[HN Gopher] Roman Tyrian purple snail dye found in UK for first ...
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Roman Tyrian purple snail dye found in UK for first time
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 187 points
Date : 2024-05-10 06:31 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| sublinear wrote:
| > The chunk of Tyrian purple, roughly the size of a ping pong
| ball, was dug up at Carlisle Cricket Club as part of ongoing
| yearly excavations.
|
| Is anyone surprised how geographically stable these kinds of
| gathering places are?
| gostsamo wrote:
| How often do you find roman baths in cricket clubs?
| debesyla wrote:
| I think OP meant social gathering places?
| sublinear wrote:
| I don't really know, hence my comment
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I suppose you could tell from how many ducks there are...
| jl6 wrote:
| Carlisle has been a continuously occupied town since before the
| Romans, and continuously since. I don't think it's too
| surprising that we find Roman things underneath modern things
| (in fact I strongly suspect that we have yet to discover most
| Roman things because they lie under modern structures that are
| difficult/controversial to excavate).
| jdietrich wrote:
| The river Eden is prone to flooding, creating a natural
| separation between Carlisle on the south bank and Stanwix on
| the north. In between, there's a lot of land that is
| conveniently located, but unsuitable for either intensive
| development or arable farming. There's the cricket club on this
| land, but also several parks, public gardens and other sports
| clubs.
|
| When the baths were in use, there were also two separate
| settlements - the milecastle on the north bank forming part of
| the defensive line of Hadrian's Wall, and the civilian
| settlement of Luguvalium on the well-protected south bank.
| Being directly adjacent to the Eden bridge, the site would have
| been convenient for both settlements.
|
| https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Roman+Archaeological+sit...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
| logikblok wrote:
| Additionally from the article > Semi-precious gems, which had
| probably fallen out of rings after the bathhouse steam loosen
| their glue settings, were recovered from drains at the site
|
| To think about the frustration the original owner might have felt
| when those were lost and now they're found all these years later
| for us to study and learn from.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| What amazes me is the idea that at some point, a human being
| took their last look at the artwork of their gemstone jewellry,
| and then .. some thousands of years later, here we are gazing
| into the same nooks and crannies in wonder at the skills of the
| artist. One wonders, will some AI archeologist in the future,
| be digging through a cacaphonic digital noise, find some long-
| forgotten iCloud backup, and wonder at the collection of garden
| pictures I've left behind ..
| 48864w6ui wrote:
| It used to be standard practice, at the end of a year, to cut
| all the ads out of that year's issues and bind them in a
| single hardback volume.
|
| Now historians realize that often the ads may be more
| interesting than the articles.
| bcraven wrote:
| Sorry, standard practice by whom, and issues of what?
| 0xEF wrote:
| I think the other reply is referring to folks who collect
| and sell old magazines. I can only speak from second-hand
| experience, though, as I knew a person who used to do
| this. When eBay was just getting started, she was
| collecting old magazines and trimming the ads from them,
| then selling them as a lower bulk collection (she also
| took jeans with holes in them, patched them with colorful
| fabric and resold them on early eBay but different
| story).
|
| I don't know why this was a thing, but I remember her
| telling me she got the idea from a local library that
| preserved its periodicals, so maybe it started at
| libraries. Personally, were I to collect magazines, I
| would want the ads intact. Not because I love adverts
| (quite the opposite, actually), but my collector brain's
| notion of preserving a thing in its original state is at
| odds with the idea of removing the ads.
| tokai wrote:
| In libraries we don't get the ads cut out. But yeah most
| of the physical periodicals will be bound in yearly
| volumes. Much easier to deal with. It's disappearing now
| though, with most periodicals only being published
| digitally.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I assume he means things like the Strand Magazine, that
| Sherlock Holmes was first published in, it's not unusual
| to find copies bound into hardback books like that.
| FredPret wrote:
| I remember reading Scientific American magazines in my
| local library in the third world as a kid.
|
| I was blown away by the ads.
