[HN Gopher] Archaeologists find 3000-year-old sword, exceptional...
___________________________________________________________________
Archaeologists find 3000-year-old sword, exceptionally well
preserved
Author : janpot
Score : 270 points
Date : 2023-06-15 14:04 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsingermany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsingermany.com)
| 404mm wrote:
| The level of details and craftsmanship is amazing considering how
| old it is.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| plenty of earlier civilizations had _better_ crafts than we do
| now.. Second, existing society has lost its crafts.. example
| 17th century French goldsmithing that is not reproducible today
| 404mm wrote:
| I completely agree. A few hundred years ago is somewhat
| understandable. It's the peak before electricity allowed
| further progression (and demise). To me, 3k years ago is a
| bit more shocking, when I compare it with items from 5-10th
| century.
| [deleted]
| beanjuice wrote:
| Is there a website where you can view chronologically interesting
| archaelogical finds? Like a timeline of what has popped up from
| the ground made by human hands?
| ct0 wrote:
| https://www.archaeology.org/news
| OJFord wrote:
| I think GP means chronologically as in (best estimate) age of
| the artefact, not the time of discovery.
| wnissen wrote:
| I highly, highly recommend A History of the World in 100
| Objects (particularly the out of print 2011 hardback, which is
| not available from any non-Amazon sources I could find.) As you
| can guess from the title, it tells the story of human history
| through archaeological finds. They are all from the British
| Museum, so it wouldn't include something like the sword from
| the OP, but given that independence from the British is the
| most widely celebrated holiday in the world, it's nearly
| comprehensive.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/History-World-100-Objects/dp/06700227...
| kitd wrote:
| Shame. Missed opportunity to editorialise it to "Ineffective
| Rust" ;)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/xqqOx
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230615154129/https://newsingerm...
| SaintSeiya wrote:
| [flagged]
| jdlyga wrote:
| Callandor... The sword that is not a sword.
| prox wrote:
| This is really impressive, like it was made yesterday and put in
| the mud!
|
| Side note, I read this domain as "New Singer Many.com" at first
| :P
| [deleted]
| coldpie wrote:
| It blows my mind that these godawful cookie banners is where we
| ended up. Web devs, you clowns need get your shit together. No,
| the law doesn't require you to do _this._ Go back to the drawing
| board and do better.
| Eupolemos wrote:
| There's about 4 themeparks of regulations and "we hope this is
| an adequate ritual" packed into all the stuff those banners
| need to check and keep up to date when regulations (or the way
| they are enforced) change.
|
| So third parties specialize in it, and we buy the banner have
| the company behind them trawl our sites and pull in the info
| about all the cookies we don't even keep taps on.
|
| And when we've installed them, we all try not to get involved
| with them again. Because it is the least fun and rewarding area
| of any web dev day and tinkering with them just might get you
| invited to a whole series of GDPR review meetings.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's not the web devs that do it, they know what is adequate;
| as others said, it's legal, people who overthink these things.
|
| I was once working on a website, we had everything fine, but
| then a committee of various people from various departments
| spent days coming up with everything that they thought the
| cookie banner should conform to.
|
| And then the ad revenue people come in, and say that it should
| be easiest to just accept all. They quickly backtracked when
| the EU or France fined one of the big parties; suddenly, the
| (legally required) reject all button was back on all the cookie
| banners, which is a good example on how fining large companies
| large sums bubbles down quickly to smaller companies doing the
| same thing.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36341702.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| This kind of UI is malicious compliance, part of a campaign by
| European websites to slowly grind down support for GDPR by
| making a really shitty experience out of it.
| moultano wrote:
| All the official EU websites have them too.
| jahnu wrote:
| In this case it's not just a legally required tracking consent
| question. It's saying either accept tracking if you want to
| read for free or subscribe and then there is no tracking.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > subscribe and then there is no tracking.
|
| Is that what they're saying? Because that must be a lie. It's
| probably more that if you're subscribed and log in, they
| don't have to ask to set a cookie.
