Berlin Gold Hat | Hacker News Reader

Berlin Gold Hat

en.wikipedia.org

87 pointsbenbreen57 comments

The tendency to ascribe ancient artifacts to "ritual purposes" or religion always astounds me.

This is a calendar. It's proven to be a calendar. We know how it works as a calendar. It's a tool for predicting celestial events.

It doesn't need to be hand-wavingly described as "worn by a priest or diety of a sun-god religion". What evidence is there for that? Which sun-god?

Why is there never any proof or evidence required for saying an artifact has a religious purpose?

It's like saying "this object, that we know to be a screwdriver, must be an item of ritual significance to the god of Sunday Afternoon Home Maintenance, and used by their priests in their rituals"

I agree, but we can move two ways - we could also make sure we describe more contemporary occurences with the ritual language, and maybe that might clarify what we mean in just the same way, bridging the cultural gap between then and now?

I'm not sure about the the screwdriver, but certainly such things as the Sunday Morning Family Waffle Iron, can be described as items for ritualistic purposes, right?

I think it's the conflating of "religious" and "ritual" that gets out of hand.

So if your family has a tradition of Sunday Morning Waffles, then sure it's "ritual" in a very minor sense. But it's not religious. You don't make waffles every Sunday morning to appease the Waffle Gods, or because of some superstition that the next winter will be terrible if you don't. But these are the sorts of things that get associated with "ritual".

Archeologists being lazy about their interpretations leads to a view of ancient civilisations that they were all "permeated with magic and superstition". And I don't think the evidence actually supports that.

Being made of gold indicates that it was at least not an every day tool. Of course it could still be just a fancy golden calendar.

Anyway the German Wikipedia page about Goldhüte [1] says the ritual significance was attributed because there are tomb paintings depicting similar hats being worn in some religious/cultic context.

[1:] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldhut

How about comparing it to a Rolex watch?

If you describe our society in the tone archeologists describe old societies it would be something along the line like:

"The rolex watch was an instrument to calculate the time of the day and time of the year. It was worn to ritual conventions, dances and mating rituals. Thus it's rather primitive workings compared to the electronic and quantum technologies this civilization had access to it's value derives from the precious metals used and in the craftmanship needed to create this artifact which is in its working on par with the high technologies of this era. It was also worn by James Bond."

This is absolutely spot-on. Brilliant!

love it :)

but the "ritual" part - I think the definition of that word is too broad if you can say that a Rolex is used for "ritual purposes"

"Being made of gold indicates that it was at least not an every day tool."

Because of fragility or because costs of the material? Gold is one of the earliest metals used. I don't know out of my head what alloys (1000 BCE!) they could have used to create sub-milimeter wall thickness (0.6mm!). If they had been able to do this out of iron, it would be dust by now. Remember from Chemistry class? Gold does not react easily.

I once heared in a documentary that "ritual purposes" is a catch-all phrase and means: "We have no idea why they made or used it".

There are people who study and investigate this kind of things who probably have good reasons to believe this object served some kind of ritualistic purpose.

> What evidence is there for that? […] Why is there never any proof or evidence required for saying an artifact has a religious purpose?

From a related Wikipedia page:

It is assumed that the Golden Hats served as religious insignia for the deities or priests of a sun cult then widespread in Central Europe. Their use as head-gear is strongly supported by the fact that the three of four examples have a cap-like widening at the bottom of the cone, and that their openings are oval (not round), with diameters and shapes roughly equivalent to those of a human skull. The figural depiction of an object resembling a conical hat on a stone slab of the King's Grave at Kivik, Southern Sweden, strongly supports their association with religion and cult, as does the fact that the known examples appear to have been deposited (buried) carefully.

I'm sure you can find more precise details if you dig deep enough.

> Which sun-god?

You can read more about this cult here[1] and here[2].

> This is a calendar. It's proven to be a calendar. We know how it works as a calendar. It's a tool for predicting celestial events.

Do not project the hyper-rationalistic character of our current society to societies and civilizations of the pre-industrial era. People in the ancient times were not as rational and utilitarian as we are. Everything was permeated by religion, superstition and magic.

[1]: https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...

[2]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnja9z/scientists-reconst...

> Do not project the hyper-rationalistic character of our current society to societies and civilizations of the pre-industrial era. People in the ancient times were not as rational and utilitarian as we are.

I think it's much, much more the other way around. Modern archaeologists have inherited their Victorian predecessors attitudes, who tended to look on primitive societies as backward and superstitious; "nasty, brutal and short".

