[HN Gopher] 'Once-in-a-lifetime' find of 1,300-year-old necklace...
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'Once-in-a-lifetime' find of 1,300-year-old necklace dazzles
historians
Author : diodorus
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-12-18 15:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > The necklace, believed to belong to a devout medieval woman,
| almost certainly an aristocrat, shines new light on the spread of
| early Christianity through medieval Europe and offers a glimpse
| into the role played by elite women in forging England's
| Christian identity, experts say.
|
| This doesn't sound dazzling, even to experts.
|
| Article titles like this always get my hopes up for "we have to
| change all the textbooks", but it almost never happens.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Experts in all fields are dazzled by stuff that laypeople don't
| find exciting. "We have to change all our textbooks" is a
| ridiculous bar.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It's not a ridiculous bar for "once in a lifetime" "dazzling"
| discoveries.
|
| It's hard to be impressed by "here's a necklace that changes
| nothing".
| UncleMeat wrote:
| For you, sure.
|
| Historians _love_ old shit. I married one of them. This is
| just how experts respond to niche topics.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > It's not a ridiculous bar for "once in a lifetime"
| "dazzling" discoveries.
|
| As a mathematician, there are plenty of my discoveries in
| my field that are once in a lifetime and dazzling (to
| specialists) that would be meaningless to the average
| mathematics undergraduate student, much less changing
| textbooks.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Is there an example in mathematics of a once in a
| lifetime dazzling discovery that doesn't change anything?
| JadeNB wrote:
| (Sorry for the long delay in responding--I was "posting
| too fast".)
|
| > Is there an example in mathematics of a once in a
| lifetime dazzling discovery that doesn't change anything?
|
| That doesn't change _anything_? No, probably not.
|
| But that doesn't change undergraduate textbooks? I'd
| imagine it's harder to find a once-in-a-lifetime,
| dazzling mathematical discovery that _does_ change them.
| (RSA encryption, maybe, although that was famously at
| least twice in a lifetime, RSA being re-discoverers of
| classified work.) I think of Fermat 's last theorem (http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem#Wiles'.
| .. ) and the bounded-gaps results on primes
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_gap#Upper_bounds ),
| both of which will surely be _mentioned_ in new editions
| of good textbooks, but neither of which is likely to
| change the actual mathematical content of those
| textbooks.
|
| And these are just the 'popular' ones! For a long list of
| others, one can look at Fields-Medal work. In my own
| area, there is the recent proof of the fundamental lemma
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_lemma_(Langlan
| ds_p... ), which is unlikely to be suitable even to be
| _stated_ in any but the most advanced textbooks.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > "This woman probably belonged to the first generation of
| English Christians in this part of England," Francis Young, a
| historian of religion who was not involved in the excavation,
| told The Post. "This is people wanting to show off their newly
| acquired identity as Christians."
|
| Artifact interpretation is always so tendentious. Lots of
| people wear necklaces with a cross pendant today. They are
| mostly not trying to show off their newly acquired identity as
| Christians.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We should at least _consider_ the possibility that a domain
| expert may have knowledge not included in that single
| sentence given to a reporter.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Most people wearing necklaces are not first generation
| Christians. After you eliminate those, why are the remaining
| necklace-wearing ones doing it?
| tommica wrote:
| Because its a pretty necklace?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| For generic necklaces yes, but when we're talking about
| necklaces with a religious symbol on them, I'm not so
| sure.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm pretty sure though; many people wear or use religious
| symbolism without being religious themselves or aware of
| it being a religious symbol. (not just physical items
| like jewelry, think behaviours or sayings as well).
| eckmLJE wrote:
| I think you may be misreading this. This isn't about some
| person becoming a new Christian. It's about a member of high
| society wearing a cross during a turbulent period of
| competing peoples within Britain shifting from paganism to
| Christianity, at a time when religious symbolism was central
| to (synonymous with?) political symbolism.
| otikik wrote:
| I hope this key piece of British history gets exhibited in a
| place where everyone can enjoy it, like the The Prado museum in
| Spain.
| AntoniusBlock wrote:
| What's wrong with British museums?
| misnome wrote:
| It's a joke based on the fact that British museums are full
| of looted foreign artefacts.