| 34679 wrote:
| It blows my mind that people still browse the web without an ad
| blocker. Install Firefox + uBlock and the problem goes away.
| mtrower wrote:
| uBlock (at least uBlock Origin) doesn't block banners, at
| least not by default. Apparently you can adjust your filters
| to do so, but I didn't even know that was a thing until I
| looked into it just now.
| legitster wrote:
| > Web devs, you clowns need get your shit together. No, the law
| doesn't require you to do this.
|
| Your comment is a good reminder that a median HN opinion has no
| idea what they are talking about.
|
| This reads almost word for word what one of our execs might
| have expressed at us 6 years ago when we started doing GDPR
| compliance.
| klyrs wrote:
| The web devs _have_ got their shit together. If you delete the
| cookie banner through the DOM inspector, it _comes back_.
| whalesalad wrote:
| It's wild. Especially for someone who doesn't speak German.
| It's a full page takeover on mobile with a scroll bar for fine
| print. Absolutely bonkers.
| duxup wrote:
| > Web devs, you clowns need get your shit together.
|
| It's not some hobby site you're visiting and a web dev likely
| isn't the decision maker.... and I doubt a web dev had much to
| do with the legislation for all these stupid banners.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| I'm a web dev and I've tried to tell most of my clients (in the
| US) that they don't even NEED a cookie banner, and moreover
| that if they do, then it needs to be compliant with the law
| otherwise its completely pointless and cumbersome. They don't
| care. They don't trust what I tell them because they see
| countless other websites doing it, including some bigger
| companies. Even when I provide links to official EU sites or to
| articles that explain everything quite clearly, they do not
| care. And I also think it is seen as a sign of legitimacy, like
| companies want to prove they are a serious company in their
| space and so they do the same things much larger companies do,
| without actually considering what the point is and definitely
| without asking any attorneys to weight in. I suppose I could
| flat out refuse to do something that is dumb and pointless, but
| I'd rather keep their business because it doesn't actually
| affect me much.
|
| GDPR made a lot of headlines when it was announced and a lot of
| American companies confused that with the cookie requirements,
| because that is the time I started seeing a lot of American
| companies install them, including my own clients asking for
| them. Despite the cookie requirements being around long before
| that. It's quite clear that, without enforcement, nobody will
| ever take these things seriously. The best way to handle it
| would be something that requires browsers to implement and
| which cannot be skirted. Maybe we should do away with cookies
| altogether and come up with something else.
| kokanee wrote:
| Agree with the sentiment, disagree with the assignment of
| blame. Blame legal, marketing, design, or PM. No web dev
| decided this was how they wanted to spend a day.
| ryandrake wrote:
| To be fair, the web developers are the ones actually typing
| in the code and deploying it. They must share at least
| partial blame.
|
| This whole "Don't blame me! Boss told me to do it" attitude
| is rampant in software.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Don't hate the player hate the game
| pessimizer wrote:
| Pretty easy to say, but if someone is going to quit their
| job because they think the cookie banner they've been
| ordered to program will _annoy_ people, they 're either
| absurdly privileged or comically stupid.
| rkagerer wrote:
| I would never work someplace that promoted hostility to
| their users. I am neither privileged or stupid.
| mtrower wrote:
| It sounds like you're at least privileged in the sense
| that you have the apparent _option_. For a lot of people
| it 's a serious deal to pursue alternate employment,
| especially if the conditions they are seeking to avoid
| are a common practice in the industry.
| rocketbop wrote:
| I also agree with you. And the legal or marketing team that
| asked for it all have bosses too asking them for certain
| things.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Big agree with _this_ sentiment, personal responsibility
| /dev mutiny/collective action could go a long way toward
| making the world less garbage.
| kfrzcode wrote:
| yes individualism is the answer; collectivism is also the
| solution, everyone should do what they think is the
| morally correct thing and the whole garbage pile will
| suddenly go away, nobody will starve and Great Leaders
| will be no more. This has always worked in the past.