|
| From useless gadgets that will probably be fun for an hour
| or two only to very expensive ones aimed at people with
| clearly a ton of disposable income.
|
| Lawnmowers you can ride on?! A thing just to detect rings
| in the sand? How rich _are_ these people? A watch that sets
| itself to an atomic clock? An astronaut pen that writes
| _underwater_? Telescopes _in your back yard_?!
|
| The sheer volume and variety of ads told me that the
| economy of that place was in a totally different league
| from my own.
| yard2010 wrote:
| I wonder what kind of entity will find my lost necklace 2000
| years from now and what would it think about me.
|
| It's such a shame we can re-live the past through history but
| there is no way we can see the future.
|
| It makes me think like in every moment of our lives we're on
| the tip of the ice berg of humanity.
|
| And we still end up being history anyway.
| tetris11 wrote:
| "...and lo, it was a neck-trinket used to bind people to a
| specific suitor, here cast aside intentionally as an act of
| defiance, a liberation of sorts, to free oneself from the
| chains of monogamy..."
| surfingdino wrote:
| > the chains of monogamy
|
| That's some serious pro Las Vegas marriage propaganda.
| logrot wrote:
| What will they think then they find the laser powered orifice
| plug?
| dylan604 wrote:
| When in doubt, it any archeological find is thought to be a
| religious item used in various ceremonial practices
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| There's a meme, about archeologists in the future, finding
| still-viable Twinkies.
|
| Then, we have Tallahassee, from _Zombieland_ :
|
| _> There 's a box of Twinkies in that grocery store. Not
| just any box of Twinkies, the last box of Twinkies that
| anyone will enjoy in the whole universe. Believe it or not,
| Twinkies have an expiration date. Some day very soon, Life's
| little Twinkie gauge is gonna go... empty._
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| I always find it fascinating how color by itself used to truly be
| a status symbol, due to the rarity and challenge of making
| natural dyes.
| jl6 wrote:
| A modern comparison might be a vantablack cloak.
| Gud wrote:
| Nobody will kill you for painting your car in vantablack
| without the kings permission.
| baq wrote:
| Not the police and not vantablack, but don't try certain
| football team colors on certain other teams' stadiums
| yieldcrv wrote:
| we should bring back sumptuary laws, can make it legal by
| prohibiting the sale of some materials to nonaccredited
| investors with the consequences of unlimited tax to the
| business
|
| circumvents freedom of expression by giving no consequences
| to the individual if they someone procure the material
| themselves
|
| but leverages the unlimited right to regulate commerce and
| unlimited right to tax
| jdietrich wrote:
| The proper Vantablack coatings are ITAR restricted
| materials that require an export license, so the comparison
| is really quite meaningful. You wouldn't be killed for
| using it without the King's permission, but you could serve
| time at His Majesty's pleasure for it.
|
| https://www.surreynanosystems.com/purchasing
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Also it wouldn't stick to a cloak, it would most likely
| rub off.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| You could always get the much cheaper and easier to buy
| Black 3.0 or 4.0
|
| https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/black-4-0
| advisedwang wrote:
| I wonder if future people will compare trademark law to
| sumptuary laws. It being illegal to distribute fake Gucci
| might be seen like that.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| OT: I named my calico cat Vanta because of the deep black
| stripes on top of her head.
