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British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

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Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#71

Post by Tor3 »

Figs wrote: post #31
thechao wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skimming requires tracking line parity. Remember that spaces are a relatively modern concept—lines of text just sort of break in the middle of words & all sort of nonsense.

Japanese is still like that. No spaces, and lines can just break in the middle of words -- though there are certain cases where word wrap algorithms are not allowed to split lines (and standardized rules for these cases). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_breaking_rules_in_East_As... if you're curious.

True, but fortunately the particles come to the rescue. Generally a word is "tagged" with a particle indicating its grammatical significance, e.g. that it's the object of the sentence. And all the particles are Hiragana, so they stick out nicely. Helps with reading.

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#72

Post by Nasrudith »

masklinn wrote: post #65
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange that tech seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with single-purpose devices like MP3 players, GPS devices and cameras being consolidated into phones.

I'm not sure it's strange: these are "nomadic" not sedentary devices, you don't keep your MP3 player and GPS device and camera in your shed, you have them on you at all times, so combining them makes for a much simpler nomadic experience. Not to mention phones are really quite good at being mp3 players and GPS devices and cameras at least for the average person, so the tradeoff is not big.

Also the fact is that the user interfaces are the "huge" part for devices compared to the processing. It brings to mind the cyberpunk trope of full keyboard sized "decks" with a tiny screen if that as opposed to modern laptops which have long used squarer and abbreviated keyboard layouts.

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#73

Post by Tor3 »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #66
rjf72 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also makes you wonder about the mistakes we're making when things get truly ancient, but cannot be proved to be wrong. This vase is only 4,000-5,000 years old and the mistake was ostensibly very obvious. By contrast we have made a variety of statements, generally taken as true fact, about prehistoric humans tens of thousands of years past. Funny to think that one day we'll be that 4,000-5,000 year old ancient civiliz…

> Digital records don't leave much room for ambiguity, and there are already countless organizations working on preservation as a purpose in and of itself, and other organizations working on data preservation for less idealistic reasons. You say that, but there's data on media from 40 years ago that can't be accessed either because of bit rot or because the technology no longer exists. Hell, most of the content on th…

Indeed. I've been searching for stuff that I could easily find even as little as 10-15 years ago, and it's gone. Nothing on archive.org (even though it started in 1996), mirrors are gone, it's just not there. Heck, even some more recent stuff can't be found anymore, by any search engine.

As for digital storage in general.. magnetic storage is quite good. Leave your harddrive on the shelf for a few decades and it'll probably still be ok. At least the magnetically stored data. Spin up the disk every two years and the rest is taken care of too. But Flash storage gradually lose data, it's not permanent. Come back in twenty and it's gone.

To keep digital data you'll have to implement a scheme of regularly refresh + copy/convert to newer media. That's a Herculean task if you want to keep all that we currently have of digital records.

Whereas a stone tablet will keep nicely.

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#74

Post by bluntfang »

m741 wrote: post #30
2arrs2ells wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Macaulay's "Motel of the Mysteries" ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108831.Motel_of_the_Myst... ) satirizes this bias, with archeologists from 4022 inspecting a modern day motel room and uncovering the "holy" toilet. It's a gem.

I've got to thank you for this suggestion. I read this maybe 20 years ago in middle school, the concept stuck with me ("everything is oriented to this big box in the largest room, clearly it's a holy space" - television) and spent years thinking about it and never able to figure out what book it was.

Well how isn't it a holy space? What is religion but an avenue to impart morals and support to a community? Does TV not reach this goal, especially given shows like CSI/Law and Order which basically give the impression that the police/authority have god-like powers to solve crime, which is our societies codified morals? Shows like "Good Morning America" in which the hosts are our pastors giving us our daily dose of what to buy and which celebrities to pay attention to?

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#75

Post by ygra »

titanix2 wrote: post #49
minikites wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of wild writing styles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

No, there are not. Top-down right-left, right-left top-down, left-right top-down, boustrophedon, "filling the available space (hieroglyph)" and that's it. I never heard of a writing system going bottom to top.

> I never heard of a writing system going bottom to top.

Ogham. Not exclusively bottom to top, but basically written around a standing stone in a ↱↴ fashion.