| Leadership be damned! I am important and smart enough to
| do the right thing!
| coldpie wrote:
| I don't mean the individual developers. I mean the industry.
| Y'all need to spin up a working group or something and figure
| it out. This is getting completely insane.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I find it absurd that you complain about the cookie banner
| while ignoring the absolute trash advertising on the actual
| page (which appears even though I am running an adblocker). I
| like cookie banners, I get to set my preferences and if a
| website serially abuses them they don't have the excuse that I
| consented by surfing to the page or something. If they really
| engage in abuse, I can take part in legal action.
|
| Meanwhile trash clickbait advertising is semantic and
| psychological pollution that actively makes the internet (and
| by extension the world) a much worse place for profit. Your
| priorities need recalibration.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| I just spit my drink through my nose seeing that someone
| actually feels the need to defend cookie banners, lol. You
| have a fair point on how the inline ads themselves are trash,
| but I wouldn't choose one over the other--I'd have neither of
| them.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I would prefer that cookies and tracking didn't exist, but
| given that they do I like having the option to opt out of
| them when I first visit a website.
| mtrower wrote:
| I don't know about your experience (individual web
| footprints and all), but the banners I see mostly aren't
| really asking for permission. They're telling you that
| they use cookies, that by using their website you
| consent, and the "accept all" button just notes your
| consent and makes the banner go away. Not all sites with
| banners work this way, but it seems quite common to me.
| dcow wrote:
| This isn't a cookie banner. It's a full page blocking modal
| FFS. Way to conveniently argue past the point.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not on desktop, I just clicked it away in under a
| second although I don't read German. The point isn't all
| that special, is what I'm saying. The advertising on the
| underlying page is significantly worse.
| mtrower wrote:
| It was definitely full page on desktop for me. Wayyyy way
| different from your typical cookie banner along the
| bottom.
| excalibur wrote:
| It's my buddy Klauss! I haven't seen him in ages!
| Apreche wrote:
| What kind of news site is this? Seems fake. Not reported anywhere
| else.
| Gys wrote:
| The link is a translation. At the bottom is a source link:
| https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/menschen/3000-jahre...
| roelschroeven wrote:
| That's the website of the Frankfurter Algemeine, which (as
| far as I know) is a reputable German newspaper.
| [deleted]
| cheese_van wrote:
| Not fake but rather breaking news. Bavarian State Office for
| the Care of Monuments official press release was yesterday, the
| 14th:
| https://www.blfd.bayern.de/mam/blfd/presse/pi_bronzezeitlich...
|
| But what a beautiful sword!
| Apreche wrote:
| Glad to be wrong!
| mc32 wrote:
| It is! Why is the hilt at the end instead of the end of the
| blade?
| sephlietz wrote:
| With the caveat that I'm not an expert, that's the pommel
| (hilt is the entire handle) and it is at the bottom to
| prevent the sword from slipping out of your hand.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilt
| mc32 wrote:
| Heh, you're right on both counts; thanks! Looks like the
| pommel at the end acts as a counterweight for heavy
| swords.
| mtrower wrote:
| Yeah, think about how leverage works, those things really
| suck to swing around and manipulate if you just bang them
| out without consideration for balance. Especially the
| larger ones...
| throwaway_20357 wrote:
| Was all over the news in Germany today:
| https://www.welt.de/geschichte/article245860994/Archaeologie...
| https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/menschen/3000-jahre...
| https://www.schwaebische.de/regional/ostalb/archaeologen-fin...
