11 ms·
5,000-year-old sword discovered by archaeology student at a Venetian monastery
- SimeVidas 7y agoLooks like a sword from Zelda 1.
- justlexi93 7y agoLOL, maybe they got the idea from this historical sword.
- aidenn0 7y agoWay higher resolution though...
- Ericson2314 7y ago*mislabeled at a Venetian monastery's museum, which was full of stuff from (various definitions of Armenia).
- shahbaby 7y agoLooks more like a dagger tbh
- tomcam 7y agoAppears to be more of a dagger, but you can't fault the ergonomics. Beautifully designed, and I would guess not just for ceremonial use.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> I would guess not just for ceremonial use. The article has words to the effect that swords were "first forged[] both as weapons and as symbols of authority". Of course that can't possibly be true. They were weapons first. Without the use as weapons, there would be no reason to see them as symbols of authority.
- mehrdadn 7y agoIsn't that what a crown is, though? It's not a weapon but it's a symbol of authority.
- mirimir 7y agoWeapons come before crowns etc. Although crowns are presumably abstracted from helmets.
- mehrdadn 7y ago> Weapons come before crowns etc. I don't think anyone suggested weapons didn't exist before these swords either?
- thaumasiotes 7y agoIn the Iliad (much more recent than this sword, but nonetheless informative in some ways), swords are symbolic of nothing. The text is very clear on what the symbol of royal authority is -- it's a club. ("Scepter") I'd be pretty comfortable with the idea that clubs are no more recent than weapons in general.
- mirimir 7y agoSure, but didn't clubs become symbols because they were weapons?
- thaumasiotes 7y agoYes. One of the oldest Egyptian royal motifs is the king smiting a bound captive or a group of bound captives with a mace.
- inawarminister 7y agoYes, even until the Hellenistic era, the weapon of virtue and honour was... the spear. As exemplified by the poetic sense of a conqueror's demense: his spear-won land. However, other peoples from deep antiquity held sword to higher regard. Like the Celts and Germans. Especially the Germanic tribes, who couldn't make their own swords and need to win them in trade or raid.
- agumonkey 7y agosdaggering
- duxup 7y agoIt's in great shape.
- nl 7y agoGiven that it's a bronze sword it seems fairly clear it wasn't medieval. Surprising that this took so long.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoWhy would that be clear? You can buy new bronze daggers today.
- nl 7y agoBecause bronze was outdated by Roman times (let alone 1000 years later), and high quality weapons were prestigious. You can get one now because it's fun.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoI'm not a historian / archaeologist, so I can't really be sure here, but I would have assumed bronze would have been valued throughout history for-at least-it's appearance? I also would have assumed the fun-factor has been a historical constant too? If you're wealthy enough, at any time since the bronze age, you might want a bronze version of [thing] for the same reasons people want a bronze [thing] now?
- lokedhs 7y agoYou raise an interesting point, and one that I have thought about quite often. In archaeology, there seems to be an assumption that people in the past only ever did things for two reasons: Utility and religion. If an object doesn't seem to have an obvious usefulness, it's assumed that the artifact is of religious nature. People have not changed much in the last few thousand years, and thins that we find interesting today must surely have been interesting in the past. In your example, why wouldn't a person 1000 years ago consider a replica "ancient thing" just as interesting as we do today? Just imagine a future archaeologist looking at the modern work with the mindset of current archaeologists? What kind of religious symbolism would they ascribe to a picachu cosplay outfit?
- beaner 7y agoI wasn't even aware things were really made of metal before like 2,000 years ago. Crazy! Is there a history of metal somewhere? Bronze, copper, tin, steal, gold, harvesting, forging, etc. It would be an interesting read of history, science, and discovery.
- liveoneggs 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcolithic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcolithic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 7y agoWasn't 2000 years ago basically the height of the Roman Empire?
- lokedhs 7y agoYes, and 2000 years before that you have the Egyptians, who also had metal swords. Wikipedia tells me that the earliest artifacts of metal comes from 7000 years ago.
- beaner 7y agoI suppose so, but that doesn't tell me anything. Edit: Downvotes? I'm expressing my own naivety. Not everyone has intuition of the heights of empires and what that means for metal usage.