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| Think it's a jab at the British "stealing" other people's
| historical artifacts and displaying then in British museums.
| rajin444 wrote:
| I took it as a jab at modern Britain having a lot more
| people (% of population) who's ancestors didn't preserve
| much history, which implies a risk of the same pattern
| occurring.
| yboris wrote:
| I wonder why you wrote "stealing" with quotes. Presumably
| this is _exactly_ what they did in numerous (majority?) of
| cases.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I mean, it's a tough call, because you can't really
| identify who something is stolen from. In some cases you
| can, but in most you can't.
|
| Say you have the necklace of some Pharaoh. OK, who is the
| rightful owner? The present day Arabs inhabiting Egypt,
| who conquered it? Or the Greeks who conquered it before
| then? Or the Romans? Or the "ancient Egyptians" (this
| refers to many people, as Egypt was conquered several
| times by many different groups).
|
| So then your fallback position is, "we don't know which
| 'people' the necklace should belong to, but we know which
| _government_ it should belong to -- the present day
| government of Egypt, which is the current government
| occupying the geographic area where the necklace was
| made. It belongs to _that_ government. "
|
| We can call this the "occupying government" (OG) theory
| of ownership. It doesn't matter that that the present day
| Arabs were invaders number 50, but because they presently
| occupy the land, they own the necklace. Let's explore the
| consequences of this rule:
|
| When Britain controlled that territory, that meant that
| _it_ was the rightful owner -- since by the OG logic the
| rightful owner is whatever government was in charge at
| the time -- and it moved the necklace to a museum in
| London, which the owner has a right to do with their
| property.
|
| But then you say "no, that doesn't apply to _colonial_
| governments - not to _white people_. Only _legitimate_
| governments can benefit from the OG rule ", to which I
| would answer
|
| 1) "How were the Arab invasions legitimate? How were the
| Egyptian dynasties legitimate? They also ruled by force
| and enslaved their populations".
|
| 2) If your ownership rule is the OG but it's nullified if
| you believe (somehow) that a government can be
| illegitimate, then you create a situation in which the
| antiquities have _no owner_ -- since the previous
| government doesn 't exist, the original racial group is
| gone, so who is the owner if you are not going to follow
| the ownership laws of the government in charge?
|
| So really at the end of the day, these types of arguments
| boil down to not liking the behavior of the UK in Egypt,
| which is fine by me, but they are not objective arguments
| if you try to apply the same standards of property
| ownership across thousands of years to all governments
| that would remove antiquities -- which is basically every
| government in history, whenever they found something
| beautiful and shiny, from the Romans carrying back booty
| to the Pharaohs carrying back booty, some of which was
| turned into beautiful jewelry.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Say you have the necklace of some Pharaoh. OK, who is
| the rightful owner? The present day Arabs inhabiting
| Egypt, who conquered it? Or the Greeks who conquered it
| before then? Or the Romans? Or the "ancient Egyptians"
| (this refers to many people, as Egypt was conquered
| several times by many different groups).
|
| Realistically, it belongs to whoever some group of self-
| appointed liberals feels should own it. Things are
| complex, but we need _simple_ narratives to be righteous.
| avereveard wrote:
| I'm also going to argue the definition of "stolen"
| artifacts
|
| A lot of the artifact in the area where lifted from
| scavenger and sold on the black market, trough the
| inaction of the government at the time and corruption of
| officials of such government.
|
| Given such context I see the artifacts at the British
| museum retrieved under these specific circumstances as
| saved, not stolen.
|
| I do make a difference however for these artifacts that
| were taken at gun point against the will of the
| government.