|
| https://youtube.com/shorts/UzPPlEYX0NQ?si=m6EtgljZMb-iYM4e
| mrob wrote:
| Natural dyes are common. The main three in medieval Europe were
| madder, weld, and woad:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia_tinctorum
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseda_luteola
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria
|
| These give red, yellow, and blue respectively, which are the
| primary colors of the traditional RYB subtractive color model:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYB_color_model
|
| However, RYB is a poor match for human vision. The better
| subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta, and yellow. Mixing red
| and blue produces a dull, desaturated purple even when you're
| starting with saturated primaries, and the three main natural
| dyes are not particularly saturated. Tyrian purple was esteemed
| because it produced a visibly better purple than mixing woad
| and madder, which makes a purplish brown. Likewise, crimson
| from Kermes insects produces a visibly better red than madder:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermes_(dye)
|
| Poor people would still have colored clothing, because all
| clothing was expensive hand-made clothing back then, so the
| marginal cost of dying with the common plant dyes was
| relatively small. But rich people could afford expensive dyes,
| and afford multiple applications of the cheap dyes. In some
| cases there were also sumptuary laws restricting use of
| expensive dyes. Rich people's clothing would have looked far
| more garish by our standards.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Funny to think that in 2000 years someone makes the same
| statement only about a purple Porsche vs a purple Dacia
| adrian_b wrote:
| Besides visual attractiveness when fresh, the value of the
| dyes also depended a lot on their lightfastness and water
| resistance.
|
| Many of the dyes used in antiquity degraded quickly, so the
| clothes had to be dyed again periodically.
|
| Tyrian purple was valued not only because it was hard to
| obtain, but also because the clothes dyed with it kept their
| color for a very long time. The next most resistant dye was
| the blue from indigo or woad, then the red from beetles. The
| other colors faded quickly.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Well, isn't it like a nice purple car or a cool looking NFT
| with extra (or less?) steps?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _[the] challenge of making natural dyes_
|
| You could get legal cover for divorce if married to a worker in
| the production of purple, from the rotting murex, given the
| awful smell it gave... (Production is in general "costly", but
| not always with similar legal sides.)
|
| Remember that artistic pygments (so, for goods that also
| involved <<status symbol>>) had traditionally been quite toxic
| - using arsenic, lead... That was the available technology, and
| it involved drawbacks and compromises.
|
| Edit: sorry, not just artistic: people poisoned themselves just
| to wear makeup. "Met Gala"s involved a drastic amount of
| sacrifice.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| As the article mentions, you had to crush _alot_ of snails to
| get that dye.
|
| The story goes that Roman senators would wear a purple stripe
| across their toga as a symbol of their status. Julius Caesar,
| not to be outdone, started wearing an all-purple toga. Which
| then became the mark of the emperor.
| corinroyal wrote:
| Do not crush the snails. You poke them with a stick and they
| spit dye onto your skein. Then put them back.
| ronyfadel wrote:
| I'm surprised the Phoenicians are not mentioned in the article,
| as they're the first to use it, and Tyre was in Phoenicia.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Well, "Phoenician" itself is said to mean "purple" ("blood
| reddish"), although some of us prefer the idea that it means
| "carpenters" (coming from Egyptian "pheneku") - it makes more
| sense in terms of an expression "the Canaanite carpenters [of
| Tyre, Sidon, Byblos]" (all Canaanites, some of them in city
| states of that "special" region and culture).
|
| Or: "Phoenicia" is a culturally sound area (the producers of
| lumber, dye etc., colonizers etc., in the Levantine coast) -
| not a Statal entity. The term is thought to have meant "those
| of the purple" or "those of the lumbers" within the Canaanites.
| debatem1 wrote:
| Huh, very interesting. Who is 'us' above, and do you have any
| recommended reading on the Phoenician maybe-not-state?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _maybe-not-state_
|
| Take into account that you had * populations, * statal
| organizations, * empires. Chunks of populations could be
| organized into statal organizations, which could easily
| simply be city states. Their governments could be
| independent or subjected to other powers. An empire is the
| acquired power of an entity over statal organizations of
| different populations - the first empire being that of
| Sargon the Great of Akkad, ruling from -2334: he was ruler
| of the Akkadians but also conquered the Sumerian city
| states.
|
| The whole history from Jericho (the first city, -10000) to,
| say, the "classical" period of the Graeco-Persian conflict
| (-490, -480) and Pericles in Athens (-461) is quite
| interesting, showing "history-in-the-making", the emergence
| of the patterns that will continue in later history and
| that will have prepared it. But I cannot indicate a single
| especially good source: I can only recommend the scattered
| material you will find around - and which will already show
| many inconsistencies, gaps, attempts, clashing of different
| proposals.
