[HN Gopher] In Jordan, a 'stunning' discovery under Petra's anci...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       In Jordan, a 'stunning' discovery under Petra's ancient stone
        
       Author : aguaviva
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2024-10-14 18:46 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | aguaviva wrote:
       | https://archive.md/p7rFr
        
       | lubujackson wrote:
       | Not to get all Indiana Jonesy about it, but 12 skeletons? From
       | right around year 0? And they even show a picture of a weathered,
       | ceramic cup?
       | 
       | The article plays it straight, but I'm pretty sure this = Holy
       | Grail confirmed.
        
         | pushupentry1219 wrote:
         | Year 0? I thought Petra was much much older than that.
         | 
         | If year 0 is correct, these people were buried long after Petra
         | was a bustling city then?
        
           | kelnos wrote:
           | Yeah that bit doesn't pass the smell test. Petra had been
           | around for about 400 years by the time Jesus supposedly held
           | his last supper.
           | 
           | It seems much more likely that these 12 skeletons date back
           | to the earlier days of the city.
           | 
           | (Nitpick: there was no year 0; 1 BC goes right into AD 1. And
           | Jesus' supposed death was around AD 33, not AD 1. Sometimes
           | people think "AD" means "After his Death", but it's really
           | "Anno Domini", or "the year of the/our Lord", when he was
           | supposedly born.)
        
             | ithkuil wrote:
             | Alternatively we can parse AD as "Advancing Dates" and BC
             | as "Backward Counting"
        
         | Telemakhos wrote:
         | The article says the skeletons date to 400-100 BC, so, no. Year
         | 0 doesn't exist (1 BC is followed directly by AD 1), and the
         | holy grail would have to date from AD 33 or so, because Jesus
         | didn't die in the year of his birth.
        
           | auadix wrote:
           | Romans were like, what is this 0 you're talking about?
        
             | gerdesj wrote:
             | It's roughly 753 ab urbe condita, big nose!
        
           | SoftTalker wrote:
           | How accurately can skeletons be dated? Within 100 years? 10
           | years? a year?
        
             | kelnos wrote:
             | They didn't actually date the skeletons, because they
             | haven't excavated the site to physically examine them. The
             | time range given by the article is just from the date the
             | city was founded, until it was annexed by the Romans.
             | 
             | It's a pretty safe assumption that they were buried there
             | before the Roman annexation. My guess would be they were
             | buried much closer to 400 BC than to AD 106.
        
           | BugsJustFindMe wrote:
           | > _The article says the skeletons date to 400-100 BC...and
           | the holy grail would have to date from AD 33 or so_
           | 
           | It says "between 400 B.C. and A.D. 106". That encompasses all
           | relevant dates.
        
         | BugsJustFindMe wrote:
         | > _And they even show a picture of a weathered, ceramic cup_
         | 
         | A cup that looks a _lot_ like the grail prop from the film.
        
           | blackhaz wrote:
           | It's freaking identical. Definitely Spielberg's games.
        
         | skrebbel wrote:
         | Your comment made my day!
        
         | _joel wrote:
         | They have chosen wisely.
        
         | kelnos wrote:
         | The cup they show isn't dated; it just says, "An ancient
         | ceramic item discovered at the Treasury site". It's not even
         | clear the cup was discovered during this particular expedition,
         | or where it was found. It could be newer or older, and need not
         | be related to the 12 skeletons.
         | 
         | If the 12 apostles existed, it seems unlikely that they'd all
         | be buried in the same place, in what may have been a
         | "prestigious" tomb. Jesus isn't exactly described as a
         | particularly popular figure in his time when it came to the
         | authorities, and I would expect the 12 apostles would have died
         | at different times, in different places, and wouldn't have been
         | buried together.
         | 
         | The time range is pushing it, too: between 400 BCE and 106 CE,
         | though that's just the roughest of estimates based on when the
         | city was founded and when it was annexed by the Romans, not
         | based on any inspection of the remains. It feels more likely
         | that this tomb was built, used, and sealed up well before Jesus
         | and the disciples/apostles supposedly lived.
         | 
         | Even if we assume the religious fairy tales are true, this
         | doesn't pass the smell test: it's vanishingly unlikely that
         | these are the remains of those men, or that any of this is
         | related to the Holy Grail mythology.
        
           | chasil wrote:
           | They are not all buried in the same place. Mark is famously
           | in Venice.
           | 
           | https://www.ncregister.com/blog/where-are-the-12-apostles-
           | no...
        
             | stvswn wrote:
             | Or, that _could_ be Alexander the Great.
        
