221–230 of 246 posts
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Yeah but I am pretty worried about us fucking it up these days.
People have been complaining about the imminent collapse of society for pretty much all of recorded history. We're not special.
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There are thousands of sumerian cuneiform tablets left to translate, if you're bored ;-) Many of these predate the pyramids by a thousand years or so. Most translated ones contain mundane enough stuff, so its likely that the rest are similar, but if you're looking for something ancient to discover something in, I can't think of a better place to look given their age and that they're already found (ie available to rea…
You are missing my point (which I inadvertently mangled by writing ”opened chamber” in lieu of ”unopened chamber"): the whole Great Pyramid is entirely structural and there have never been artefacts found within it that can be said to have been present at the time of building and that could be definitively carbon-dated. A single sigil of dubious origin on ancient plaster repair-work in the load-baring spaces above th…
My point doesn't really go against this, just that it may be more practical to look at what we already have access to, but is largely not translated.
Also, since we have dated many other Egyptian artefacts, we can assume that the civilisation is that old (but of course, the pyramids could have pre-dated them). If they did find any artefacts with writing in the chamber and it is much older than when we believe the pyramids were built, I wouldn't be surprised if the artefacts contained Akkadian or Sumerian cuneiform anyway ;-)
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Not at all. Most of the pyramids, and many many other burials were ransacked by graverobbers and scavengers in antiquity - in a lot of cases, even while there were still pharaohs. It's assumed that a lot of them were robbed immediately , by the same workers who built them - in fact, even as early as the Middle Kingdom, there was a thriving trade in robbed grave goods for the explicit purpose of reuse in another buria…
Or, humans have always had to focus on their own self-preservation and only recently have we had the luxury to care for the past at the expense of the present.
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I was at the Vatican museum recently and was surprised to see most sculptures appeared to be permanently damaged for embedding a number label. (example: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hvqlG6iPcP8/UGzso1C3AcI/AAAAAAAAJF... ) I agree with you, let’s not be arrogant, like in the past, and destroy what we should save for future generations.
I was also there in april, and I am surprised the tourists and kids are left unattended, taking selfies, touching everything. It's an accident waiting to happen. Most tourists (ashamed to admit, but this includes me) don't actually appreciate or care about ancient art, it's more like been there, done that.
Amazing this stuff still yields secrets after thousands of years. Meanwhile the 3.5" floppy disks in my parents attic on which I've kept all my teenage Turbo Pascal source code have long lost all their data.
Real programmers store their source code on baked clay tablets.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/human...
Amazing this stuff still yields secrets after thousands of years. Meanwhile the 3.5" floppy disks in my parents attic on which I've kept all my teenage Turbo Pascal source code have long lost all their data.
This is something I think about a lot. How do we build a "data pyramid" that can be interpreted by future generations. I feel like much of our culture will be lost to bit rot.
Also with a lesser extent of knowledge storage this one is interesting: https://www.wired.com/2009/04/ff-guidestones/
Interesting how the pyramids have been around for 4500 years and we still don't know all about their structure... Fun fact: there's a Neolithic site in Ireland, Newgrange, that's actually older than the pyramids. Fascinating and worth a visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange
Nothing blows my mind more than Göbekli Tepe, especially its age. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe
These look like neither... and that's damn weird! Almost like what a blind carver would make from listening to a description of a thing he never saw and carving it.
Probably the oldest cave paintings are like this, but those are like "simplest thing one can do" while these imply effort, but... somehow "skillfully retarted", like there was something "messed up" with the minds of the designers, or simply very different from our own.
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Traditional archaeology is well documented, controlled, and destructive.
You two are not in contradiction.
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You are right, but that was just an example I found on the web. Here is another one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Sculptur... A few more: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2693/4094114491_b9ae422af4_b.j... https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4293/35910672716_90f1f62105_k....
Art is restored all the time. The places these labels were put are not where the valuable details rest. I grew up around antique collectors all my life. You are overreacting.
Sure they could find far better solutions, and very likely would today. But I don't think this is a particularly big deal that it was done in the past.