[HN Gopher] Findings from 3,300-year-old Uluburun shipwreck reve...
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Findings from 3,300-year-old Uluburun shipwreck reveal complex
trade network
Author : wglb
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-12-05 15:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Reminder that this time corresponds with New Kingdom Egypt and
| the 18th Dynasty.
|
| The Great Pyramid had been around for about 1000 years by the
| time of the events discussed in the article.
|
| Even known civilization is very old.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| As is increasingly speculated, humanity has had sophisticated
| societies for far longer than a few thousand years. Zero chance
| we just sprung up out of the dirt one day. Guaranteed the ice age
| destroyed huge swaths of technically primitive but socially
| advanced civilizations. Two issues with this hypothesis:
|
| 1. Over 10,000 years few artifacts can survive degradation
|
| 2. There are political motivations for controlling the narrative
| around evolution and the birth of civilization
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Do you have any evidence for what you are saying? It sounds
| like the rabbit hole I went down after watching the recent
| Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse and discovering pretty much
| all of his assertions can be refuted by just reading the
| Wikipedia for each "ancient" site such as this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang
|
| This gives a very different picture of the site than the one in
| the episode.
| guessbest wrote:
| Gobekli Tepe dates to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between c.
| 9500 and 8000 BC, which would make it over 10k years old. It
| didn't get built overnight
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
| rightbyte wrote:
| 3300 years ago the oldest pyramids were thousands of years old.
| Or do you mean in general and not tied to the article?
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I'm more so discussing 10k+ years ago, with supporting
| evidence of sophistication thousands of years ago
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye well they were probably not less intelligent than we
| are. And we can more or less only estimate their
| sofistication by their tools we find at burial sites etc.
|
| Obviously complex societies could have existed on a social
| level.
| someotherperson wrote:
| > Ye well they were probably not less intelligent than we
| are
|
| It's important to emphasise that they were definitely not
| less intelligent, nor did they have different behaviour.
| You can take a child from 50,000 years ago and they would
| perform the same as the average child today. The modern
| homo sapien sapien reached its point as early as 160,000
| years ago.
|
| The idea here is that we're expected to believe that
| modern humans -- like me and you -- sat idle for at least
| 80,000 to as much as 150,000 years before reaching a
| point in the last 10k years and suddenly forming
| civilizations (of which there are about six known,
| independent origin points around the globe). We lack
| evidence to the contrary -- sure -- but if we find
| evidence it will just be construed as a black swan event
| that would, in hindsight, be obvious.
| browserman wrote:
| For those unaware, OP is referring to a crackpot theory most
| recently advanced by the journalist Graham Hancock. The idea of
| sophisticated pre-ice age civilizations is universally regarded
| by the archaeologists and experts to be roughly on par with the
| "ancient aliens" hypothesis.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Ah yes, gatekeeping and name calling. The cornerstone of
| "established" science everywhere. There is no need to
| denigrate Graham Hancock's hypothesis as "crackpot" and it
| certainly isn't a proper theory. Science welcomes all ideas
| only to discard them with proof to the contrary.
| Unfortunately, much of archeology is inference not proven
| fact. The farther back we go the more inference and less fact
| we have. There is certainly a possibility that an advanced
| Pleistocene civilization existed and was destroyed by a
| cosmic impact. To dismiss these ideas as "crackpot" is one of
| the most unscientific claims I regularly encounter.
|
| We know there are human built megalithic structures that are
| dated at the end of the Pleistocene. We know that the
| Pleistocene ended abruptly with all North American megafauna
| perishing and immense amounts of meltwater entering the
| oceans. We don't know if there were a bunch of distributed
| civilizations with similar technology levels or if there was
| a global civilization that shared knowledge before or after
| cataclysm. We also don't know what caused the end of the
| Pleistocene. This is the realm of hypothesis on all sides.
| browserman wrote:
| There's certainly no harm in indulging in wild, unfounded
| recreational speculation, as long as one is clear that's
| what's happening. Usually that's not what going on with
| people who allude darkly to "[unspecified] political
| motivations for controlling the narrative around evolution
| and the birth of civilization"
| Tor3 wrote:
| There is a very recent analysis of Hancock's "Ancient
| Apocalypse" series. Well worth watching:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 by Stefan Milo.