> Everything was permeated by religion, superstition and magic.

I don't think there's much evidence to support this. Lots of speculation and interpretation, but not much actual evidence. A girl wearing a "sun disk" is interpreted as being a "priestess of a sun religion". On what basis? Can't it just be decoration?

Again, saying "ritual" or "religious" is easy because it requires no proof. If you said that the disk was a tool, you'd be required to specify what the tool was and what it was used for. But you're not required to say what ritual, or how the item was used in the ritual. It's a different standard of proof.

It would be better if archeologists admitted that they don't know what the thing is for, until there's more evidence or better understanding of the culture.

Thinking of rituals and rationalism as polar opposites is the projection that shouldn't be applied. Ancient rituals should be seen as an early encoding of knowledge, not as an antithesis to rationalism. Some of that knowledge, or perhaps much of it, must have been utterly wrong if it only evolved through random mutations, deliberate nonconformism and natural selection. But it's easy to see how a group with the ritual of "eat your dead" would soon be displaced by a group with the ritual of "cook your dead before eating" who would still be outperformed in the long run by a group with "hide your dead somewhere where they can't give you nasty infections".

If you have never heard of a distinction between the natural and the supernatural then every learned act is a ritual and every ritual is a productive act.

Sure there's a tendency to dismiss every artifact that doesn't have an obvious purpose as ritualistic in the most hand-wavy way imaginable, but it's not wrong, it's just a bit too easy perhaps.

This is the thing. I don't understand where that interpretation of ancient culture comes from (except Victorian attitudes, of course).

These are biologically modern humans we're talking about. They're as smart as us, as curious as us. They have a working knowledge of crafts that would put modern artisans to shame. They make beautiful, intricate, functional items. For instance, they understand the movement of the stars well enough to make a functional calendar.

Why do we assume that they're irrational and ritualistic? What evidence do we have for that?

What evidence do we have that they can't make a distinction between the natural and the supernatural?

And yes, I think interpreting everything we don't understand the purpose of as "ritualistic" is not only wrong, it's actually harming our understanding of these people.

So you trust archeologists without a second thought when they say that this object was used as a calendar, but you suddenly don't trust them anymore when they tell you it also had a religious function?

> I think it's much, much more the other way around. Modern archaeologists have inherited their Victorian predecessors attitudes, who tended to look on primitive societies as backward and superstitious; "nasty, brutal and short".

Looks like you have an underlying prejudice against history and archeology practitioners, you already thought about these issues and you already have strong opinions on them. That explains your first comment. You might very well have your reasons in thinking this, but when you say

> I don't think there's much evidence to support this. Lots of speculation and interpretation, but not much actual evidence.

I'm sorry, but I really don't know what to tell you. Saying that there's "evidence" would be an understatement. Just pick up whatever history book. I suggest you read about pre-Colombian societies in central America, or shamanism in Africa, or even about religion wars in Europe in the 15th and 16th century. Just to get you started…

it's not a matter of trust. They have shown evidence that it was a calendar, because they figured out how it worked as a calendar. They provide no eveidence that it served a religious function.

My "prejudice" stems from re-enactment, and dealing with archeologists who were experts at digging things up, but completely useless at interpretation. They didn't know the first thing about any of the crafts of the time, had never used a forge or even seen a blacksmith at work, yet routinely intepreted artifacts from a dig where a forge was present. Instead of admitting ignorance, or asking for expert advice, they'd label stuff as "ritual".

So yes, I'm a bit prejudiced. And reading a report about an artfact where it's cheerfully labelled as "ritual" with no proof or evidence provided, does get me ranting in the comments.

> I don't think there's much evidence to support this. Lots of speculation and interpretation, but not much actual evidence.

I dunno, imagine trying to explain current year to a victorian sociologist/anthropologist, or a space alien in the large Magellanic cloud looking at a video feed of current year 170,000 years from now when it reaches them. People wave around these preposterous magic wands, knock over statues, banhammer people for saying taboo things. Functionally speaking a lot of weird human behavior can be categorized into "religious" whether or not there as an actual religion involved.

The Gold Hat: I saw it two summers ago in Berlin, and wasn't convinced at the time it has any Calendrical purpose. Could have been coincidence. Could have been some standard of clothing from that era (aka everyone walks around with calendars for the same reason everyone now walks around with small radio linked computers in their pockets; monkeys are weird; maybe this was some honcho's top hat). Personally I find the previously accepted idea these things were post decorations to be about as likely as magic hats. The past is a foreign country.

maybe assigning students to faculties in a bronze-age educational facility

> Why is there never any proof or evidence required for saying an artifact has a religious purpose?

