[HN Gopher] Rare 2,100-year-old gold coin bears name of obscure ...
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Rare 2,100-year-old gold coin bears name of obscure ruler from pre-
Roman Britain
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 163 points
Date : 2023-10-29 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.livescience.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.livescience.com)
| jphoward wrote:
| One thing I always wonder is how did all these countries manage
| to find enough gold to run an (albeit tiny) economy off them?
| I've never heard of/seen a gold mine in the UK, and yet 2000
| years ago they were mining enough to mint currency. Was it all
| relatively surface level and rapidly mined out, and now all gone?
| jacoblambda wrote:
| more or less yes. Everything that was easy to find and extract
| largely has been.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > Was it all relatively surface level and rapidly mined out,
| and now all gone?
|
| Pretty much. Elemental gold or relatively easy to refine alloys
| were stripped off the land over many thousands of years. Now we
| have to go deeper to find more.
| okr wrote:
| I would guess these currencies took over gradually. And they
| never really disappeared. So it got more and more.
| cyberax wrote:
| Most of the economy back then was non-monetary.
|
| If you're interested in this area, look up the Inca Empire. It
| did not really have money at all.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that's not accurate. Source for "most"
| economies not having money?
|
| It would appear based on some simple googling that "money"
| has existed in many cultures going back 30,000 years, in two
| forms: "money of account" and "money of exchange". Of both of
| those they have taken various forms. Minted coins did not
| appear until around 3,000 years ago.
| cyberax wrote:
| "Monetary economy" means that it uses money for the
| exchanges, rather than barter. Most pre-industrial
| economies were not monetary.
|
| Barter economy certainly existed, probably from before the
| Human Sapiens. But _money_ is a relatively recent
| invention.
| ETH_start wrote:
| Good paper from the progenitor of the blockchain, Nick
| Szabo, positing that the first moneys emerged up to
| 75,000 years ago and possibly enabled Homo sapiens
| sapiens to supersede Neanderthals:
|
| https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeec
| h/C...
| cyberax wrote:
| I seriously doubt that currency (a standardized medium of
| exchange) existed in prehistoric times. But barter
| economy certainly did, we have plenty of archeological
| evidence for it.
|
| Still, even the barter economy was used for mostly
| "optional" activities. People were not dependent on it
| for survival, a tribe could live just fine on their own,
| without trade.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > currency (a standardized medium of exchange)
|
| That's a pretty recent innovation, standardized coins
| didn't appear until the 600s BC, barely 100-150 years or
| so prior to the Greco-Persian wars. Widescale
| international trade existed for 1000+ years prior to that
| as far as we know, you don't necessarily standardized
| money for that.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > Barter economy certainly existed
|
| What is the best evidence for this historically?
| Anthropologists strongly dispute this idea, and believe
| barter was mostly used for trade between total strangers
| (e.g. traders from outside your society or "economy")
|
| Graeber's _Debt: the first 5000 years_ covers this topic
| cyberax wrote:
| > What is the best evidence for this historically?
|
| Mostly archeological. There are many burials that contain
| items that were clearly not locally sourced. In some
| cases, they had to be transported for thousands of
| kilometers.
|
| And quite often this was done for non-functional items
| such as jewelry or dyes.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Er... Money has existed for thousands of years, and has
| replaced barter in any society with even moderate amounts
| of specialization, and a population size that gets into
| the thousands. In Roman times, this was already the case
| for thousands of years. Money is one of the great
| enablers of trade and specialization, of empire building.
| Barter economy cannot sustain any of that, because barter
| economy does not scale. Money is a relatively recent
| invention in the time scale of our species existence, but
| that's still 3-4 thousand years of near-ubiquitous use,
| minimum.
| cyberax wrote:
| The Roman Empire was basically modern. It had currency,
| banks, loans with interest, etc.
|
| At the same time, the Slavic countries up north still
| were pre-monetary. There was little to no currency, but
| there was extensive trade in fur, salt, and other goods.
| eesmith wrote:
| Was there money in pre-1778 Hawaii? Not that I have been
| able to figure out. I believe it was a gift economy.
|
| There certainly was specialization in Hawaii, and with a
| population of over 100,000 would seem like a good
| counter-example.
|
| > Barter economy cannot sustain any of that, because
| barter economy does not scale.
