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Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin

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Re: Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin

#41

Post by sidewndr46 »

alephnerd wrote: post #35
robot-wrangler wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the wild thing about the southwest is the open-air museum aspect of it, not the layers on layers. For petroglyphs, the southwest has so many that date to the high middles ages (~1100 AD) you can stumble on them by accident as a hiker. AFAIK the oldest in the area are still thought to be these ones[0], about 9000 years ago. (Always controversial to date rocks I guess, but the oldest North American mummy should be…

The Puebloan culture in the southwest during that time was basically a full fledged civilization. It's insane how underresearched such a culture is despite having built megastructures like within the Grand Chaco Canyon

did they leave behind significant amounts of writing?

Re: Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin

#43

Post by alephnerd »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #41
alephnerd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Puebloan culture in the southwest during that time was basically a full fledged civilization. It's insane how underresearched such a culture is despite having built megastructures like within the Grand Chaco Canyon

did they leave behind significant amounts of writing?

Nope. Which is what makes it so difficult. Additionally, adjacent nations like the Navajo, Apache, and others are very tight lipped about their extremely robust ancestral and oral history because of bad experiences along with taboos.

It felt like a mix of rightful wariness due to untrustworthy opportunistic anthropologists from the 19th and 20th century along with taboos that developed due to some sort of collapse.

Re: Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin

#44

Post by traderj0e »

SoftTalker wrote: post #22
hecturchi wrote: post #20

As a child I was walking down the street and kicked something by chance that sounded metallic. 150 year old coin, irrc. Just there on the asphalt next to the sidewalk. Unfortunately bronze, with trimmed edges, common mint and worth very little. But if you tell me someone just stumbles onto and old coin in the street just lime that, I pretty much believe it.

When I was a teenager I was working at McDonalds and someone came in and paid for a meal using old US Silver Certificate bills. Some people just are careless and don't notice old or unusual things.

Wow. I like how those look almost like modern bills except for a cool seal and text saying it's redeemable for silver, subtle flex.

Only time I ever got rare money was a buffalo / Indian head nickel as change in a cafe very recently, not a valuable form though.

Re: Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin

#46

Post by [deleted] »

exitb wrote: post #4
lordleft wrote: post #2

I knew vaguely that Troy had many layers of settlement, but I didn't realize that Troy had an extensive life in antiquity that extended into the classical Greek age (Post-Bronze Age) and Early Roman Age. It's funny to think of Roman and Greek Tourists visiting Troy VIII in 300 BC.

Was there anything resembling tourism in 300 BC?

[deleted]

Re: Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin

#47

Post by traderj0e »

nonameiguess wrote: post #26
cammasmith wrote: post #13

Can't even imagine what it's like to live in Europe. Just casually going on a walk and finding a coin that is over 2 millennia old. Just another Tuesday.

Downtown Los Angeles has a pretty famous park and museum with fossils of preserved megafauna that have been extinct for millennia still regularly found just chilling in a bubbling lake of oil. I even worked there 25 years ago.

La Brea tarpits, the essential LA elementary school field trip

Re: Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin

#48

Post by redsocksfan45 »

kirubakaran wrote: post #25
lamasery wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there were street vendors selling little replicas of the wooden horse.

When I visited Troy, the museum's trojan horse replica said "Under Construction". Apparently it had been that way for months and months, which was pretty funny considering the original took only 3 days.

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