| Case in point: Hancock presents _zero_ evidence.
| kevinpet wrote:
| That is not in fact how science works.
|
| Science only welcomes new ideas when they offer a possible
| solution to a problem with the existing paradigms. For this
| type of theory, if you had data showing the earliest known
| societies were unusually advanced, or if you had artifacts
| that suggest more wide spread early societies, these would
| be facts wanting an explanation.
|
| You can't just say something like "maybe all language was
| singing until 20,000 years ago" and claim it's scientific
| until proven false.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| You cant say the contrary either. Theres not enough
| evidence either way due to the sands of time.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Occam's razor is also a thing. If you can explain the
| exact same facts with a theory that involves fewer or
| more general assumptions, that also counts.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's worth noting that falsificationism really only applies
| to experimental sciences like physics and chemistry. The
| "historical sciences" like geology, paleontology, and
| archaeology don't work that way because of the arrow of
| time. I'd recommend Cleland's original [1] or most recent
| paper [2] on this topic.
|
| The upside is that we _can_ differentiate between the
| quality of various competing hypotheses in a reasoned way.
| That 's how we can say that the traditional academic
| narratives are epistemologically better than e.g. Tolkien's
| Silmarillion.
|
| [1] https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0987:HSESAT>
| 2.0.C...
|
| [2] https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axq024
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Your second link is bad
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Corrected.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| This has nothing to do with the recent Netflix show, which I
| have never seen
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Crackpot theory? It's a straightforward inference from human
| behavioral modernity, and the fact that some places have
| always been resource-rich enough to allow for at least some
| effort to be spent on things other than brute survival. Those
| who suppose the contrary as a default are merely transporting
| our naive, self-serving stereotypes about "savage" societies
| to the very far past.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There's two different ways to interpret the GP post. Using
| the term "civilization" instead of "sophisticated
| societies", the first is that civilization == the
| traditional childe definition. The academic timelines
| around that sort of stuff are well-established and people
| like graham Hancock _do_ push ideas best described as
| crackpot about these sorts of societies existing before the
| LGM.
|
| But there's also the redefinitional arguments that the
| Childe definition of civilization is wrong. That's the vein
| you're working in and where books like Dawn of Everything
| are arguing from. They're much more agreeable to modern
| archaeologists and most wouldn't disagree too strongly (if
| at all).
|
| Wengrow has a good opinion piece on this dichotomy in [1].
|
| [1] https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-
| is-not-...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| AIUI, Childe proposed a number of criteria for
| civilization, all of them correlating one way or another
| with 'increasingly complex society'. Some of those we'll
| never know if the very ancient past had them (and I think
| even Graham Hancock would acknowledge this), the others
| are pretty much in line with the article you link to. So
| I'm not sure how much genuine disagreement is involved,
| as opposed to scholars holding on to untenable viewpoints
| and neglecting to put two and two together.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's a bit fuzzier. The popular model prior to Childe was
| Lewis Morgan's three stage
| Savagery->Barbarism->Civilization model. When Childe
| published his famous paper [1] laying out the criteria,
| he acknowledged Morgan (though I'm not sure it's cited in
| the paper itself) and was intentionally providing
| standardized criteria to recognize the last stage. Childe
| himself preferred the terminology of "city" and later
| archaeologists adopted the phrase "state", but really
| these are all the same broad concept with slightly
| different connotations.
|
| But aside from a few exceptions (people at USYD, Michael
| Smith), Childe's definitions are increasingly
| disagreeable to archaeologists. Most of the newer
| generations, myself included, find anti-evolutionist
| arguments significantly more persuasive and even those
| that don't aren't big fans of the original formulation of
| Childe's ideas.
|
| [1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108
| zozbot234 wrote:
| So your point is that the disagreeable connotations and
| 'evolutionist' viewpoint is something Childe might have
| picked up from Morgan, and that what scholarship is
| finding out now is that complex societies might not
| necessarily have been all that state-like, or highly
| unequal/hierarchical?
