[HN Gopher] 5k-year-old tavern with food still inside discovered...
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5k-year-old tavern with food still inside discovered in iraq
Author : rntn
Score : 259 points
Date : 2023-03-02 05:05 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Internet Archive Scholar has some interesting results for
| "Lagash", it's a nice resource. See this from 1956:
|
| https://archive.org/details/sim_transactions-of-the-american...
|
| > "This is the dream contained in the famous Cylinder A of Gudea
| (published in TCL VIII), the ensi of the Sumerian city of Lagash,
| whose floruit falls about the very beginning of the second
| millennium B.C. Gudea, ruler of Lagash, desired to build a
| fitting temple for his god, NinGirsu, and, as was customary
| throughout the entire span of existence of the Mesopotamian
| civilization, the latter sent a dream..."
|
| These kinds of modern excavations reveal a lot more about
| ordinary daily life than the older translation of temple
| documents and royal inscriptions do, however.
| namaria wrote:
| >These kinds of modern excavations reveal a lot more about
| ordinary daily life than the older translation of temple
| documents and royal inscriptions do, however.
|
| I don't think these are separate things. Excavating is a blind
| effort, there is no 'modern excavation', we just find more
| interesting things now because we excavate a hell lot more then
| we used to decades ago. And these boring translations of temple
| documents and royal inscriptions is how we get context for the
| objects and layers we find.
| nick123567 wrote:
| >there is no 'modern excavation'
|
| They describe the modern technique in the UPenn
| announcement...
|
| Rather than digging according to architectural construction
| phases, the Lagash Archaeological Project is using an
| approach championed by Pisa's Pizzimenti, who excavates by
| microstratigraphic layers, thin lens by thin lens
| horizontally, across a wide swath, "like doing very careful
| surgery," Pittman says. "Just 50 centimeters down, we were
| able to capture all of this. We were happily astounded."
| namaria wrote:
| That's a refinement of practices that are decades old.
| Comment I responded to seemed to imply we got evidence of
| this tavern due to some recent breakthrough, while before
| we'd be doing mostly work on temples and translation. Which
| is false, we have slice of life findings since the
| beginning of archeology, and ongoing efforts on prominent
| buildings and bodies of text.
| nunodonato wrote:
| how can food last for 5k years? doesn't it decompose during such
| a long period?
| RugnirViking wrote:
| they mentioned they found the "remains" of fish, presumably
| liquefied along with possibly some bones
| thrill wrote:
| 5000 year old fish would probably be excellent fish sauce by
| now
| indy wrote:
| The article didn't imply that the food was still edible.
| nunodonato wrote:
| I wasn't implying that either. But how can you recognize
| organic food after 5k years? In my compost bin it lasts only
| a few weeks :)
| myth_drannon wrote:
| You can't compost food in the desert, it's to dry.
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Composting is a process specifically intended to break down
| organics. A closed tavern in the desert isn't likely to
| have the same conditions, and I'd imagine the remnants of
| the fish are largely bones and scales of the sort you
| wouldn't put in home compost.
| fartsucker69 wrote:
| maybe they found it in a sumerian freezer
| penguinvondoom wrote:
| bones, seeds etc. can fossilize
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| They can, but usually not on the relatively short timescales
| we use in archaeology. It's not what happened here, for
| example.
| bluedino wrote:
| You've never found McDonalds of unknown age under the seat of
| your car?
| lm28469 wrote:
| Depends on the conditions, see mummies for examples. Don't
| expect fresh looking food though, it probably amounts to super
| dry rock looking objects
| Thlom wrote:
| Reminds me of this article[0] about a guy that revitalized
| 4500 years old Egyptian yeast and baked bread using old
| grains.
|
| [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bread-was-made-
| usi...
| srcreigh wrote:
| The guy, Seamus Blackley, a game programmer who proposed
| the original Xbox, no less. Also made Trespasser (1998)
| realistic open world 3D game with physics engine [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSDa4VZbJzI
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| A dog walks into a bar. "I can't see anything!" He says. "I'll
| take this one." --oldest joke in the book
| tdiff wrote:
| Why aren't inner wall orthogonal to outer walls?
| kyteland wrote:
| I believe what you're calling the "outer wall" is just the edge
| of the excavation grid, not a wall in the original city. The
| grid plan used by the archeologists won't necessarily align to
| the city plan.
