> “The peculiarity of the finding is that it was a hermetically sealed sarcophagus. It was not disturbed previously, so it was intact,” said Gabriella Fényes, the excavation’s lead archaeologist.
If this is the case -- dont scientists have interest in analyzing the air contents inside this sealed box before it is fully opened -- maybe by inserting a narrow tube? Might that not teach us something that may help us preserve future archaeological finds better? Maybe we are irreversibly destroying some of the evidence inside it by casually opening them? (I am sure they are not intentionally careless or destroying it -- but just wondering if future scince might make the current scientific process look clunky and ill-advised)
"Excavators also removed a layer of mud roughly 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) thick from inside the coffin that Fényes hopes could contain more treasures."
i strongly suspect this is not "mud" but the dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue, [coffin liquor] and condensation.
Once all the bacteria have done their thing what's left? At this point thousands of years later it probably is solidly within the mud spectrum and closer to the sand end then say lakebottom or swamp mud.
I was reading the article looking for mentions of some analysis that this might allow. Perhaps all that archaeology does with this material is to sift it for objects.
I wish someone would do the math, it feels like a human body wouldn’t leave that much remains after degrading. I remember learning in the cemetery tour at New Orleans that those above ground tombs are family tombs and that they contain generations of people. The top shelf is where the body goes and it stays for one year and degrades before it is opened again and scraped into the bottom layer where multiple generations dwell forever together.
> In the early days of New Orleans, the pieces of the casket were removed and burned, while the remains were pushed to the back of the tomb, falling into an underground chamber called a caveau (This is where the phrase, "I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole comes from... the pole being the device used to push remains to the back of the tomb).
While the article does not mention it, chances are that the sarcophagus was found during doing the soilwork for modern construction. In which case the construction company is obliged to report that to the ministry in charge and then the excavation can be done with proper care. If there was not a law for that we wouldn't talk about grave robbing but grave destroying instead.
It sells newspapers unfortunately. For the longest time newspapers (and by extension much of the general public) equat archaeology with treasure hunting.
I don't know the circumstances of this dig, but it may have been a rescue dig ahead of eg massive concrete foundations going in. In many countries this is what drives (and funds) fieldwork.
There's a bit done by a comedian where they ask what the differences are between grave robbers and archaeologists, but basically it boils down to a question of time.
Those descriptions themselves would be a major archaeological find if they were preserved at all. But chances are that those detailed descriptions would be lost even if the original artifacts would have still been preserved had they not been looted.
A key fossil, journal entry, or bit of clothing that would help explain "X" is going to stay mute if sold on the black market and kept on someone's shelf. Maybe we'll get lucky and learn about it someday from the heirs - but probably not.
limestone is porous and will allow water to eventually seep through.
a condensation cycle will occur, and drip percolate the soft tissue and adipocere into a slurry [coffin liquor] that will settle to the bottom of the sarcophagus.
What a strange way to date it. "The Roman sarcophagus from the III century CE is unearthed in Budapest". Okay? The Roman Empire did span that far in that time period, and IIRC that time period is already quite well represented archaeologically speaking.
What an aggressive website: at the same time, there's 2 different popups, a display ad and a video ad playing without being activated. Doesn't AP make enough money selling news to news organizations? Disgusting.
The treatment archeological finds get today is downright religious compared "that's a damn good stone, we'll use that stone for a lintel, chuck the skeleton in the river" that would've happened prior to the modern era.
Or worse, for centuries mummies were ground into powder for “medicine” or pigments, during the Egyptology craze hundred of mummies were unwrapped and destroyed for the idle curiosity and entertainment of aristocrats, and tens of thousands of cat mummies are attested being used as fertiliser.
>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
Well, no, because as you've said, the evidence will be in warehouses, and then at some later time also buried. The practice of human archeology is as much a part of culture that the future may study as the cultures that it itself studies.