| tren wrote:
| I read Phoenician Secrets: Exploring the Ancient
| Mediterranean by Sanford Holst recently and found it
| extremely interesting.
| junto wrote:
| Related HN post from 5 months ago links to another article that I
| found fascinating about the quest to recreate it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38513073
| epolanski wrote:
| OT but interesting fact.
|
| The first evidence we have of purple or red shoes used for kings
| is more than 3000 years old.
|
| Etruscans (an ancient Italian population) used red shoes for
| their kings[1], albeit its uncertain whether they could be purple
| which is more likely. This habit then moved to the roman kings
| and later the Roman emperors.
|
| It is uncertain when it went from purple to red, but it's likely
| a practical reason: when going outside you don't wear slippers
| but leather boots, which were very easy to get in a red color,
| purple? Not really. You can easily find purple used anywhere in
| clothing, but not shoes.
|
| And who else claims (or claimed) to be the heir of the Roman
| empire other than the Pope?
|
| The emperor of byzanthium [2], notice how he's the only one
| depicted with red/purple shoes.
|
| The German emperor [3].
|
| The Tsars [4] (Tsar word comes from Caesar, same as Kaiser) too
| claimed the inheritance of the Byzantine (and thus Roman) empires
| after the Ottomans took the city.
|
| [1] https://www.pope2you.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/06/Etruscan...
|
| [2] https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/QytBnfnDoP8aDE-
| rm3eYGbTYCpk=/...
|
| [3] https://www.ancient-
| origins.net/sites/default/files/field/im...
|
| [4] https://www.mediastorehouse.com.au/p/731/tsar-boot-
| antiquiti...
| mr_toad wrote:
| To be pedantic the Holy Roman Emperors claimed that title
| _before_ Constantinople fell to Mehmed, which makes the claim
| even less legitimate.
|
| The Byzantine emperors carried on many Roman traditions,
| including wearing purple. The imperial birth chambers were
| decorated in purple (actually a purple stone), giving rise to
| the term "born in the purple" to describe their legitimate
| heirs, these days used to describe any old toff.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_purple
| mrangle wrote:
| >which makes the claim even less legitimate.
|
| I'm not sure that follows. Who specifically "inherited" the
| Right to Rule from Roman Empire was always more of a
| political claim. The concept of "legitimacy" in this regard
| is dubious. That said, the original Northwest European
| territory of the Merovingians-Carolingians had a strong
| political connection to Roman Imperial Rulership. Not to say
| that this necessarily translated to "legitimate inheritance",
| but arguably no territory outside of Byzantium had a stronger
| historical political claim.
| epolanski wrote:
| In principal I agree, but Costantinople had a sounder
| claim.
|
| In 298 the emperor Diocleziano split the empire in two
| different administrative parts, the western one, culturally
| latin, and the eastern one, culturally greek.
|
| The emperor Costantine I moved the capital from Rome to
| Costantinople in the 320s, the city was called also New
| Rome and the greek inhabitants of the eastern empire called
| themselves "Romei", and the balkans have been called then
| Rumelia a term that spread even further under the Ottomans.
| Even today many turks use the term "Rumeli" for balkan
| people (as Balkans is a term introduced two centuries ago
| by a german geographer).
|
| By the end of the 4th century the split was basically
| complete and the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzanthium
| was Giustiano in the 7th century.
|
| I think that the history of the Eastern Roman Empire has
| enough "de jure" claims for the inheritance.
|
| This also connects to Russia.
|
| By the fall of Costantinople in 1453 no country claimed to
| inherit the throne of the eastern roman empire but Russia.
| The Tsar Ivan III married the last granddaughter of the
| last emperor (Constantine III) thus uniting the bloodlines.