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Another piece of evidence that Mesopotamia was the cradle of
| civilisation.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Civilization might be much older than that but the traces in
| Mesopotamia are the oldest ones we could find.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I find the concept of pre-human civilisations fascinating.
| For how long would we be able to find our own civilisation's
| remains and what would they look like in a million years, or
| a 100 million?
| speed_spread wrote:
| I would expect plastic and radioactive waste to be our
| longest lived tell-tale markers, along with stuff we've
| left on the moon, if anybody ever makes it there again.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Millions of years from now, even the devices we left on
| the moon will be under regolith or mowed down by incoming
| micrometeorites.
|
| You are probably right that the most obvious signs will
| look like mineral deposits. Plastic will be back to oil
| by then.
| staplung wrote:
| No word on whether any of the beers had coasters over their tops.
| I mean maybe they still plan to come back and boy are they going
| to be pissed if the archeologists have stolen their beers.
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| We missed it the first time around, quick, let's bomb it!
| tiffanyh wrote:
| I don't know what I was expecting, but those photos weren't it.
| gwill wrote:
| yea, i wanted to see this food.
| 2rsf wrote:
| > They also found a domestic dwelling that contained a toilet
|
| A toilet?
| apeescape wrote:
| A toilet is a place where people go take a shit or piss.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| [writes that down]
| credit_guy wrote:
| Before the invention of flushing toilets, the place where
| people were going to shit or piss was generally outside the
| house, also known as an "outhouse". A "domestic dwelling that
| contained a toilet and a kitchen" does sound unusual.
| dghughes wrote:
| The Indus Valley Civilization had toilets that could be
| flushed using a pipe coming from a water source above it.
| That's from about 6,000 years ago.
| ztrww wrote:
| The Romans had indoor toilets. They also existed in
| medieval times but only the very rich had them. most
| castles had a toilet or two. of course it was probably
| reserved for the lord and other high ranking individuals.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Hell no. People have never been ok to stump on someone else
| shit and feces have been used in the past as construction
| material and fertilizer.
|
| There are still old dry toilets in my grandparents old
| farm. Basically a cabin with a toilet seat made of wood on
| top of a big hole. Wood chips and saw dust was kept in a
| bucket for the user to cover his shit with.
|
| Mixed with compost the end result was used as fertilizer.
| fahadkhan wrote:
| Or as fuel for fire. (Once dired)
| somedangedname wrote:
| >...a cabin with a toilet seat made of wood on top of a
| big hole.
|
| In Australian slang this is called a 'long drop' after a
| particular style of judicial hanging.
|
| And yes, there are spiders.
| speed_spread wrote:
| I would have guessed long dropbears instead of spiders.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I have never given outhouses a second thought before
| this, but I wonder how often people fall in.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Hmmm...
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/toilet
|
| > "1917, Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of Wisteria
| Lodge": "It is a quarter-past two," he said. "Your telegram
| was dispatched about one. But no one can glance at your
| toilet and attire without seeing that your disturbance dates
| from the moment of your waking."
