Rare Bronze Age spearhead discovered intact in Jersey | Hacker News Reader

Rare Bronze Age spearhead discovered intact in Jersey

bbc.com

59 pointsdiodorus26 comments

If you are interested in the far past, you might consider taking look at an interactive timeline of ancient history I created using data from Wikipedia: https://www.chronoflotimeline.com/timeline/shared/4392/Ancie...

This is really cool, thanks!

This is great, and something that I would get completely lost in for hours. I've become much more interested in ancient history after recently getting the book "Secret Britain: Unearthing Our Mysterious Past" and I'm keen to explore some more history around Europe at that time

This is great visualization.

Mehrgarh [1] one of the oldest city in South Asia (pre 7000 BCE) is missing.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh

Thanks for the suggestion. Mehrgarh is a very important archeological site. But according to wikipedia ancient history has a very specific meaning. If my interpretation is correct, ancient history starts from the beginning of writing or recorded history, which Mehrgarh predates. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history

The boundary conditions are somewhat porous here. Take a look at the related page [1] about proto-writing. I think to some extent there's a philosophical and ontological frame that you have to put at the boundary; personally, I'm more inclined to add some slack into my understanding to accommodate for new artifacts we find that push back the earliest artifacts of recorded history. Still, even now, we have evidence of proto-writing at 6600BC at least (Jiahu shells), as well as the Vinca script and Dispilio tablet around 5200BC.

Thinking about this stuff stirs the same childlike wonder I used to have as a kindergartener thinking about dinosaurs and trying to comprehend or imagine what life must have been like so many millions of years ago. I very selfishly hope (but have no proof) that we will find earlier and earlier evidence of proto-writing. What a grand mystery and story!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing#Proto-writi...

The Tower of Babel story comes into pretty good context when you realize that the people writing it down (most likely in the 5th-6th century BC in Babylon) were living among the ruined towers of a Babylonian empire from a millennium before them.

"ancient history starts from the beginning of writing or recorded history"

Perhaps an unconscious bias of literate cultures. In the Canadian high arctic years ago, scientists discovered evidence of "paleo-eskimo" (bad name) peoples in the soil. These included more primitive hunting tools than were used by the Inuit people who were there when Europeans arrived.

They took to the tools to the village elders excited to show what they had found. The news story reported that the elders said (paraphrase) "Yes we know. These are the Tuliit people. We have songs about them" :-0

> Perhaps an unconscious bias of literate cultures

It seems like a quite conscious decision. That's how categorizing things works. You have to have a definition, however vague and exception ridden, otherwise your words don't refer to anything.

I think some would argue that oral history counts as "recording", so this is history.

More generally, history (as a field) deals with those records, where archaeology as a field deals with the artifacts. They obviously interact and inform each other to varying extents, but are distinct in their practices and habits.

This is a controversial, and in my opinion (as an archaeologist), a rather incorrect definition. It's certainly the traditional one, but most archaeologists today don't use it because of all the theoretical issues it would entail, like Europeans "bringing history" in 1492 to an entire continent when nothing about the nature of our sources changes at that time.

I've worked on both sides of the "writing line" and frankly, the process is very much the same in most cases.

This looks excellent, however it feels weird when reading "Cucuteni-Trypillian culture in Romania and Ukraine" given that for example Ukraine exists from like 1917? I think more accurate would be just referring to geographical areas rather than administrative areas of current time. Borders change and countries come and go whereas Europe as a continent is not moving that quick.

Apparently the term was used for the region and people from the 16th and 17th centuries, and it was commonly referred to by that name in the Russian Empire as a geographic region rather than an administrative one. So it seems to have started as a geographic name and then converted into being an administrative one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine#History

I am sorry I hope I didn't offend anyone. The page refers to times between 5500 and 2750 BCE, so it is unlikely that any country (even as a concept) existed that has any links to 16th or 17th century.

Ah, so you only want to sue era-appropriate names. What was that region called in 5500 BCE?

It seems to me using the current names of places for finds is pretty standard, and gives a modern audience a decent chance of understanding it. Is the a particular reason you object to it in this specific case?

I always read these kinds of things as having an implied "in the area currently known as"....

e.g. To use an example local to me - plenty people would talk about "The Romans in Scotland" even though there is no historical overlap between the two.

It seems like a practical shortcut to describe the location. Border changes on scales that would actually make a difference do not happen that often.

Last changes that I could think of are the occupation of Crimea in 2014 and the split-off of South Sudan in 2011.

I was recently searching for something that made a comprehensive timeline of history. This is amazing!

What I find most fascinating about this, is that how one could pretty much use this 'product' so many years later. In a day & age where products have turned into fashion and only last for a few years, I wonder if we're moving in the right direction. Are there any companies out there that try to build useful products that last for ever/long time?

That's a pretty interesting observation, I had not thought of that at all.

/r/buyitforlife

When looking to buy something this is the first thing I append to my search phrase. If it's too expensive I'll just forget about it and buy the cheapest first and see how it goes.

Two of my recent bifl purchases, a cereal bowl and a water bottle, while not expensive per se, are certainly more expensive than their generic counterparts.

I'm hoping it'll last me a lifetime, though only time will tell.

> She said: "This spearhead is completely different from everything else we have so we're wondering if it was deposited as part of a ritual or an offering.

Something I noticed some time ago: when historians and archeologists don't know what something is, they tend to default to sayings it may be for ritual use. I have no basis on which to disagree with them, but it's something that I see everywhere in historic writing now what I've noticed it, and I find it quite a funny assumption.

I am not an archeologist, but I suspect that this is due in part to how and where intact objects are discovered. Usually a vase, statue, figurine, or other object will only survive in tact over thousands of years if it's left in a sequestered area and treated with extreme care. Further Archeologists tend to focus on objects that appear to bear cultural significance and hence are unlikely to report on "common" items.

There is a somewhat nascent set of research which focuses on the common items and their leftovers. Even cities annihilated by time leave behind pottery, and currency fragments in the dirt. You can even correlate these fragments with other cites to identify the extant of a trade network.

Aww. I got excited when I first thought it was New Jersey.

Yeah, the bbc.com source should have tipped me off. If it had been nypost.com ...

I read that as New Jersey too! I was hoping we'd find out about ancient american metallurgy.

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