|
| The difference need to be made on a case by case basis.
| But still.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I mean, it's a tough call, because you can't really
| identify who something is stolen from. In some cases you
| can, but in most you can't.
|
| I don't think one has to identify whom something was
| stolen _from_ to know _that_ it was stolen. For a lot of
| artifacts in the British Museum, it may not be clear or
| able to be agreed upon who could be said at the time of
| their appropriation to own them, but it 's clear that the
| British didn't.
|
| > But then you say "no, that doesn't apply to _colonial_
| governments - not to _white_ people. Only _legitimate_
| governments can benefit from the OG rule ", to which I
| would answer ....
|
| You seem to be putting a lot of words in your
| interlocutor's mouth! If I find something, it's not my
| responsibility or right to decide whose it is, and my
| inability to do so doesn't make it mine. It may be that
| someone else will come along and commit an injustice
| equal to my taking it if I don't--but that doesn't excuse
| _my_ taking it. I need not work out a theory of ownership
| before simply leaving what I have found where I found it.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > I don't think one has to identify whom something was
| stolen from to know that it was stolen.
|
| If we are talking about people, then yes, but governments
| are different. They are not people. Governments are _law
| makers_. So you are claiming that British law shouldn 't
| apply and I am asking you for the name of the government
| whose law you think should apply. That at least deserves
| an answer.
|
| The UK was ruling Egypt at the time and you have to prove
| its own laws weren't being followed -- which is unlikely
| to be the case as regardless of how we may not like
| Perfidious Albion, they are a stickler for things like
| property rights. The British museum paid for these
| artifacts, and you need to prove that the people who sold
| them those artifacts had no right to do so, but these
| antiquities traders were acting in accordance to British
| law, so you need to prove that someone else's law should
| have been applied instead. Whose?
|
| > If I find something, it's not my responsibility or
| right to decide whose it is, and my inability to do so
| doesn't make it mine.
|
| Again, people aren't governments. If you find oil in the
| ground, it may not belong to you, but if the UK finds oil
| somewhere in the mandate of Palestine, you can be sure
| that it belongs to the UK, since that is territory
| controlled by UK, and the oil belongs to the government
| that controls the territory, not France or China or some
| other government that doesn't control the territory. And
| if some Arab tribes conquer that region, then the oil
| belongs to them. And if some other nation conquers it,
| then the oil again gets a new owner. Or do you think the
| House of Saud was the first group of people to live in
| Saudi Arabia? No, but they were the government in charge
| when the oil was found, and no one has managed to conquer
| them -- that's the only reason it's their oil -- because
| they found it and they rule over the territory. And who
| do you think will be the owner of any artifacts that
| Saudi Arabia digs up as they search for more oil? Yes, it
| will be Saudi Arabia. The rightful owner. And they can
| transfer those artifacts to some museum in Riyadh if they
| want, even if the artifacts were made by some ancient
| civilization that has no genetic relationship to the
| house of Saud. They could be of Ethiopian origin, but
| Saudi Arabia is not going to "return" them to Ethiopia.
| This is the definition of what it means to be the
| government - it means _your laws_ are the ones that apply
| in the territory you rule over.
|
| I think that's the mistake you are making here. Maybe you
| think there was some international law in effect at the
| time? International law originates with the UN charter,
| which post-dates what the UK did, and you wouldn't want
| to apply a law to an action which predated the law, as
| that's understood to be an illegitimate application of
| law. If you start retroactively applying the UN charter
| to all government actions that happened in the past, you
| will find every government on earth an inveterate thief
| and lawbreaker - from the UK to the Egyptian Pharaohs,
| they all stole everything.
| yboris wrote:
| I suspect we're in some serious philosophy territory now.
| I find it problematic to insist that since governments
| make laws, they then are exempt from moral criticism.
| Just because a government can make a law doing something
| doesn't mean it's a morally permissible thing to do.