             | ccakes wrote:
             | Peter is apparently underneath the Vatican. I'm not
             | religious but I love history - they run a tour under the
             | current city and it's really quite cool if you're into that
             | sort of thing
             | 
             | http://www.scavi.va/content/scavi/en/ufficio-scavi.html
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Isn't it thought that Peter never went to Rome? Did they
               | collect his remains and move them?
        
               | KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 wrote:
               | Peter and Paul founded the church of Rome -- an
               | inscription was found in the necropolis in proximity to a
               | bone box during the excavations in Saint Peter's in 1950
               | as I recall -- "Peter is here".
               | 
               | It was always a point made from very early times that
               | Rome was the church of Peter. As opposed to places like
               | Alexandria for example whose status came from it being
               | the see of a disciple of Peter.
               | 
               | Something else I seem to recall is that one of the leg
               | bones was different -- what would be expected from a
               | Galilean fisherman always putting one leg on the side of
               | a boat to haul in a fishing net.
               | 
               | The final resting place of a number of Apostles is more
               | or less known -- Ss Simon and Jude are in Saint Peter's,
               | Saint Paul is buried in Saint Paul Outside the Walls in
               | Rome, Saint James the Greater is at Compostella in Spain,
               | Saint Bartholomew is in a church on an island in the
               | Tiber in Rome, Saints Philip and James the Lesser have
               | their own church in Rome I think.
        
               | shakna wrote:
               | Catholic tradition has always held that Peter moved to
               | Rome, taught there as a teacher, and then died there.
               | 
               | Other Christian circles, and a large swathe of
               | historians, disagree on this front. However, it is one of
               | the founding points of the Petrine Primacy, or the reason
               | that Saint Peter is seen as the First Pope of the
               | Catholic Church.
        
             | adolph wrote:
             | Doubting Thomas went to India:
             | 
             |  _Christianity is India 's third-largest religion with
             | about 26 million adherents, making up 2.3 percent of the
             | population as of the 2011 census.[1] The written records of
             | St Thomas Christians mention that Christianity was
             | introduced to the Indian subcontinent by Thomas the
             | Apostle, who sailed to the Malabar region (present-day
             | Kerala) in 52 AD._
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_India
        
           | rolph wrote:
           | the 12 apostles existed, not as a one-off, but a common
           | practice. there is numerological signifigance to 12, that
           | precedes christianity.
        
           | derdi wrote:
           | The cup they show isn't even a cup. It looks more like the
           | top part of a broken bottle, photographed upside down. The
           | narrow end looks too narrow for a cup's base, it would not be
           | very stable.
        
           | psunavy03 wrote:
           | Tell me you missed the Indiana Jones joke without telling me
           | you missed the Indiana Jones joke.
           | 
           | The ending of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade used Petra
           | as the outside shot for the ancient temple where the story
           | ended.
        
           | analog31 wrote:
           | I think it was Martin Luther who said something to the effect
           | that of the 12 apostles, 19 are buried in Germany.
        
         | ggambetta wrote:
         | That's the cup of a carpenter.
        
         | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
         | In movie reality, this is definitely the Holy Grail. In real
         | reality (for those not familiar), the grail is a legend
         | invented in the middle ages.
        
       | sorokod wrote:
       | That ground penetrating radar really delivers but what is the
       | stunning part?
        
         | parsimo2010 wrote:
         | Finding 12 ancient skeletons in a place that was not previously
         | known as a tomb is pretty stunning. Imagine if you found 12
         | bodies under your neighborhood bank- people would freak out,
         | and it's not nearly as old as the Petra Treasury.
        
           | sorokod wrote:
           | Many places we know now as tombs weren't known as such
           | before, that is untill some skeletons were found.
        
             | throwway120385 wrote:
             | If you wait around long enough anywhere becomes a tomb.
        
       | pvaldes wrote:
       | For some reason, slow people always lie under the big boulder,
       | shaped like mail stamps. Never over the rock.
        
       | noneeeed wrote:
       | For anyone thinking of visitng Petra, try and allow more than a
       | couple of hours. When we went it was for two days, going in and
       | out each day. A lot of people just go down the entry canyon, take
       | a look at the Treasury (the bit in Indiana Jones) and head back.
       | But the site itself is much larger. If you are up for a decent
       | walk there are parts that I thought were much more impressive and
       | interesting up the hills. Some of the scenary around there is
       | stunning.
       | 
       | Also, if you can do down in the evening, that's great too.
       | 
       | Jordan as a whole was a really interesting place to visit.
        
         | viewtransform wrote:
         | For those who cannot travel, the Fall of Civilizations episode
         | 15. The Nabataeans - The Final Days Of Petra has stunning
         | visuals in 4K
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSfFq02pK4s
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-10-15 23:01 UTC)