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#76

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

cronix wrote: post #17
gus_massa wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they thought it was a vase, I guess it is empty and it has a hole at the "top"/"bottom". It doesn't look like a good design for a real weapon.

I imagine the hole is where the wooden club was inserted/attached, which has probably since disintegrated long ago.

Quite. An axe head would also have a similar hole after the wooden handle disintegrates.

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#77

Post by vmh1928 »

ahje wrote: post #57
TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's hard to understand, it's just the plague of consumerism IMO. Most people have the attitude that an item has a purpose, and that this purpose is it's only sanctioned one, and you can't use the item for anything else. So instead of using an item for multiple purposes, they'll just keep buying the same thing with different labels ("food scissors", "paper scissors", "knife for X", "knife for Y", "knife…

I keep getting wierd looks when I do things with a regular utility knife instead of spending five minutes fetching "the right tool for the job". I bet the ancient ones had the same problem when someone used a small shard of rock for a job that a larger shard was clearly better suited for! ;)

Who hasn't used a flat bladed screwdriver to pry open a can of paint, scrape crud off of a car part, lever apart two things after removing the bolt, as a chisel and then turned it around and used the handle as a hammer. In some areas of life, not much has changed.

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#78

Post by d4rti »

UncleSlacky wrote: post #68
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that, I was just thinking about how people years from now would interpret stuff like our erm, sacred thrones used in the daily cleansing rituals.

Check out "Body Ritual Among the Nacerima": https://msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html

And in the same vein, The Sacred Rac : http://www.drabruzzi.com/sacred_rac.html

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#79

Post by Balgair »

staplers wrote: post #22
Balgair wrote: post #20

Man, archeology is hard , but this one, with all the upside-down writing, is a bit of a face-palm. My favorite examples in archeology is the Chaco Canyon Cultures. If you are in the western US, have a 4 wheel drive car, and a free few days, I'd go no where else. Those people are an astonishing mystery. You know how with some places, going on the journey is kinda the point? Sometimes with archeology, that's kinda true…

After a decade of telling people about my favorite places around Portland (where I grew up) and watching them get absolutely destroyed by Instagram-tourists, I would highly advise against this sort of promotion of fragile amazing places.

Thanks for the tips!

Chaco Canyon is not very close to any large-ish city to begin with. Just driving from Albuquerque is about 3 hours to get to the 4-wheel-drive-only road into the park. That road is generously described as 'washboard' in the best of conditions, which are rare. Once there, there is only tent camping. Water and toilets are available, but not any food or drink though, 'amenities' are sparse. It's difficult to get to and stay at, so you really have to want to be there. Though I may not know too much about the current zeitgeist of Insta' , I'd imagine that Chaco is not 'worth' the trip if you are just there for the photos and likes. However, if you are there to experience the archeology, the people, and the astounding mystery of the Chacoans, the effort is very much worth it. Besides, the stars at night are some of the clearest I've ever seen, and those show up terribly on a phone camera.

Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down

#80

Post by logfromblammo »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #7
logfromblammo wrote: post #2

The king's weapon combined the best qualities of the two bashing weapons that had previously been available to elite soldiers of the 22nd century BC: bricks and sticks. This photo caption makes more sense if you are inscribing your gripe against the city you are warring with on your weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:This_cuneiform_text_gives...

You may just be joking, but just in case, the Mesopotamian early dynastic period was very familiar with metalworking. Metal swords were common, and there are several examples of fine gold and silver-decorated weapons.

I was joking. But because it was the bronze age, I figured I'd make it a little clearer by specifying "bashing" weapons. As far as I know, metal would have been expensive, and limited specifically to the purposes where it would be strictly advantageous: spearheads, axe heads, sword blades, forge tools, helmets, shields, maybe torso-only armor. And if you're rich: mirrors, cups, jewelry, and artwork. The king of Umma would have likely owned a lot of bronze stuff, commanding soldiers with bronze arms and armor.

It is possible that a mace head with cuneiform inscriptions served a ceremonial purpose. Executions of captured prisoners, maybe? I imagine it would have been like Negan from the Walking Dead, except barbed wire hadn't been invented yet.

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