Roman Tyrian purple snail dye found in UK for first time
bbc.com
bbc.com
To think about the frustration the original owner might have felt when those were lost and now they're found all these years later for us to study and learn from.
Now historians realize that often the ads may be more interesting than the articles.
I don't know why this was a thing, but I remember her telling me she got the idea from a local library that preserved its periodicals, so maybe it started at libraries. Personally, were I to collect magazines, I would want the ads intact. Not because I love adverts (quite the opposite, actually), but my collector brain's notion of preserving a thing in its original state is at odds with the idea of removing the ads.
I was blown away by the ads.
From useless gadgets that will probably be fun for an hour or two only to very expensive ones aimed at people with clearly a ton of disposable income.
Lawnmowers you can ride on?! A thing just to detect rings in the sand? How rich are these people? A watch that sets itself to an atomic clock? An astronaut pen that writes underwater? Telescopes in your back yard?!
The sheer volume and variety of ads told me that the economy of that place was in a totally different league from my own.
I can get the comics on Kindle. But the ads for Arachnophobia are priceless.
It's such a shame we can re-live the past through history but there is no way we can see the future.
It makes me think like in every moment of our lives we're on the tip of the ice berg of humanity.
And we still end up being history anyway.
That's some serious pro Las Vegas marriage propaganda.
Then, we have Tallahassee, from Zombieland:
> There's a box of Twinkies in that grocery store. Not just any box of Twinkies, the last box of Twinkies that anyone will enjoy in the whole universe. Believe it or not, Twinkies have an expiration date. Some day very soon, Life's little Twinkie gauge is gonna go... empty.
Seems to me this ought to spur on further research into the chemical.
(Given its nature and the way I've seen it prepared these days (on video, not in person) that it would have been much less stable (many organic dyes are very unstable).
This stability also suggests it must have been rather stable in use (togas dyed with it, etc.). Its stability would have made it even more valuable than otherwise.
That stuff was worth more than it's weight in gold, someone must have been pissed at losing that much of it.
circumvents freedom of expression by giving no consequences to the individual if they someone procure the material themselves
but leverages the unlimited right to regulate commerce and unlimited right to tax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia_tinctorum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseda_luteola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria
These give red, yellow, and blue respectively, which are the primary colors of the traditional RYB subtractive color model:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYB_color_model
However, RYB is a poor match for human vision. The better subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta, and yellow. Mixing red and blue produces a dull, desaturated purple even when you're starting with saturated primaries, and the three main natural dyes are not particularly saturated. Tyrian purple was esteemed because it produced a visibly better purple than mixing woad and madder, which makes a purplish brown. Likewise, crimson from Kermes insects produces a visibly better red than madder:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermes_(dye)
Poor people would still have colored clothing, because all clothing was expensive hand-made clothing back then, so the marginal cost of dying with the common plant dyes was relatively small. But rich people could afford expensive dyes, and afford multiple applications of the cheap dyes. In some cases there were also sumptuary laws restricting use of expensive dyes. Rich people's clothing would have looked far more garish by our standards.
Many of the dyes used in antiquity degraded quickly, so the clothes had to be dyed again periodically.
Tyrian purple was valued not only because it was hard to obtain, but also because the clothes dyed with it kept their color for a very long time. The next most resistant dye was the blue from indigo or woad, then the red from beetles. The other colors faded quickly.
Bret Deveraux has a fascinating, in-depth series about this: https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t...
To summarize from what I can remember: it wasn’t even quite that clothing was “expensive”. You didn’t buy clothing unless you were absurdly rich. You didn’t even buy cloth. You bought raw fabric, usually wool or linen, and you had to spin it into yarn or thread and then weave it into cloth. Spinning was the vast majority of the actual work you’d do though. And by “you” I meant if you were a woman, because this was always considered women’s work. And highly respected as such, to the point where even wealthy high status women took pride in still doing it or at least claiming to, or at least other people claimed it of women they admired.
You could get legal cover for divorce if married to a worker in the production of purple, from the rotting murex, given the awful smell it gave... (Production is in general "costly", but not always with similar legal sides.)
Remember that artistic pygments (so, for goods that also involved «status symbol») had traditionally been quite toxic - using arsenic, lead... That was the available technology, and it involved drawbacks and compromises.
Edit: sorry, not just artistic: people poisoned themselves just to wear makeup. "Met Gala"s involved a drastic amount of sacrifice.
The story goes that Roman senators would wear a purple stripe across their toga as a symbol of their status. Julius Caesar, not to be outdone, started wearing an all-purple toga. Which then became the mark of the emperor.
Is anyone surprised how geographically stable these kinds of gathering places are?