|
| I guess the word "stolen" could have a legalistic
| interpretation, but there's surely a moral one as well.
| And I think the legal discussion is entirely
| uninteresting -- _of course_ a country can write whatever
| law they want and follow it. What is interesting to me is
| whether the law and /or act is _moral_.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| You said "stolen". That's a question of property rights.
| It's a legal definition. If the government takes my land
| via eminent domain, and pays me for it, I can criticize
| the government "morally", but I can't say it "stole" my
| land without engaging in hyperbole and some misdirection.
| This is why someone else would put "stolen" in quotes.
| Those quotes are what the thread is about. You can't just
| decide for yourself that something was stolen because you
| are morally offended. If you do that, someone else will
| put stolen in quotes.
|
| But if we venture into _moral criticism_ , then let's
| remember that for many ancient artifacts, they were in
| the process of being destroyed by the various local
| governments until Europeans came along. Greek papyri were
| being burned in scrap heaps for heat. Ancient pottery was
| being smashed and recycled for raw materials. Many of
| these artifacts were pulled from local trash heaps and
| recyclers. Europeans had to come and decipher the
| hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform because the local
| societies -- for whom these were the works of foreign
| civilizations -- had no idea what they meant and zero
| intellectual curiosity in studying these works. Arab
| Egypt had ownership of the rosetta stone and a vast array
| of hieroglyphs for over a millennia and never understood
| it, and launched no program to uncover their secrets. For
| them, pre-Islamic Egypt was at best a pagan society that
| they conquered long ago, and there wasn't much point in
| trying to understand it. The French and British travelled
| long distances and spent great personal fortunes on
| expeditions to study these artifacts and understand these
| ancient civilizations. It wasn't Arab Egypt that learned
| the names of the Egyptian dynasties and deciphered the
| Book of the Dead. It wasn't Arab civilization in
| Mesopotamia that deciphered Akkadian and learned the Epic
| of Gilgamesh. It was Europeans. Europeans prized and
| valued this cultural product of other civilizations, they
| preserved it, often rescuing it from destruction, and
| they purchased it from local antiquities dealers, and
| they put it in their museums. Of all the consequences of
| colonialism, this was on balance on the good side of the
| ledger, or at least ambiguous, so it's an odd thing to
| morally condemn, given the many richer targets for
| criticism in the colonial world.
| yboris wrote:
| Thank you very much! I really appreciate the amount of
| thought and care you put into all your responses. You're
| probably right that were it not for Europeans taking some
| artifacts from around the globe they would have perished;
| and so I agree that on the whole it may have been better
| that Europeans took many things into museums.
|
| I feel like _Last Week Tonight_ show about Museums was
| probably a decent overview of the state of things. I
| wonder, if you 've seen it, you disagree with more than
| 10% of what's said?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJPLiT1kCSM
| rsj_hn wrote:
| That is kind of you.
|
| I will take a look, but 35 minutes of John Oliver is a
| big ask.
|
| Last time I watched him -- years ago -- he spent the
| entire segment in 100% outrage mode with a sledgehammer
| wall-of-sound style rhetoric in which nuance and empathy
| were entirely absent from his sequence of cherry-picked
| outrage nuggets.
|
| But at the same time, I didn't find him very funny. Sam
| Kinison was also a loud outrage comic, but he was funny.
| But Kinison's yelling had an emotional honesty that
| Oliver lacked, since you can't really be too honest if
| you are doing politics on TV, especially partisan
| politics for the PMC class - a large amount of Oliver's
| material (that I saw) was basically mocking the beliefs
| of working class people. But perhaps he's changed. George
| Carlin was probably the one who made political comedy
| work the best, but he was deconstructing ideas that
| people have, and specifically ideas that you, the
| listener, had, often without questioning. That's what
| made people go "hmmm, that's interesting" when they
| listen to Carlin. Nobody says "Hmm, that's interesting"
| when listening to Oliver, they say "Boom! Nailed it! He's
| got their number!!" Subtlety, balance, making an honest
| effort to portray the complex world as it really is --
| that was completely absent. It was all about caricaturing
| people or institutions as being unreasonable or suitable
| for mocking. Real life tends not to be like that.