>it is after all objectively desecration of burials
What do you mean "objectively desecration"? Whether something is sacred or not is purely a matter of opinion. "Objectively" it's just some configuration of atoms being moved from one place to another, neither action inherently having any more meaning or specialness than the other.
>that were never meant to be dug up to satisfy the curiosity and career of some rather selfish and increasingly irreligious academic.
Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.
>Think about it, very little of today will be of value if it survives at all.
That's what you think because you're alive now to experience it. It's worthless to you because it's abundant. Someone a million years from now may see your PC and that sarcophagus as equally priceless artifacts, because both points in time will be roughly equally distant.
> Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.
There are many conceptions of humanity that hold the dead in equal (or indeed greater) esteem than the living. Just because you consider the dead to have vanished does not mean others agree.
>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
My understanding is that most countries prevent areas from being wholesale dug up, but only permit smaller, limited digs for this reason. So a representative sample of a site can be reexamined at a future date with future technology to reassess understanding. Some sites have had many many digs in this fashion, and still havent dug the entire site. In fact its a criticism of some semi famous sites, usually from charlatans, that the entire site hasnt been dug therefore we are leaving evidence of their popular wackjob ideas in the ground
>because there is very little of anything physical that remains.
I dont know thats true. Lots of what we do is kept and recorded. And our activity surely leaves traces. Plastics especially.
>My understanding is that outside of specific medium, none of the data we generate or consume will last, let alone survive something like a nuclear war or even a massive solar flair.
I dont believe this is true either. We arent backing our society up to a single old spinning disk. We have documents that immediately predate data storage. We have old documents stored in multiple places. We have lost certain specific artefacts of our own history but it seems doomerish to assume thats what happens universally.
1. A lot of archaeology is "rescue" archaeology. i.e. Either natural processes (e.g. rivers shifting) have threatened a site or the decision has been made to build, but there is a legal requirement to have the site surveyed and dug (if warranted). If you have an issue with this, then it must be with rivers shifting or people building. Rescue archaeology merely rescues the past from otherwise certain destruction.
2. Archaeologists are keenly aware that digging is a destructive act. There are countless examples of sites that were dug with unsophisticated techniques (e.g. bulldozers and dynamite) in the past that could have taught us far more were they dug with even slightly more modern (and careful) techniques. This is why, outside of rescue archaeology, excavations are done with careful deliberation. It's also standard practice to excavate sites only partially, leaving some of it intact for future archaeologists to dig with more advanced technology and techniques.
3. Rest assured, there yet remains vast quantities of history buried in the ground, waiting to be discovered. e.g. We have discovered cuneiform records referring to entire cities that remain buried and unknown. Other cities of the past are under modern settlements and are, at present, mostly inaccessible to archaeologists. It may seem like the world has been exhaustively explored, but there are still huge surprises waiting underground.
Maybe there were advanced human civilizations on the planet before the current (there are such theories), but at some point they also got so advanced that they accidentally/systematically removed all of their traces, and have declined in some way. (though the theories are have better explanation for their lack of artifacts apart from a few OOPARTs)
Our age unfortunately will have long-lasting traces in the forms of various plastics and forever-chemicals.
And they also took care to replenish the deposits of iron, copper, tin, lead, and rare-earth ores plus coal and oil before ultimately disappearing. Very considerate of them!
There is 7+ billion people now on the planet.
Don't worry our descendants will find our stuff for a long time.
In 10.000 years they won't care that much if something was from 300.A.C or 2025.A.C.
> we dig up and remove artifacts whenever and wherever we find them
Not anymore, at leats not everywhere. AFAIK there is a stop to excavations of unexplored areas in Pompei. There are several burial sites of kings and emperors in Korea and China that are intentionally left unexcavated (they excavated a few mounds, but left the rest as it is).
Until today. Open a grave one day and you are a grave robber. Open it on some other day and you are a scientist. I think the people who sealed the grave wouldn't see much of a difference.
What would the people who sealed the grave do when they accidentally unearthed a sophisticated burial site from the middle bronze age? Leave it alone? Maybe. I'm not sure, humans are curious.