When the baths were in use, there were also two separate settlements - the milecastle on the north bank forming part of the defensive line of Hadrian's Wall, and the civilian settlement of Luguvalium on the well-protected south bank. Being directly adjacent to the Eden bridge, the site would have been convenient for both settlements.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Roman+Archaeological+sit...
The first evidence we have of purple or red shoes used for kings is more than 3000 years old.
Etruscans (an ancient Italian population) used red shoes for their kings[1], albeit its uncertain whether they could be purple which is more likely. This habit then moved to the roman kings and later the Roman emperors.
It is uncertain when it went from purple to red, but it's likely a practical reason: when going outside you don't wear slippers but leather boots, which were very easy to get in a red color, purple? Not really. You can easily find purple used anywhere in clothing, but not shoes.
And who else claims (or claimed) to be the heir of the Roman empire other than the Pope?
The emperor of byzanthium [2], notice how he's the only one depicted with red/purple shoes.
The German emperor [3].
The Tsars [4] (Tsar word comes from Caesar, same as Kaiser) too claimed the inheritance of the Byzantine (and thus Roman) empires after the Ottomans took the city.
[1] https://www.pope2you.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Etruscan...
[2] https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/QytBnfnDoP8aDE-rm3eYGbTYCpk=/...
[3] https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/field/im...
[4] https://www.mediastorehouse.com.au/p/731/tsar-boot-antiquiti...
The Byzantine emperors carried on many Roman traditions, including wearing purple. The imperial birth chambers were decorated in purple (actually a purple stone), giving rise to the term “born in the purple” to describe their legitimate heirs, these days used to describe any old toff.
I'm not sure that follows. Who specifically "inherited" the Right to Rule from Roman Empire was always more of a political claim. The concept of "legitimacy" in this regard is dubious. That said, the original Northwest European territory of the Merovingians-Carolingians had a strong political connection to Roman Imperial Rulership. Not to say that this necessarily translated to "legitimate inheritance", but arguably no territory outside of Byzantium had a stronger historical political claim.
In 298 the emperor Diocleziano split the empire in two different administrative parts, the western one, culturally latin, and the eastern one, culturally greek.
The emperor Costantine I moved the capital from Rome to Costantinople in the 320s, the city was called also New Rome and the greek inhabitants of the eastern empire called themselves "Romei", and the balkans have been called then Rumelia a term that spread even further under the Ottomans. Even today many turks use the term "Rumeli" for balkan people (as Balkans is a term introduced two centuries ago by a german geographer).
By the end of the 4th century the split was basically complete and the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzanthium was Giustiano in the 7th century.
I think that the history of the Eastern Roman Empire has enough "de jure" claims for the inheritance.
This also connects to Russia.
By the fall of Costantinople in 1453 no country claimed to inherit the throne of the eastern roman empire but Russia. The Tsar Ivan III married the last granddaughter of the last emperor (Constantine III) thus uniting the bloodlines. The crown of the byzanthine empire was then given to the Tsars as it was the last country in Europe of greek-orthodox descendance (visible still today, both in religion, culture and language) thus claiming to inherit the throne of the roman emperors more than a thousand years after.
I do absolutely agree with you about the legitimacy, I don't think there's necessarily any nor I think it's relevant, but I find this extremely interesting nonetheless.
> The emperor Costantine I moved the capital
> and the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzant[]ium was Giust[in]iano in the 7th century.
This is a surreal approach to the names of historical figures. Diocleziano and Giustiniano are not their names in English, the language you're speaking, nor are they the actual names of the people. "Costantine" appears to be a hybrid of the modern Italian name Costantino with the English name Constantine, and analogously for "Costantinople".
> the latest Latin-born emperor of Byzanthium
> The crown of the byzanthine empire
There is no H in Byzantium, the Greek original uses a tau and not a theta, and the modern Italian noun and adjective are bisanzio and bizantino. I really can't figure out where you're getting this spelling.
> and the greek inhabitants of the eastern empire called themselves "Romei"
That isn't Greek; surely they called themselves rhomaioi?
What's up with the Italian imperialism from "epolanski"?
I know, right? Almost as if he's Roman Polanski
(I'll show myself out now)
There was bo bloodline though. Until quite late (much to its detriment) the empire maintained some of its original “republican” character and the emperors derived their legitimacy from the will of God and the people rather than inherited it (which resulted in endless civil wars). Unlike in Europe in the medieval and the succeeding periods your bloodline/dynasty was secondary to your ability to take and hold power effectively making emperors closer to modern dictators than kings in some ways.
To be fair there was nothing unusual from the Roman perspective about there being 2 emperors. Even during the Byzantine period it was not particularly uncommon for heirs to be crowned as “co-emperors”. Despite effectively becoming a monarchy the empire retained some “republican” traits with the emperor reigning with the consent of God and the people of Rome.
