13 ms·
Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoInteresting. I really like that they're displaying the things they found in the stations rather than just carting them away to the basement of some museum.
- elorant 8y agoSame happens in the metro stations at Athens.
- Someone 8y agoThe threshold for “museum worthy” is fairly high in ancient cities such as Rome. Chances are builders tried to avoid finding artifacts as much as possible. They certainly did in Istanbul when extending the subway: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-big-dig https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-big-dig
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- toyg 8y agoMuseums in Rome would throw them out, their basements are already full. I know it's controversial, but I personally think that there should be the possibility for the State to sell (or "permanently loan" for money) significant amounts of minor artifacts to other nation-states. Countries like the US, Britain or Australia would build academic cathedrals around the crappiest 1% of the stuff we have to stockpile in Italy.
- carlob 8y agoIn many cases that is possible when the dig was financed by another institution. The 4000 yo Egyptian "dioramas" they have on display at the met have been split between NYC and Cairo, because it was an American-led archaeological survey that found them.
- toadworrier 8y agoI think they are doing this with temporary loans. Our Maritime Museum in Sydney had a very good exhibition about the destruction of Pompeii. All the stuff there was on loan from some a couple maritime museums in Italy. Though I would leave Britain off your list.
- personlurking 8y agoIn Amsterdam as well https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2018/07/17/amsterdam-museum-archaeologists-artefacts-river-amstel/ https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2018/07/17/amsterdam-museu...
- ff_ 8y agoThe really funny thing about doing any construction work in basically any Italian city is that you already know from the start that there is going to be several years of delay due to finding ancient stuff... But it's impossible to dig all of that out (reasons: too big, too disruptive, no funds, happens everywhere, etc). So what usually happens is: take pictures, save some artifact, cover with concrete and go on with the works.
- bvc35 8y agoWhat a damn shame.
- drb91 8y agoWhat's the alternative--people stop developing Istanbul, Rome, etc entirely? I can't say I'm entirely unsympathetic to a population that wants development over marginally better understanding of places that already experience high levels of excavation and historical tourism.
- freehunter 8y agoI agree. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's valuable. Archaeologists come in and determine if the area has any historical value or advances our understanding of the ancient past. If it does, construction stops while the finds are uncovered. If not, then continue on. Finding yet another clay pot in Rome, one of the largest centers of population with one of the longest and most complete historical records of anywhere in the ancient world, is probably not going to be of much historical value. In an age where you can buy 10 Roman coins on Amazon for $25 and have them delivered to your house in two days with Prime shipping, the value of common ancient Roman artifacts is made abundantly clear.
- pmontra 8y agoIt's valuable (think about revenues from tourism) but we still have to live our lives. The ancients built on top of anything was there before. That's why we have so many archeological layers in Rome.
- toyg 8y agoSad that this great trove will end up with a name linked to one of the most shameful pages of Italian history [1], just because postwar politicians in Rome didn't have the guts to do the right thing and rip colonial-era names from the map. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Amba_Aradam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Amba_Aradam
- squarefoot 8y agoThat is just one of the atrocities my country committed in the past [1]. I would rather keep these names, in the hope young people who cannot ask their grandparents anymore dig the terms and get some information before they're sucked into embracing neo fascist ideologies spread by Facebook groups as it is happening right now. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_war_crimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_war_crimes
- frostburg 8y agoThere is absolutely no point in renaming it, actually it could be argued that it would be worse than keeping the name. Not far from there is a monument to the fallen of Dogali (another pointless colonial battle that I won't recount here) that was itself built using a obelisk looted around two thousand years before in Egypt. There is no way to neatly untangle that sort of thing.
- azujus 8y agoIt’s weird how our great^5 grandchildren will only find treasures in our dumps, but the cities will still be full of ancient stuff.
