[HN Gopher] 2,700-year-old leather armor proves technology trans...
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2,700-year-old leather armor proves technology transfer happened in
antiquity
Author : benbreen
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-12-09 07:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedaily.com)
| sillyquiet wrote:
| I think there was a bunch of evidence already that also strongly
| indicated technology transfer throughout Eurasia in the last few
| millennia BCE, especially military technology.
|
| For example, two-wheeled light military chariots _probably_
| originated in Central Asia with the Sintashta culture around 2000
| BCE, and spread from there to everywhere from Egypt to East Asia.
|
| In addition, though I dunno if you want to consider it a
| technology transfer, their particular horse breeds, bred to drive
| those chariots, also spread to the extent those breeds are the
| ancestors of every living domestic horse
| (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04018-9)
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The remarkable thing here is that the technology transfer was
| not by contact and osmosis over the centuries, but literal and
| intentional transit.
|
| We now know that there were two people, a shock troop and a
| horseman, who served in the same Assyrian imperial army at or
| around the same time. Then after they retired from the army,
| one stayed in the region, and the other moved to China.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Well the horses at least were quite intentionally traded, and
| I would be very surprised if chariots were not either,
| although admittedly, they spread mostly by some poor saps
| being pounded to dust by the folks in chariots and then those
| poor saps adopting chariots themselves (e.g., the Egyptians
| and the Hyksos)
| hereforphone wrote:
| How was this in doubt? I invent fire, you see it and copy my
| idea. Technology transfer. The idea is useful enough that it
| propagates out to the rest of the world over time. This is
| intuitive.
| codezero wrote:
| I don't think there was any doubt, but archaeologists like to
| show solid physical evidence, of which they had not had any
| yet, probably mostly because leather decays so quickly. Similar
| to how it's hard to know exactly how material culture evolved
| before the stone age because much of the technology and tools
| have decayed. We have a good idea, and a few examples, but the
| more we can collect and understand the better we can paint the
| picture of history.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| It's not just people copying each other, we have direct
| evidence of an Assyrian soldier who moved to China after
| retirement.
| codezero wrote:
| The article makes it clear they are not sure that this person
| served in the military or whether they bought/acquired the
| armor from someone who did after the fact, nonetheless it's a
| possibility and it's pretty cool.
| elevanation wrote:
| And who then started a DirtTube channel on how to make
| Assyrian armor. (Sadly the records and backups of DirtTube
| have been lost).
| codezero wrote:
| What's really fascinating here is that there is no scale leather
| armor from that period that can be placed contextually in
| Assyria! We only know of it from art and writing. It's wild to
| think that the first set with archaeological context was found so
| far away, imagine if we didn't have the Assyrian art/context, we
| might think the armor was first developed in North West China!
| hannasanarion wrote:
| It's the second set. The first known set was found in the
| Middle East somewhere and is in the Met collection. The
| conclusion of the paper is that these two sets were
| manufactured around the same time, and one of them stayed put,
| while the other was carried 3000 miles to China
| codezero wrote:
| My reading of the paper left me thinking the set in the Met
| is of unknown provenance, this is huge in archaeology/history
| as folks tend not to consider things without having context
| of the exact source.
|
| It's pretty clear (or seems so) that the armor in the Met
| came from there, but the Met doesn't seem to have a
| definitive source for it.
|
| I could have read it wrong or misunderstood, but I've been
| reading a lot about ancient history and they seem to value
| items found in-situ with context over ones that surface after
| they've been discovered without context.
| elevanation wrote:
| It's cool to find this evidence.
|
| But now we have the opposite problem... there is so much good
| information and technology out there, yet we're often not able to
| effectively use it. (What, another failed infrastructure / IT /
| software project? Don't we know how to make those?)
|
| Our collective ego has gotten so big, we often lack the humility
| to say, "Wait, I need to see who has the best technology / method
| in this area", and then learn it and apply it.
| codezero wrote:
| Well, now like then, I suppose, technology is wielded, not
| shared freely.
|
| Sure it spreads, but it spreads by the nature of warfare and/or
| commerce more than anything else.
|
| In fact, that this person was buried with a piece of technology
| that predates defensive technology available in the area shows
| how selfish or superstitious they were.
| incomplete wrote:
| full paper w/images here:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104061822...
| ValG wrote:
| Can we change the link to this article - it's fulsome with more
| details and great images.
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