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It can be an item into which one deposits bodily waste, or an
| area/room where one goes to defecate and/or micturate. The
| earlier meaning, very occasionally still used, is a place for
| dressing and/or grooming (eg powdering a wig).
| [deleted]
| jollyllama wrote:
| Great, it used to be a nice, chill place to grab a drink and some
| food but now it'll be swamped with tourists.
| 404mm wrote:
| My expectations form the headline: Photos of dusty objects on
| some clay or stone made benches.
|
| Reality: photo of a large square sandbox
| antihero wrote:
| Excited for SandBox in Shoreditch that sells desert themed
| craft beer for PS7/pint
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Did you even read the article? It's an archaeological site...
| not an operating tavern...
| surge wrote:
| Did you even read the comment? That was obvious humor.
|
| "It used to be" - 5k years ago
|
| "now it'll be swamped with tourists" - today now that its a
| famous dig site, people will come to look.
|
| All of it parodying a common refrain from locals when ever a
| cool local spot gets media attention on the news or some
| national TV show.
|
| Much like dissecting a frog, explaining humor kills the joke.
|
| To OP: I liked the joke.
| samstave wrote:
| You ever go to Turkish Laundry? Nobody goes there any more,
| too many tourists.
| soperj wrote:
| It's interesting seeing a joke as a top comment and someone
| downvoted for not getting the joke. I feel as though the
| voting would have been the opposite on this site years ago.
| Aicy wrote:
| Yep, as much as I enjoy the occasional humour I don't
| want HN to become reddit.
| surge wrote:
| They were down voted for the way they remarked on it.
| "Did you even read the article", berating the OP for
| missing something obvious (and also apparent just from
| the headline, not just the article).
|
| People make jokes sometimes on here, its not all serious
| business, I don't think it would have been different
| years ago. You should get down voted for being a bit rude
| and simultaneously hypocritical because your criticism is
| also based on also missing something fairly obvious. The
| OP didn't deserve that comment, and the commenter should
| be corrected and have it pointed out they're actually the
| one making the embarrassing mistake.
| serf wrote:
| It's not about not getting the joke, "did you even read
| the article?" is an explicitly against the rules
| comment[0], and it's snide to boot.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| I think you missed the joke. It was quiet because literally
| no one was there for thousands of years.
| kome wrote:
| ahahah
| epberry wrote:
| The archaeology content on HN is some of my favorite. I think
| what this find is getting at is more evidence that Sumerian
| civilization was more egalitarian than we may have thought if we
| projected our understanding of feudal civilizations all the way
| back.
| kupopuffs wrote:
| Interesting. I've always seen feudalism as the response to
| civilization/empires collapsing (e.g. europe in the dark ages,
| Japan), and Mesopotamia was a thriving civilization
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Feudalism was not entirely new to the Middle Ages - it was
| partially derived from the Ancient Roman system of Patronage
| [0] between a Patron and Client. So this kind of hierarchical
| social structure predates the civilizational collapses that
| led to the Middle Ages. Of course, Mesopotamia predates
| Ancient Rome, so perhaps it was even more egalitarian.
| Although slavery has existed since pretty much day one of
| civilization.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome
| ztrww wrote:
| such a system more or less existed in every premodern
| society. Some sort of a patron-slient to system is
| absolutely inevitable in any complex non egalitarian
| society unless there is a strong state that can protect the
| rights of individuals.
| londons_explore wrote:
| For those wondering why people were living in the middle of a
| desert 5k years ago...
|
| It seems the global temperature then was much the same as today:
| https://scitechdaily.com/images/Global-Average-Surface-Tempe...
|
| Would there have perhaps been a locally different climate, for
| example because the african and middle eastern rainforests hadn't
| yet vanished after the global temperature rises 5k years earlier?
| [deleted]
| ftrobro wrote:
| I wonder why the tavern was abandoned with food in it in 2700 BC
| when the city itself was inhabitated far longer and according to
| Wikipedia might have been "the largest city in the world from c.
| 2075 to 2030 BC".
| jcutrell wrote:
| I was thinking exactly this.
|
| It's not surprised it would be abandoned, but the story makes
| it sound like it was _suddenly_ abandoned.
|
| The simplest explanation to me is likely the untimely death of
| the proprietor, but even that doesn't seem like a sufficient
| answer.
| ggeorgovassilis wrote:
| The article mentions that the city was surrounded by "fertile
| lands", so maybe there was no need for scavenging?