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money ,
| "There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, of a
| society in which barter is the main mode of exchange;[23]
| instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along
| the principles of gift economy and debt."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
| monetary_economy#Other_mon... list other money-less
| systems including "the Incas and possibly, also the
| empire of Majapahit". Both were empires.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > for thousands of years
|
| It depends on how you define money. Coins didn't really
| exist until the 7th century BC, that doesn't mean long-
| range widescale trade did not exist prior to that for
| 1000+ years but they didn't generally use money (in the
| way we would understand it at least) so the boundary
| between using money and barter wasn't really that clear.
| noselasd wrote:
| This is highly dependent on the location. We certainly
| know there was a large interconnectede monetary economy
| around the middle east and the mediterranean around 3000
| years ago. The roman empire was largely a monetarian
| economy as well, about 2000 years prior to what is
| commonly referred to as "pre-industrial", they had quite
| an extensive banking system as well.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| They used money. The Incas had a system for accounting using
| knots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu
|
| You don't need physical coins to have money
| cyberax wrote:
| They certainly used _accounting_, but not money (currency).
| They were not assigning certain monetary value to items.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I think it's highly likely that a system built for
| counting was used for counting loans, debts, and
| resources. The foundation of civilization is resource
| allocation.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I'm not an expert in this so maybe am just off base.
|
| But the key difference (I have been told) is what you can
| do with that accounting.
|
| Like, I can walk into a shop and buy anything on the wall
| with money, whereas that kind of accounting may have very
| different implications for what you can do with it.
|
| Additionally, I can take money that I gathered from one
| source and use it somewhere else, and it's fungible in
| that I can use it anywhere else in the system. If I have
| a debt to one person in earlier systems that debt may be
| non-transferable.
|
| If those two elements are true, it becomes very difficult
| to do a lot of the things that we think of as money,
| specifically interest and massive accumulation.
| cyberax wrote:
| It assumes that Inca used formal loans and debts. They
| certainly used accounting for resources, though.
| weatherlight wrote:
| An accounting system using knots isn't money, per ser.
| These systems of credit were based on mutual trust and
| social relations, often without a physical representation
| of money as we know it today.
|
| Comparing this to coinage, the innovation of coins
| introduced a standardized physical object that could
| represent value, which allowed for a different kind of
| economic activity not solely based on personal trust and
| relationships. Coinage enabled transactions with strangers
| and facilitated trade over larger distances and among
| larger groups of people, where personal credit
| relationships were not feasible.
|
| Money, has a specificity to it. In essence, while early
| credit systems were based on social relationships and trust
| within communities, coinage represented a more impersonal
| and widely accepted medium of exchange that did not
| necessarily rely on social bonds. This distinction is
| crucial because it allowed for the expansion of trade and
| the concept of money as an abstract unit of account, rather
| than a direct reflection of social debts and credits.
| csomar wrote:
| So they invented the modern fiat monetary system before
| it was cool?
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I think there is a lot of fantasy thinking that ancient
| times didn't use money. Trade is evident from the
| earliest times as proven through goods at burial sites
| that originated thousands of miles away. Trade
| necessitated commoditized assets as intermediary value
| stores, and common ones included salt and furs in
| addition to hard metal coins and commoditized metal
| objects like swords.
|
| Social relationships are still important the higher you
| go in finance - it's much easier to get a $100 million
| loan for a new building with a strong relationship with a
| banker than as a stranger, regardless of collateral.
|
| I think a pre-commercial time where people didn't care
| about money is a fiction.
| weatherlight wrote:
| There's a lot of anthropological and archaeological
| evidence to the contrary. People indeed had trade and
| exchanges in ancient times, but these did not aalways
| necessitate a formalized system of money as we understand
| it today. The early forms of trade were often based on
| complex systems of credit and debt that were deeply
| intertwined with social relationships and trust within
| communities. David Graeber's work, "Debt: the first 5000
| years," highlights that for more than 5,000 years before
| the invention of coins, humans extensively used such
| credit systems to buy and sell goods, long before the
| existence of coins or cash.
|
| While it is true that trade is evident from ancient
| times, with goods found at burial sites that originated
| thousands of miles away, this does not automatically
| imply that all trade was facilitated by a commoditized
| asset serving as a universal medium of exchange. In many
| cases, goods like salt, furs, and metal objects were
| indeed used in trade, but they were part of a broader
| system of barter and reciprocal exchange, which could
| function effectively without a standardized form of
| money.
|
| Regarding the role of social relationships in finance,
| while it's accurate that relationships remain crucial,
| especially for large transactions in modern times, this
| does not discount the fact that in the past, community
| trust and social bonds were often the primary means of
| securing credit, not collateral or commoditized money.
| This is evident in how competitive markets and the
| scarcity of trust can affect transactions, as Graeber
| notes through an anecdote where mutual aid within a
| community was a given, not a transaction requiring formal
| repayment.
