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Comment by Camillo | Hacker News Reader

> Somehow, these blueberry-sized beads made their way from what is now Venice, Italy, to the Brooks Range mountains of Alaska at some point during the mid-to-late 15th century, according to new research published in American Antiquity.

They somehow managed to put the "what is now" hedge in the worst possible place in that sentence.

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Yeah - why there and not "what is now the Brooks Range mountains in what is now Alaska"? Venice was still Venice even back then. Especially back then when it was a major international player, not a damp place populated with tourists.

Hey, the Brooks range is not populated with tourists! But you are right about the damp.

Haha, I think he meant Venice but I honestly thought GP meant Brooks on first read. But even at its moments of greatest population the Brooks Range was never a major international player except in terms of historical significance to the peopling of North America. See: https://www.blm.gov/programs/cultural-heritage-and-paleontol...

I find the placement fine. How would you write it?

Not OP - I don't think this statement needs that phrase. Venice was Venice 500 years ago.

Haha, missed that.

While Venice was Venice, Italy wasn’t yet Italy.

It was. "Italy" (Italia to the natives) is both the name of the modern country (which didn't exist back then) and the peninsula (which did).

At the time Venice was the capital of the Republic of Venice, so its inhabitants would think of themselves as first and foremost Venetians.

Also Venice isn't located strictly on the peninsula.

But, the sentence says “what is now Venice”. It’s Venice now, ant it was Venice then. It’s been Venice for the past 1000 years. I guess that it wasn’t “Venice, Italy”, but “Venice, The Venetian Republic” then, but I ascribe this oddity to there being “Paris, Texas” for the USA audience while the rest of the world knows that when you say Paris, you mean the capital of France and not “Paris, the nail salon down the road”. Likewise, 500 years ago, it wasn’t “Venice, the Venetian Republic” since anyone who would understand what Venice or The Venetian Republic is, would not need any qualifying of Venezia, or whatever local name they used for that city.

Anyway, the OP referred to the weirdest place in the sentence for that qualification because nothing else was qualified (was Alaska even Alaska back then? ;)

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