Archaeologists unearth ancient Sumerian riverboat in Iraq(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
Archaeologists unearth ancient Sumerian riverboat in Iraq
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/archaeologists-unearth-ancient-sumerian-riverboat-in-iraq/
20 comments
I could never be a historian or archaeologist. I'd go insane thinking about all the lost history we will never know about. So few materials can last thousands of years. Makes me think about all the digital data created in the past 20 years. How much of that will still exist in the next 20, never mind 2000.
I dunno, I kinda think that the ephemerality of life and everything in the universe is kinda beautiful.
I think this is how it should be.
Take keeping Birthday Cards for instance. The person sending you the card didn't intend you to keep it forever!
When I give a gift, I don't intend it to be kept forever!
When I make something; I don't expect it to last forever.
When I tweet something, I don't want that to be tweeted forever. In fact, I run an auto tweet delete bot.
Things should be transient.
The few scraps of history that we do found have value in their scarcity.
If society preserved everything, we'd be crushed and destroyed under its weight.
We can say the same of societies rituals as well. We must constantly reinvent to progress for the better of us all.
One of Steve Jobs first actions when he returned to Apple was to dispose of the archives. (He gifted them to a University I think)
Take keeping Birthday Cards for instance. The person sending you the card didn't intend you to keep it forever!
When I give a gift, I don't intend it to be kept forever!
When I make something; I don't expect it to last forever.
When I tweet something, I don't want that to be tweeted forever. In fact, I run an auto tweet delete bot.
Things should be transient.
The few scraps of history that we do found have value in their scarcity.
If society preserved everything, we'd be crushed and destroyed under its weight.
We can say the same of societies rituals as well. We must constantly reinvent to progress for the better of us all.
One of Steve Jobs first actions when he returned to Apple was to dispose of the archives. (He gifted them to a University I think)
I recently tried to find an archive of popular chain emails from the 90s... They're gone. Most of the popular data from that era just wasn't collated by anybody. The data hasn't survived 20 years.
How little will exist in 100 years? Let alone 2000?
How little will exist in 100 years? Let alone 2000?
This is why it would be something I would love to do. I would get bits of knowledge all my own and get my own personal puzzle to solve.
I did it for awhile before before returning to tech. It's a fun field in many respects, but it's an absolutely terrible career. Much less puzzle solving than you might imagine though. Most evidence is far too underdetermined for that.
There will be an explosion of archaeological potential in the next two decades.
* underwater drones to capture settlements and boats (particularly in the anoxic Black Sea)
* advances in ground penetrating sensors combined with ML-based recognition
* new funding models through popular media like Netflix
* underwater drones to capture settlements and boats (particularly in the anoxic Black Sea)
* advances in ground penetrating sensors combined with ML-based recognition
* new funding models through popular media like Netflix
And a rapid increase in the number of multimillionaires ready to hand over cash for antiquities, either personally or through thier funding of museums. Ancient relics are the new cool for the super rich, as dinosaur bones were a few years back, and painting before that.
> “the boat sank in a river, which swiftly buried it and preserved it for the next 4,000 years. That ancient river has long since silted up, but a few years ago, it began to yield at least one long-held secret: erosion revealed the outline of the boat”
Just seeing the phrase “ancient river” in the context of a human artifact is enough to make my head spin a bit. This boat is so old, not only has the civilization that created it come and gone, but the river is gone too.
What other secrets of our past still lie buried beneath the sands and waves of our changing planet?
Just seeing the phrase “ancient river” in the context of a human artifact is enough to make my head spin a bit. This boat is so old, not only has the civilization that created it come and gone, but the river is gone too.
What other secrets of our past still lie buried beneath the sands and waves of our changing planet?
> but the river is gone too.
The Sumerians were well known to forcibly reposition the local rivers of which there were many in the flood plain. There are probably plenty of areas with long lost boats, areas today that wouldn't appear to having been a river, ever.
There's a whole back story here of the Persian gulf which receded something like 100 miles around the time Sumer disappeared[0]. My theory for this is that population growth in the south created caused an expansion of irrigation/agriculture- and as kings became more willing and able to reposition rivers, they unintentionally created the first major human environmental catastrophe. This is why the Akkadians, to the north of the Mesopotamian flood plain, were the inheritors of Sumerian culture. Cities like Uruk would have much been closer to the coast than they are today, giving southern Sumer (in its heyday) a very similar environment to the Nile river delta pouring into the Mediterranean, with all those cities parked right in the middle of the delta.
We know too that southern Sumer was trading heavily with many neighbors, including India, so we can easily imagine they were active in the Persian gulf... and naturally I'd imagine there are plenty of boats stuck in sand deep underground, undisturbed, and loaded with artifacts of trade.