|
| The idea of a pre-commercial time where 'people didn't
| care about money' may indeed be fictional, but it's more
| nuanced than simply saying they used money in the way we
| do now. They cared about value and exchange, but these
| were frequently managed through social mechanisms rather
| than through impersonal, commoditized money. It's
| essential to understand that the concept of money has
| evolved and that early forms of trade and credit were
| valid economic systems in their own right, even if they
| don't match the monetary systems we are familiar with
| today.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| My broader point is that certain people think that there
| is this utopian "pre money time" where capitalism didn't
| exist. I believe capitalism is the default, free trade is
| the default, and the fundamental idea that people will
| engage in for-profit commerce is embedded into our
| psychologies.
| weatherlight wrote:
| capitalism, as a system defined by profit-driven markets
| and private ownership, is a relatively modern concept and
| not the default economic state throughout human history.
| earlier societies often operated on principles of
| reciprocity and communal sharing rather than for-profit
| trade. while the inclination to trade can be considered
| inherent, the forms and rules of trade have varied
| greatly across cultures and eras, shaped by differing
| social and political contexts.
| progne wrote:
| Money-as-knots-in-a-rope sounds closer to the modern
| money-as-bits-on-a-plate than does money-as-metal-disks.
| weatherlight wrote:
| indeed, the comparison of quipu to modern digital money
| highlights the diversity of forms that 'money' can take.
| However, the fundamental difference lies in the functions
| and roles that these systems serve within their
| respective societies. The quipu was primarily an
| accounting tool, part of a complex system of record-
| keeping used by the Incas, which facilitated the
| administration of their economy, particularly in terms of
| tribute and state resources. It did not serve as a medium
| of exchange in the same way coins or modern digital money
| do.
|
| modern money, whether digital or physical, serves several
| key functions: it is a medium of exchange, a unit of
| account, and a store of value. While the quipu certainly
| functioned as a unit of account, it's not clear that it
| served as a medium of exchange or a store of value. These
| are essential characteristics that define 'money' in the
| economic sense.
|
| the impersonal nature of coinage and modern digital money
| allows them to facilitate trade and economic activity on
| a scale and with a degree of anonymity that's not
| possible with a system like quipu, which is deeply
| embedded in the social and political fabric of the
| society that uses it.
|
| The transition to coinage and later to digittal
| transactions represents a move towards a more
| standardized, divisible, and portable form of money that
| can be used in a wide range of transactions, with or
| without a pre-existing relationship between the parties
| involved. This is quite different from the quipu, which
| was embedded in a specific cultural context and may not
| have been readily exchangeable or understood outside of
| that context.
|
| So while it's tempting to draw parallels between ancient
| accounting systems and modern digital currencies, we must
| be careful not to conflate the two. Each serves its
| purpose within its particular economic and social milieu,
| with specific attributes and limitations that define its
| use as "money."
| zopa wrote:
| > It did not serve as a medium of exchange in the same
| way coins or modern digital money do.
|
| Source for the confidence here? We know that a corvee
| economy existed, but I'm skeptical that we can rule out
| private quipo-based exchange. The evidence base is pretty
| thin; a lot of stuff didn't survive Pizarro.
| weatherlight wrote:
| https://www.peruforless.com/blog/quipu/
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu?useskin=vector they
| were more like ledgers or logs... not money. (Early
| databases perhaps?)
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > Coinage enabled transactions with strangers and
| facilitated trade over larger distances and among larger
| groups of people, where personal credit relationships
| were not feasible.
|
| Extensive trade international trade networks existed
| during the entire bronze age and the preceding periods
| without any coins, though. Coins are useful as an
| standardized accounting unit and are easy to transport
| but fundamentally are not that different from barter.
| keep_reading wrote:
| Of course knots aren't "money" because money also needs
| scarcity and a way to prevent forgery but we have plenty
| of other examples: Rai stones, cowrie shells, other rare
| things ...
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Money and debt aren't exactly the same thing though right?
| The quipu is a system of IOUs iirc. More like the English
| debt stick. With currency/money (gold, silver, copper, fiat
| notes), we make a transaction on the spot and we're done.
| There is no debt in the simple case. The poster is saying
| they didn't use money and it sounds like they didn't. They
| used a system of tracking debts which could likely be
| traded.
|
| I know it's all tightly related, but I believe there is a
| difference.
| neeleshs wrote:
| It is fun to think of knots as rudimentary Merkel trees!
