The Archaeology Thread

[AkiraTheViking]

This is cool: Ancient Egypt’s Book of the Dead

Article is from 2017, but I do love me some Ancient Egypt and Egypt Mythology.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Archaeologists are some dedicated motherfuckers.



Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

-and that's why experimental archeology is the best.

On that note, I'd like to introduce folks to one Shelby Putt - who's been studying peoples brains as they learned to manufacture stone tools.

After 800,000 years of making simple Oldowan tools, early humans began manufacturing Acheulian handaxes around 1.75 million years ago. This advance is hypothesized to reflect an evolutionary change in hominin cognition and language abilities. We used a neuroarchaeology approach to investigate this hypothesis, recording brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy as modern human participants learned to make Oldowan and Acheulian stone tools in either a verbal or nonverbal training context. Here we show that Acheulian tool production requires the integration of visual, auditory and sensorimotor information in the middle and superior temporal cortex, the guidance of visual working memory representations in the ventral precentral gyrus, and higher-order action planning via the supplementary motor area, activating a brain network that is also involved in modern piano playing. The right analogue to Broca’s area—which has linked tool manufacture and language in prior work1,2—was only engaged during verbal training. Acheulian toolmaking, therefore, may have more evolutionary ties to playing Mozart than quoting Shakespeare.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0102

[Fake Messiah]

Ok, this is paleontology, but wow, I will never look at the rocks same again.

[WinterHold]

I like archeology but I'm especially interested in stuff like Göbekli Tepe in Turkey:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe

circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected, classified as the world's oldest known megaliths

This is the most interesting thing that captured me, the pillars are mysterious and strange:






Did they use these as signs? they say it's for "animal sacrifice".

Note: this is as old as 9000 BCE

[Anomalocaris]

I like archeology but I'm especially interested in stuff like Göbekli Tepe in Turkey:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe

circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected, classified as the world's oldest known megaliths

This is the most interesting thing that captured me, the pillars are mysterious and strange:






Did they use these as signs? they say it's for "animal sacrifice".

Note: this is as old as 9000 BCE

Another thing interesting about gobekli tepe, it has a strong claim to being the exact location where wheat was domesticated.

Not part of One of several general regions where some early domestication of wheat may have occured, but the very spot where the only instance of domestication of wheat, responsible for all the wheat ever eaten in subsequent history of the human species,  occurred

[The Architect Of Fate]

The Ancient world had 20 sided dice. This can one thing. The ancient world had D&D.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and those dice were religious artifacts, just saying.

Another fun fact, the romans notched their javelins at the angle at which they would whistle through the air not because there was a practical benefit to javelin flight in this arrangement, or that they believed javelins could be better thrown if they did so...., but because they knew it produced an overwhelming fear which caused the enemy to make mistakes.

The original whistling death.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

-and those dice were religious artifacts, just saying.

Another fun fact, the romans notched their javelins at the angle at which they would whistle through the air not because there was a practical benefit to javelin flight in this arrangement, or that they believed javelins could be better thrown if they did so...., but because they knew it produced an overwhelming fear which caused the enemy to make mistakes.

The original whistling death.

Also, contrary to popular belief, the javelins were NOT deliberately designed to bend on impact, so the barbarians couldn't throw them back. Although, there is some evidence that Marius (he of the 'mules') had the pilum redesigned so that the entire head of the thing would break from the shaft on impact.

Boru

[The Valkyrie]

-and those dice were religious artifacts, just saying.

Another fun fact, the romans notched their javelins at the angle at which they would whistle through the air not because there was a practical benefit to javelin flight in this arrangement, or that they believed javelins could be better thrown if they did so...., but because they knew it produced an overwhelming fear which caused the enemy to make mistakes.

The original whistling death.

Also, contrary to popular belief, the javelins were NOT deliberately designed to bend on impact, so the barbarians couldn't throw them back.

Boru

And those that hit were not easily removed.

Cunning bastards, the Romans.