| The crown of the byzanthine empire was then given to the
| Tsars as it was the last country in Europe of greek-
| orthodox descendance (visible still today, both in
| religion, culture and language) thus claiming to inherit
| the throne of the roman emperors more than a thousand years
| after.
|
| I do absolutely agree with you about the legitimacy, I
| don't think there's necessarily any nor I think it's
| relevant, but I find this extremely interesting
| nonetheless.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In 298 the emperor Diocleziano split the empire
|
| > The emperor Costantine I moved the capital
|
| > and the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzant[]ium was
| Giust[in]iano in the 7th century.
|
| This is a surreal approach to the names of historical
| figures. Diocleziano and Giustiniano are not their names
| in English, the language you're speaking, nor are they
| the actual names of the people. "Costantine" appears to
| be a hybrid of the modern Italian name Costantino with
| the English name Constantine, and analogously for
| "Costantinople".
|
| > the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzanthium
|
| > The crown of the byzanthine empire
|
| There is no H in Byzantium, the Greek original uses a tau
| and not a theta, and the modern Italian noun and
| adjective are _bisanzio_ and _bizantino_. I really can 't
| figure out where you're getting this spelling.
|
| > and the greek inhabitants of the eastern empire called
| themselves "Romei"
|
| That isn't Greek; surely they called themselves rhomaioi?
|
| What's up with the Italian imperialism from "epolanski"?
| vijayr02 wrote:
| > What's up with the Italian imperialism from
| "epolanski"?
|
| I know, right? Almost as if he's _Roman_ Polanski
|
| (I'll show myself out now)
| mrangle wrote:
| I appreciate the history. If we want to discuss actual
| "inheritance" in a historical sense of the Classical civ
| and initial expanded civ originated in the Republic,
| rather than some type of lineal-political claim, than
| where the decentralized or otherwise Parliamentarian
| system of government again appears is the heir.
| Certainly, the HRE is the start of that in Europe. Prior,
| Frankish-Norman invader Kings sewed its seed in Britain.
| Today, its largest and historically most powerful
| manifestation is in the United States.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > thus uniting the bloodlines
|
| There was bo bloodline though. Until quite late (much to
| its detriment) the empire maintained some of its original
| "republican" character and the emperors derived their
| legitimacy from the will of God and the people rather
| than inherited it (which resulted in endless civil wars).
| Unlike in Europe in the medieval and the succeeding
| periods your bloodline/dynasty was secondary to your
| ability to take and hold power effectively making
| emperors closer to modern dictators than kings in some
| ways.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This is one of many ways the Russian claim to be the
| "Third Rome" is and was bullshit. The Eastern Roman
| Empire ended in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople, and
| it was the last polity with a credible claim to the
| continuation of the Roman Empire of old.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| You spelled Diocletian, Constantine, and Justinian
| incorrectly.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > which makes the claim even less legitimate
|
| To be fair there was nothing unusual from the Roman
| perspective about there being 2 emperors. Even during the
| Byzantine period it was not particularly uncommon for heirs
| to be crowned as "co-emperors". Despite effectively becoming
| a monarchy the empire retained some "republican" traits with
| the emperor reigning with the consent of God and the people
| of Rome.
| throwawaylolx wrote:
| The emperor of "Byzantium" literally was the emperor of the
| Roman empire; it was not merely a claim like in the other cases
| but an administrative and historical fact. It is more accurate
| to say that "the Byzantine Empire" not being the actual Roman
| empire is merely a modern claim.
| toyg wrote:
| Well, technically it was one of two emperors.
| epolanski wrote:
| Yes and no as the emperor Constantine literally moved the
| capital from Rome to Costantinople and Constantinople was
| the capital of both empires for another few centuries till
| the death of Giustiniano.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The emperor of "Byzantium" literally was the emperor of the
| Roman empire; it was not merely a claim like in the other
| cases but an administrative and historical fact.
|
| Not in any useful sense.
|
| Cyrus the Great was literally the King of Sumer and Akkad.
| Did he know where Akkad was?
