build a new subway line, because they kept running into ancient artifacts. It was also commonly said that the city was like a lasagna, with layers upon layers of history under everything. Building that were originally built elevated are now at street level. It almost seems hard not to find ancient ruins. It then becomes a question of pr…

My obvious thought is why not dig deeper to build the subways?

I’m not sure how deep the new one is, but some of them I went on already seemed extremely deep. I felt like I was on escalators for a long time, and multiple tiers, to the point I was Googling what the tallest escalators were when getting back to my hotel (Rome didn’t make the cut). There is definitely a cost to going deeper, in construction, ongoing maintenance, and the experience for the rider.

Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#87

Post by thaumasiotes »

rsynnott wrote: post #56
viciousvoxel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick but we do know who built Teotihuacan -- it was the Teotihuacanos! Unfortunately it's true that we know relatively little about them.

This feels kind of tautological. We know who built Teotihuacan, it was the Teotihuacanos! What do we know about them? Well, they built Teotihuacan... (Seriously, though, _is_ anything much known about them beyond that?)

The general term for this type of argument is "dormitive potency".

https://brucebyfield.com/2012/07/11/recognizing-dormitive-ex...

Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#88

Post by quadrifoliate »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #82
stephenhuey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparatively few historical ruins built out of materials that would have lasted this long, but a long history, actually, and some you can still see... Mexico City is a quick plane ride from the USA, and while some of their ruins are buried, you can hop a short bus ride outside the city to walk among standing ruins of Teotihuacan, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at the time Jesus walked on the Earth. It wa…

> Teotihuacan, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at the time Jesus walked on the Earth. It was 20 square kilometers whereas Rome at the height of the empire had only 14 square kilometers within the Aurelian Walls. ...so what? Why would you compare "the size of Teotihuacan" to "the area enclosed in the Aurelian Walls"? Why not compare it to "the size of Rome"? I can think of one reason you'd do this...

Huh?

Not the OP, but I have heard that Rome is defined by the seven hills, so I thought the Aurelian Wall definition was excluding a hill or something. The Wikipedia article says the walls cover all seven hills and the Campus Martius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian_Walls

Are you saying you'd include even more in "the size of Rome (the city)"? If so, what?

Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#89

Post by quadrifoliate »

DougN7 wrote: post #21

As an American, where we have comparatively little history (we’re celebrating 250 years - some folks in Europe live in houses older than that!) visiting Rome is almost mind blowing to see SO MUCH ancient history right there, and almost everywhere. So cool!

> we have comparatively little history (we’re celebrating 250 years)

You didn't exactly say this, but I'd stop short of defining history around the existence of the current US government and structure. Ironically 250 years is probably longer than any continental European government has been around in its present state.

In terms of history as such, we have just as much history in the US as Europe does. Just ask the Native Americans / First People. There are lots of examples elsewhere in the conversation.

Re: Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins

#90

Post by thaumasiotes »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #88
thaumasiotes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teotihuacan, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at the time Jesus walked on the Earth. It was 20 square kilometers whereas Rome at the height of the empire had only 14 square kilometers within the Aurelian Walls. ...so what? Why would you compare "the size of Teotihuacan" to "the area enclosed in the Aurelian Walls"? Why not compare it to "the size of Rome"? I can think of one reason you'd do this...

Huh? Not the OP, but I have heard that Rome is defined by the seven hills, so I thought the Aurelian Wall definition was excluding a hill or something. The Wikipedia article says the walls cover all seven hills and the Campus Martius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian_Walls Are you saying you'd include even more in "the size of Rome (the city)"? If so, what?

You'd include the entire city. That's what people will take you to mean when you refer to a city.
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