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| chubot wrote:
| Hancock is very questionable in motives and methods (talks a
| lot about how he is suppressed rather than what he thinks is
| true)
|
| But it's true that narratives around past civilizations are
| controlled for political reasons
|
| Eg in China the winners want to paint the picture that the
| way they govern is inevitable and mandated, when really there
| was a lot of diversity, experimentation, and violence
|
| Including matriarchal societies!!
|
| I recommend reading Dawn of Everything by graeber and wengrow
| for peer reviewed info on past, ignored, alternative
| civilizations
|
| It does have an axe to grind but it's a welcome contrast and
| asks good questions
|
| You don't need to invoke hypothetical pre ice age societies
| for any of this
|
| However the book does give a good perspective on how much of
| history we simply don't know, which leaves room for
| speculators like Hancock
| carapace wrote:
| FWIW, I wasn't that impressed with "Dawn of Everything", I
| wish it had more data and less polemic. (I think the
| polemical argument would have been stronger if,
| paradoxically, it had been weaker.)
| Naga wrote:
| I haven't seen the new documentary, but I read one of
| Hancock's books years ago. His book Underworld, which is
| about how evidence of ancient civilizations is underwater as
| the coastline has changed dramatically over the last few
| thousands of years. I think he draws way too many conclusions
| from way too little evidence, but that premise itself has
| always struck me as incredibly plausible. The issue is that a
| lot of the evidence is underwater now, and therefore hard to
| get to. But that doesn't really mean we shouldn't be looking
| for it though, right? Otherwise we're like the drunk looking
| for his keys under the street light because its easier, not
| because he dropped them there.
|
| As for the academy, Thomas Kuhn wrote "The Structure of
| Scientific Revolutions", where he argues that most paradigm
| shifts happen in revolutionary leaps instead of incremental
| improvements. We've been pushing back the timelines of human
| expansion for a long time. It was impossible and just fables
| that Vikings were on North America, until it wasn't for
| example.
| [deleted]
| bandrami wrote:
| Maybe Nanni's copper consignment from Ea-Nasir was on that
| ship...
| pugworthy wrote:
| This article leads to some interesting reading about Oxhide
| Ingots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxhide_ingot), and how this
| shipwreck was the biggest find (?) of these so far.
|
| And you, probably like me, had a hard time not reading "Copper
| Oxide"
| eternalban wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medes#Prehistory
|
| A substantial portion of the indicated area in the map later
| became the Median empire. Above link discusses the "power vacuum"
| in that area before the establishment of centralized power, which
| would explain the lack of state involvement as there was no
| sovereign counter party to the trade treaty for the consuming
| power. This also may explain why the first Iranian dynasty were
| the Medes in that specific part of today's Iran (and not in the
| southern zone like the Persians who came to power later) - looks
| like it was most likely an outgrowth of economic activity.
|
| Also note that there was a significant Israelite community in
| that center dot in Iran (which was called Rhages and is now
| called Ray, now a suburb of Tehran). The Book of Tobit mentions
| the community of Israelites in Rhages and how Tobin sent his son
| Tobit to Rhages to get a proper wife. The book is ~2300 years old
| so 1000 years after the subject of the article, so not entirely
| conclusive but possible that a 'trade network' that spanned that
| zone in fact existed and had some cohesion (it was Israelite) and
| that is what facilitated this entire affair.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Tobit
|
| "Tobit's son Tobias is sent to retrieve ten silver talents that
| Tobit once left in Rages".
|
| Why did he leave it there? He was a trades man, that's why.
|
| -
|
| [edit] p.s.: fact checking this the Israelite tribe of this book
| was deported ~723 BC so my theory does not hold up.
| someotherperson wrote:
| We can actually see evidence of trade in that area dating back
| even earlier -- to the neolithic times. Specifically Mehragh[0]
| which has its neolithic agricultural tools completely matching
| the Mesopotamian ones. They also traded with Badakhshan[1] in
| neolithic times.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badakhshan#History
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Amazing find. This was the first era of 'globalisation', where
| trade networks connected geographically dispersed and culturally
| diverse peoples in a mutually beneficial exchange. Whatever the
| initial event which triggered the Late Bronze Age collapse, it
| was consequent collapse of these networks which led long periods
| of cultural regression
| zasdffaa wrote:
| I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure there were wide exchanges
| of peoples happened thousands of years earlier (eg. stonehenge
| burials came from a wide range of europe - this from memory).
|
| Edit: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188
|
| <<
|
| The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west
| across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has
| shown.
