5 ms·

Grave of ‘Griffin Warrior’ at Pylos Could Be a Gateway to Ancient Civilizations

64 points by diodorus 11y ago

marktangotango 11y ago
>>The top of the warrior’s shaft grave lies at ground level, seemingly so easy to find that it is quite surprising the tomb lay intact for 35 centuries. >>“It is indeed mind boggling that we were first,” Dr. Davis wrote in an email. “I’m still shaking my head in disbelief. So many walked over it so many times, including our own team.” One wonders how many other discovery are similarly near the surface.
- dalke 11y ago
  http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/22/europe/viking-sword-norway/ http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/22/europe/viking-sword-norway... > 1,200-year-old Viking sword discovered by hiker > ... The rusted weapon was lying under some rocks on a well-known path across a high mountain plateau, which runs between western and eastern Norway.
- dpeck 11y ago
  I recall a relatively recent find of a large viking cache in a long farmed field in Britain. The discovery mentioned with wonder thinking about how many time a plow had been just a few inches from it for nearly a thousand years.
grok2 11y ago
Seems like the tech for making gold necklaces hasn't changed too much in 35 centuries! http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/27/science/27PYLOSJP1/27PYLOSJP1-articleLarge.jpg http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/27/science/27PYLOSJP1...
- scoot 11y ago
  It wasn't so much that the technique is still the same that struck me, so much as that the technique, and the technology to fabricate using it, existed 3500 years ago!
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    The main reason we're ahead of these folks is because we went about our research a bit more methodical, not because we're smarter or more precise with our fingers. If not for a handful of men and women we'd be stuck trying to find the philosophers stone.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    Gold is one of the least remarkable metals in that respect, given how soft it is, and how easy it is to melt (both that the melting point is reasonable, but also that it is relatively hard to mess up the melting compared to many other metals). You can do a lot with gold with next to no equipment and patience that required substantial technological advances to be possible with many other metals.
coldcode 11y ago
I'm reading a book on that era and this is pretty fascinating to read. Archeology seems like a science of studying small bits and trying to understand the big picture from them. I bet you have to be really patient to be an archeologist.
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  It is terribly fascinating what they can infer from the smallest of objects. I remember reading about the Viking settlements on Greenland and how archaeologists were able to deduce that Greenland Vikings did not eat fish because of the lack of fishbones found in refuse sites. Archaeology feels like a low-tech version of the machine that rebuilds the fifth element in the movie of the same name, from just a fragment.
  - douche 11y ago
    Do you have a link for that? It sounds interesting. It seems like a very odd situation, given that the Norse who settled Greenland surely knew about fishing before they packed up from Norway, the Orkneys and Iceland.
    - davidw 11y ago
      The natives ate fish too, so they would have seen that as well. I recall reading about it in this book: http://amzn.to/1kJ7A0G http://amzn.to/1kJ7A0G
      - douche 11y ago
        Ah, I guess I'll have to read that over again. I recall Diamond suggesting that they for some reason didn't adopt practices from the Inuits(?), like sealing, kayaks, etc, as the climate got colder after the medieval warm period, but I don't remember anything about them not fishing.
      - dalke 11y ago
        I've seen comments every which way about "Collapse", so I looked for something that was a bit more directly from the literature and found http://www.yale.edu/ycei/arcticworkshop/background-reading/Dugmore_et_al-Norse_Greenland_Settlement.pdf http://www.yale.edu/ycei/arcticworkshop/background-reading/D... . Quoting first from p.7 then p.6 (emphasis mine): > The development and expansion of the trade in dried Atlantic cod around 1100 AD was to have widespread economic impacts throughout Europe, which probably did not work to the advantage of the Norse Greenlanders who did little if any fishing. ... > Details of these Norse strategies of caribou and common seal conservation in Greenland are unclear but we may speculate that it was part of a conscious effort to conserve resilience and flexibility by underwriting the farming economy based on imported stock and the long distance Norðursetur hunt for trade goods. In late medieval and early modern Iceland elements of resilience thinking in a context of recurring labor shortage may be embedded in restrictions on sea fishing. In order to undertake fishing, farm ownership was required, and the development of fishing camps unsupported by agriculture was legally discouraged. The rationale was that fishing alone could not ensure a certain livelihood, and when it failed there would be a burden of poor relief on the wider community if those fishing did not have farming as well. In other words; specialization that could produce a greater short term yield was discouraged because it could potentially compromise the resilience of the wider community through burdens of support during times of fishery failure. Similar rationale may have stood behind the apparent absence of specialized sealing stations in Norse Greenland and the failure to develop substantial fisheries. Despite the growing role of seals in subsistence, even small farms maintained substantial flocks of sheep and goats and at least a few cows- this was a multi-stranded economy which spread risks and coordinated labor on a community scale rather than specialized, individualized subsistence system. Its major limitations were in its inability to accumulate multi-year surplus in the absence of cereal agriculture and the resulting recurring problem of matching high seasonal communal labor requirements with year-round provisioning limits.
erickhill 11y ago
That things like this can still be discovered -- a Mycenaean warrior's grave discovered at Pylos, complete with weapons, Linear B tablets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B), jewels, etc. Don't forget that "sandy Pylos" was the home of Nestor, whom Telemachus consulted to see if he knew anything about his father, Odysseus. Wise old Nestor (90 years old) had also fought at Troy, but he did not know what had become of Odysseus. Interestingly, the "Griffin warrior" recently unearthed at Pylos had trappings of the Minoan civilization (Crete), although Pylos is more associated with the Mycenean civilization.