It's there if you bothered to look. 2 minutes following links gets me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hats

"Their use as head-gear is strongly supported by the fact that the three of four examples have a cap-like widening at the bottom of the cone, and that their openings are oval (not round), with diameters and shapes roughly equivalent to those of a human skull"

Further: "The figural depiction of an object resembling a conical hat on a stone slab of the King's Grave at Kivik, Southern Sweden, strongly supports their association with religion and cult" which links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_Grave

I can't see the hats but whatever, I assume people aren't actually stupid.

so it's a hat-calendar. Why is that religious?

Read the wiki link I posted. It tells you why they believe it likely religious.

> It is assumed[by whom?] that the golden hats served as religious insignia for the deities or priests of a sun cult then widespread in Central Europe. Their use as head-gear is strongly supported by the fact that the three of four examples have a cap-like widening at the bottom of the cone, and that their openings are oval (not round), with diameters and shapes roughly equivalent to those of a human skull. The figural depiction of an object resembling a conical hat on a stone slab of the King's Grave at Kivik, Southern Sweden, strongly supports their association with religion and cult, as does the fact that the known examples appear to have been deposited (buried) carefully.[citation needed]

There's an "assumption" that it's relgious, which is "strongly supported" by a resemblance to a carving on another site. That other site is a burial mound, no evidence for any religious purpose. So how is this "strongly supporting" a relgious interpretation?

There's evidence it's a hat. There's evidence it's a calendar. There's no evidence it's religious.

But sure, I didn't read the wiki page.

Why is it so absolutely awful that an ancient artifact has religious purposes?

It's a valid question, the frustrating thing is it had an answer and the guy didn't bother to look for it.

the guy did bother, but all he found was assumption and ignorance. Like in this reply.

Archeologists must publish, too, so there’s pressure to say more than “we don’t know”, but in my very humble opinion, “a tool” isn’t the best description.

It may be a tool, but why would they make it in gold, and so delicate? Why would they bury such a tool in a seemingly ceremonial way, on a stand, with axes leaning it to it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Hat_of_Schifferstadt#Pr...)?

Also, how would they keep track of time on this, if its primary purpose was use as a tool?

I don't know. But I notice that we're not required to answer any of those questions if "it's ritual"

In pure form, gold is a fairly useless metal, except for being hard to obtain, being shiny and staying shiny.

That’s why I think it historically, had 3 only uses: as money, to show wealth, and to show power.

Also “ritual” is not a well-defined concept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual says it may include coronations, can be part of warfare, etc), so declaring something as “ritual” most of the time isn’t a bold claim. In this case, I would think it mostly says “it doesn’t look like a form of money, and we don’t see people at the time use this to make a living”.

Gold isn't useless. It's very easy to work, especially by beating. It doesn't tarnish or rust, and takes a great polished surface with not much effort. It is heavy, but you can beat it to a really thin surface easily (it doesn't get brittle with beating like so many other metals), so you can make it thinner to offset the weight.

If you were going to make a hat-calendar, for whatever reason, then thinly-beaten gold is not the worst material to choose (evidence: it survived!).

Of course, we have plastic or aluminium as alternatives, and gold has a high value as currency for us, so it would be a terrible choice of material now.

Well there is a vaste amount of evidence and history regarding religious use of hats. It's not a stretch to assume this hat was used by a priest or someone in a leadership role, ancient Egypt has volumes of different immense hat types worn by priests and Pharaohs, Christianity does as well, the pope's various Mitre hat's for example, worn for thousands of years. High priests and priestess's of many types of religions, ancient and modern, use hats to signify rank, especially those made with gold, rare materials, and decorated with significance.

You also see this a lot in translations of undeciphered scripts. Often there's a period of speculative translations that really make no sense, but are justified with "it's just religion, of course it's esoteric".

Example in hieroglyphics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obeliscus_Pamphilius?wprov=sfl...

Example in an undeciphered script: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decipherment_of_rongorongo#F...

Up to some point in not so distant (around Newton's time in Europe) past you can read "ritual purposes" as "scientific purposes"

Looking at it I had, for the first time in my life in a museum, the feeling of looking at a fake.