|
| I do wonder why people refer to Oliver as a news source
| or use him in arguments, it's basically the same thing as
| citing Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh was actually much kinder
| -- sure, he also cherry picked examples to make his
| opponents look like fools, but he usually treated them as
| confused fools ("young minds, full of mush") rather than
| malicious actors. Limbaugh was also often self-
| deprecating and was able to change tone so that it wasn't
| all full throttle attack mode. But still I wouldn't cite
| one of his shows as evidence to support my point, as
| that's clearly a partisan show that is meant to be
| entertainment for those who agree with him rather than
| any kind of reasoned investigation.
| fancymcpoopoo wrote:
| > We can call this the "occupying government" (OG) theory
| of ownership.
|
| Let's not
| wl wrote:
| Much of the "stealing" arguably isn't. Just to pick a
| notable example, the Rosetta Stone was given to the
| British by the Egyptian government.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| Grandparent comment is a triple entendre: the historical
| British tendency to take priceless cultural treasures home
| with them for display is being inverted; the modern British
| tendency to retire/vacation in Spain is being noted; and I
| think there's also a jab at Brexit disallowing easy movement,
| as more people can more easily see a thing exhibited in an EU
| museum than in a British one due to the Schengen area.
| AntoniusBlock wrote:
| Looks like it breaks multiple guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| izacus wrote:
| I'll allow it.
| pepperidgeFarm wrote:
| Pepperidge Farm remembers when tasteful multi-layered
| entendres on HN were appreciated.
|
| This is in fact what we designed our multilayered
| packaging on for our delicious Milano cookies.
|
| A multi-layered delight of highly processed wheat with
| Italian history.
| boston_clone wrote:
| accounts like yours, on the other hand, are obviously
| low-effort and should be removed.
| npc12345 wrote:
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I read through the guidelines and couldn't find any rules
| it was breaking. What guidelines do you believe are
| broken by the top comment?
| AntoniusBlock wrote:
| >Don't be snarky.
|
| >Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.
|
| >Please don't use Hacker News for political or
| ideological battle.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Calling this "flamebait" or "ideological battle" is
| pretty over-the-top.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Because it's entirely one sided and anyone that was to
| challenge it knows their comments aren't welcome.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| It's breaking "don't be snarky" at the very least,
| although that rule is barely ever enforced
| [deleted]
| iambateman wrote:
| Sometimes guidelines are meant to be broken, and I think
| taking an opportunity to make a jab at the long history
| of British colonialism and cultural appropriation was
| worth it.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| How many of these 'cultures' being appropriated were the
| same culture or inheritors that the British
| 'appropriated' from? How many of these cultures respected
| these items on a cultural level? How many just happened
| to be living in the same physical location where these
| items are from but had no cultural connection (Rosetta
| stone)? It's a pretty one sided conversation you all are
| having, and one that can't be expanded without breaking
| the guidelines, hence the guidelines. But it's ok because
| you are directing this at an 'out' group.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Not the right piece for El Prado, that is focused in art, oils
| and sculpture; but the MAN would surely appreciate and know how
| to honor a jewel from... [updated, 640] the Visigoths period,
| where Spain was ruled by Germanic people.
|
| Could we borrow it for a while? The same European culture
| extended by a lot of different places. If it says "Greetings
| from Triana" somewhere, yep, is ours.
| latchkey wrote:
| I love this form of humor.
|
| A comedian, 3 Year Letterman [0], does this a lot of Twitter
| and catches a lot of people off guard. The responses are really
| entertaining. Their website is a running list of top hits [1].