[0]: http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/lambeck_k/pdf/171.pdf
The Sumerians were well known to forcibly reposition the local rivers of which there were many in the flood plain. There are probably plenty of areas with long lost boats, areas today that wouldn't appear to having been a river, ever.
There's a whole back story here of the Persian gulf which receded something like 100 miles around the time Sumer disappeared[0]. My theory for this is that population growth in the south created caused an expansion of irrigation/agriculture- and as kings became more willing and able to reposition rivers, they unintentionally created the first major human environmental catastrophe. This is why the Akkadians, to the north of the Mesopotamian flood plain, were the inheritors of Sumerian culture. Cities like Uruk would have much been closer to the coast than they are today, giving southern Sumer (in its heyday) a very similar environment to the Nile river delta pouring into the Mediterranean, with all those cities parked right in the middle of the delta.
We know too that southern Sumer was trading heavily with many neighbors, including India, so we can easily imagine they were active in the Persian gulf... and naturally I'd imagine there are plenty of boats stuck in sand deep underground, undisturbed, and loaded with artifacts of trade.
[0]: http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/lambeck_k/pdf/171.pdf
> This boat is so old, not only has the civilization that created it come and gone, but the river is gone too.
Is it? "Silted up" would usually imply that the river moved, not that it disappeared. A river that isn't there can't deposit silt.
The article kind of suggests that the river in question was the Euphrates:
> Archaeologists found the boat in an area that, 4,000 years ago, would have been the bustling hinterlands of the largest city in the world: Uruk. Founded in 5000 BCE from the merger of two smaller settlements on the bank of the Euphrates River, Uruk was one of the world’s first major cities
The Euphrates is still around.
Is it? "Silted up" would usually imply that the river moved, not that it disappeared. A river that isn't there can't deposit silt.
The article kind of suggests that the river in question was the Euphrates:
> Archaeologists found the boat in an area that, 4,000 years ago, would have been the bustling hinterlands of the largest city in the world: Uruk. Founded in 5000 BCE from the merger of two smaller settlements on the bank of the Euphrates River, Uruk was one of the world’s first major cities
The Euphrates is still around.
Sadly, very little of it still reaches the sea anymore.
From 20,000 up until 8000 years ago, the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers drain into, was continuously filling in, and thousands of square miles where people lived were disappearing beneath the waves.
From 20,000 up until 8000 years ago, the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers drain into, was continuously filling in, and thousands of square miles where people lived were disappearing beneath the waves.
Wikipedia [1]:
> Uruk was extremely well penetrated by a canal system that has been described as, "Venice in the desert."[13] This canal system flowed throughout the city connecting it with the maritime trade on the ancient Euphrates River as well as the surrounding agricultural belt.
> The original city of Uruk was situated southwest of the ancient Euphrates River, now dry. Currently, the site of Warka is northeast of the modern Euphrates river. The change in position was caused by a shift in the Euphrates at some point in history, which, together with salination due to irrigation, may have contributed to the decline of Uruk.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk
> Uruk was extremely well penetrated by a canal system that has been described as, "Venice in the desert."[13] This canal system flowed throughout the city connecting it with the maritime trade on the ancient Euphrates River as well as the surrounding agricultural belt.
> The original city of Uruk was situated southwest of the ancient Euphrates River, now dry. Currently, the site of Warka is northeast of the modern Euphrates river. The change in position was caused by a shift in the Euphrates at some point in history, which, together with salination due to irrigation, may have contributed to the decline of Uruk.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk
It is possible the river moved. Bends in rivers tend to slowly shift the path of water over time.
Here's another: when the first Egyptian pyramid was built in 2600 BCE, woolly mammoths were still around.
Something I read recently on acoup.blog - the Great Pyramid of Giza was as old to Cleopatra, as Cleopatra is to us.
Hundreds of years older than that. If not thousands...
We don't have very good ways to determine how old stonework is, in general. The convention for dating Egyptian works is to date them by whichever is the oldest name somebody carved into them, or by the age of objects found buried nearby. Carving a current pharaoh's name into older stonework, and chiseling away previously carved names, was absolutely the norm, with many things peppered with such alterations. But the obviously oldest things were all made with no name carved in. Often the alteration used to date one is comically cruder than the object itself.
In the only published use of surface luminescence testing applied to Egyptian stonework, it seemed to date a fragment of a facing-stone block from the presumed most recent of the Giza pyramids to 500 years before its official age, albeit with error bars that just barely included the official age. Surface luminescence is a technique that determines when a rock surface was last exposed to light. If the sample is collected with insufficient care, the test will indicate a more recent date than would be correct. It is frustratingingly imprecise, dating the sample in question to 3000 BC, +/- 500 years. No further such work has been permitted.
