[HN Gopher] Archaeometallurgical investigation of the Nebra Sky ...
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Archaeometallurgical investigation of the Nebra Sky Disc
Author : Archelaos
Score : 60 points
Date : 2024-11-29 16:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Would you have deduced that stars are distant suns if you'd lived
| in the ancient world?
|
| Apparently the only pre-modern people (i.e. pre-Giordano Bruno)
| recorded as making the claim were Anaxagoras, and Aristarchus of
| Samos, but their ideas were completely rejected by
| contemporaries.
|
| In retrospect, it just seems so blindingly obvious that I'm
| tempted to believe that I too would have seen through the
| Aristotelean BS. But surely there must be aspects of reality that
| will seem similarly obvious to future generations, and yet I
| don't feel any insights coming on.
|
| I should say, Aristarchus is the ideal of maximizing information
| from minimal data:
|
| >Aristarchus of Samos (Samos is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea)
| lived from about 310 to 230 BC, about 2250 years ago. He measured
| the size and distance of the Sun and, though his observations
| were inaccurate, found that the Sun is much larger than the
| Earth. Aristarchus then suggested that the small Earth orbits
| around the big Sun rather than the other way around, and he also
| suspected that stars were nothing but distant suns, but his ideas
| were rejected and later forgotten, and he, too, was threatened
| for suggesting such things
|
| http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsunasstar.html
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| A Pythagorean. The pythagoreans taught that there were 10
| celestial bodies, but they could only observe 9, so they
| proposed a counter earth that could not be seen -- behind the
| sun. Aristotle mocks them for this idea, but the idea implies
| rotation around the sun.
| fph wrote:
| Does it? If the sun were rotating around the Earth, there
| could still be another planet behind it, rotating
| synchronously with it.
|
| At least from the point of view of the Greek, who didn't know
| how gravitation works in detail.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Possibly. But I believe the mechanism for the movement of
| the planets was believed to be crystal spheres.
|
| Another possibility is that the Pythagoreans actually
| described the earth rotating around a central fire or
| Hestia. If that wasn't the sun, it might have been the
| center of the earth -- and the counter earth was actually
| the antipodes.
|
| When you see the source texts describing these things, it
| is terribly vague. Yet, Copernicus described himself as
| bringing back the Pythagorean ideas--
| theginger wrote:
| Archaeometallurgical, If we allow words with 94 bits of entropy
| why do we need some words with 3 or 4 different different
| meanings?
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Because we get to have sentences like this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| Because we value conciseness over preciseness.
|
| If given enough time and use, we would probably shorten
| "Archaeometallurgical" to "arcmet" or even "arc" in speech.
| gdjskshh wrote:
| > five-phase reconstruction of the development of the imagery on
| the disc seems to be the likeliest sequence for the disc's
| development. In the earliest version, an elaborately encoded
| image reflects sophisticated astronomical knowledge. In
| subsequent stages this was forgotten and replaced by traditional
| knowledge, which was focused on the interaction of the heavenly
| bodies and the horizon; and finally, this reduced knowledge gave
| way to mythology
|
| It's interesting that the oldest part of the artifact has the
| most advanced astronomical information.
| jl6 wrote:
| It's only relatively recently in history that we have
| relatively reliable methods for passing on knowledge. It is
| probable that all the "firsts" we know about were just the
| first occurrence that survived. It is probable that
| astronomical knowledge like this was discovered and forgotten
| and discovered over and over again, until finally it persisted.
| gedy wrote:
| > The state of Saxony-Anhalt registered the disc as a trademark,
| which resulted in two lawsuits. In 2003, Saxony-Anhalt
| successfully sued the city of Querfurt for depicting the disc
| design on souvenirs. Saxony-Anhalt also successfully sued the
| publishing houses Piper and Heyne over an abstract depiction of
| the disc on book covers.
|
| > The defenders argued that as a cult object, the disc had
| already been "published" approximately 3,500 years earlier in the
| Bronze Age and that consequently, all protection of intellectual
| property associated with it has long expired.
|
| This is really silly, and disappointed if this is valid under
| DE/EU law. This is our shared history, not a trademark
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| A modern person interprets this as a sky map. But it some round
| and cresent shapes on a field of dots. Not sure they drew the sky
| like that in the Bronze age? What evidence is there, that it's
| supposed to represent the sky?
|
| The stars are no evidence. A bunch of dots can be stretched to
| fit any star configuration you please.
|
| And there are way too many crescents. What, did we have three
| moons back then? And none of them are shaped anything like the
| actual moon looks at any time.
|
| Hm.
| eschaton wrote:
| I'm sure the authors of this paper that was published in one of
| the premiere scientific journals and the authors of all of the
| works they cite did not consider these elementary questions
| whatsoever and will appreciate your insight.
| oezi wrote:
| Definitely one of the most awe-inspiring museum visits for me in
| Germany.
|
| https://www.himmelsscheibe-erleben.de/
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