64 points by diodorus 11y ago

>>The top of the warrior’s shaft grave lies at ground level, seemingly so easy to find that it is quite surprising the tomb lay intact for 35 centuries. >>“It is indeed mind boggling that we were first,” Dr. Davis wrote in an email. “I’m still shaking my head in disbelief. So many walked over it so many times, including our own team.” One wonders how many other discovery are similarly near the surface.

dalke 11y ago
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/22/europe/viking-sword-norway/ http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/22/europe/viking-sword-norway... > 1,200-year-old Viking sword discovered by hiker > ... The rusted weapon was lying under some rocks on a well-known path across a high mountain plateau, which runs between western and eastern Norway.
dpeck 11y ago
I recall a relatively recent find of a large viking cache in a long farmed field in Britain. The discovery mentioned with wonder thinking about how many time a plow had been just a few inches from it for nearly a thousand years.

grok2 11y ago

Seems like the tech for making gold necklaces hasn't changed too much in 35 centuries! http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/27/science/27PYLOSJP1/27PYLOSJP1-articleLarge.jpg http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/27/science/27PYLOSJP1...

scoot 11y ago
It wasn't so much that the technique is still the same that struck me, so much as that the technique, and the technology to fabricate using it, existed 3500 years ago!
- jacquesm 11y ago
  The main reason we're ahead of these folks is because we went about our research a bit more methodical, not because we're smarter or more precise with our fingers. If not for a handful of men and women we'd be stuck trying to find the philosophers stone.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Gold is one of the least remarkable metals in that respect, given how soft it is, and how easy it is to melt (both that the melting point is reasonable, but also that it is relatively hard to mess up the melting compared to many other metals). You can do a lot with gold with next to no equipment and patience that required substantial technological advances to be possible with many other metals.

coldcode 11y ago

I'm reading a book on that era and this is pretty fascinating to read. Archeology seems like a science of studying small bits and trying to understand the big picture from them. I bet you have to be really patient to be an archeologist.

mmanfrin 11y ago
It is terribly fascinating what they can infer from the smallest of objects. I remember reading about the Viking settlements on Greenland and how archaeologists were able to deduce that Greenland Vikings did not eat fish because of the lack of fishbones found in refuse sites. Archaeology feels like a low-tech version of the machine that rebuilds the fifth element in the movie of the same name, from just a fragment.
- douche 11y ago
  Do you have a link for that? It sounds interesting. It seems like a very odd situation, given that the Norse who settled Greenland surely knew about fishing before they packed up from Norway, the Orkneys and Iceland.
  - davidw 11y ago
    The natives ate fish too, so they would have seen that as well. I recall reading about it in this book: http://amzn.to/1kJ7A0G http://amzn.to/1kJ7A0G
    - douche 11y ago
      Ah, I guess I'll have to read that over again. I recall Diamond suggesting that they for some reason didn't adopt practices from the Inuits(?), like sealing, kayaks, etc, as the climate got colder after the medieval warm period, but I don't remember anything about them not fishing.
    - dalke 11y ago
      I've seen comments every which way about "Collapse", so I looked for something that was a bit more directly from the literature and found http://www.yale.edu/ycei/arcticworkshop/background-reading/Dugmore_et_al-Norse_Greenland_Settlement.pdf http://www.yale.edu/ycei/arcticworkshop/background-reading/D... . Quoting first from p.7 then p.6 (emphasis mine): > The development and expansion of the trade in dried Atlantic cod around 1100 AD was to have widespread economic impacts throughout Europe, which probably did not work to the advantage of the Norse Greenlanders who did little if any fishing. ... > Details of these Norse strategies of caribou and common seal conservation in Greenland are unclear but we may speculate that it was part of a conscious effort to conserve resilience and flexibility by underwriting the farming economy based on imported stock and the long distance Norðursetur hunt for trade goods. In late medieval and early modern Iceland elements of resilience thinking in a context of recurring labor shortage may be embedded in restrictions on sea fishing. In order to undertake fishing, farm ownership was required, and the development of fishing camps unsupported by agriculture was legally discouraged. The rationale was that fishing alone could not ensure a certain livelihood, and when it failed there would be a burden of poor relief on the wider community if those fishing did not have farming as well. In other words; specialization that could produce a greater short term yield was discouraged because it could potentially compromise the resilience of the wider community through burdens of support during times of fishery failure. Similar rationale may have stood behind the apparent absence of specialized sealing stations in Norse Greenland and the failure to develop substantial fisheries. Despite the growing role of seals in subsistence, even small farms maintained substantial flocks of sheep and goats and at least a few cows- this was a multi-stranded economy which spread risks and coordinated labor on a community scale rather than specialized, individualized subsistence system. Its major limitations were in its inability to accumulate multi-year surplus in the absence of cereal agriculture and the resulting recurring problem of matching high seasonal communal labor requirements with year-round provisioning limits.

erickhill 11y ago

That things like this can still be discovered -- a Mycenaean warrior's grave discovered at Pylos, complete with weapons, Linear B tablets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B), jewels, etc. Don't forget that "sandy Pylos" was the home of Nestor, whom Telemachus consulted to see if he knew anything about his father, Odysseus. Wise old Nestor (90 years old) had also fought at Troy, but he did not know what had become of Odysseus. Interestingly, the "Griffin warrior" recently unearthed at Pylos had trappings of the Minoan civilization (Crete), although Pylos is more associated with the Mycenean civilization.