Ancient wisdom: Oldest full sentence in first alphabet is about head lice | Hacker News Reader

Ancient wisdom: Oldest full sentence in first alphabet is about head lice

arstechnica.com

24 pointsbenbreen8 comments

The paper (not linked per standard journalistic practice) is really interesting and highly readable. It's "A Canaanite's Wish to Eradicate Lice on an Inscribed Ivory Comb from Lachish": https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364318023_A_Canaani...

Here's their transliteration (brackets denote damaged letters)

  ytš ḥṭ ḏ lqml ś'[r] [w]zqt

glossed as

  ytš      root out, jussive mood (indicating command)
  ḥṭ       tooth/tusk (metonymically, comb)
  ḏ        this
  l        direct object marker
  qml      lice
  ś'[r]    hair
  [w]      and
  zqt      beard

I thought it was cool that the third letter that looks like a W is so close to its modern form, shin ש.‎

Lice are very special animals, and are not given enough credit.

Head lice are not known to carry any disease.

They help modulate the immune system. At the same time, they are hypothesized to improve immune response to tick-borne disease, such as Lyme.

They are fascinating to observe if you have the time and patience.

They are not much trouble to take care of and to control their population size.

One of the sweetest pets I've ever had was a head louse. I miss you, Bob.

>they are hypothesized to improve immune response to tick-borne disease, such as Lyme.

I'm not sure if I'm reading you right, but would this also mean that people who already have Lyme Disease might see an improvement?

I have wondered if the use of (combined urine and feces) fresh Cow-dung[0] in the hair/bead, was to discorage lice.

[0] Cow dung : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_dung

>”The team sent a sample from the comb to the University of Oxford's radiometric laboratory, but the carbon was too poorly preserved to accurately date the sample”.

Title a bit clickbait.

Not clear when inscribed, so 3700 years ago is erroneous.

> Title a bit clickbait. > Not clear when inscribed, so 3700 years ago is erroneous.

I don't know how accurate the date is, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily entirely unclear when it was inscribed just because a sample couldn't be dated. They should be able to make some reasonable guesses by successfully dating other artifacts found at the same site/depth or based on when people would have known about and used the alphabet found on the comb. If ~3,700 years is the best guess based on the available evidence we have is it really clickbait?

Some quotes from another article linked in the first article:

"It came from a level of the site dating back roughly 2700 years but from the style of the writing engraved on the comb, Garfinkel’s team argues this particular artefact is about 1000 years older."

"It isn’t even clear exactly when the alphabet was invented: Many researchers argue for a date around 3800 years ago, but there is some evidence the alphabet was in use as early as 4300 years ago."

"The previous oldest known sentence is about 400 years younger than the one on the comb."

Discussed here as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33535857 18 comments

I love how the engraving gets progressively tilted, and the author misjudged the space available so had to "tack on" a word on the third line.

Looks like me writing on unlined paper.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com