Well the effort and care put into the grave made us - 2000 years later in cyberspace - in a sense remember the person. Who was this young woman? They even gave us hints/rewards. Made us curious.
So maybe they prepared her for an afterlife ... of continued memory and presence among the living, which they with their technological limitations succeeded in, we are talking about her, now.
> “The peculiarity of the finding is that it was a hermetically sealed sarcophagus. It was not disturbed previously, so it was intact,” said Gabriella Fényes, the excavation’s lead archaeologist.
If this is the case -- dont scientists have interest in analyzing the air contents inside this sealed box before it is fully opened -- maybe by inserting a narrow tube? Might that not teach us something that may help us preserve future archaeological finds better? Maybe we are irreversibly destroying some of the evidence inside it by casually opening them? (I am sure they are not intentionally careless or destroying it -- but just wondering if future scince might make the current scientific process look clunky and ill-advised)
It's made of limestone, which is quite porous. Should be plenty of air exchange over the last 1700 years.
(And they may have done so before opening. It probably wouldn't be mentioned in an article like this.)
Then it wasn't hermetically sealed, as the author claims.
Where does it say that they didn't?
If nothing else, a time capsule of bacteria present...
"Excavators also removed a layer of mud roughly 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) thick from inside the coffin that Fényes hopes could contain more treasures."
i strongly suspect this is not "mud" but the dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue, [coffin liquor] and condensation.
"dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue...and condensation". Yeah - mud.
Once all the bacteria have done their thing what's left? At this point thousands of years later it probably is solidly within the mud spectrum and closer to the sand end then say lakebottom or swamp mud.
I was reading the article looking for mentions of some analysis that this might allow. Perhaps all that archaeology does with this material is to sift it for objects.
Step 1: Find it.
Step 2: Archive it. (Dig and catalogue)
Step 3: Analyze it.
We often learn new things from fossils that have been shelved for decades, but not yet researched, so I assume analysis is still in the pipeline.
'Coffin liquor' may be the most disgusting pair of words I've ever read, and I've been on the internet a while. Wow.
Try these three words: Victorians eating mummies
I was getting the exact same thing. I will be using the term in conversation now though.
Sounds like a cocktail to me. Somewhat like a black russian but browner in colour.
Brown is right. "Mummy brown" is a pigment made from ground up mummy.
Cool band name, too.
Haha I told my good friend (we played together in a black metal band 100 years ago) that we might want to try again with this name.
There's a grindcore album by that name. Which I'll now have to check out ;)
https://napalmted.bandcamp.com/album/coffin-liquor
Vampires playing black metal during the roaring 20s must have been wild
> Cool band name, too.
Coffin Liquor. It's to die for.
I'm imagining vampires obsessing over terroir...
Similar to “dumpster piss”. hehe.
Sounds like dirt to me.
I wish someone would do the math, it feels like a human body wouldn’t leave that much remains after degrading. I remember learning in the cemetery tour at New Orleans that those above ground tombs are family tombs and that they contain generations of people. The top shelf is where the body goes and it stays for one year and degrades before it is opened again and scraped into the bottom layer where multiple generations dwell forever together.
https://historyinstone.blogspot.com/2019/07/above-ground-bur...
> In the early days of New Orleans, the pieces of the casket were removed and burned, while the remains were pushed to the back of the tomb, falling into an underground chamber called a caveau (This is where the phrase, "I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole comes from... the pole being the device used to push remains to the back of the tomb).
TIL
I’ve always heard the phase a little different, “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot barge pole.” And when I search that the story matches yours.
There's something about how this article was written that reads like grave robbing, especially the bit about them hoping to discover "more treasures."
While the article does not mention it, chances are that the sarcophagus was found during doing the soilwork for modern construction. In which case the construction company is obliged to report that to the ministry in charge and then the excavation can be done with proper care. If there was not a law for that we wouldn't talk about grave robbing but grave destroying instead.
