[HN Gopher] Mass grave of Roman soldiers found under Vienna spor...
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Mass grave of Roman soldiers found under Vienna sports field
Author : speckx
Score : 88 points
Date : 2025-04-04 15:54 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| prmoustache wrote:
| There are some funny questions in the comments: "So to be clear,
| they were Roman soldiers killed. Not locals?"
| bee_rider wrote:
| That caused me to re-read the article. Actually it is
| surprisingly ambiguous on that point inside the text of the
| article, with wording like
|
| > the human remains likely belonged to soldiers who died during
| a battle involving ancient Roman legionaries.
|
| Doesn't say which side they were on. The most direct bit seems
| to be
|
| > X-ray images of the sheath revealed typical ancient Roman
| decorations: silver wire inlays [...]
|
| But a German could just have traded with a Roman at some point.
|
| Of course, the headline says they are Roman soldiers. I wonder
| if it is hard to tell definitively.
| hx8 wrote:
| A simple DNA test should tell us. Roman soldiers were
| recruited from a diverse gene pool and fought far from their
| birthplace in mixed groups. A simple test to determine the
| average variance of genetics will let us know if they were a
| single ethnicity. Further cross references to compare
| similarity to other known genomes can tell us which region an
| individual was from.
|
| Whole genetic sequencing cost about $500. So <$75,000 for the
| sequencing of the entire 150, plus scientist time to gather
| samples and process results. Answering the question through
| genetics probably costs more than $250,000 even with cheap
| grad student labor, so it's probably just not worth it,
| especially when the moral high ground is to let the dead
| rest.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Sequencing 2K years old material is not that easy,
| specially WGS. From what I've been told, both from
| degradation and contamination, you're going to need much,
| much more samples and work than when doing a regular $500
| sequencing.
|
| You can do simpler procedures to find their general
| regional origin, although it always requires more work in
| those conditions.
|
| Edit: Wien Museum press release says they're doing DNA and
| isotope analysis, but doesn't say the concrete techniques
| applied.
| hx8 wrote:
| Thanks for lifting me above the Dunning-Kruger threshold
| so that I understand there is more to archaeological
| genetics then I previously conceived of.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| DNA in the ground has a half-life of ~500 years. After
| 2000 years, ~6% of the DNA remains. More crucially, there
| will not be a single complete chromosome left, it's all a
| jumbled, mixed mess of DNA fragments.
|
| This can be reconstructed, but it requires a much larger
| sample than normal DNA analysis. (You need to get enough
| fragments to get a whole genome, with enough overlap
| everywhere that you can reassemble the pieces.)
|
| The largest problem after that is that the vast majority
| of DNA in all your samples will not be human DNA, but DNA
| of the various bacteria that live in the soil. This
| doesn't ruin the sample, because you can just reconstruct
| everything and then discard all the things that are not
| human chromosomes or mitochondrial DNA, but it does
| greatly increase the workload when compared to a pure
| human DNA sample.
|
| There are a lot of smaller problems that I am eliding
| here. But amazingly, all the problems are solvable, and
| the progress in this field in just the past decade is
| staggering. We have usable fragments that teach us new
| things that are >500kyr old, the oldest complete human
| genome we now have is ~45kyr old, and more recent samples
| are solving hundred-years-old historical debates, and new
| ones are done almost daily. We are living in the golden
| age of archaeogenetics, and many papers published today
| on it will be cited for a hundred years or more.
|
| ... but all the solutions to those problems create a lot
| more work, and thus a lot more cost than those $500 gene
| sequencing kits.
| hoseyor wrote:
| Most likely They are not going to be allowed to rest at
| all. Especially western humanity is basically sanitizing
| the whole earth below them of human culture and history and
| storing it away in boxes and vaults, and ephemeral digital
| files of dubious quality, centralized for some Library of
| Alexandria or Dresden Bombing atrocity to totally erase all
| the centralized records of humanity.
|
| No one seems to think of these types of things, especially
| in todays world where everything is digital and even in
| places like America there will be nothing left but rather
| uninteresting rubbish piles of plastic and other toxic
| remains left where stick and drywall houses and junky metal
| warehouses used to be.
|
| There will be no silver lined sheathes of common soldiers,
| no coins of any kind, let alone gold ones, there will be no
| hidden manuscripts, not even charred scrolls that could be
| recovered with the use of AI. There will not even be any
| buildings and castles that stood the test of time for 1000
| years, or any new pyramids because it rich and successful
| don't build grand and permanent anythings. Humanity will
| effectively have not only left a huge hole in history
| starting in about the 1980s, but there won't even be
| anything left to discover in the ground from the past the
| way we are going. And worst, even the digital history is
| clearly starting to come under attack with censorship and
| deletion and even the IP rules where corporations just get
| to delete what they dem you should no longer have.