|
| Tsai Ing-wen is literally the President of China. You might
| object that China doesn't even have a president, but the
| administrative and historical facts are against you.
| retrac wrote:
| If the United States were invaded on the east coast, and
| the invaders were stopped at the Mississippi, and the US
| then carried on with its capital in Sacramento for the next
| 1000 years, do you think the executive would no longer be
| called the President of the United States just because the
| US lost some of the states? (Credit to Dan Carlin for that
| little thought experiment.)
|
| The Byzantines called themselves Roman. They thought of
| themselves as Roman. To them, the constitution of their
| political order dated to 753 BC with the founding of Rome,
| even after they lost Rome. It wasn't just a label. For
| example, Latin remained is use in law in the empire, many
| hundreds of years after they lost the west. Emperor
| Heraclius around 610 AD would undertake a project to start
| translating all the old Latin laws into Greek (even though
| he may have spoke Latin himself natively). If nothing else,
| the Roman self-identity is important for understanding how
| they saw themselves in their own historiography.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| So you're fully on board with the idea that Tsai Ing-wen
| is the President of China, and anyone who thinks they see
| some important distinctions is just making a weird
| mistake?
|
| Neither your first paragraph nor your second one manages
| to distinguish modern China from ancient Rome.
|
| Calling yourself Roman won't make you Roman any more than
| calling yourself Australian will make you Australian.
| foobarian wrote:
| I am working on some messy cdk code as I read this and
| find myself breaking out in cold sweat :-)
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| If the ROC still controlled half of mainland China and
| those regions were governed in pretty much the same way
| as before the civil war and the rest of China was broken
| up into tiny little kingdoms that didn't last very long
| then yeah, it would make sense to think of them as China.
| reaperman wrote:
| Not even Tsai Ing-wen herself would claim that. Your
| rhetoric is absurd, there are surely better tactics if
| you wish to engage in rhetorical argument. Today's ROC
| has a different view than their predecessors relating to
| claims on Chinese mainland.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Constantinople was the center of the empire long before
| Italy and Rome were lost (and the Byzantine empire
| controlled the city of Rome itself until the 750s).
|
| It's a bit like saying that Angles/English stopped being
| "English" after they moved from northern Germany/Denmark
| to the modern territory of Britain.
|
| At least for several centuries the "Byzantine" Empire was
| the Roman Empire and was undoubtedly recognized as such
| both in the west and east.
| anikom15 wrote:
| Yes
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > them, the constitution of their political order dated
| to 753 BC with the founding of Rome, even after they lost
| Rome.
|
| I'm not sure they were particularly bothered by that. The
| late Roman/Byzantine empires was over everything the
| universal "Christian Empire" and being a true Orthodox-
| Catholic Christian basically became synonymous to being
| Roman the pagan past prior to Constantine was mostly
| ancient history by the middle ages and had limited if any
| influence on their self-identity.
| amenhotep wrote:
| It's a bit weird to write that the Romans of Constantinople
| "claimed" to be the "heirs" of the empire; as far as they were
| concerned they simply were Romans and their empire was
| obviously the same empire as Augustus', albeit with a change of
| capital city and so on. And given that they _were_ Romans and
| the Emperor of Rome _did_ become the Emperor of Constantinople,
| you have to do some work to argue against them.
|
| In particular, very unsurprising that they'd share continue to
| like the same colours of shoes.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It's not hard at all to refute the Byzantines' claims to
| being the Roman empire. If your empire doesn't _include Rome_
| , it cannot be the Roman empire. Similarly, Taiwan is not
| China even though they are the continuation of the old
| Chinese government.
| sophacles wrote:
| That's silly. The Roman empire could not have existed at
| all, delusional people claimed roman citizenship but lived
| far beyond the city limits. You can't be a citizen of a
| place you've never been, so the whole thing is just dumb
| and a myth.
|
| I can't believe you buy into this absurd nonsense that
| there could even be a Roman Empire without a megalopolis
| covering much of Europe, North Africa and the Levant.