| Kye wrote:
| Ancient times must have had some equivalent to urban
| explorers.
|
| edit: Bing Chat says...
|
| >> _" That's an interesting question. I couldn't find any
| direct evidence of ancient urban explorers, but there were
| many ancient explorers who traveled to different lands and
| cultures for various reasons123. Some of them may have
| explored urban areas as well, but they didn't leave any
| records of their adventures."_
|
| >> _" One possible exception is Xuan Zang (602-664), a
| Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled to India and visited many
| ancient cities and temples along the way. He wrote a detailed
| account of his journey, which is considered a valuable source
| of information on the history and culture of India and
| Central Asia1."_
| speed_spread wrote:
| That's not really urbex though. Not sure ancient times had
| closed down industrial and commercial sites like the ones
| we have now.
| ralfd wrote:
| He looks like a backpacker tourist:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang
| notahacker wrote:
| I was going to say "but backpackers never wore clothes
| that wild", but then I remembered backpacking in India!
| thesuitonym wrote:
| In hindsight, it's completely obvious, like of course it
| would be this way, but it's still amazing how ancient
| people were exactly the same as people are today.
| pram wrote:
| IIRC there's a lot of totally abandoned places around there
| (like Babylon) because the Tigris and Euphrates changed course
| quite a bit? So what might have been a riverside city soon was
| just sitting in the middle of the desert.
|
| Kinda like the fishing towns around the Aral Sea.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| One can think of a million reasons, but we will never know.
| Maybe the owner died and the kids didn't want to take it over
| and boarded it up.
|
| Maybe someone was murdered there or everyone got food poisoning
| and it was closed up because people were superstitious.
| arp242 wrote:
| I used to live across an abandoned building that was falling
| apart; one day I forced the door to have a look inside (the
| place was already beyond salvage) and there was all sorts of
| stuff inside; some furniture, bunch of magazines and
| newspapers, empty bottles. Today's refuse, tomorrow's
| archaeology. Lots of boring mundane stuff gets interesting
| hundreds of years in the future.
|
| Or the owner burned the place down after a tourist from a
| faraway land sold him a polly sea for some inn sewer ants.
| notahacker wrote:
| Plenty of abandoned taverns in inhabited cities in the modern
| world. Owners die or suffer financial or social death,
| businesses become too unprofitable to run in parts of cities
| where the land also isn't worth much, structures start looking
| alarmingly unstable and aren't worth repairing etc etc.
|
| And regardless of how long bits of the food are preserved for
| future archaeologists, a couple of days after the tavern's
| closed most of it isn't really edible any more...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| You'd expect scavengers to get the food: rodents, insects,
| etc.?
|
| Buildings that fall into disrepair tend to be scavenged by
| humans for materials too. Much moreso anywhere there's wealth
| disparity or resource shortages.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You'd be surprised. It depends heavily on the prevailing
| social mores. Besides, much of what archaeologists recover
| is the stuff that survived, not the 99% that didn't.
| nick123567 wrote:
| In archaeological terms, they could be discovering stuff
| like microscopic grain husks embedded into the clay of the
| containers. Though they could have found whole chicken
| skeletons or fossilized garlic or something else too... I
| searched for a moment but couldn't find more details from
| this dig about the food specifically.
| einherjae wrote:
| Presumably just the eras equivalent of Hakarl or
| Surstromming was left, alongside the pizza-with-pineapple
| equivalent and Dr. Pepper-equivalent.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Notice that they didn't find any beer or wine. It seems the
| important stuff got scavenged.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Building falls or burns down perhaps? The ruins cover the site
| and people just rebuild on top of it.
|
| There's a site in the UK from slightly later (1000BC) that had
| food still found in containers but that was the result of a
| fire
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must_Farm_Bronze_Age_settlemen...
| ftrobro wrote:
| I was mainly wondering why noone else claimed the tavern or
| demolished it to make room for a new building considering
| that the city was probably growing between 2700 BC and 2075
| BC. Looking at the photo it seems the tavern was found in the
| top soil layer with nothing above it. But perhaps the photo
| looks like that because there have been several excavations
| since 1887. Or maybe the photo just shows some random
| building...
| anonu wrote:
| It's hard for humans to fathom timelines beyond our life span.
| But over the course of 100s or 1000s of years, cities can be
| abandoned and population migrates. Think about the Detroit
| suburbs in recent years where entire neighborhoods were
| abandoned. https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/abandoned-houses-
| in-detro...