It sells newspapers unfortunately. For the longest time newspapers (and by extension much of the general public) equat archaeology with treasure hunting.
I don't know the circumstances of this dig, but it may have been a rescue dig ahead of eg massive concrete foundations going in. In many countries this is what drives (and funds) fieldwork.
Yes. “Unlooted and unopened”… until today.
Taking all the tokens people gave the deceased for their afterlife journey sounds like highway robbery.
There's a bit done by a comedian where they ask what the differences are between grave robbers and archaeologists, but basically it boils down to a question of time.
If historical grave robbers left detailed descriptions of what they'd found and where they moved it to, I wouldn't mind much.
Those descriptions themselves would be a major archaeological find if they were preserved at all. But chances are that those detailed descriptions would be lost even if the original artifacts would have still been preserved had they not been looted.
A key fossil, journal entry, or bit of clothing that would help explain "X" is going to stay mute if sold on the black market and kept on someone's shelf. Maybe we'll get lucky and learn about it someday from the heirs - but probably not.
What's the difference between archeology and grave robbing. Just time.
We are much closer in time to Marco Polo than Marco Polo was to this girl.
Obviously?
Where did the mud inside come from if it was still sealed?
limestone is porous and will allow water to eventually seep through.
a condensation cycle will occur, and drip percolate the soft tissue and adipocere into a slurry [coffin liquor] that will settle to the bottom of the sarcophagus.
I honestly cannot believe that I have been listening to Death Metal my entire life, and no one has ever used the term “coffin liquor” in a song.
For what it's worth, Morpheus Descends had a song called 'Submerged in Adipocere', which is a similar kind of thing.
Just wanted to say hello to my fellow metalheads. And thanks for the song recommendation!
I think “coffin liquor” would be a great name for an absinthe.
That's more Necrophagist kinda territory.
What a strange way to date it. "The Roman sarcophagus from the III century CE is unearthed in Budapest". Okay? The Roman Empire did span that far in that time period, and IIRC that time period is already quite well represented archaeologically speaking.
>III century CE
IV century CE
AD*
What an aggressive website: at the same time, there's 2 different popups, a display ad and a video ad playing without being activated. Doesn't AP make enough money selling news to news organizations? Disgusting.
Underneath all of that mud there might be treasures.
Adblocking is the brush you need
uBlock Origin, my friend
Goddamn the website is atrocious to use on a phone, let me pinch to zoom in on the photos!
Good post though.
The famous last words: "Let's open this Sarcophagus and see what we find inside..."
[dead]
[flagged]
The treatment archeological finds get today is downright religious compared "that's a damn good stone, we'll use that stone for a lintel, chuck the skeleton in the river" that would've happened prior to the modern era.
Or worse, for centuries mummies were ground into powder for “medicine” or pigments, during the Egyptology craze hundred of mummies were unwrapped and destroyed for the idle curiosity and entertainment of aristocrats, and tens of thousands of cat mummies are attested being used as fertiliser.
Or literally used as firewood to power steam engines
>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
Well, no, because as you've said, the evidence will be in warehouses, and then at some later time also buried. The practice of human archeology is as much a part of culture that the future may study as the cultures that it itself studies.
>it is after all objectively desecration of burials
What do you mean "objectively desecration"? Whether something is sacred or not is purely a matter of opinion. "Objectively" it's just some configuration of atoms being moved from one place to another, neither action inherently having any more meaning or specialness than the other.
>that were never meant to be dug up to satisfy the curiosity and career of some rather selfish and increasingly irreligious academic.
Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.
>Think about it, very little of today will be of value if it survives at all.
That's what you think because you're alive now to experience it. It's worthless to you because it's abundant. Someone a million years from now may see your PC and that sarcophagus as equally priceless artifacts, because both points in time will be roughly equally distant.
My original IBM PC looks pretty sad now. I remember buying it and how it smelled when I unpackaged it.
> Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.
There are many conceptions of humanity that hold the dead in equal (or indeed greater) esteem than the living. Just because you consider the dead to have vanished does not mean others agree.