| plugin-baby wrote:
| > It is uncertain when it went from purple to red, but it's
| likely a practical reason: when going outside you don't wear
| slippers but leather boots, which were very easy to get in a
| red color, purple? Not really. You can easily find purple used
| anywhere in clothing, but not shoes.
|
| Wasn't the point of regal colours that they were
| scarce/expensive?
| kadoban wrote:
| Scarse is good, for regal, but they do have to actually
| exist. Were there dyes that would work on leather at that
| time and yield the desired color and not wash off in 3
| seconds and look like crap?
| wil421 wrote:
| The snails produced red, purple, and a unique red/purple. It's
| more likely they had the deep reddish purple.[1]
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple
| boringg wrote:
| Byzantium = Eastern roman empire. They referred to themselves
| as Roman and in every way were Roman. Funny that we bifurcated
| the empire nomenclature for our own classification.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| If it was actually true that in every way they were Roman, we
| wouldn't have done that.
| legitster wrote:
| > It is uncertain when it went from purple to red
|
| The same dye produces a wide range of shades between purple and
| red depending on how the cloth is treated/the amount used/the
| aging of the piece. A shift in color could very much be a
| gradual shift over time as styles/process change.
| 1propionyl wrote:
| This is also true of the dye obtained from the cochinilla
| (cochineal) insect.
|
| Adjust the acidity and you can get anything from mauve to
| crimson. Soda ash and citrus juice were well known even three
| thousand years ago.
|
| Of course this was the dye of royalty halfway around the
| world to the Zapotec people even before the Aztec conquered
| them, but details, details.
| yard2010 wrote:
| I just found that video of someone from Tunis, Tunisia making
| this after years of trial and error: https://youtu.be/IVXqisH6VeM
|
| Found in the comments of the other post about this linked here
| unfocused wrote:
| This makes sense, because one of the more famous colonies that
| the Phoenicians established was Carthage, which is modern day
| Tunis. Since they had already invented creating purple back in
| Phoenicia (modern day Lebanon), they simply brought over their
| traditions/skills along.
|
| I have a DVD from 2004 about them, as I did the National
| Genographic Project DNA test way back before it was popular,
| but I must admit, the DVD is so-so. I think afterwards, they
| got more and more data, and were able to track where they
| travelled to based on artifacts and DNA. Lots of websites about
| them, but hard to say what is what. I would trust information
| by Dr. Pierre Zalloua as he uses DNA analysis for his research
| into the Phoenicians.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| What amazes me is that an organic dye of this nature is still
| viable and recognizable after ~2000 years in the ground.
|
| Seems to me this ought to spur on further research into the
| chemical.
|
| (Given its nature and the way I've seen it prepared these days
| (on video, not in person) that it would have been much less
| stable (many organic dyes are very unstable).
|
| This stability also suggests it must have been rather stable in
| use (togas dyed with it, etc.). Its stability would have made it
| even more valuable than otherwise.
| wil421 wrote:
| Lots of things are stable if you bury them underground away
| from oxygen and sunlight.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| No doubt, at some point, the chemistry of the surrounding
| soil will be researched in depth and we'll know.
| _xerces_ wrote:
| Maybe the beeswax helped preserve it as intended.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Likely so. Even so, I'm more curious than ever to know more
| about its chemistry.
| yawpitch wrote:
| Interesting, but I just have to giggle at the fact that my
| reading of the headline at first had me absolutely boggled by the
| notion of the Romans dyeing snails Tyrian purple.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > The chunk of Tyrian purple, roughly the size of a ping pong
| ball
|
| That stuff was worth more than it's weight in gold, someone must
| have been pissed at losing that much of it.
| corinroyal wrote:
| There's some guy on Facebook crushing up snails for this color.
| Don't do this. You just poke them with a stick and they spit dye
| onto your skein at the beach. Then you put them back.
| FredPret wrote:
| Finally we can break Tyre's stranglehold on the colour purple
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