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Most of the economy back then was non-monetary.
|
| In 600 BCE, Lydia's King Alyattes minted what is believed to
| be the first official currency, the Lydian stater. The coins
| were made from electrum, a mixture of silver and gold that
| occurs naturally, and the coins were stamped with pictures
| that acted as denominations.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/roots_of_money.asp
|
| But also note that physical currency is not necessary for
| "money". Money has been around for about 5000 years, ridding
| us from barter.
| gilleain wrote:
| Interesting question - it seems like there were Welsh mines in
| Roman times:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolaucothi_Gold_Mines
|
| > They are the only mines for Welsh gold outside those of the
| Dolgellau gold-belt, and are a Scheduled Ancient Monument. They
| are also the only known Roman gold mines in Britain, although
| it does not exclude the likelihood that they exploited other
| known sources in Devon in South West England, north Wales,
| Scotland and elsewhere.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| The wiki on this mine is quite extensive.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolaucothi_Gold_Mines
| weatherlight wrote:
| Phenomenal book that cover's this exact topic, "Debt: The First
| 5000 Years."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
| "The book argues that debt has typically retained its primacy,
| with cash and barter usually limited to situations of low trust
| involving strangers or those not considered credit-worthy"
|
| It would make sense that cash would pop up once the Romans
| arrived, and would be in small amounts to facilitate spot
| transactions between Romans and the pre-Roman peoples of
| Britain and why there's such little amounts of cash.
|
| Further more, I can imagine a scenario where Roman coins were
| melted down to make these coins (total conjecture) .
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I've seen some work on this as well. It would make sense in
| small tight knit communities to help out your neighbor when
| you could and vice-versa. There would be a relatively small
| need for coinage until things became a lot more complex and
| urbanized.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| That's still true nowadays if you limit 'cash' to just
| physical currency.
| weatherlight wrote:
| its not quite the same, I explain why in the comments below
| this one. :)
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The book is a combination of anecdata and speculation
| presented in a polemical style. Not really something that I
| would call "phenomenal".
| weatherlight wrote:
| the book stimulates important discussions on economic
| history and the roots of our financial systems. While its
| style is assertive, its contribution to questioning
| established economic assumptions is undeniably valuable.
| its also backed by anthropological and archaeological
| evidence.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Unfortunately, Graeber is not well-versed in economic
| theory so him "questioning established economic
| assumptions" often resembles fighting windmills or not
| even that.
|
| If you know any actual contributions to economics or the
| history of economics that were consequences of his
| stimulation, I would be glad to hear about them.
| weatherlight wrote:
| Graeber's background in economic anthropology offers a
| fresh lens through which to view economic history,
| highlighting the social and cultural dimensions that
| traditional economic theories sometimes overlook. His
| work has encouraged interdisciplinary dialogue, prompting
| economists and historians alike to incorporate broader
| socio-cultural understandings into their analyses. While
| his approach differs from conventional economic
| theorizing, it complements it by adding depth to our
| understanding of economic phenomena.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Right, but are there _actual_ contributions to economics
| or the history of economics that were consequences of his
| "stimulation"?
|
| Also, saying that he single-handedly prompted "economists
| and historians alike to incorporate broader socio-
| cultural understandings into their analyses" is a huge
| denigration of institutional economics, behavioural
| economics, Austrian economics, social economics, etc.
| weatherlight wrote:
| It's a relatively recent addition to the discorse, having
| been published just over a decade ago.
|
| It's definitely apart of the heterodox tradition in
| economics (without diminishing what's already there),
| which often takes longer to be integrated into the
| mainstream.
|
| So, I guess time will tell?
| sebmellen wrote:
| I don't say this as an accusation, but your writing is
| remarkably similar to ChatGPT output.
| ksaj wrote:
| Missing the giveaway "However..." clause that nearly all
| ChatGPT descriptions have in them.
| Natsu wrote:
| I made a prediction that I was going to find out that
| Graeber was a communist thinker before I looked him up
| just now. I was not surprised.
| bibanez wrote:
| My feeling when I read Debt was that he was smart enough
| to understand conventional economic theory. My brother
| studied economics and he was the one who actually
| recommended me the book.
| tomrod wrote:
| As a second nomination, I hold a PhD in economics and
| found the book interesting.
| bedobi wrote:
| I don't mean to be uncharitable but you need to read up
| on what actual experts say about things Graeber says.
| He's Joe Rogan level knowledgable, and that's not a
| compliment.
| spicymapotofu wrote:
| Where can I search for this kind of discourse? There's a
| lot of "actual" here without names.
| Exoristos wrote:
| And very tendentious.
| permo-w wrote:
| I've never heard of a gold mine in the UK, but Welsh gold is
| something you often see and hear of, whatever that tells you
| netbioserror wrote:
| As early as the Bronze Age, Britain was part of wide-spanning
| trade networks that funneled Cornwallish tin to the empires of
| the Near East. I would imagine that even before the invention
| of true coinage, various quantities of gold and other precious
| metals were circulating in Britain from those Mediterranean
| sources.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > As early as the Bronze Age
|
| Note that while Great Britain didn't have a whole lot of
| gold, it _did_ have a whole lot of tin.