OK. What does that have to do with the snippet you quoted? There are people who think the dead don't vanish, therefore what?
>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
My understanding is that most countries prevent areas from being wholesale dug up, but only permit smaller, limited digs for this reason. So a representative sample of a site can be reexamined at a future date with future technology to reassess understanding. Some sites have had many many digs in this fashion, and still havent dug the entire site. In fact its a criticism of some semi famous sites, usually from charlatans, that the entire site hasnt been dug therefore we are leaving evidence of their popular wackjob ideas in the ground
>because there is very little of anything physical that remains.
I dont know thats true. Lots of what we do is kept and recorded. And our activity surely leaves traces. Plastics especially.
>My understanding is that outside of specific medium, none of the data we generate or consume will last, let alone survive something like a nuclear war or even a massive solar flair.
I dont believe this is true either. We arent backing our society up to a single old spinning disk. We have documents that immediately predate data storage. We have old documents stored in multiple places. We have lost certain specific artefacts of our own history but it seems doomerish to assume thats what happens universally.
1. A lot of archaeology is "rescue" archaeology. i.e. Either natural processes (e.g. rivers shifting) have threatened a site or the decision has been made to build, but there is a legal requirement to have the site surveyed and dug (if warranted). If you have an issue with this, then it must be with rivers shifting or people building. Rescue archaeology merely rescues the past from otherwise certain destruction.
2. Archaeologists are keenly aware that digging is a destructive act. There are countless examples of sites that were dug with unsophisticated techniques (e.g. bulldozers and dynamite) in the past that could have taught us far more were they dug with even slightly more modern (and careful) techniques. This is why, outside of rescue archaeology, excavations are done with careful deliberation. It's also standard practice to excavate sites only partially, leaving some of it intact for future archaeologists to dig with more advanced technology and techniques.
3. Rest assured, there yet remains vast quantities of history buried in the ground, waiting to be discovered. e.g. We have discovered cuneiform records referring to entire cities that remain buried and unknown. Other cities of the past are under modern settlements and are, at present, mostly inaccessible to archaeologists. It may seem like the world has been exhaustively explored, but there are still huge surprises waiting underground.
Maybe there were advanced human civilizations on the planet before the current (there are such theories), but at some point they also got so advanced that they accidentally/systematically removed all of their traces, and have declined in some way. (though the theories are have better explanation for their lack of artifacts apart from a few OOPARTs)
Our age unfortunately will have long-lasting traces in the forms of various plastics and forever-chemicals.
And they also took care to replenish the deposits of iron, copper, tin, lead, and rare-earth ores plus coal and oil before ultimately disappearing. Very considerate of them!
There is 7+ billion people now on the planet. Don't worry our descendants will find our stuff for a long time. In 10.000 years they won't care that much if something was from 300.A.C or 2025.A.C.
>catalogued and archived in some warehouse
"We have top men working on the Ark right now."
> we dig up and remove artifacts whenever and wherever we find them
Not anymore, at leats not everywhere. AFAIK there is a stop to excavations of unexplored areas in Pompei. There are several burial sites of kings and emperors in Korea and China that are intentionally left unexcavated (they excavated a few mounds, but left the rest as it is).
[dead]
>> Untouched by looters and sealed for centuries,
Until today. Open a grave one day and you are a grave robber. Open it on some other day and you are a scientist. I think the people who sealed the grave wouldn't see much of a difference.
What would the people who sealed the grave do when they accidentally unearthed a sophisticated burial site from the middle bronze age? Leave it alone? Maybe. I'm not sure, humans are curious.
Well the effort and care put into the grave made us - 2000 years later in cyberspace - in a sense remember the person. Who was this young woman? They even gave us hints/rewards. Made us curious.
So maybe they prepared her for an afterlife ... of continued memory and presence among the living, which they with their technological limitations succeeded in, we are talking about her, now.
And open a grave a third day, and you're just an ordinary grave digger, reusing the cemetery land.
Is that Yorick?