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| That looks like the City of Detroit, not its suburbs, though
| I'm sure some of them do suffer some decay, in general
| Detroit's suburbs are pretty healthy.
| jghn wrote:
| The definition of 'suburb' has been changing over time. I
| can't speak to Detroit but for instance with Boston the
| original 'suburbs' would now be described as "the city of
| Boston, not its suburbs". Likewise the town I grew up in as
| a kid (mumble) years ago, I would have been laughed at for
| calling it a 'suburb' of Boston as it was too far out of
| the city. Now Wikipedia calls it a suburb of Boston.
| gs17 wrote:
| I can speak to Detroit, and it's the same. The areas
| south of 8 Mile but not downtown would by definition be
| "suburbs" (and structurally resemble the outside of the
| city), but I'm used to people reserving the term for
| outside city limits. Now that I'm in Nashville, "suburbs"
| seem to usually still be inside the city, so I'm guessing
| it changes as cities grow/decay.
| Infernal wrote:
| Nashville has experienced really rapid growth too over
| the last 20 years, and I think it takes a while for
| naming conventions to catch up. Given by the fact that
| what people call suburbs appear to you (as I'm assuming,
| a relative newcomer) to be "inside the city".
|
| My own hometown has experienced rapid growth over the
| same time span as Nashville, and has annexed large
| portions of what were commonly known as the suburbs. So
| there has been a literal change from what used to be
| suburbs to now be within city limits, in the course of a
| generation.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Japan is another great example as they're now seeing
| population decline by the millions.
|
| I think we often forget just how many of us there are on this
| planet (or even in a given country). Each of those million
| people all had their own homes, lives, businesses, and so on.
| And as the country sees population decline, much of that just
| gets left to rot. Homes that have been completely abandoned,
| usually because the owner died and left no heir, even have a
| term - akiya. Here's [1] an image search with all sorts of
| them. They make up more than 13% of all homes in Japan now.
| They have more homes than people to live in them!
|
| And if things don't suddenly turn around in dramatic fashion,
| soon there will be tens of millions of these sort of places.
| In some you may even find the old owner. There's also a term
| for that - kodokushi [2].
|
| [1] -
| https://search.brave.com/images?q=akiya%20houses&source=web
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi
| hackernewds wrote:
| This seems like the impending future for San Francisco
| eternalban wrote:
| > the tyranny of kings
|
| English had inns and pubs, when toiling under the "tyranny of
| kings", right?
|
| https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-Great-British-Pub/
| DeathArrow wrote:
| And on the table a Big Mac with fries, looking as fresh as on its
| first day.
| euroderf wrote:
| I was expecting ever-fresh spam & twinkies.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| These finds that teach us about everyday life are interesting to
| me because they remind us that people are people. I remember
| looking at an exhibit of Babylonian seal cylinders, which were a
| kind of tool that a Babylonian would use to sign a document
| written on a wet clay tablet. It suddenly occurred to me that
| what I was looking at was not a work of art intended to be
| displayed and enjoyed just for its aesthetic value: it was the
| everyday tool of an ordinary clerk who lived and died thousands
| of years ago. I pictured this ancient Babylonian at the office,
| rolling the cylinder over wet tablets, looking forward to
| quitting time when he could go home, maybe stop for a beer on the
| way, play with the kids, kiss his wife. All of which would also
| be normal behavior for a white-collar worker alive today.
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