Not in any useful sense.
Cyrus the Great was literally the King of Sumer and Akkad. Did he know where Akkad was?
Tsai Ing-wen is literally the President of China. You might object that China doesn't even have a president, but the administrative and historical facts are against you.
The Byzantines called themselves Roman. They thought of themselves as Roman. To them, the constitution of their political order dated to 753 BC with the founding of Rome, even after they lost Rome. It wasn't just a label. For example, Latin remained is use in law in the empire, many hundreds of years after they lost the west. Emperor Heraclius around 610 AD would undertake a project to start translating all the old Latin laws into Greek (even though he may have spoke Latin himself natively). If nothing else, the Roman self-identity is important for understanding how they saw themselves in their own historiography.
Neither your first paragraph nor your second one manages to distinguish modern China from ancient Rome.
Calling yourself Roman won't make you Roman any more than calling yourself Australian will make you Australian.
Are you kidding? It's her formal title right now. She can't call herself anything else!
If we're going to insist on dealing with "historical and administrative facts", shouldn't we at least know the facts?
> “We don’t have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,” Tsai told the BBC. “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan. We are a successful democracy … We deserve respect from China,” she said. “We have a separate identity and we’re a country of our own.”
> Beijing has refused to deal directly with Tsai on the grounds that she has not, like her predecessor, accepted the so-called 1992 consensus which says that Taiwan and China are part of “one China”. That vague agreement leaves it up to each side to interpret the definition of “one China”.
Tsai Ing-Wen leads her party further along the overton window that ROC is "just Taiwan, not the mainland", but it is widely accepted among experts that ROC doctrine dropped the pretense of ever retaking the mainland, for all practical endeavors, quite some time ago.[1] This is viewed to have occurred through the period when Taiwan was transitioning from an autocratic government (justified by it's "war footing") to an open, democratic government (facilitated by "war" no longer being viewed to be necessary or desired, merely "defense" instead).
So to directly address your verbiage:
> It's her formal title right now.
Her formal title is "president of the Republic of China, Taiwan". In her own words, "the Republic of China" is just Taiwan, not the mainland.
To steel-man your argument, it is true that the ROC party has not yet released any statement dropping their old claims to the mainland. But even that valid, stronger argument falls when confronted with the fact that the ROC hasn't re-asserted those claims in a very long time, and the leader of the ROC frequently makes statements which are in direct contradiction to those old claims.
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Also please read HN's commenting guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Your comment would be interpreted as unhelpfully inflammatory by many readers. I admit that mine above could have benefited from similar proactive discretion on my part.
However, I stand by my assertion that you're primarily engaging in rhetorical argument, using mostly logical fallacies to "win", rather than engaging in actual intellectual debate. I'd honestly argue that pretty much every sentence you've typed on the topic so far has been merely one rhetorical technique followed by another. The techniques of "rhetoric" that you've used include:
- Red Herring (overall): Introducing Tsai Ing-Wen and the modern political status of Taiwan diverts the conversation from the historical discussion about the Roman and Byzantine empires.
- Straw Man (severe): "So you're fully on board with the idea that Tsai Ing-wen is the President of China"
- Poisoning the Well (severe): "anyone who thinks they see some important distinctions is just making a weird mistake?"
- Appeal to ridicule (severe): "Are you kidding?"
- Misleading Vividness or Appeal to Emotion (severe): "shouldn't we at least know the facts?" suggests that anyone not agreeing with your presentation of "facts" is either ignorant or willfully misleading, thereby emotionally charging the argument to sway the listener without providing substantive evidence for your position.
- Appeal to authority (major): "It's her formal title right now. She can't call herself anything else!" This is appealing to the authority of formal titles and official designations, and falsely removing the agency of the person herself. As well as implying a factual mis-statement of the official title. The implication is that her title is "President of the Republic of China" but her actual title is "President of the Republic of China (Taiwan)"[2]
- Begging the Question (major): "She can't call herself anything else," assumes that Tsai Ing-Wen is bound to her title without addressing why that must necessarily be the case beyond asserting some formalistic requirement. This begs the question by assuming the point under debate (that her title defines her political reality completely) is already proven. Notwithstanding, again, that the implied title is factually incorrect in the first place.
- False Analogy (minor, debatable): comparing the historical administrative status of the Byzantine Empire as the Roman Empire to modern claims of national identity.
- Red Herring (minor, debatable): "Did he know where Akkad was?" introduces an irrelevant issue (Cyrus's geographical knowledge of Akkad) to the discussion of legitimate rule and continuity of empires.
- False Dilemma (minor, debatable): "She can't call herself anything else," suggests a false dilemma that Tsai Ing-Wen has only two choices: to fully adhere to the (imagined) restrictions of her (factually incorrect) formal title or to entirely abdicate it.