We actually have documentary records from the supervisor of a crew that received facing stones for work on a pyramid, but we do not know whether the stone was for repair or improvement, or original construction. Pharaohs frequently boasted of repairing or improving older works. The pharaoh officially credited with making the Sphinx left a stela next to it describing the improvements and repairs he had commissioned.
We don't have very good ways to determine how old stonework is, in general. The convention for dating Egyptian works is to date them by whichever is the oldest name somebody carved into them, or by the age of objects found buried nearby. Carving a current pharaoh's name into older stonework, and chiseling away previously carved names, was absolutely the norm, with many things peppered with such alterations. But the obviously oldest things were all made with no name carved in. Often the alteration used to date one is comically cruder than the object itself.
In the only published use of surface luminescence testing applied to Egyptian stonework, it seemed to date a fragment of a facing-stone block from the presumed most recent of the Giza pyramids to 500 years before its official age, albeit with error bars that just barely included the official age. Surface luminescence is a technique that determines when a rock surface was last exposed to light. If the sample is collected with insufficient care, the test will indicate a more recent date than would be correct. It is frustratingingly imprecise, dating the sample in question to 3000 BC, +/- 500 years. No further such work has been permitted.
We actually have documentary records from the supervisor of a crew that received facing stones for work on a pyramid, but we do not know whether the stone was for repair or improvement, or original construction. Pharaohs frequently boasted of repairing or improving older works. The pharaoh officially credited with making the Sphinx left a stela next to it describing the improvements and repairs he had commissioned.
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And the pyramids of Caral were being built in Peru.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral
There's loooots of ancient rivers around, or less ancient former riverbeds. Be wary, thinking about these things leads to an amateur interest in geology. ;)
Today I drove across the former riverbed of a large river that flows out to sea 10 minutes north of the largest city on my island. [0] It has changed course several times in the past, it used to flow out to sea at Te Waihora [1], a brackish coastal lake about 50km south of it's current mouth, when Pakeha arrived, its river mouth was in it's current location.
But in the early days of European colonisation, it flooded Christchurch when a large flood led to it breaking out into an old course that led to the Avon River/Ōtākaro [2] which the city was built around. And fun fact, this course leads straight through the international airport was eventually built!
It's very hard to see from the ground unless you know what you're looking for, but from the air the old courses are unmissable. [3] If you zoom out somewhat, you can trace the swirling branches of the former braided riverbed across the plains.
A lot of engineering effort has gone into keeping the "Cold Water" (wai being Māori for water, makariri for "cold") river from finding its old courses. [4]
And so, there's a lot of places around Christchurch called islands, that no longer are, like Coutts Island, or McLeans Island. [5]
But who knows, maybe they'll become islands again. In these days of climate change, NIWA predictions for the South Island / Te Waipounamu are that northwesterly flows will become more prevalent, which are the weather patterns that bring heavy rains to the headwaters of the Waimak.
The stopbanks are designed for a 5000 cumec flood, but in our brave new world, I'm unsure how long it will be until the stopbanks are breached, and the river seeks to find its old ways to the sea again.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waimakariri_River
[1]: https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/ca...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avon_River_/_Ōtākaro
[3]: https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/43°28'47.2"S+172°21'59.3...
[4]: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-river-never-sleeps/
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLeans_Island
Today I drove across the former riverbed of a large river that flows out to sea 10 minutes north of the largest city on my island. [0] It has changed course several times in the past, it used to flow out to sea at Te Waihora [1], a brackish coastal lake about 50km south of it's current mouth, when Pakeha arrived, its river mouth was in it's current location.
But in the early days of European colonisation, it flooded Christchurch when a large flood led to it breaking out into an old course that led to the Avon River/Ōtākaro [2] which the city was built around. And fun fact, this course leads straight through the international airport was eventually built!
It's very hard to see from the ground unless you know what you're looking for, but from the air the old courses are unmissable. [3] If you zoom out somewhat, you can trace the swirling branches of the former braided riverbed across the plains.
A lot of engineering effort has gone into keeping the "Cold Water" (wai being Māori for water, makariri for "cold") river from finding its old courses. [4]
And so, there's a lot of places around Christchurch called islands, that no longer are, like Coutts Island, or McLeans Island. [5]
But who knows, maybe they'll become islands again. In these days of climate change, NIWA predictions for the South Island / Te Waipounamu are that northwesterly flows will become more prevalent, which are the weather patterns that bring heavy rains to the headwaters of the Waimak.
The stopbanks are designed for a 5000 cumec flood, but in our brave new world, I'm unsure how long it will be until the stopbanks are breached, and the river seeks to find its old ways to the sea again.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waimakariri_River
[1]: https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/ca...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avon_River_/_Ōtākaro
[3]: https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/43°28'47.2"S+172°21'59.3...
[4]: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-river-never-sleeps/
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLeans_Island