| luddit3 wrote:
| Sir, this is a Wendys.
| bee_rider wrote:
| TBH I agree that we Americans are going to leave behind
| some really lame plastic artifacts. But I'm trying not to
| worry about that sort of thing too much, it doesn't seem
| healthy to worry too much about what'll happen long after
| we're dead. If we do, we might forget to live, right?
| 7952 wrote:
| Despite all that it has become much easier to copy vast
| quantities of information. A modest effort to archive by
| future generations could deliver far more than was
| previously possible through discovery of antiquities. And
| paper products are still produced in vast quantities.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| We are on the precipice of a new space age.
|
| Where you should put your horizon is Psyche 16.
|
| Space-factories building Starships for everyone. New
| iPhones dropping from the sky.
|
| Earth, returned to Eden.
| intrasight wrote:
| "The experts also noted remarkably good dental health."
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| The Roman army must have had good deductibles.
| remoquete wrote:
| And CDI plans better than those in year MMXXV.
| credit_guy wrote:
| MMDCCLXXVIII AVC
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_urbe_condita
| skirge wrote:
| good selection of conscripts
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Too poor to afford sugar.
| hx8 wrote:
| Actually bread was the most common issue for poor dental
| hygiene at this time.
|
| Flour was ground by stone, tiny pieces of stone made its way
| into the bread, and the stone stripped the enamel from teeth.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| ugh!
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| And still not as dangerous as adding sugar to everything
| hx8 wrote:
| I wouldn't trade my diet for the diet of a roman. The
| estimated 500ml wine/daily is very high.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> The estimated 500ml wine /daily is very high._
|
| My dad and grandad would laugh at this. 500ml/day is
| rookie numbers in the former Roman parts of Eastern
| Europe.
| seszett wrote:
| Your dad might not be the best example of a healthy
| lifestyle.
|
| Because they (and many other people) drank more than
| that, doesn't mean it's a good diet. The Romans drank
| they wine cut with water though I think.
| fnordlord wrote:
| Less than a bottle/day. Not something I do but not
| something I wouldn't do either.
| frenchwhisker wrote:
| Roman wine was heavily diluted though, at least.
| foobahify wrote:
| Yes maybe it is more like a pint of weak beer per day by
| modern alcohol standards. Not great for you but maybe a
| good source of clean water.
| hx8 wrote:
| The 500ml is the undiluted amount [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome_and_wine
| sva_ wrote:
| German breweries gave their workers an allowance of 4 to
| 8 liters of beer per day not too long ago. ('Haustrunk')
| disambiguation wrote:
| So youre saying micro stones in the food supply were
| causing a public health crisis?
| globalise83 wrote:
| Sugar (cane or refined) wasn't really a thing in the Roman
| period, even for those who could theoretically have afforded
| it.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Pliny the Elder described sugar, but he said that it was
| used only for medicinal purposes, presumably because having
| to be imported from India through Arabia it was available
| only in small quantities and at high prices.
|
| However, besides the more expensive honey, boiled
| concentrated grape juice was widely used as a sweetener,
| for most purposes where today sugar would be used.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| They had a very toxic replacement though, basically grape
| juice sirup rendered down in lead kettles.
| wolfi1 wrote:
| Romans usually burnt their corpses, so it is quite unusual to
| find skeletons.
| mikestew wrote:
| From TFA: _"Since cremations were common in the European parts
| of the Roman Empire around 100 AD [CE], inhumations are an
| absolute exception. Finds of Roman skeletons from this period
| are therefore extremely rare," said Kristina Adler-Wolfl, head
| of the Vienna City Archaeology Department._
| jandrese wrote:
| Which might tell a story in itself. This might have been a
| small detachment that was ambushed and utterly wiped out,
| leaving nobody alive on the Roman side to perform the
| traditional funeral rites. Instead the attackers were left to
| bury the bodies in their own tradition.
| lukan wrote:
| "Instead the attackers were left to bury the bodies in
| their own tradition."
|
| Germanic tribes usually burned their bodies as well. But
| that does not mean, they feld oblieged to give the enemy a
| proper rite.
| morninglight wrote:
| Can anyone tell me the manufacturer and model of the small, round
| vacuum cleaners in the photograph? You cannot believe how filthy
| my workshop gets.
| atombender wrote:
| Have you looked at Shop-Vac? They make multiple sizes, the
| small wing being a cute 1 gallon (3.7 liters) desk version:
| https://www.shopvac.com/products/shop-vac%C2%AE-1-gallon-1-0...
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(page generated 2025-04-07 23:00 UTC)