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > Alle Artikel sind aus der Originalquelle ubersetzt. Wir
| betreiben einen Ubersetzungsdienst, um Englischsprachigen in
| Deutschland zu helfen, zu verstehen, was in ganz Deutschland
| passiert.
|
| All articles are translated from the original source. We run a
| translation service to help English speakers in Germany
| understand what's happening across Germany.
|
| But yeah, it has strong freebooting energy.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >But yeah, it has strong freebooting energy.
|
| The FAZ and Zeit articles are just copy pasted from the dpa,
| which is why they are identical. I am sure they payed for
| them, but I can't say I am particularly sorry for them.
|
| Welt was the one article I saw which included some more info
| and a few more pictures.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| >A man, a woman and a youth were buried in it. It is still
| unclear what relationship the people may have had to one another.
|
| Yeah, real puzzler that one
| InitialLastName wrote:
| There may be a single, overwhelmingly likely option, but absent
| DNA testing or further context clues we can't know for sure.
| Let's not snark the one science journalist who isn't adding
| baseless speculation to their article.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Rag tag group of friends obviously
| werds wrote:
| skiffle band
| civilitty wrote:
| The woman and child were clearly put there for ceremonial
| purposes.
| lalos wrote:
| Vikings used to that -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_funeral as described by
| Ahmad ibn Fadlan
| deely3 wrote:
| Probably roommates.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| Here's the original source:
| https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/menschen/3000-jahre...
| lordleft wrote:
| It's funny to think that the fantasy/speculative fiction trope of
| "precursor civilization that has advanced tech" was probably
| grounded in the historical memory of people happening upon ruins,
| weapons and artifacts of extraordinary craftsmanship.
| beloch wrote:
| Such myths are likely based on classical Rome rather than
| bronze age discoveries.
|
| For several centuries after the Western empire fell apart,
| Europeans lacked the capability to build settlements or
| structures anywhere close to the size typical of classical
| Roman civilization. Populations were depressed by pestilence,
| social order had declined, and most Europeans were within a
| short distance from a former Roman settlement of a size larger
| than they'd ever seen populated in their lives. The Eastern
| empire was a little different, but Western Europe was pretty
| much fubar in the early middle ages.
|
| Although technology steadily progressed throughout the middle
| ages, it took centuries for population and social organization
| to return to anywhere near classical levels. If you lived
| during the early middle age, it was an unmistakable fact that a
| great "precursor civilization" capable of wonders far beyond
| what your own civilization was capable of had lived and fallen
| long before you were born. With colossal roman ruins scattered
| across Europe, there was no need to look to the bronze age for
| a fallen civilization.
| cubefox wrote:
| There was also purely intellectual evidence from an advanced
| civilization, in form of surviving books by Greek
| philosophers, mathematicians and astronomers.
| detourdog wrote:
| The epic of Gilgamesh starts out talking about the distant
| past.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It goes further back than that. In 400BC, Xenophon, while
| retreating from a failed attempt at taking Babylon, came
| across the abandoned ruins of a bunch of Assyrian cities,
| like Nineveh and wrote about them. 200 years after being
| abandoned, they were far more impressive than anything
| Xenophon would have seen in his home country. For example,
| Athens at that point had a city wall(the Themistoclean wall)
| approximately 5 miles circumference, made of rubble, 30'
| tall, 10' thick at the base
|
| Compare to what Xenophon saw at Nineveh: A city wall 7.5
| miles circumference, made of stone and brick, 55' tall and up
| to 50' thick. The most impressive structures he would have
| ever seen - just out in the middle of nowhere, absolutely
| abandoned.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There was also the Minoan civilization, wiped out by the
| eruption of Santorini. Probably inspired the Atlantis legend.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Most of what you wrote was true for the most of the
| Mediterranean after the Bronze Age collapse too. That is why
| the Greeks and Romans also had such myths, remember Atlantis
| is something that seemingly originated with Plato.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| My YouTube feed has been (pleasantly) taken over by ancient
| Rome videos where historians and archaeologists cover how
| various Roman inventions and buildings worked.
|
| I don't think people realize how far ahead of everyone else
| Rome was at that time.
|
| Like most people know that Rome had aqueducts bringing in
| water to the city, but they probably don't know that water
| was supplied to different buildings directly, and you could
| pay to get a line installed straight to your house. Running
| water in your house, 2000 years ago!
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| Sounds interesting. Do you have any channels or particular
| videos you'd recommend?
