Archaeology sensation: An ancient city reemerges in Iraq reservoir | Hacker News Reader

Archaeology sensation: An ancient city reemerges in Iraq reservoir

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47 pointsdiodorus15 comments

Possibly dumb question... Did they know the city was there when they built the Mosul Dam and flooded the area to create the present reservoir?

Not dumb. Yes, they did know of it. But they did not get opportunity to study it. So now they have to hustle before it goes under again.

They had to do Abu Hureyra in a mad rush before it went under. That was a site occupied at the time the bolide strike in 10,818 BCE itinitiated the 1300-year Younger Dryas freeze, and burnt it to cinders and glass beads.

I've read about this before. I don't know if they knew, but I do know that they were headed for a water crisis and ancient cities don't have any value if your population thirsts to death.

Iraq doesn't really have any natural springs so they rely on rivers who are controlled by other nations. It's a tough spot to be in.

Also covered in the Smithsonian Magazine site :

Drought in Iraq Reveals 3,400-Year-Old City [1]

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/drought-in-iraq-re...

Seems like an exciting time for archaeology. It must be interesting to live in these regions with such long history of civilization. Do these findings excite those living there, or are they more like "meh"?

Not really, quite opposite, archeology is very expensive.

Istanbul desperately needed metro, but new tunnel was delayed by 15 years for excavations. If new site is found during construction, many builders just pay off archaeologists, and pour concrete over it.

True for most of the middle east. Egypt is an interesting counterexample, both because tourism is so important for their economy, and because for most of their history moving water uphill was really expensive, so if you just move a bit off the river valley you can be fairly certain that no-one ever built anything there, so you always have room to develop without having to stumble on ruins.

Unless you're in one of the few island nations that were settled recently like NZ or Madagascar, there's a very good chance your country has stuff that's just as old as this. Many of the ruins under Tucson slightly predate this site, for example. If you're in Australia, there are important sites that predate this by tens of thousands of years.

There's no denying that near eastern stuff is cool, but it's good to be aware of the stuff in your own backyard as well.

Can’t speak for them, but I know that people in certain regions of Spain don’t care much about Roman excavations. There are so many, it’s almost a nuisance to some.

I would think they'd be happier to have enough water.

Unfortunately these regions are war-torn and often suffer from drought and famine. It's crazy how the cradle of civilization has come down to this.

> It's crazy how the cradle of civilization has come down to this.

-- and should be a beacon of caution to those of us in young nations --

Interesting that you use -- in your comment(s). Any particular reason why?

-- habit from irc/forum days - was in a quake clan with members that punctuated this way - also found it helpful to find my place quickly on irc in irssi - also i think its easy to read - do you find it annoying? --

> do you find it annoying? --

Oh not at all. It's just interesting because for a moment I thought it's to confuse web scrapers somehow (i.e., make it harder for HN comment scrapers to sentiment-analysis your comments).

I didn't use IRC but sometimes I wish it'd be nice to have signatures on HN, just like the forum days!

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