4 ms·

Just to note, you would be surprised how many "ancient" items are forgeries, either from real items or made up items. Unfortunately I have no link to evidence;

Just to note, you would be surprised how many "ancient" items are forgeries, either from real items or made up items. Unfortunately I have no link to evidence; but people have regularly (especially in the 18th/19th century) created forgeries of so-called "ancient items".

DanBC 10y ago
Chastity belts are one example, and they've been mentioned on HN before.
logicallee 10y ago
Did you see my other comment? I realize a lot of ancient items are forgeries - in fact, it's a pain for people to tell the difference between ancient Greek sculptures and Roman imitations of them, since compared with our time they're both old: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rogr/hd_rogr.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rogr/hd_rogr.htm "In the late fourth century B.C., the Romans initiated a policy of expansion that in 300 years made them the masters of the Mediterranean world. Impressed by the wealth, culture, and beauty of the Greek cities, victorious generals returned to Rome with booty that included works of art in all media. Soon, educated and wealthy Romans desired works of art that evoked Greek culture. To meet this demand, Greek and Roman artists created marble and bronze copies of the famous Greek statues. Molds taken from the original sculptures were used to make plaster casts that could be shipped to workshops anywhere in the Roman empire, where they were then replicated in marble or bronze. Artists used hollow plaster casts to produce bronze replicas. Solid plaster casts with numerous points of measurement were used for marble copies. Since copies in marble lack the tensile strength of bronze, they required struts or supports, which were often carved in the form of tree trunks, figures, or other kinds of images. [...] All the marble statues in the central area of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum are copies made during the Roman period, dating from the first century B.C. through the third century A.D. They replicate statues made by Greek artists some 500 years earlier during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. " So those are replicas, made around, say, 200 AD, of statues from 500 years earlier. For us, both times are antiquity. But this is different. Our author is saying the originals simply didn't exist at all. In fact, in addition to the quotes in my other reply, he explicitly says (other than titling the piece "the curious case of the of the weapon that didn't exist") : > The more interesting possibility is that they were figments of an active artistic imagination, and that the examples we have are artistic or ornamental. This is a fascinating possibility, because it means that the flail could be an example of what French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called simulacra: copies of something that had no original. > If it is a simulacrum, the original inventors were not weaponsmiths but illustrators. The weaponsmiths who made them—in the sixteenth, nineteenth, or twenty-first century, were just copying an idea rather than a thing. Its realest life has been its afterlife. You see the difference? He's saying they're "copies of something that had no original." So this is very, very different. He is really striving hard to say that the original simply did not exist. At all. See my other comment for the quotes in which he says this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11745174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11745174 The author goes too far.

DanBC 10y ago

Chastity belts are one example, and they've been mentioned on HN before.

logicallee 10y ago

Did you see my other comment? I realize a lot of ancient items are forgeries - in fact, it's a pain for people to tell the difference between ancient Greek sculptures and Roman imitations of them, since compared with our time they're both old: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rogr/hd_rogr.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rogr/hd_rogr.htm "In the late fourth century B.C., the Romans initiated a policy of expansion that in 300 years made them the masters of the Mediterranean world. Impressed by the wealth, culture, and beauty of the Greek cities, victorious generals returned to Rome with booty that included works of art in all media. Soon, educated and wealthy Romans desired works of art that evoked Greek culture. To meet this demand, Greek and Roman artists created marble and bronze copies of the famous Greek statues. Molds taken from the original sculptures were used to make plaster casts that could be shipped to workshops anywhere in the Roman empire, where they were then replicated in marble or bronze. Artists used hollow plaster casts to produce bronze replicas. Solid plaster casts with numerous points of measurement were used for marble copies. Since copies in marble lack the tensile strength of bronze, they required struts or supports, which were often carved in the form of tree trunks, figures, or other kinds of images. [...] All the marble statues in the central area of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum are copies made during the Roman period, dating from the first century B.C. through the third century A.D. They replicate statues made by Greek artists some 500 years earlier during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. " So those are replicas, made around, say, 200 AD, of statues from 500 years earlier. For us, both times are antiquity. But this is different. Our author is saying the originals simply didn't exist at all. In fact, in addition to the quotes in my other reply, he explicitly says (other than titling the piece "the curious case of the of the weapon that didn't exist") : > The more interesting possibility is that they were figments of an active artistic imagination, and that the examples we have are artistic or ornamental. This is a fascinating possibility, because it means that the flail could be an example of what French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called simulacra: copies of something that had no original. > If it is a simulacrum, the original inventors were not weaponsmiths but illustrators. The weaponsmiths who made them—in the sixteenth, nineteenth, or twenty-first century, were just copying an idea rather than a thing. Its realest life has been its afterlife. You see the difference? He's saying they're "copies of something that had no original." So this is very, very different. He is really striving hard to say that the original simply did not exist. At all. See my other comment for the quotes in which he says this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11745174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11745174 The author goes too far.