|
| Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains
| found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time
| in Europe.
|
| The Neolithic inhabitants were descended from populations
| originating in Anatolia (modern Turkey) that moved to Iberia
| before heading north.
|
| They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.
|
| Details have been published in the journal Nature Ecology &
| Evolution.
|
| The migration to Britain was just one part of a general,
| massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000BC that
| introduced farming to Europe
|
| >>
| s3000 wrote:
| >the mines in ancient Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age were
| under the control of the Hittites, an imperial global power of
| great threat to Ramses the Great of Egypt
|
| What's the reason to call the Hittites a great threat to Ramses?
| They had the first known peace treaty [1] with Egypt which should
| lead to the opposite reputation.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian%E2%80%93Hittite_peace...
| bandrami wrote:
| You don't sign peace treaties with people who aren't threats
| humantorso wrote:
| You usually don't sign peace treaties with allies?
| rmah wrote:
| Am I the only one who finds it odd to describe an empire that
| covered turkey and the levant (syria/northern iraq) as
| "global"?
|
| To answer your question though, the hittites and egypt were
| fighting over the western levant. Areas of what is now Lebanon
| and NW Syria.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Trade is built into our human nature. We all want stuff we can't
| have, and no one can produce everything. Even if all the raw
| materials and all the skills and all the knowledge was possessed,
| there isn't enough time for a single (person, city, country) to
| produce enough to fill all desires.
|
| So we trade to get what we want. This has been the case for all
| of human civilization and I am confident if you could peer into
| the earliest time periods the rocks sharpened during the Stone
| Age traveled far and wide as well. Trying to ban or artificially
| limit trade is like trying to limit the tides - you are battling
| against a decentralized force of human desire.
|
| This is the same reason you can't ban drugs, alcohol, sex,
| gambling - and on the positive side love, children, religion -
| both categories of which have been attempted by various
| governments in recent and distant times.
|
| I like history because it shows us how stable we are as humans.
| The context changes but our desires and motivations do not.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| We want to ban sex? Interesting-- explains the falling
| birthrates. :)
| SapporoChris wrote:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/05/asia/indonesia-new-
| code-p...
|
| This certainly seems to be a ban on sex outside of marriage.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Trade is built into our human nature.
|
| Even some animals do understand some kind of trading. Monkeys
| will steal your cap and give it back to you in exchange for
| food.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Strange comment - nobody was suggesting banning trade (even
| weirder about banning sex).
| monero-xmr wrote:
| The recent rise in mercantilism / trade wars / tariffs /
| America (or insert country) First / China one child policies
| / China and Soviet state official atheism / Russia and China
| banning gays
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Ok, points taken, except with 'China and Soviet state
| official atheism'. I don't see the relevance to either
| trade or sex.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I see it as a restriction on an innate desire of humanity
| which is therefore impossible to constrain or stop,
| merely drive it underground.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| It is questionable if it's universally innate, there
| being many atheists, but now you've explained it I can
| see your point.
|
| Have to say you used some ill-focussed or ill-expressed
| arguments which is why I have been repeatedly chasing you
| for an explanation. Take that as you will. But thanks for
| clarifying.
| mellavora wrote:
| > Trade is built into our human nature.
|
| I'd go deeper than that, I'd say trade is built into nature.
|
| Forests have economies, sharing resources. Deciduous trees
| over-produce "food" in the summer, when their big leaves pay
| off, which they share with the conifers. In return, the
| conifers (which have food year-round because they don't drop
| their needles) give food to the deciduous trees in early
| spring, before the new leaves form.
| lkrubner wrote:
| At one point Scientific American had an article which reported
| that the pigments used in the cave paintings in Spain, circa
| 25,000 BC, had come from Italy, suggesting goods were traveling
| long distances as early as 25,000 BC. Either one tribe was moving
| back and forth from Italy to Spain, on a regular basis, or there
| was a trade network. So to learn that there was an extensive
| trade network at the end of the Bronze Age is not nearly so
| exciting, even if the scale of distance is a bit greater. I mean,
| we already knew there was extensive trade at the end of the
| Bronze Age, I was taught that when I was in school.
| warinukraine wrote:
| Upvote if you were skimming and thought this headline was about
| Ubuntu.
| steele wrote:
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