[HN Gopher] Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pha...
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Egyptologists uncover rare tombs from before the Pharaohs
Author : pseudolus
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-04-28 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I love how much history is unearthed helping us understand the
| modern era. This is a great example of cancer being found in the
| skeletons and mummies in ancient Egypt:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26627941
|
| https://www.curetoday.com/view/ancient-history-two-mummies-d...
|
| - Early healthcare and medicine in Ancient Egypt:
|
| https://ecancer.org/en/journal/article/746-the-past-and-futu...
|
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323633#takeaway
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Oh, the title is underselling this. Pre-first-dynasty is a big
| deal.
|
| (As I understand it, the title of Pharaoh originates in the 18th
| dynasty almost two thousand years later, when Hatshepsut became
| ruler and it was difficult to call her "king".)
| ncmncm wrote:
| What is most amazing about that period is the thousands of carved
| stone bowls and jars, made from materials up to and including
| corundum-hard as ruby-machined with a precision that is wholly
| unaccountable, and all made before the pyramids.
|
| The interiors of these vessels show machining marks incompatible
| with the tools they are imagined to have been made with. It will
| be very interesting when Zawi Hawass retires and, eventually,
| somebody figures out how they really were fabricated, and
| (moreso) why the method was lost.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > materials up to and including corundum-hard as ruby
|
| Corundum isn't just "hard as ruby", they are the same material.
| sintaxi wrote:
| When Zawi Hawass retires virtually every existing Egyptology
| book will worth less than the paper it is printed on.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| For someone who is unaware of Zawi Hawass and pretty
| uninformed about any serious Egyptology, can you explain what
| you mean. It seems a very interest topic for some medium
| reading while I wait in court tomorrow.
| ClosedPistachio wrote:
| >The tombs include 68 from the Buto period that began around 3300
| B.C. and five from the Naqada III period, which was just before
| the emergence of Egypt's first dynasty around 3100 B.C.,
| according to a statement from the Ministry of Tourism and
| Antiquities.
|
| This is incredible. When you zoom out of your daily life, zoom
| out before smartphones, before electricity, before most modern
| countries exist... there were other civilizations, living daily
| lives, probably considering many of the same concerns we have
| today (family, health, work). Just wild.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| And a lot of war and religion.
|
| What destroyed most of the empires was succession battles
| resulting in civil war, all through the late 1800s.
|
| I've been watching the Fall of Civilizations Youtube channel,
| and the South Americans really messed up succession.
| krisgee wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
|
| This is one of my favourite things. It's an incredibly old,
| historically important text in a dead language and it's just a
| customer complaint.
|
| >"You have put ingots which were not good before my messenger
| and said, 'If you want to take them, take them. If you do not
| want to take them, go away'.
|
| 3750 years ago some dude was still showing up and trying to rip
| people off and pull the "cash in hand" choosing beggar play.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> 3750 years ago some dude was still showing up and trying
| to rip people off and pull the "cash in hand" choosing
| beggar play._
|
| It wasn't so much a scam, but a dispute over _quality
| control_ of all things. Other tablets were found along with
| that one that included a customer complaining that he was
| tired of receiving low quality ingots. They knew enough about
| metallurgy six thousand years ago to have legal disputes over
| impurities!
| intergalplan wrote:
| Also, a bunch of stuff that seems super-old actually isn't.
| There were still lions in the Caucusus until the 10th
| century... CE, not BCE. A thousand years earlier they lived in
| Thrace, too. There were still some wooly mammoths alive when
| the Great Pyramids were being built.
|
| Similarly, living history can sometimes reach closer to the
| modern day than one might appreciate. There were (probably--
| some of the stories lack documentation) a few people born into
| legal chattel slavery in the US still alive while Martin Luther
| King, Jr. was active. The "Old West" and settler/Western
| Expansion days were still _very much_ in living memory when
| early western radio serials and films were made, so it 's
| entirely possible (likely, even) that a couple honest-to-god
| gunslingers (rare though they may have been, and as unlike
| their film counterparts) or victims/perpetrators of
| settler/native violence sat down and watched romanticized
| Westerns on the big screen. Shane is set in 1889 and came out
| in 1953. Lots of people alive during the fictionalized events
| of the film were still alive then. At least a few people who
| fought in or witnessed actual fighting in the Civil War likely
| watched Keaton's _The General_ in a movie theater, or (more
| ominously) Griffith 's _The Birth of a Nation_.
| cheriot wrote:
| I really good one I heard: Harriet Tubman was born into
| slavery when Thomas Jefferson was alive and died when Ronald
| Reagan was alive. The American experiment is still young.
| buerkle wrote:
| Another good one,
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/06/04/she-was-
| la...
| martinflack wrote:
| My favorite fact that puts time in perspective is that
| Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon Landing than the
| building of the great pyramids. (Also sometimes phrased as
| living closer in time to the first Pizza Hut instead of Moon
| Landing.) If you search it, you'll find listicles that go
| through a bunch of these fun facts.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Article just auto closes for me and takes me to a list of
| articles. Is there an alternative link?
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(page generated 2021-04-28 23:01 UTC)