|
| You can't make bronze without tin. People who want to make
| bronze will give you gold for it.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| >Cornwallish
|
| _Cornish_ would do
| justincormack wrote:
| I have been in a gold mine in Wales, I think it was this one
| that is Roman https://www.visitwales.com/attraction/visitor-
| centre/dolauco...
| nn3 wrote:
| They didn't necessarily need gold. For example in bronze/iron
| age trading it was common to use relatively standardized small
| bars of other metals for payment. These were not coins, but
| approximately had the same function.
| dghughes wrote:
| > how did all these countries manage to find enough gold
|
| They may not have. Some gold mixed with silver or other metals
| may have been common. In other words counterfeiting whether
| officially sanctioned or by thieves was probably not uncommon.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I have a 'silver' Roman coin, but it's a thin layer and it's
| bronze underneath.
| creer wrote:
| To complement the answer "yes, there was surface level gold
| which was simply mined, and early", also 2000 years ago is not
| that long ago. By that time there was commerce going on across
| all of Europe, and gold had been used in coins and jewelry or
| cult items by most of these cultures for a long time BEFORE
| that. So that any specific gold could actually have come from
| elsewhere.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| There's plenty of gold, or at least there was, in the south
| west of Britain back in the day. I'd assume pre Roman gold was
| all surface level stuff, but there were stories of way more
| industrial processing of silver by the Romans in Spain.
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/296070#:~:text=The%20silver%20m...
| .
| retrac wrote:
| In a few rare spots of the world, gold is literally just in the
| dirt and rocks.
|
| There's certainly some gold in the UK; there's still probably
| thousands of extractable tonnes of gold in the UK. Whether a
| deposit is _economic_ to extract is a different question. Very
| few sites in the world can compete with the gold mines of
| Canada, China and Australia with their very rich deposits.
|
| > Was it all relatively surface level and rapidly mined out,
| and now all gone?
|
| To some degree this is a factor. Copper and tin are other
| resources you'll find are already heavily extracted in Europe:
|
| > The main mining district of the Kupferschiefer in Germany was
| Mansfeld Land, which operated from at least 1199 AD, and has
| provided 2,009,800 tonnes of copper and 11,111 tonnes of
| silver. The Mansfeld mining district was exhausted in 1990.
|
| It's not so much that they literally ran out - there's still
| plenty of copper there. But it was only viable to run in the
| East German (Communist) economy. Now that most is extracted,
| there are diminishing returns. It takes more labour and
| processing and etc. than extracting from a deposit elsewhere
| would.
|
| When Europeans came to North America and reached regions that
| had never had a particularly high population density and had
| never had much mining - like in parts of the Rocky Mountains -
| they sometimes literally found gold dust lying at the bottom of
| riverbeds and chunks of gold ore sticking out of the side of
| cliff-faces. (Cue up a gold rush.) Europe's first large-scale
| miners probably had a similar experience of abundance once,
| many thousands of years ago.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| What's surprising to me is that cultures all across the world
| agreed that this shiny metal was valuable and could be readily
| exchanged anywhere for goods and services.
|
| We know that gold is valuable today because of its
| distribution, availability and metallurgical properties. But
| random tribes who haven't even seen an iron tool somehow
| decided that this shiny metal was scarce and valuable enough to
| hoard and desire.
|
| Is it something in the metal itself?
| eszed wrote:
| Incorruptible - as in, doesn't rust - and is commonly found
| in a state that doesn't need to be refined.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| It's shiny and very easy to work and doesn't rust. The
| complete opposite of iron, which didn't really become that
| widespread until the bronze age trade routes collapsed (tin
| and copper aren't found in the same place). Bronze was also a
| much nicer metal than iron back in those days. Much, much
| easier to work and about as strong.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Scarcity is actually an incredibly valuable property. Control
| over gold production meant control over the money supply.
| Otherwise, anyone could inflate your currency into oblivion.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Just imagine what would happen if the money supply
| consisted of pieces of paper that the government could
| print any time it wanted more money!
| fl7305 wrote:
| > Is it something in the metal itself?
|
| Yes. I never understood it myself, until the first time I
| held a heavy gold necklace. The feeling is hard to describe.
| dboreham wrote:
| There were gold mines:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining_in_Scotland
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_gold
| spacecadet wrote:
| lol age of empires man. There was gold just sticking out of the
| ground everywhere. You just needed some pleebs to mine it and
| carry it back to your keep. or was that stronghold? I forget XP
| jmyeet wrote:
| There was gold mining in Britain (specifically Scotland) at
| least 2,500 years ago [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/index/gold/gold-mining-in-
| th...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| It came from trade. The exact provenance was not important.
|
| Herodotus tried to figure out where all the "stuff" is coming
| from, but mostly found stories he admits are far-fetched.