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Look up "Ancient Rome Live" on YouTube and then go down
| the recommendations rabbithole.
| usrusr wrote:
| That trope is about something so forgotten that any
| discoveries would be entirely unexpected. But awareness of
| Rome was never lost, quite the opposite. Even bureaucratic
| connections survived, they just shifted back a gear from
| political to spiritual authority. Most nominal titles like
| count or duke assumed by european nobility derive their names
| from some role in Roman administration, they all considered
| themselves as continuation of something that never
| disappeared but merely changed shape.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Came here to say much the same thing. A great book that
| gets into the details of this is
| https://www.amazon.com/Inheritance-Rome-Illuminating-
| Dark-40...
|
| TLDR; people considered themselves "Roman", or something
| adjacent to it, long after the western empire officially
| disintegrated, and of course in the east it didn't really
| die.
|
| Even on the outskirts (e.g. Romano-British) people held
| onto Roman, Christian, and Latin culture at a very deep
| level. And even when the Anglo-Saxons invaded they were
| extremely aware of who and what the Roman ruins etc. were,
| even if they chose not to settle in them in many cases.
| lrem wrote:
| Polish nobility, stretching well into today's Ukraine,
| was inventing ways in which they were continuation of
| imaginary outskirts of said empire.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > Even on the outskirts (e.g. Romano-British) people held
| onto Roman, Christian, and Latin culture at a very deep
| level.
|
| Three of the 10 most common languages on Earth boil down
| to "Latin with a bad accent".
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Exactly, and the most popular religion in the world is
| basically _cultural continuity with late western Roman
| culture_ and its largest most organized official form
| even uses the Latin language and maintains political
| institutions with continuous lineage back to Rome.
|
| I don't think there's a real timeline where Europeans
| were wandering around the ruins of the suddenly collapsed
| empire wondering who these people were. They knew fully,
| but the economic and political (and physical! plague!)
| situation meant they were unable to reconstruct the Pax
| Romana.
|
| But they _certainly tried_ , even when they were former
| "outsiders" like the Franks (who, in the west half of
| their realm, even dropped their native tongue to speak a
| form of Latin!).
|
| In fact I feel it's possible that actual "progress"
| wasn't possible in Europe until philosophical thought
| moved beyond late-Roman neo-Platonic & neo-Aristotelian
| boundaries, and into new radical enlightenment era
| concepts.
| labster wrote:
| Knowing fully what happened to Rome, if it's even
| possible, would have been limited to the educated class.
| Stories would still have come out of the peasant class,
| whose folk memory of Rome couldn't match what the clergy
| had.
|
| Eventually we did remake the Pax Romana, but it took two
| utterly ruinous wars, humanism, and a working knowledge
| of free trade to recreate the system that Rome had
| managed to create almost by accident.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Almost everywhere on earth, there have been many regional
| collapses in different times. This is enough for a corpus of
| stories about mythical, great past to be created, survive
| through the highwater mark of the next cycle of civilization
| (which was usually higher than the previous great past), and
| provide context during the next collapse and it's aftermath.
|
| When Roman power in the West collapsed, and, for example, the
| remaining population of Arles retreated into the amphitheater
| of their previously much greater and more prosperous city,
| building a fortification in the middle and from the ruins of
| what used to be before, there were almost certainly people
| among them who could recite Hesiod. I just for some reason find
| this so trippy.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| I think it might be a general bias in the human psyche. When
| you're born, you're utterly dependent on the gods that are your
| parents (and extended village, to a greater or lesser extent)
| and this has selected for a bias in the human brain that
| expresses itself as "older people good, oldest people better".
|
| I base this only on finding the trope of "precursor
| civilisation/society with the best tech" in literature from
| across the globe.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Before written text and easy access to books and knowledge,
| you also relied on the experience and skills of older people
| to learn and make your way in the world.
| svachalek wrote:
| And oral history I'm sure. We will probably never know how
| advanced and widespread some of these ancient technologies are
| but the existence of artifacts that are far, far ahead of
| anything we would expect historically (e.g. Antikythera
| Mechanism, Gobekli Tepe) suggests there are some big, big holes
| in our records of the past.