- carlob 8y agoIt's also that the Romans thought they were going to be around forever so they built everything to last. If you look at the Colosseum, it looks the way it is because it was willfully destroyed and used for construction material over centuries: when Rome became the seat of the Papacy, the Colosseum was remembered as a place where the early martyrs were slaughtered by wild beasts, not as a nice building to be preserved for tourists. On the other hand many Roman bridges throughout Europe still stand and some are still in use (yes even by cars). But the really amazing case is the Pantheon, that was turned into a church early on and preserved and restored for almost 2000 years. It's true that not all we see is original, but the structural engineering is.
- wtvanhest 8y agoThe Pantheon is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen. The light coming through the top is just incredible.
- ProfessorLayton 8y agoRandom tangent: As much as I love living in sunny California, it saddens me that due to earthquakes, nothing we build here will still be around in 2,000 years.
- wjnqx 8y agoThat's only because the construction isn't as sturdy. Italy routinely experiences earthquakes similar in magnitude to California.
- weberc2 8y ago> It's also that the Romans thought they were going to be around forever so they built everything to last. Is that a cause or a byproduct?
- sAbakumoff 8y agoIn Amsterdam they recently started the new subway line and they put items from underwater in one of the stations. I can't express enough how cool it looks likehttps://www.google.nl/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International/stone-axes-cellphones-project-examines-amsterdams-history-junk/story%3Fid%3D56339929?source=images https://www.google.nl/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International...
- ngold 8y agoThat's fun. Neolithic all the way to cell phones. It's a neat reminder how far we've come and how short our lives are.
- psukhedelos 8y agoReminds me of what I consider one of the most beautiful scenes in film from Federico Fellini's Roma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjtst-Vr87A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjtst-Vr87A
- cm2187 8y agoStupid question: how come so much stuff is buried? Tombs of course. But why do we keep finding other stuff under several meters of earth? It's not like if there are sand storms in Rome like there are in Egypt. And many of these areas have been inhabited continuously since ancient Rome.
- civilian 8y agoWhen a building is being knocked down and replaced with another, the construction workers usually don't clear the rubble. They just flatten the rubble and build ontop of it. That means that cities like Rome and Vienna truly are building up, ontop of centuries of different buildings. If you look at walkways down to the Tiber river in Rome, you have to go down two or three flights of stairs to get to the river. I imagine that Rome was originally flush or close-to-flush with the river, and now it's 3 stories taller.
- garmaine 8y ago> how come so much stuff is buried? Tombs of course. No, that's not the reason. Rather it is the case that through most of human history new buildings were built on top of the rubble of earlier buildings destroyed in a fire, sacking, earthquake, or in very early times the simple accumulation of trash. In many parts of the Middle East finding a lost city is as easy as looking for a hill that has no geological business being there and digging. People living in the same place over thousands of years is what makes the hill.
- zaarn 8y agoThings are build on top of each other. In my city, there are leftovers of the old castle walls from the middle ages, which in the core are build on top of the walls from the early medieval age and those in turn are built on top of roman walls. Or the social housing built after WW2 build on top of housing build in 1600s which in turn was build on top of social housing from 1516. Rubble over rubble over rubble for ages and ages. If you go into the nearby forests and dig, you'll find in order WW2, WW1, medieval, post roman and roman layered on top of each other. There is no tombs, mostly either a battlefield or simply a city being build on top of itself. A lot of European Cities tend to be like that and lots of places are like that. American cities by comparison are very very young (San Juan manages 400 years and some change, San Augustine comes second), our cities have grown organically over 3000 to 2000 years and through countless wars and catastrophes.
- User23 8y agoSouthern California faces a similar challenge. There are many interesting fossils and any sizable work site is going to find something. Usually it just gets surreptitiously trashed, but occasionally it’s something so awesome the builders actually follow the law.
- doitLP 8y agoI saw a joke headline last time I was in Rome that went something like "C Line construction halted to excavate ancient remains of C Line construction"
- justinclift 8y agoThe straight text version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=630532760 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=630532760
- emmelaich 8y agoChrome Canary gives a https warning: NET::ERR_CERT_SYMANTEC_LEGACY Subject: www.npr.org Issuer: Symantec Class 3 ECC 256 bit EV CA - G2 Expires on: 17 Nov 2019 Current date: 27 Jul 2018