- neuronic 7y agoIt's nearly impossible to grow up in Western culture (no experience with others) and not have some extremely basic Asterix-level understanding of what the Romans were and when they lived. And that they basically copied large chunks of their own culture from Greece which invented democracy a few centuries earlier. I mean, even Christian fundamentals have that context based on their lecture of the Christ saga. It's all fundamentally what our own culture is based on in the West, just look at Washington DC and the buildings. Or Wall St. The Greco-Roman influence is permeating the West.
- rvz 7y agoReminds me of the discovery of a 1,500 year old sword at the bottom of a lake thought to be King Arthur's legendary excalibur which was said to have been thrown in that same lake in Cornwall in England [0]. 𝔄𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔬 𝔶𝔢 𝔩𝔢𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔡 𝔬𝔣 𝔈𝔵𝔠𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔟𝔲𝔯 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔱𝔯𝔲𝔢... [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/schoolgirl-excalibur-king-arthur-lake-discover-dozmary-pool-cornwall-bodmin-moor-matilda-jones-a7930881.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/schoolgirl-e...
- outworlder 7y agoWhere does it say that it is 1500 year old? The article says "the family doesn't think it is very old, probably an old film prop".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tpmx 7y agoI first thought the previous comment was about that 8-year old girl in Sweden who found a 1500 year old sword: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45753455 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45753455 and https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/9lgdaf/girl_8_pulls_a_1500yearold_sword_from_a_lake_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/9lgdaf/girl_8_pu... (the puns never really end...) Why are so many young girls finding viking age swords in lakes?
- ackbar03 7y agoBecause young girls discovering swords in other scenarios probably can't make its way onto news sites
- samstave 7y agoListen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!
- tarheels100 7y agoThis seems to stretch the meaning of "discovered." Hey look, I just discovered a dinosaur at the natural history museum! It's older than they thought it was!
- irjustin 7y agoI'll take the opposite end and say it was discovered. If you "discovered a dinosaur" that was completely mislabeled and of the oldest dinosaurs known to man "hiding in plain sight" - you deserve it.
- tarheels100 7y agoCertainly it is a significant contribution, but I have to admit that my mental image when reading someone dicovered an ancient sword is of someone digging it out of the ground.
- sfifs 7y agoWell yes. From the article the digging out of the ground part likely happened but maybe a 100 years previously.
- rsynnott 7y ago> Hey look, I just discovered a dinosaur at the natural history museum! It's older than they thought it was! I mean, that actually happens, doesn't it? It's not that unusual for new species to be identified, misclassified in museums.
- specialist 7y agoUncovered? Refound? I would like a better word, phrase for "sharing something that I just figured out, but didn't invent or create myself." Some thing like "News to me." For instance, I'm currently "discovering" recipes for pumpkin pie. More of drunken sailor's walk thru an underspecified problem space.
- nkrisc 7y agoIt was discovered because no one really knew what it was before this.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- arminiusreturns 7y agoWow, this is very interesting and right up my alley. One of my many random hobbies is collecting images of artefacts and I have a huge dir dedicated just to ancient swords. Bronze tends to look very similar due to the casting methods but it's cool to see an older iteration and compare it to say the Scythian (my personal favorites), Mycenaean, Greek, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, etc. Funny enough, the ones I have marked as oldest are called "The Swords of Arslantepe" [1] (which the article mentions in passing) from the same general region as this one, and are said to be also ~5k old, and of a very similar chemical composition. The weapons of the royal tombs of Ur [2] are right behind these in age. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=Swords+of+Arslantepe&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=Swords+of+Arslantepe&iax=im... [2] http://sumerianshakespeare.com/117701/118301.html http://sumerianshakespeare.com/117701/118301.html edit: From the article, a new one to me: "and the sword found in the Tokat Museum in Turkey", now I have a new something to search for!
- hodgesrm 7y agoIt seems your user name matches your hobby!
- arminiusreturns 7y agoI suppose you have a point! Most people don't know the story of Arminius so I usually dont get any comments about it.
- mboto 7y agoI just heard about it the other week via In Our Time on the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f69q https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f69q
- arethuza 7y agoWhat do you make of the myth that Scots came from Scythia - e.g. in the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath: They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Now I'm not say there is much chance of historicity of this myth - but I've been puzzled as to why anyone would pick on Scythia as a place to come from? https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_TextArbroath01.htm https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_Text...
- ggm 7y agoA better headline is "Sword in Venetian monastery collection discovered to be 5,000 years old"
- tarheels100 7y agoAccurate, but not as "grabby". Of course, I don't think the author was necessarily aiming for accuracy.
