31–40 of 112 posts
> Considering this thing survived 5000 years (holy shit!) with zero downtime and has stronger durability guarantees than most databases today. One could argue that it had 5000 years of downtime when no one knew where it was /s
Quote: I wonder how people store dates older than this. Maybe if I’m a British Museum manager, and I want to keep theft inventory details. How do I do it? As an epoch? Store it as text? The answer: Text. Many items in museums have no specific date but Circa X. I have spent a lot of time in the early 2000s to enable "Sort by date" in museum registrars software I was maintaining despite having it textual
This sounds like the perfect invitation for some old school over engineering.
I'm already having so much fun running through every possible input in my head, and I would inevitably write a serious mountain of steaming code to support it.
Some more info: > This tablet with early writing most likely documents grain distributed by a large temple. Scholars have distinguished two phases in the development of writing in southern Mesopotamia. The earliest tablets, probably dating to around 3300 B.C., record economic information using pictographs and numerals drawn in the clay. A later phase, as represented by this tablet, reflects changes in the techniques…
From Weavers, Scribes, and Kings:
> The reason that the artist immortalized Ushumgal and Shara-igizi-Abzu is that they were involved in a transaction so important that a record of it was carved onto a stone boulder, complete with pictures of the main parties. The roughly drawn cuneiform signs that litter the sides of the boulder, and even extend over the figures themselves, record that this transaction pertained to animals, land, and houses, in large quantities: 450 iku of fields are mentioned (about 158 hectares or 392 acres), along with three houses and some bulls, donkeys, and sheep. Unfortunately, the inscription suffers from a dire shortage of verbs, which would have been useful in determining what exactly was going on.
This isn't just the oldest recorded transaction, it's nearly the oldest known recognizable sample of human writing. Not a love letter or a sermon or a story, but a receipt. This probably reflects their ubiquity rather than importance. There is one known older writing sample, the Kish Tablet of Jemet Nasr. Since that tablet represents lists and counts of goods (barley, oil, livestock), it may also be a receipt, or per…
That was not by (deliberate) choice. The earliest writings were actually logographic or semasiographic, meaning they represented ideas, objects, or concepts directly rather than the sounds of a specific spoken language. We actually don't know what language(s) was/were spoken by the people who recorded the earliest tablets (not sure if that also applies to this particular one, though). Phonographic writing developed m…
Well, the earliest signs are logographic.
But phonographic writing didn't take long to develop. Once you've got a few logographs, it becomes apparent immediately that you can't extend that approach to everything you can say.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The IBM 80-hole punch card will only turn 100 in 2028. Who knows what the world will look like in 2128.
I bet the clay tablet will be just fine. No word on moldy cards.
Whenever a city was conquered, the tablets there were immortalized as the city burned down. But cities that didn't get sacked didn't burn down, and their tablets could be lost. For example, we don't have the clay records from Hammurabi's reign in Babylon, because (a) he was a strong king, and Babylon wasn't conquered on his watch; and (b) he reigned a long time ago, and that period of Babylon sank below the water table, dissolving all the records.
[1] Some tablets were intentionally fired for posterity.
This isn't just the oldest recorded transaction, it's nearly the oldest known recognizable sample of human writing. Not a love letter or a sermon or a story, but a receipt. This probably reflects their ubiquity rather than importance. There is one known older writing sample, the Kish Tablet of Jemet Nasr. Since that tablet represents lists and counts of goods (barley, oil, livestock), it may also be a receipt, or per…
You start keeping items in clay jars. You eventually mark the jars with a depiction of what's in it. Those marks begin standing in for the items themselves when communicating across languages or keeping records of how many items and jars you have.
Quote: I wonder how people store dates older than this. Maybe if I’m a British Museum manager, and I want to keep theft inventory details. How do I do it? As an epoch? Store it as text? The answer: Text. Many items in museums have no specific date but Circa X. I have spent a lot of time in the early 2000s to enable "Sort by date" in museum registrars software I was maintaining despite having it textual
> Sort by date" in museum registrars software This sounds like the perfect invitation for some old school over engineering. I'm already having so much fun running through every possible input in my head, and I would inevitably write a serious mountain of steaming code to support it.
Quote: I wonder how people store dates older than this. Maybe if I’m a British Museum manager, and I want to keep theft inventory details. How do I do it? As an epoch? Store it as text? The answer: Text. Many items in museums have no specific date but Circa X. I have spent a lot of time in the early 2000s to enable "Sort by date" in museum registrars software I was maintaining despite having it textual
> Sort by date" in museum registrars software This sounds like the perfect invitation for some old school over engineering. I'm already having so much fun running through every possible input in my head, and I would inevitably write a serious mountain of steaming code to support it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was not by (deliberate) choice. The earliest writings were actually logographic or semasiographic, meaning they represented ideas, objects, or concepts directly rather than the sounds of a specific spoken language. We actually don't know what language(s) was/were spoken by the people who recorded the earliest tablets (not sure if that also applies to this particular one, though). Phonographic writing developed m…
> Phonographic writing developed much later Well, the earliest signs are logographic. But phonographic writing didn't take long to develop. Once you've got a few logographs, it becomes apparent immediately that you can't extend that approach to everything you can say.
> Once you've got a few logographs, it becomes apparent immediately that you can't extend that approach to everything you can say.