| George83728 wrote:
| I don't think anybody really thought much about it before the
| discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism, but at least in
| retrospect there seem to be clear reference to such devices
| in ancient contemporary literature. Particularly, Cicero
| described such devices and attributed them to Archimedes.
| holoduke wrote:
| I find the ancient stone works the best evidence for some
| kind of advanced civilization in the far past. (No not
| aliens). Some date back 10.000 years ago. The precision and
| similarities between different sites all over the world is
| incredible. We are just in the beginning of this research
| field.
| leobg wrote:
| This is mindblowing. Here we are, 3000 years in the future. But
| how many of us could make such a "primitive" thing?
| mtrower wrote:
| To be fair, how many of the populace 3000 years ago could make
| such a thing?
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| How many people could make them 3000 years ago? Im curious how
| many blacksmiths there were back then with the appropriate
| skill and resources to learn it and do it well. I feel as if
| there are still a surprising number of people that could make a
| sword today, although maybe not from raw resources.
| stinkbutt wrote:
| it was one of the most popular and widespread occupations
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I think it's more accurate to say most communities had a
| blacksmith. "Farmer" was the most popular and widespread
| occultations. A community at that time didn't require a ton
| of specialized labor, they needed more people _using_ the
| output of a blacksmith.
| webbdiscoveries wrote:
| [flagged]
| philomath_mn wrote:
| Please keep LLM responses off of HN
| automatic6131 wrote:
| What stands out to me is the pommel with the large handhold. That
| makes me think that it's a slashing sword, not a stabbing one.
| Then there's the fact that it's all metal, unlike how most
| ancient and medieval swords which were made with an handle of
| organic material around the tang of the blade. Probably not
| intended (ever) for use in fighting? Since it doesn't have a
| replacable handle.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The handle seems to be a separate piece of metal from the
| blade, and it appears to have been riveted to the blade (with
| two pairs of lateral rivets), so it might have been
| replaceable, even if there should have been little need to
| replace a bronze handle.
|
| The blade seems thick, so even with a bronze handle the sword
| might have been balanced well enough to be usable.
|
| Just from the pictures it cannot be guessed whether the sword
| was too heavy to be easily handled by a normal human.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I was under the impression that bronze swords' lifespans were
| limited by the metal; they can't be sharpened, but would need
| to be re-cast. A replaceable handle probably wouldn't help
| much.
| Loughla wrote:
| Wait, can you really not sharpen bronze? From what I know it
| takes a good edge, just not quite as fine as steel would. But
| I don't know anything about not being able to sharpen it.
|
| Am I wrong? Can you really not sharpen bronze?
| [deleted]
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I have been told that, but I really don't know. It's a tech
| that's been obsolete for a couple millenia now, so I hadn't
| put much actual research into it.
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| You can definitely resharpen bronze. The castings are not
| perfectly sharp, the edges are further worked (and can be
| hammered and work hardened). I don't think you can redo
| work hardening indefinitely but you can a bit and can
| scrape and grind and hone repeatedly. There are (or were
| last I looked) some people supplying cast blanks these
| days for re-enactors to try sharpening up. Always wanted
| to try that one day.
| ftxbro wrote:
| > "What stands out to me is the pommel with the large handhold.
| That makes me think that it's a slashing sword, not a stabbing
| one."
|
| it looks like the pommel of a rondel dagger which is as stabby
| as it gets
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If the handle is metal, why would it ever need to be replaced?
| It's not going to rot, and it's not going to break.
| civilitty wrote:
| It's not that the handle is going to rot, it's that there's
| zero shock absorption. The fact that it doesn't have a
| replaceable handle probably means that it's for ceremonial
| purposes, not fighting. Hitting another sword with it would
| be exhausting and painful.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I doubt that "shock absorption" would have been a problem.
|
| This kind of sword would not have been used like a hammer.