- cull 7y agoI know that this is more of an announcement of the recognition of the misattribution of an artifact in the museum’s collection, but I am more curious of it’s provenance; specifically, how it made its way into the museum’s collection. And what its original archaeological context was.
- btrettel 7y agoHow does one get better at noticing that something is "off" like this sword not matching its claimed origin? To me, it took more than student being an expert here. Experts often miss things like this in my experience if they're not paying attention for it. I'm assuming that the student was the a tour not in her capacity as a Bronze age weapons specialist, so if that's true then this wasn't necessarily something she would be paying attention for. When I notice that something is off, it's usually a fleeting thought that quickly passes. Sometimes when I notice that something is off a second time, I'll realize that I didn't "catch" the thought the first time. I think I've been getting better at catching those thoughts and writing them down. I'm also confident that there are methods to increase the frequency by which one catches these things, though I'm not certain how.
- brailsafe 7y agoIt seems like in this case, there was a vague description that didn't align with her acute knowledge of a very specific/esoteric subject. Her father was an archival researcher at the monastery. So to get better at this, a good path would probably be to develop general critical observation skills, as well as a deep understanding of particular subjects that you'd be exposed to.
- ForHackernews 7y agoI think you may be misreading the term "father" in this context. It's not that the grad student's literal biological father is a researcher at the monastery. One of the priests/monks, who carry the honorific title Father[0], is an archival researcher in the monastery. [0] https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/d003rpHowToAddressClergy.html https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/d003rpHowToAddre...
- brailsafe 7y agoWoops, looks like you're right about that.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI'm making a guess here, but mindfulness and being 'awake' (bit vague terms I know) would do it I think; I believe so many people walked past that sword without really paying much attention to it - oh it's an old sword in a display case (I think?), neat. In a place like that, and I get the same thing in historical museums, you get so much things coming at you that it's hard to take it all in - let alone think critically about it. I'm guessing she took more than a quick glance at the sword and the blurb.
- z3t4 7y agoWhats even cooler is that this sword/dagger might have been made from meteorite. Eg. It could be alien.
- varjag 7y agoDoubt there are bronze meteorites known to humanity. Either way, copper, the major component of bronze, is a product of exploding supernovas. That's cool enough.
- Causality1 7y agoFascinating that there's so much metal used in the handle rather than using a tang inside a wooden handle.
- anonmindbender 7y agoBest i can do is 300
- Hokusai 7y ago> Two years worth of research confirmed the sword is among the most ancient ones ever found, dating as far back as 5,000 years ago. Two years? But, I have seen Hollywood movies that they just need a magnifying glass and 5 minutes to get a conclusion. There goes another myth. Science and history are complicated and require more effort and time that movies are willing to concede.
- kaybe 7y agoI always laugh when stealing research data of ongoing work is an import plot point. Making sense of it can be hard for the person who wrote it, let alone a close colleague, but a stranger? Haha, good luck.
- squarefoot 7y agoFiction aside, funding makes a difference here. Give non military science funds comparable to hollywood movies and we'll likely go from 2 years to a few months.
- CabSauce 7y agoThat might make the movies a little too long.
- rsynnott 7y agoAIUI, they could get a good impression pretty quickly, but if you're publishing, you want to be _sure_. Actually getting permission to do the required testing also probably took a while.
- danso 7y agoTangent, but I can't help but recall one of my favorite headlines and subheds in the Guardian, from a couple years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/19/experience-pulled-a-1500-year-old-sword-lake-saga-vanecek https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/19/experie...
- lb1lf 7y ago-One of my wife’s ancestors found a sword dating back some 1,300 years on the farm we currently live on, and it has caused lots of annoyances over the years. The problem is that the national Norwegian archive of ancient artifact findings only register the property something is found on, not the exact location. Hence, a hundred years after a sword was found in a mountainside a mile away from where we live, I have to obtain permission from an archaeologist every time I put a shovel in the ground, more or less... The sword looks cool, though. (On display in a museum; no such thing as finder’s keepers for such old things - very rightly so!)
- TSiege 7y agoDo you have a link to the piece in the collection? I'd love to see it.
- samirillian 7y agoHow big is this farm?
- lb1lf 7y ago-Not very big; approximately a square kilometer (.4 sqm) all told - most of which is forest and a mountainside. Some 30,000sqm arable land, all of which is maintained by neighbours who are active farmers -both my wife and I are engineers.