[HN Gopher] 2k-year-old wine and the uncanny immediacy of the past
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2k-year-old wine and the uncanny immediacy of the past
Author : benbreen
Score : 134 points
Date : 2025-01-15 21:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (resobscura.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (resobscura.substack.com)
| bglazer wrote:
| Nice article about artifacts that make the past more immediate,
| that allow us to connect our experiences to people hundreds or
| thousands of years ago.
|
| My favorite example is the writings of Onfim, who was a little
| boy in the 1200s in present day Russia whose scribbling and
| homework were exquisitely preserved on birch bark fragments. It's
| so immediately recognizable as a little boy's endearing doodles
| about knights and imaginary beasts, yet its 800 years old.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim
| morkalork wrote:
| I like the adorable animal shaped sippy cups for babies:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/science/prehistoric-baby-...
| romanhn wrote:
| Wow, haven't seen this before, thank you. Amazing that the
| writing can still be read by a modern reader (that said, really
| helps to know what it's supposed to say though). The note I
| found most relatable is the one with greetings to his
| classmate.
| ge96 wrote:
| Do some eyebrows convey emotion or coincidence? (near bottom
| of page)
|
| Edit: I'm also curious how much time (thousands of years) for
| there to be noticeable difference in the capability of the
| brain like abstract thinking. Language may be the real
| problem.
| methyl wrote:
| I've had similar feeling when realizing that the bells that we
| sometimes hear in old cities of Europe are exact same bells
| producing exact same sound as 1000 years ago
| zehaeva wrote:
| Similarly, when I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius I was
| struck by how normal everything seemed. While he was an Emperor
| the everyday banality of what he talked about going through
| 2,000 years ago was amazing.
|
| Humans really haven't changed that much at all.
| thesz wrote:
| > Humans really haven't changed that much at all.
|
| I guess you are quoting Woland from The Master and Margarita
| [1], the words he said in a show at the Variety theater.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita
|
| Woland is _the_ Satan in the novel. What he said has a deeper
| meaning, but superficial one is most probably wrong.
| abeppu wrote:
| The inscription on the Sword of Goujian, the translation for
| which is displayed in the article, says that the King of Yue made
| and used the sword himself. How literally do people with
| knowledge of the period take that? Is it surprising / unlikely
| for a king of that period to make anything themselves, especially
| something so ornate, rather than commission it?
| tokai wrote:
| Well kings have always said they made/build anything they
| ordered. I would simply not believe Yue's claim. It's much like
| the things Wolfram "creates".
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, everyone needs a hobby :)
|
| Here's another one, different king, similar inscription:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear_of_Fuchai - seems likely it
| should be read more as "caused this to be made".
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| Julius Caesar made the dang calendar. People had a lot of free
| time.
| scottLobster wrote:
| When you have some sort of divine right to rule, the most
| money, a palace filled with servants and responsibilities that
| can be neglected with no immediate consequences, well you have
| a lot of free time.
|
| That said, while it's possible this King was really into
| swordsmithing, more likely he's just taking credit for the work
| or something gets lost in the translation. Like if Elon said he
| "built the Falcon 9". It's not explicitly true, he certainly
| wasn't machining parts or writing code for it, but he was
| involved enough that no one would really call it a lie either.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Like if Elon said he "built the Falcon 9". It's not
| explicitly true, he certainly wasn't machining parts or
| writing code for it, but he was involved enough that no one
| would really call it a lie either.
|
| Yea, that would be the way I read it: He "built" the sword
| just like the executives of your company "built" its
| products. It's like those home remodeling TV shows, where the
| remodelers don't really do anything besides write checks and
| drive around talking on their phones to other people who
| don't really do anything either. All the actual building is
| done by silent building contractors who are mostly off-
| camera.
| keybored wrote:
| > It's not explicitly true, he certainly wasn't machining
| parts or writing code for it, but he was involved enough that
| no one would really call it a lie either.
|
| Or you've been taught well.
