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sovietmcdavid t1_j8y797v wrote

A lot of these are well known and documented "tells", large mounds known to cover ruins, ziggurats, cities, etc.

Often, they are left alone because exposing them to the elements can ruin the site. South and Central america have untold amounts of these "hills" in the jungle as well covering all kinds of ancient ruins

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Negative_Gravitas t1_j8yojxj wrote

>Rey said that when he first brought up the project at international conferences no one believed him. “Everyone basically told me, ‘Oh no you’re making it up you’re wasting your time you’re wasting British Museum UK government funding’ – that’s what they were telling me,” he said.

That seems . . . odd. No one believed him? It seems like it would be very hard to get away with falsifying findings like this, and to not get away with it would be instant professional suicide. And to effectively and publicly accuse someone of fraud seems pretty close to libel/slander.

Strange. Probably I am missing something. At any rate, this is really cool and just goes to show that sometimes even the oldest and best known sites can still teach us new things.

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Mississimia t1_j8ysn99 wrote

Replying to xzekezx37 (#1,849,590)

While this is true, I find it especially interesting when it comes to archaeology. Drawing conclusions from material remains that are thousands of years old seems to be a shaky business, it doesn't make sense to be so stubborn about new discoveries.

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Bentresh t1_j8ytuqf wrote

Replying to xzekezx37 (#1,849,590)

Yes, but it's still a rather strange statement, at least in my opinion as an ancient historian who digs in the Middle East. It's hardly uncommon for Mesopotamian archaeologists to uncover new temples and palaces, and many are known from texts but have not yet been found. The entire point of conferences like ASOR and ICAANE is the dissemination of new archaeological and historical discoveries.

Perhaps he meant that people believed that the damage to the site from slipshod excavations in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the more recent looting precluded the discovery of more monumental architecture.

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Bentresh t1_j8yx42m wrote

Replying to crimedog69 (#1,849,732)

They'll be excavated eventually, but it takes decades if not centuries to fully excavate a major site like Girsu. Babylon has been excavated for over a century, but only about 3% of the Neo-Babylonian levels have been excavated (and virtually nothing of the Old/Middle Babylonian levels has yet been uncovered).

Archaeologists choose where and what to dig based on their research questions, usually after surveying a site and (when possible) mapping it with techniques like ground-penetrating radar. If you are interested in early glass production, for example, you are going to focus on excavating crafts workshops from the Middle Bronze Age rather than, say, tombs and houses from the Neo-Assyrian period.

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812many t1_j8yxgsz wrote

Replying to Negative_Gravitas (#1,849,333)

Yeah, this is kinda weird without more context. Who exactly said what and when? Was this before or after the official discovery of the temple last year?

The article very quickly moves past that to the actual findings, which is nice. Kinda like it was written by two people, one with the controversial first paragraph, then the rest as facts and findings.

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Helix014 t1_j8yzyr1 wrote

Replying to Bentresh (#1,850,038)

Yeah. The reality is archeology is very slow, expensive, done by a small number of highly experienced/trained researchers, in a small area at one time. They focus on what they know they will find rather than destructive treasure hunting like Scliemann.

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Muzzerduzzer t1_j8zdna6 wrote

Replying to Neat-Plantain-7500 (#1,849,622)

If you are refering to the big ones in Egypt, they were built during the 4th dynasty so almost exactly 4,500 years ago. But also it's important to keep in mind that "built at the same time as the pyramids" could be like someone, 4500 years from now, "user neat-plantain-7500 lived around the time the statue of liberty was built."

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gwizone t1_j8zzhoo wrote

Replying to Ripcord (#1,852,987)

I laughed way too hard at this. Watched every ep on YouTube during the pandemic and was amazed by the sheer number of Roman artifacts spread throughout the English countryside. You can’t walk a mile without tripping over a piece of Roman pottery, caldinium, or tesserae.

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dusmeyedin t1_j8zzppj wrote

Replying to Pilgrim_of_Reddit (#1,851,821)

No, they left the imperial resting place untouched because they don't know how to preserve it if it's exposed to the elements.

They've partially opened up some of the buried statues, but they immediately started to lose their coloring as the paint fades on exposure.

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Bentresh t1_j90229y wrote

Replying to randathrowaway1211 (#1,853,266)

It’s just a very slow process. Every step has to be documented in careful detail (mapped, photographed, recorded, etc.), every bucket of dirt has to be sifted with a mesh screen for small finds, any architecture has to be articulated (i.e. the dirt between stones is removed carefully and slowly), and so on. It’s not uncommon to dig down only about 20-30 cm a day.

I've been working in the same 10x10 meter square for about a decade, and we haven't even gotten out of the Iron Age levels, with the Bronze Age and earlier levels still untouched. Multiply that square by 800-1000 and you get a sense of how long it takes to excavate the citadel of a standard mound (~8-10 hectares), to say nothing of the sprawling lower town!

Additionally, many excavations only run for a couple of months a year. Partly this is because of weather and seasonal rain patterns, but it’s also because archaeologists and hired diggers have other obligations during the rest of the year (typically teaching or museum work for archaeologists and farming/agriculture for local workers).