I recently finished reading "The Art of Forgery" by Noah Charney and that is the exact same feeling I had. Great book, very interesting, but it will leave you curious and perhaps a little doubtful about all art that you look at afterwards. Things like this are so wild and unlikely (to me at least) that when something like it comes up with zero provenance it just raises a whole lot of questions.

I had a similar kind of "something isn't right here" feeling when I saw the mold cape (linked in wikipedia article on Golden Hats). It was so tiny and would have been so cumbersome to wear that there might be something we are missing. These things might look vaguely like hats, but they don't really make sense as "clothing" even for spiritual purposes.

The Wikipedia article states that it’s a cover for a hat, not meant to be worn.

Yes, I read that part, including the test on the other ones found, but it still doesn't quite make sense to me - presumably there would have been the hat inside it (oddly) shaped the same way as this, and/or what exactly is a "cover" for a hat?

> the mold cape (linked in wikipedia article on Golden Hats)

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

I honestly didn't get that feeling but I am genuinely obsessed with museums and landing on the museum Island, I had spent the entire day lurking through the museums and by the time I got to the gold had, my brain had turned into melted jelly, I could barely focus my eyes at that point.

It wasn't actually a hat, it wwnt onto a hat you were already wearing, like a headpiece. And even then, you'd only wear it a few times a year at ceremonies.

I had a similar feeling walking through a lot of the Pergamon

> The amount of gold used would form a cube of only 3 cm dimensions. The average thickness is 0.6 mm.

Modelling the hat as a cylinder surface of length 745 mm and 88% gold, the resulting radius is about 1 cm.

it weighs 490gr and the gold is 87.7% pure, that results in cube of side 2.8cm

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=490+*+0.877+grams+of+g...

Every time I see these amazing works of art I wonder why they didn't just focus on building a steel lathe [0] as soon as possible and kick start the industrial revolution. It probably had more to do with geography, transportation, culture and unequal development of the planet than the skill of the craftsmen at the time.

[0] If you have a lathe you can build more steam machines and locomotives which then enable you to transport coal and steel to build and power even more lathes and steam machines and locomotives...

Even if tools looking like the lathe existed as early as the Bronze Age, I think the knowledge to smelt steel wasn't available until much later. And even then if you smelt steel and build a lathe, the industrial revolution was possible because steam power was also known.

I wonder what people millenia from now will make of of the Stanley Cup.

It's a silver hat used in religious rituals, the bowl goes on your head. The names on the side are religious figures, gods and priests.

My dear colleague, the bowl doesn't go on your head. There was a period local rite of keg standing* and the Stanley Cup, judging from the materials (evidence for an expanded elite trade network), is obviously an apparatus for the temple version of this ritual.

* In Great White North, head goes on bowl.

ObCanada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCcWzLAcv4o

> religious rituals

Far to generous...in this instance it’s a “sun cult”

It’s kind of funny the worship of the sun, which a) actually exists; and b) is responsible for life on earth (not to mention stars generally are responsible for the elements that make up life) is cult status...but if you worship a “God” that is entirely faith based and more akin to a invisible friend, that is a sacred religion.

> It’s kind of funny the worship of the sun, which a) actually exists; and b) is responsible for life on earth (not to mention stars generally are responsible for the elements that make up life) is cult status...but if you worship a “God” that is entirely faith based and more akin to a invisible friend, that is a sacred religion.

It is funny. But then again, almost everything in society relies on storytelling like that. The mainstream narrative is always flawed or biased, but everybody pretends it isn't.

“And as further proof this was a religious artifact they also describe an event in 1980 as the Miracle on Ice to which there was much celebration most likely as this was the start of rising temperatures that rid the land of frozen water”

To be fair, most hard core sports fans bear many resemblances to religious zealots.

Motel of the Mysteries is a great book for imagining what people in the future will think about what we leave behind.

https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/039...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2016/07/15/i...

I don't understand. Is stuff like this supposed to be serious? Even if there was a disaster that completely destroys the communicative link between us and a future people (say, because humans have to return to subsistence hunting/gathering), there is an outrageous amount of written language everywhere as durable artifacts. Any future industrialized (or hell, even agrarian) society will be able to learn to read our language and understand huge amounts. These sorts of widespread written artifacts just didn't exist before the printing press, so pretending that looking at our current era by future people will be like us looking at 1000 BC makes no sense.

The only way to change this is to go to the far future when tectonic activity plausibly erases most artifacts. But once you've looking millions of years in the future, you're talking about a different species and everything about interpretability goes out the window.

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