|
| Modern historians take pleasure in proving his "myths" to be
| fact.
|
| "Apparently there is some place in Asia where gold is mined by
| ants!"
| fiedzia wrote:
| Gold is relatively common, it's just that most mines were mined
| completely or to the point where further exploration was not
| economically viable, so few were preserved, though many mines
| that we have been used recently for other minerals did contain
| some gold in the past.
|
| From first google link
| (https://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/index/gold/gold-mining-in-
| th...):
|
| "Gold has been mined in Scotland for over 2,500 years. There
| was gold mining in Crawford from the early 1500s" - and that's
| just a few examples.
|
| I recommend reading about or visiting Great Orme if you are
| interested in mining, it's a copper mine that was in use since
| bronze age.
| jakedata wrote:
| I think that if humanity survives another 2000 years, our
| descendants will know far less about us than we do about our
| ancestors.
| wcoenen wrote:
| The Long Now foundation is trying to fix that, e.g. with their
| Rosetta project. They actually managed to get a copy onto comet
| "67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko"!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Project
|
| https://longnow.org/ideas/after-more-than-a-decade-esas-rose...
| qup wrote:
| For what reason?
| pjmlp wrote:
| A few things come to mind, the longevity of digital based
| information, how electronics doesn't survive as well as clay
| and paper, encrypted storage, commercial software stored
| information, and how well we may nuke ourselves.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Digital data that we don't have a very long history of
| maintaining and largely not maintained and most paper print
| matter is very short lived relative to what we have gleaned
| from metal, stone and clay used by prior civilizations.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I think this is an interesting question in that it brings up
| two points.
|
| The media this culture creates (specifically writing, in
| general) is very specific but very fragile. So eventually it
| wears out, and every year our storage media get vastly more
| fragile- photos from the early 1900s might last longer than
| stuff on hard drives if humans forget how to build those
| kinds of things.
|
| But (and this is what I find interesting) the oral traditions
| that go back (in what we call north America) go back 15k
| years or more don't "count" under the current epistemic
| regime. Generally this history isn't something most of the
| people I run into are aware of, and when people are aware of
| them they come across as fables/ folk tales/ lore and not
| material history.
|
| I live around a lot of native folks whose history has been
| often lost as they have been the victims of a vast genocide
| seeking to eradicate their culture. However, if you look
| online you can find discussions about oral histories around
| hunting mammoths, for instance. This has become a relevant
| discussion as the amount of genocide has eased up a bit and
| we have, for instance, native folks doing academic
| anthropology who can tie an archeological history of (say)
| large mammoth kills to specific oral narratives.
|
| So, I get what seems to be the original point (our writing
| will become less legible), but I also find some irony in the
| idea that people with oral traditions might know a lot more
| about their long-term ancestors than our rather ephemeral
| culture.
| kouru225 wrote:
| I don't understand why people say this. Digital formats can be
| easily ported over to other digital formats and the more we can
| automate, the easier it'll be to port digital information from
| one format to another. I don't think we'll lose very much data
| at all.
| kaashif wrote:
| Unless civilization is destroyed after a nuclear war, solar
| event, something else. Knowledge could be lost in a handful
| of generations. Maybe a global pandemic makes everyone have
| constant debilitating brain fog and everything just stops
| working. I think the right actor in the right place could
| make these things (except the solar thing) happen.
|
| Although a good point to consider is that we have lost the
| vast majority of information about the past, so it's not like
| the old way of writing stone tablets or whatever is
| necessarily good.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Preserving digital data requires constant maintenance,
| because none of the media we use will last forever. Any
| maintenance gap of a few decades means the data is lost. Such
| gaps are inevitable over longer timescales like thousands of
| years.
| xvector wrote:
| Computers from the 70s still work fine today, and
| technology is more resilient, not less.
|
| All of Wikipedia (and relevant human histories and
| discoveries) can fit on a small USB drive.
| kouru225 wrote:
| Preserving analog data also requires maintenance, except
| digital maintenance is much easier to do and can be, at
| least partially, automated, while analog maintenance is
| specialty work that can't be automated at all.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > Preserving digital data requires constant maintenance,
| because none of the media we use will last forever
|
| That's the only reason we have any texts written by Greek
| and Romans constant maintenance and copying, and that's
| also why almost everything has been lost over the ages.
| Clay tablets from the bronze age are an aberration.
| forinti wrote:
| We produce huge amounts of artifacts in plastic, metal,
| ceramics, etc, that will last a very long time.
|
| Archeologists will have tons of garbage to go through, lots of
| it with dates and place of origin molded into them.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Future archeologists are going to know lots about our
| consumption from all the food and drink containers.
