[HN Gopher] Purple dye extracted from sea snails made the Phoeni...
___________________________________________________________________
Purple dye extracted from sea snails made the Phoenicians rich
traders (2020)
Author : Ballu
Score : 42 points
Date : 2022-04-07 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.middleeasteye.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.middleeasteye.net)
| egberts1 wrote:
| A good read about how a conquered civilization can lose their
| trade secrets.
| EricE wrote:
| I love articles like this - it's easy to think of ancient peoples
| as being dumb, but I'm always amused when you come across stuff
| like this and find there is more in common with them than we
| often think.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I have a feeling that since the industrial days we're also very
| removed from physical reality and only skilled at handling
| forms and vague concepts. People back in the day had first-hand
| knowledge of lots of thing in the world.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| A lot of that is just propaganda. The last 1000 years of
| western intellectual tradition has be marked by the present
| zeitgeist propagandizing against the previous zeitgeist.
|
| The western dark ages weren't all that dark, nobody thought the
| world was flat, Giordano Bruno was an occultist and not
| champion of natural science, nailing your theses to a church
| door wasn't a mic drop thing but more like making a forum post,
| there's even nuance to the Spanish inquisition.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| And it gets even spicier the more recently you look!
| JunkEmu wrote:
| Relevant: https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/video/the-
| monologues-blin...
| anonu wrote:
| There is speculation that the Phoenicians made it to present day
| USA thanks to their advanced seafaring capabilities. [1]
|
| Nonetheless, the same Phonenician explorer spirit contributed to
| the shaping of what is modern day Lebanon today. The Lebanese, as
| early as the 1500s and 1600s had strong ties to the regions of
| Italy and France. This is why Lebanon has been more on the West-
| leaning side than other Middle Eastern countries.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Phoenician_discovery...
| petercooper wrote:
| You know when people ask hypotheticals like "if you were
| transported to medieval times, had to live there, and can take
| one thing with you" and you realize how useless computers,
| phones, or light bulbs would be? I think my new answer is a
| bottle of exotically colored dye!
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'd bring my Casio Rangeman. Altimeter, barometer, compass,
| thermometer and time in a small solar powered package. I'd be
| able to predict weather and the setting and rise of the sun
| with greater accuracy than anyone else. Hopefully I could get a
| job in a kings court as a wizard. Worst case I sell it for a
| mansion.
|
| https://www.gshock.com/watches/master-of-g/gw9400-1b
| yumraj wrote:
| Actually if you do that, you'll be able to start your own
| religion and have the king follow you.
| hnov wrote:
| You'd probably be killed for that kind of sorcery.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Man, depending on the era, I think each of these items is
| enough to start a religion.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Showing up prior to the Reconquista in Europe with a working
| knowledge of 0 and the Hindu-Arabic numeral system would go a
| long way. You could probably also figure out distillation. If
| you aren't too early you could probably invent telescopes,
| microscopes, and germ theory. And that's without bringing
| anything other than knowing that those things could exist.
|
| There's probably a good book on practical engineering stuff
| that would really come in handy. Simple recipes for things like
| clear glass, gunpowder, interesting properties of coal,
| navigation, etc.
| bolasanibk wrote:
| Something like this? How to Invent Everything: A Survival
| Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler
| [https://www.amazon.com/How-Invent-Everything-Survival-
| Strand...]
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Yeah idk. Lenses are hard.
| samatman wrote:
| It's not the lenses which are difficult, it's clear glass.
|
| With a piece of pure glass, the rest is some emory and a
| great deal of patience.
|
| Clear glass is also more about knowhow than raw technical
| difficulty, it isn't the Bessemer process, it's knowing how
| to flux with soda + add some lead to get the melting point
| down, then pouring it on lead to get nice flat sheets.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It's not like you'd be distracted by Twitter, just
| knowing how it works you could probably work it out with
| a few skilled glass makers.
| ahartman00 wrote:
| Hope a website will work, assuming your trip is not too
| imminent :)
|
| https://simplifier.neocities.org/index.html
| tmchu wrote:
| You would make good money by just peddling the bottle
| themselves for majority of history. Glassware, fine China and
| other vessels that can contain your dyes are not cheap before
| the industrial revolution.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| No, not that much, they knew how to make glass since way long
| ago. I guess in the Americas you could, they apparently
| either had not much glass or it wasn't viable (like the
| wheel, which was for children's toys mostly).
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I've always wondered how things would have played out in
| the americas if someone had invented something like the
| Chinese wheelbarrow[1] which is meant to work something
| like a human powered cart.
|
| [1]https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-
| wheelbar...
| jmkb wrote:
| I've always imagined a solar-powered scientific calculator.
| distances wrote:
| And my usual thought is to bring bag full of ibuprofen and
| peddle that as a pricy hangover cure for the nobility. Truth
| be told, I doubt I would get anyone to even try my pills.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-07 23:01 UTC)