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maaku7 t1_j9084wz wrote

Replying to gwizone (#1,853,149)

Time Team was responsible for something crazy like 25% or 50% of British archeology while it was under production. It being cancelled was actually quite a blow to British archeology.

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Penitent_Exile t1_j90c7lo wrote

So did it thrive in pre-Akkadian Sumer or during? Akkadian clay tablet has been found.

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Morbanth t1_j90e71l wrote

Replying to Penitent_Exile (#1,854,111)

> So did it thrive in pre-Akkadian Sumer or during?

Both. Also, the Akkadians were thoroughly a part of Sumer long before Sargon, and the first bilingual documents date a few centuries before him as well.

Incidentally, Ningirsu, the tutelary deity of Girsu, had a talking mace called Shar-ur, meaning "Smasher of thousands". :D Not related to anything, just think it's great.

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ten-million t1_j90yw3w wrote

So many of these ancient sites are in now inhabitable places. It seems like the story of ancient civilization is a story of climate change and technological development.

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LadyBugTango t1_j90z4te wrote

Noah's ark 4,800 years ago.... so 4,500 years ago..

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DC-DE t1_j913zmb wrote

Did they find the WMDs there?

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vincento36 t1_j914wk2 wrote

“May Hold Key” What do they mean by this? I read the whole article and they never say why this discovery is important or what makes it so ground breaking. If the city and the civilization have been known for 140 years and we already knew about the Sumerian advances in writing etc., then why do we care about these new tablets or this palace?

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dusmeyedin t1_j9185un wrote

Replying to Pilgrim_of_Reddit (#1,854,512)

The terminology might be a bit confusing. The Qin mausoleum is a fairly large complex that mimics the layout of the old capital city Xianyang. There are many structures in this complex, including the resting place of the emperor himself, and the outer armies statues and other ceremonial structures.

Archeologists distinguish between the emperor's tomb, which is the resting place of his body, vs the rest of the complex, which is generally called the mausoleum or the necropolis.

They have excavated parts of the necropolis and seen the damage this caused, and so they have not excavated the emperor's actual tomb. There's a whole half of the necropolis which they are unwilling to touch because they don't know what their archeological process will do to it - contemporary reports said that Qin had a relief terrain map of the whole empire set up with liquid mercury filling in for the rivers and lakes. Modern excavation techniques are still not up to the task of preserving this.

The commenter you responded to might have been using that distinction: they hope to see some day when our science is advanced enough to examine Qin's personal resting place, amidst all its riches and ceremonial finery, without destroying it.

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SuperSaiyan2589 t1_j918fkv wrote

Discovery of (insert whatever you want here I guess I don’t know) in (Insert wherever you want here I guess I don’t know) may hold key to ancient civilization.

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Durable_me t1_j92882l wrote

when did 2500 BC become 'ancient civilisation' .... ? Egypt was flourishing by then, Mesopotamia also, Sumerian civilisation was far older, Indus too
Talk 11000 BC like Gobleki Tepi, THAT is an ancient civilisation .

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Bentresh t1_j92aigw wrote

Replying to randathrowaway1211 (#1,855,144)

It depends where one wants to dig. Excavations in some countries like Greece and Israel regularly take volunteers with no dig experience, whereas it’s very difficult to join a dig in Iraq even as an archaeologist. The AIA fieldwork opportunities page is a good place to start.

Local workers are usually hired for digging.

  • The square is excavated from north to south using shovels, pickaxes, or hoes. Usually only a 5 or 10 cm layer is removed at a time, since you want to be able to quickly identify any changes in soil texture or material culture indicating that you’ve moved from one period of occupation into an earlier one.

  • All of this dirt is shoveled into buckets (guffa in Arabic), and the buckets are loaded into wheelbarrows.

  • Each of the buckets is dumped into the sifter and examined for bones, seals and seal impressions, beads, potsherds, and other small objects.

  • The square is swept clean after completing a pass so that it can be photographed.

  • Any architecture (stone or mudbrick) or statuary we come across is articulated. This is usually done with a trowel and a stiff brush.

Typically each square has one or two archaeologists and three or four workers. I like to get down and dirty and dig as much as possible too, but a lot of my time has to be spent doing paperwork (mapping the square, packaging and labeling artifacts we find, recording details about soil color and texture, etc.).

Additionally, a couple of local villagers are hired to cook meals and wash pottery.

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goldenhour710 t1_j92c6wu wrote

There have been landmarks carbon dated older than this by 2-3 fold that are believed to have been built by ancient civilizations. Some pre-date the ice age. Accepting this will wipe out everything that has been taught about ancient civilizations and discredit many professionals in the field.

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JunkoBig t1_j92dmbx wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#1,859,852)

I know the origin of ziggurat, I just meant the curious use of "tell" to refer to such hills, and its purported Arabic origin. After checking Wikipedia it actually seems to have made it to English directly from Arabic.

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HippCelt t1_j932qxm wrote

better make a copy before they lose it again.....

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Nowuh7 t1_j93mvrm wrote

Incredibly fascinating, stuff like this invigorates my sense of wonder with this world

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Southphltrashfire t1_j94epqc wrote

Hopefully the local militias won’t blow up this one , those guys must of hated history class

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alikazi t1_j94kcek wrote

I mean if it isn't already destroyed by the Americans while they try to kill innocent people.

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