|
| Some written items, like street signs, are going to last a
| long time.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Well, considering that we have human ancestors going back
| hundreds of millenia, I feel like we actually know very little
| about them.
|
| Often I get the feeling that the culture I live in makes so
| many assumptions about other people that we misunderstand even
| folks who are living now, so people I think we have a very hard
| time understanding the folks who were living 50k years ago who
| were every bit as smart, kind, and funny as we are now.
| ianburrell wrote:
| If you are a reader, you probably have more books than the
| entire corpus of ancient Greek writing.
|
| We still make lots of paper books. Some will be buried in
| places they survive. If civilization doesn't completely
| collapse, somebody will collect books.
|
| If we really cared about preservation, we could archive things
| better. Like printing books on something that won't degrade. Or
| inventing archival data storage. I can see focus on
| preservation happening if there is a near collapse of
| civilization.
| em-bee wrote:
| preserving books is not cheap.
|
| most private collections will end up destroyed, because their
| value is unknown and the cost to even evaluate what is worth
| preserving exceeds the value of the books themselves.
|
| just the other day i heard the story of a private collector
| leaving 75,000 books behind, that the heirs can't even afford
| to dispose of, let alone preserve. there is no complete
| catalogue, if there is one at all, and most certainly not a
| digital catalogue.
|
| they will most likely end up being permanently destroyed in
| paper recycling, if they keep the house. otherwise it will be
| cheaper to just tear the house down with the books still
| inside.
|
| so in the end the only books being preserved will be
| libraries as long as those are being funded. for less popular
| titles that means just a few copies of each book. and those
| that can be digitized before they are being destroyed.
|
| beyond that what will survive are at best maybe a few private
| libraries that are on privately owned properties owned by a
| family that cares.
|
| with that in mind it would actually be an interesting
| question how to bury books with minimal effort so that they
| have at least some chance to survive
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Outside of archeology we basically know nothing about pre-Roman
| Britain. We hardly know anything about Roman Britain too and we
| barely know what happened after the Romans left.
|
| Barring some world ending apocalypse I find it hard to imagine
| that, even if let's say 1000 times less written material
| survived the next 2000 years compared to the 2000 that preceded
| us our descendants would still have several magnitudes more
| information about our times than we do about 0 BC (especially
| if we're talking about Britain or pretty much any people in
| Europe who did not speak Latin or Greek).
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Who's the obscure ruler?
|
| I refuse to click clickbait.
| gilleain wrote:
| It's "Esunertos". Presumably you would have immediately known
| who that was, so if they put it in the title it would have been
| obvious, right?
|
| While clickbait is annoying, of course, not every single
| article title is clickbait :)
| Dalewyn wrote:
| If a title refuses to describe the subject without further
| interaction for no good reason at all, it's clickbait.
|
| Clickbait can die in a fire.
|
| Thanks for the info though.
| gilleain wrote:
| Ok, but the problem here is that the article would either
| have to use his actual name ('Esunertos') which almost no
| one would know, or it would have to summarise:
|
| >coin bears the name "Esunertos," which can be translated
| as "mighty as the god Esos," (also spelled Esus) ... dates
| to sometime between 50 B.C. and 30 B.C., a time after
| Julius Caesar invaded Britain twice around 55 B.C. to 54
| B.C
|
| Into the title. I'm not sure which would be better, really.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| _" Rare 2,100-year-old gold coin bears name of Esunertos,
| an obscure ruler from pre-Roman Britain"_
|
| Two extra words. It's not so hard.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Rare 2,100-year-old gold coin featuring Esunertos, a
| ruler from pre-Roman Britain.
|
| You're welcome.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > The rare coin was discovered in March 2023 in Hampshire
| county and was auctioned Sept. 28 for 20,400 British pounds
| ($24,720), Spink auction house said in a series of statements.
|
| > A Latin alphabetic inscription on the coin bears the name
| "Esunertos," which can be translated as "mighty as the god
| Esos," (also spelled Esus) the statements said. The name itself
| is Gaulish, a language commonly spoken in the region at the
| time, John Sills, an archaeologist at the University of
| Oxford's Institute of Archaeology who examined the coin before
| it was auctioned, told Live Science in an email.
|
| > The coin dates to sometime between 50 B.C. and 30 B.C., a
| time after Julius Caesar invaded Britain twice around 55 B.C.
| to 54 B.C., the statement said. Caesar's invasions failed to
| establish permanent Roman control over Britain. It wasn't until
| after another Roman invasion, launched in A.D. 43 by Emperor
| Claudius, that the Roman Empire managed to gain long-term
| control over part of the island.
|
| > This coin is one of only three on record that bear the name
| Esunertos, Sills said. All three were found in the same region,
| and it's possible that the territory controlled by Esunertos
| included part of what is now western Hampshire, Sills noted.