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/3YearLetterman
|
| [1] https://www.determinedlook.com/
| agentwiggles wrote:
| These are really funny, thanks for sharing.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It seems strange that they're so sure it's from the seventh
| century given the Roman coins on it. Maybe they're what help date
| it? I'd be interested to know who's depicted on them, what they
| say and what language is used.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It seems strange that they're so sure it's from the seventh
| century given the Roman coins on it. Maybe they're what help
| date it?
|
| I would guess the coins are much older than the necklace -- the
| alternative would be that they're from the Byzantine empire --
| and the necklace is being dated based on the grave in which it
| was found.
| tokai wrote:
| >alternative would be that they're from the Byzantine empire
|
| The alternative to the coins being Roman is that they are
| Roman?
| Altho00 wrote:
| I think that the point was that when most people refer to
| 'Romans' they usually mean western roman empire. But by the
| 8th century that wasn't a thing anymore so an alternative
| is that they could have been from the eastern roman empire.
| I guess that's really a non-question since identifying
| those coins would be trivial for the archeologists
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Sometimes taking something and preserving it is not a bad thing.
| Anyone recall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan?
|
| I'm pretty sure thousand or 10 of thousand of Egyptian artifacts
| were looted, probably quite often by Egyptians.
|
| Take at look at many regions of the African continent. When
| ethnic groups or even groups they perceived themselves different
| would wipe out tribes or societies, artifacts were taken or
| destroyed.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| https://archive.vn/isn0r
| jaclaz wrote:
| To nitpick, cannot say if it comes from the journalist writing
| the article or from the archeologists, the jewel seems to sport a
| cross, not a crucifix.
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| And she could well have called it a rood, either way!
| tokai wrote:
| To nitpick - you are wrong. A crucifix is the cross of Christ.
| It can still be a symbol of Christ's crucifixion while "just"
| being a cross without any Christ handing on it. The whole value
| of finding of the pendant that it shows very early Christian
| iconography in England.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| uhh - that symbol is as old as cave paintings; let history
| speak as it is, not as it is told to be
| joshuaissac wrote:
| It can refer to any cross used for crucifixion, but in the
| context of Christianity, a crucifix is understood to have a
| figure of Christ.
|
| Example usage on a Catholic site:
| https://www.catholic.com/qa/wrong-to-wear-a-bare-cross
|
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/.
| ..
| mbg721 wrote:
| How to annoy Catholics: start a sentence with "It can still
| be a symbol while just..."
| hacknewslogin wrote:
| To nitpick - you're both wrong. It's a square made of four
| smaller squares. Or maybe we're all right and art is
| subjective, who knows.
| treis wrote:
| To further nitpick you're all wrong. The large ornate cross
| is not the necklace:
|
| >WHAT ELSE WAS FOUND?
|
| >The necklace is only part of this amazing burial and
| x-raying the soil blocks lifted from the site revealed
| further incredible finds.
|
| >Most excitingly, we found a large ornate cross with inset
| garnets and smaller crosses at the end of each arm. While
| it is still being micro-excavated, the x-ray clearly shows
| its incredible design.
|
| https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/%E2%80%98once-
| lifetime%E2%80%99...
| SamBam wrote:
| To nitpick further, you're talking about a cross that has
| not finished being excavated yet, and everyone else is
| talking about the square cross piece that appears to go
| in the middle of the necklace, which has certainly been
| excavated.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Clearly a Windows 698 logo
| defrost wrote:
| The December 7th, 2022 MOLA blog post (the progenitor press
| release) here:
|
| https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/%E2%80%98once-lifetime%E2%80%99...
|
| Twit release:
|
| https://twitter.com/MOLArchaeology/status/160048215093513421...
|
| The earlier site geophysics and excavation field reports can be
| found (as an exercise for the reader) with a bit of searching.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| The excavation was part of the preparation to build a large
| number of new homes not far from where I live,[1] so I hope they
| find all of the artefacts before they build over it.
|
| 1. https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/lifestyle/homes-and-
| garde...
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