0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/15/tsai-ing-wen-s...
1: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2021.1...
There are several problems here:
1. "Taiwan" does not appear anywhere in her title.
2. The English title "President of the Republic of China" specifies explicitly that her country is called "China".
3. Her actual title, 中華民國總統, does the same thing, only without also calling the country a "republic". This would translate directly as "President of the People's State of China", where 中華 is a fancier word for China than the plainer 中國. It's the same one, by the way, used in the name of the PRC, 中华 [China] 人民 [People] 共和国 [Republic]. This should make plain what was already plain from the English formal names, that Taiwan and China overtly claim to be the same country. This also happens to be an administrative fact known as the One China Policy.
I have to stand by my appeal to you to know the facts before you take a position on what they are.
I also hope you've noticed that your objections to my point immediately imply that there is no valid reason to claim that the Byzantine Empire is the same thing as the Roman Empire, which of course is my point. Every argument marshaled upthread in support of this claim applies in full to Taiwan. They tend to be stronger for Taiwan, actually, given the fact that Taiwan was invaded and occupied by a bunch of foreign Chinese, who persist there, operate the government, and have successfully imposed their own foreign language, whereas the Byzantine Empire was populated by the same people who were there before the Romans took control, speaking the same language they spoke before the Romans took control.
If you think that this argument is nevertheless valid for the Byzantines but invalid for Taiwan, you need to state a difference between the two cases. Otherwise, "are you kidding?" is really the only possible response. Similarly when your argument consists of bare lies. Tsai Ing-wen clearly wishes that her title were not "President of China". She could make the attempt to change what it is, but she hasn't.
> "Did he know where Akkad was?" introduces an irrelevant issue (Cyrus's geographical knowledge of Akkad) to the discussion of legitimate rule and continuity of empires.
Think about the possible reasons why the "King of Akkad" might not know where Akkad is.
president.gov.tw, which I linked above, has "Taiwan" in the title. Please see the official logo on the government's own webpage here: https://english.president.gov.tw/images/logo.svg
That said, I really love the way you present information in this most recent comment. I will definitely take some time to consider your points!
It’s a bit like saying that Angles/English stopped being “English” after they moved from northern Germany/Denmark to the modern territory of Britain.
At least for several centuries the “Byzantine” Empire was the Roman Empire and was undoubtedly recognized as such both in the west and east.
I’m not sure they were particularly bothered by that. The late Roman/Byzantine empires was over everything the universal “Christian Empire” and being a true Orthodox-Catholic Christian basically became synonymous to being Roman the pagan past prior to Constantine was mostly ancient history by the middle ages and had limited if any influence on their self-identity.
In particular, very unsurprising that they'd share continue to like the same colours of shoes.
I can't believe you buy into this absurd nonsense that there could even be a Roman Empire without a megalopolis covering much of Europe, North Africa and the Levant.
Wasn't the point of regal colours that they were scarce/expensive?
The same dye produces a wide range of shades between purple and red depending on how the cloth is treated/the amount used/the aging of the piece. A shift in color could very much be a gradual shift over time as styles/process change.
Adjust the acidity and you can get anything from mauve to crimson. Soda ash and citrus juice were well known even three thousand years ago.
Of course this was the dye of royalty halfway around the world to the Zapotec people even before the Aztec conquered them, but details, details.
Or: "Phoenicia" is a culturally sound area (the producers of lumber, dye etc., colonizers etc., in the Levantine coast) - not a Statal entity. The term is thought to have meant "those of the purple" or "those of the lumbers" within the Canaanites.
Take into account that you had * populations, * statal organizations, * empires. Chunks of populations could be organized into statal organizations, which could easily simply be city states. Their governments could be independent or subjected to other powers. An empire is the acquired power of an entity over statal organizations of different populations - the first empire being that of Sargon the Great of Akkad, ruling from -2334: he was ruler of the Akkadians but also conquered the Sumerian city states.
The whole history from Jericho (the first city, -10000) to, say, the "classical" period of the Graeco-Persian conflict (-490, -480) and Pericles in Athens (-461) is quite interesting, showing "history-in-the-making", the emergence of the patterns that will continue in later history and that will have prepared it. But I cannot indicate a single especially good source: I can only recommend the scattered material you will find around - and which will already show many inconsistencies, gaps, attempts, clashing of different proposals.
Found in the comments of the other post about this linked here
I have a DVD from 2004 about them, as I did the National Genographic Project DNA test way back before it was popular, but I must admit, the DVD is so-so. I think afterwards, they got more and more data, and were able to track where they travelled to based on artifacts and DNA. Lots of websites about them, but hard to say what is what. I would trust information by Dr. Pierre Zalloua as he uses DNA analysis for his research into the Phoenicians.