| tired-turtle wrote:
| This was the opposite of clickbait.
|
| The pertinent part of the discovery is a 2100 year old coin
| from pre-Roman Britain stamped with some ("obscure") ruler's
| name, meaning the British Isles had coin-based commerce before
| the Romans arrived. The ruler's name is incidental and not
| itself germane to the conversation, hence why it was elided
| from the title.
| weatherlight wrote:
| The answer doesn't fit nicely into the title......sooo? read
| the article I guess?
| Garklein wrote:
| > The name itself is Gaulish, a language commonly spoken in the
| region at the time
|
| A bit of research says that Gaulish was only spoke in Continental
| Europe. Is the inscription on the coin just a similar Celtic
| language?
| Cacti wrote:
| I mean, British kings holding French land and French kings
| holding British land is... well, not new.
| rz2k wrote:
| Though not new, the well known example of Norman claims in
| France is a thousand years newer than this coin.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Brittonic was likely very close to gaulish. It's possible the
| authors just had a simple mixup or possibly subscribe to one of
| the various hypotheses that they're genetically closely related
| (e.g. gallo-brittonic).
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Evidence I think shows was plenty of back and forth trade and
| population movement between Britons and Gauls in that period.
| And at this point in history or just prior I _suspect_
| Brittonic and Gaulish were more dialects or branches of a
| common P-Celtic language, but there is controversy about this
| topic.
|
| In any case, language aside, esp after the Romans conquered
| Gaul, many Gaulish tribes had power centres among the Britons
| in areas of what is now England. There's been chariot burials
| discovered in Britain that look basically identical to those
| from the continent.
|
| E.g. the Parisi were a Brittonic tribe mentioned by the Romans
| that share a name with the Parisii of Gaul (for which Paris is
| named), and likely were quite connected.
|
| I believe in fact that part of the justification the Romans
| gave for their invasion of Britain was in fact that the
| (defeated) Gauls were using it as a power base to cause
| problems for the Romans in Gaul.
|
| And then a few hundred years later, it got flipped around and
| some Britons fled from Saxon invasion back to the continent
| into what is now Brittany in France and Britonia in Galicia in
| Spain.
|
| This is a good book on this topic: https://www.amazon.ca/Blood-
| Celts-New-Ancestral-Story/dp/050...
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Looks like a bicycle
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > an Iron Age man who said he was as "mighty" as a god
|
| I wonder if such people were actually believed (by their
| followers or by themselves) wielding enormous supernatural powers
| or if descriptions of this kind were just political flattery.
| gleenn wrote:
| 2100 years ago was before Christ and at least a few people
| think he's pretty important. Seems reasonable to assume there
| was enough mysticism that people would believe it.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Seems reasonable to assume there was enough mysticism
|
| Is there a reason to believe ancient people had no skepticism
| and popularly took mysticism seriously?
| carbotaniuman wrote:
| Even today there are people who have little skepticism and
| take mysticism seriously, it is likely that any evidence
| against this person did not survive the times.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Indeed. Even today "there are people...". What I am
| curious about is how much does the average degree of
| seriousness differ between our and their times. We
| seemingly tend to assume people of the distant past
| predominantly were extremely naive and sincerely believed
| whatever we find written by them. But what if they were
| almost as rational as modern people are and that's we who
| are naive when reasoning about their beliefs?
| Loughla wrote:
| I think it's less about being naive and more about the
| base of information.
|
| I believe I need antibiotics when I have an appropriate
| infection, because modern medicine has built an entire
| catalogue of reasons.
|
| If we don't have that information, and we do have
| "experts" saying it's because our autumn sacrifice wasn't
| good enough, then my guess is that's what most people
| will believe.
|
| Make the best choice you can with the available
| information, sort of thing.
| skinner927 wrote:
| When a bad harvest, a pack of hungry wolves, violent
| neighbors, or a small cut that becomes infected, are all
| life threatening possibilities, I think mysticism overrules
| skepticism.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| It might just have been the name his parents gave him. In such
| cases it would just be an aspirational name such as Chastity,
| or one meant to draw the favor of a particular god such as
| Jesus or Christian.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| Can someone explain why this is remarkable? Is there something
| special about that ruler? Or about coins that age in Britain?
|
| > "Within a rapidly changing political landscape, I suspect that
| new political leaders emerged; sometimes flourishing, sometimes
| disappearing as quickly as they had appeared," Leins said. "If an
| individual amassed enough power and wealth to extend his/her
| influence, the striking and issuing of coins was one mechanism by
| which they could further expand their influence."
|
| Yes, that's pretty much how it works. This is also how we know of
| a couple of short lived rulers during the migration period after
| Rome fell. Why is this science 'news'?
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