|
| The wavy pattern on the bronze handle would have ensured a
| firm grip even with a sweaty or wet hand. I have some
| Japanese Tojiro kitchen knives, which have stainless steel
| handles with a similar pattern on the handle, and they are
| more comfortable than most of the knife handles made of
| wood or plastic, especially when used with a dirty hand.
|
| So based on this experience, I do not believe that such a
| bronze handle would have been a serious disadvantage, even
| if it is possible that the sword was purely ceremonial.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I have found though that my kitchen knife is not very
| good when I have to parry, or when I have to bash my way
| through a shield.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Nobody would have parried with a sword, except in
| desperate situations, because of the risk of breaking the
| sword or damaging its edge. That's what the shield was
| for.
|
| However you have a valid point that anyone wielding a
| sword had to resist the shock of a successful parry with
| the shield done by the opponent.
|
| For thrusting movements, I do not believe that such a
| bronze handle would have been worse than any other
| handle, because it is unlikely to have been more
| slippery.
|
| Only for cutting movements you are right that a handle
| wrapped in leather or cords should have been better at
| absorbing shocks.
| George83728 wrote:
| If the blade breaks, that handle is fancy enough that
| somebody might want it fitted with a new blade.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| A pommel is supposed to be small, this one is so large and
| protruding, how do you even slash or stab with this thing? The
| only thing this seems good for is for beating your opponent on
| the head with its handle.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Generally speaking, shorter swords from that period (as the
| current one), which are more like large daggers, were typically
| cast in one piece with the handhold. For larger swords, we
| often find some with separately attached handles, too.
|
| Here you can see a selection of Danish swords of both types
| alongside each other from the same period:
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Images-of-Danish-swords-...
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I collect swords, and this is a nice example. When researching
| swords from the medieval period I found this technique of
| starting with an octagonal "bar" of stock material and then using
| a hammer to shape the blade while leaving a round segment for the
| handle to be interesting. It makes sense of course, although it
| can make for an uncomfortable handle (hence the wrapped handles
| in more modern swords.)
| trilbyglens wrote:
| The article mentions that the handles were often cast over the
| blade.
| contingencies wrote:
| Cool, what's your oldest sword and where does it come from? Do
| you display them or just collect them? I have a friend in
| Australia with a fairly significant knife (not sword)
| collection which will be for sale shortly (aged owner), let me
| know if interested.
| Luc wrote:
| More nice pictures here, very metal:
| https://www.welt.de/geschichte/article245860994/Archaeologie...
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Wow! That really does look like it's in good shape. I
| understand it's because bronze doesn't oxidize as readily but
| it's not what I picture when someone says 3000 year old sword.
| rurp wrote:
| Same here. With something that old I was expecting "well
| preserved" to mean that I could probably make out that it has
| the shape of a sword.
| mikewarot wrote:
| The arrow points are pretty amazing too
| masklinn wrote:
| Fwiw bronze does oxidise quite readily, but the copper oxide
| is not porous, and becomes a resilient copper carbonate.
|
| Which is why bronze and other copper-alloy artefacts are
| extremely resilient, unless they come in contact with
| chlorides and get bronze disease.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| I can tell you have some experience with old bronze/copper.
| Most people do not even know what "bronze disease" is.
| isametry wrote:
| https://archive.is/RccA2
| avereveard wrote:
| You'd think a civilization 3000 years in the future would take
| more than a couple questionable resolution pictures.
| techwiz137 wrote:
| The shape, intricate detail, not something I would have expected
| from a civilization 3000 years ago. The more you know.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Well, the famous mask of Tutankhamun was dated to 1323 BCE.
| Plenty of older artefacts than 3000 years ago that are equally
| impressive.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mask_of_Tutankhamun
| barrenko wrote:
| Umm there can be only one?
| Archelaos wrote:
| The article is somewhat sensationalistic. Finding an octagonal
| type bronze sword ("Achtkantschwert" in German) from that period
| is rare, but we have quite a couple of them. Since bronze does
| not rust, the conditions of such swords are often quite good (and
| typically far better than that of medieval iron swords, for
| instance).