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| _Who built the seven gates of Thebes?_
|
| _The books are filled with names of kings._
|
| _Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?_
|
| - Bertolt Brecht, _Questions of a Worker who Reads_
| klik99 wrote:
| Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he actually made it himself
| (though I agree the inscription is hardly proof). We have this
| view of Kings as fat, lazy bureaucratic blowhards because we're
| closest to the tailend of the history of monarchy. When this
| King was around there were a lot more regional leaders who
| fought and strength was admired the most, if a King was seen as
| weak he had just as much internal attempts that were way more
| physical than the political coups of today. You could not be a
| king or survive being a king without being a good fighter and
| knowing a bit about how weapons are made and used.
| Frummy wrote:
| Even recent kings have this grand education from the best of
| the best if not from actual geniuses, examples abound like
| Alexander the great and Aristotle, and usually there's other
| examples in wikipedia articles for most recent kings, even
| without tutoring here's a list of books that could have been
| used to educate royalty in less ancient times than this case
| but of course maybe a book wont teach craftsmanship
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrors_for_princes
|
| The elite/aristocracy of these old ages was at the top for
| reasons that make some sort of sense even though it could be
| violent it would be perhaps not completely uncorrelated with
| ability, if a prince is born into it they'd sometimes get
| taught multiple languages, music, poetry, on top of the
| reasonable politics and warfare, strategy etc. As for
| craftsmanship that is a good question since it's working with
| ones hands but with the examples here so far it would make
| sense if they could just get instructed by the best craftsmen
| as well to learn that too of course this is maybe too far
| backwards and another continent to extrapolate
| dmix wrote:
| The bakers stamp on the bread is interesting branding
|
| https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_...
| Aloha wrote:
| I think it was the equivalent of a tax stamp
| binarycrusader wrote:
| My recollection from a previous article was that in many
| cases, ovens were communal, so the mark was so that they knew
| which items belonged to a particular baker:
|
| https://wheatbeat.com/bread-stamps/
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| It is! I found the sword quite fascinating as well. The older
| Chinese lettering on it looks really neat, too
| mcswell wrote:
| 41 AD was a very good year.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| While the tomb was sealed it wasn't a vacuum, so how did the
| liquid not evaporate over time?
| Karellen wrote:
| Looking at the images in the article, I think c), d) and e) in
| the first group, and the close-up image a couple of paragraphs
| later, are all the same item.
|
| So. e) looks like d) with a top covering taken off. And, from
| the curved "handles" visible in c), e) and the close-up, they
| could all be the same glass vessel. We can see in c) that the
| vessel does have a lid. In e) and the close-up, there appears
| to be a residue where the lid rested against the container.
|
| So it's possible that liquid from the jar got to the join,
| evaporated, and left behind a substance that sealed the
| container against further evaporation?
|
| You'd probably have to read the full report for an actual
| explanation, but that's my guess from what's reported in the
| linked article itself.
| thom wrote:
| I agree these objects (just like colourised photos) help bridge
| the distance to the past. But I've had the same experience purely
| with text. If you read Cicero's letters and diaries, and then
| just imagine him - suffering writer's block, wracked with anxiety
| and self-doubt, desperate for his friends to cheer him up - as a
| neurotic, terminally-online Twitter user, it fits perfectly and
| breathes life into his every word.
| teddyh wrote:
| It is always fascinating when Americans re-discover that old
| things actually exist.
|
| But, as they say, an American thinks that 100 years is a long
| time while a European thinks that 100 miles is a long way.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN. That's a
| pretty insulting variant of it.
|
| (I love the adage you quote, though. When I first heard it it
| said "Canadian" and "Englishman", which probably says something
| about how far back it goes.)
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| One of the most interesting parts of Pompeii for me was seeing
| the area where they've restored a vineyard, to the point of
| planting the rows of vines in the exact spots that held vines
| 2000 years ago. While large areas of the city consists of ruins
| of buildings that you kind of have to infer the layout of from
| the floorplans, the vineyard was the one of the spots where I
| most felt like I was looking back in time, and seeing the spot
| more-or-less as it would have looked in 79CE.
| duskwuff wrote:
| One interesting recent discovery at Pompeii was what appears to
| have been, for all intents and purposes, a fast food restaurant
| - complete with a serving counter set up much like a modern-day
| steam table. Many of the original wall paintings are intact -
| it's not hard to imagine what it would have looked like, and
| it's surprisingly familiar.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/archaeologists-excav...
| sedatk wrote:
| "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again"
| --Battlestar Galactica (originally from Peter Pan though)
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