|
| Here is a map of the distribution of octagonal-hilted swords in
| Europe:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-showing-the-distribu...
|
| As you can easily see, there are two clearly separated areas
| where these swords were found.
|
| The following article (PDF, in German, including an English
| abstract and some nice photos) explores the possible
| (dis-)connection between the two areas:
|
| https://goedoc.uni-goettingen.de/bitstream/handle/1/8646/pz....
| hzay wrote:
| My knowledge of bronze vs iron comes purely from playing dwarf
| fortress. Are they fairly comparable in the damage they can
| cause?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I've just started listening to the Fall of Civilizations
| podcast (https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/), and their
| second episode is on the Late Bronze Age collapse. The theory
| they put forward as to one of the reasons the big successful
| Bronze age civilizations got out-competed is that bronze is
| very expensive / hard to acquire, primarily because of the
| need for tin. (Copper is very common but unsuitable for
| weaponry without turning it into bronze.)
|
| Iron is extremely common and cheap, but requires much much
| higher temperatures to work with than bronze. Once the
| furnace technology was out there to make smelting iron and
| creation of steel feasible, poorer / less complicated
| civilizations were able to make iron weaponry and go up
| against their richer neighbors.
| bombcar wrote:
| Any real difference in damage would be weight based, as
| swords were more used for beating than cutting. It's likely
| that one metal could hold a better edge, and one (perhaps the
| same) would be more resilient to breaking.
|
| It's not quite like the D&D "this metal is higher ranking and
| does more damage".
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| Bronze is superior to iron, but not to steel. Both bronze and
| steel can take very sharp edges while only steel can be
| tempered to be springy and tough and therefore can make much
| lighter weapons. Iron is soft, weak, prone to rusting, can't
| easily take or hold an edge, and requires a lot of fuel to
| process from ore, but you can get it _anywhere_ in large
| quantities if you have the fuel, while bronze needs the much
| harder to find tin.
| zulban wrote:
| >somewhat sensationalistic
|
| What a cynical comment. The title doesn't even say rare, and
| there's only a few dozen found in "all of Europe", ever. What
| could possibly be seen as sensationalist here? Thanks for your
| excellent sources, however.
|
| I know it's trendy to say sensationalist, and it's often true.
| Just seems like a lazy thing to write in this case.
| pessimizer wrote:
| "Somewhat sensationalistic" ranks somewhere around "slightly
| uncomfortable" or "a little misleading" on the cynicism
| scale. I know it's trendy to write entire comments responding
| to a single, passing word usage in someone else's comment,
| but...
| mtrower wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's used in passing. I'd say it's the
| entire point of their comment.
|
| Whether the usage was reasonable I don't feel qualified to
| comment on.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > What could possibly be seen as sensationalist here?
|
| I wrote "somewhat" on purpose, meaning something in the
| middle between "really sensationalistic" and "quite
| interesting". The sensationalist aspect of the article is
| that it gives the uninformed reader the impression that it is
| something like the find of the year, which it really isn't.
| Yes, it is a nice find and well-preserved, but in the end,
| everything is rare if one only narrows down the area enough.
| Instead, the author should have informed the reader that
| bronze swords are often quite well-preserved and why this is
| the case, and that "rare" does not mean "one or two others",
| but "about 200 others of this specific type and thousands of
| others considering all types".
| TSiege wrote:
| The "exceptional" part is literally a quote from the top expert
| of preservation for the region.
|
| > The sword and the burial still need to be examined, said
| Conservator General Mathias Pfeil, head of the Bavarian State
| Office for the Preservation of Monuments. "But we can already
| say: the state of preservation is exceptional!"
|
| This article has more photos and compared to the sources
| mentioned here does seem much better preserved. The entire
| sword doesn't even look corroded
| https://www.welt.de/geschichte/article245860994/Archaeologie...
| AHOHA wrote:
| Now that valuable piece must be saved and taken care of, and
| there's no where else except the British museum!! ;)
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