12 ms·
Roman mosaic floor found under Italian vineyard
- rident 6y agoI watched a lot of old Time Team episodes lately and this looks like more of the same from the era. Really nice, complex looking work but overall what can be expected for the time period. Cool that it's so well preserved though and hasn't suffered from having a plow or seismic event turn it into a puzzle.
- timthorn 6y agoI worked on an episode as part of a team reconstructing a mosaic a couple of decades back. (Basildon/"The Intercity Villa") Unfortunately, it turned out that the GWR railway line had obliterated the original villa. :(
- lokl 6y ago+1 for Time Team. Highly recommended for HN readers even remotely interested in archaeology.
- cpach 6y agoIncredibly beautiful!
- ComputerGuru 6y agoIt’s remarkably well-preserved! Aside from some fading and needing some polish, it’s impossible to believe it’s really that old. The “resolution” (to use a modern turn of phrase) is much higher than I would have expected for something that large.
- qubex 6y agoYou made me laugh because people used to describe pixels in terms of mosaic tiles. Now we’ve got to the point where we do the opposite and descrive mosaics in terms of pixels.
- fatbird 6y agoIn the entrance of the Pokemon Company International in Bellingham, WA, one wall is decorated with an image from one of the games, blown up so that the pixels are 1" x 1", filling a space that's about 20' x 10' tall. What makes it cool is that a transparent tile was put over it, where the tiles are 1" x 1", making the whole wall look like a mosaic, giving something totally modern a wonderful antique air.
- wtetzner 6y agoDo you have a link to a picture of it? I can't seem to find one.
- DanBC 6y agoI'd love to know if this is it, and if there's a better picture of it. https://media.glassdoor.com/l/74/a2/5e/2a/pokemon.jpg https://media.glassdoor.com/l/74/a2/5e/2a/pokemon.jpg
- fatbird 6y agoYeah, that's it, between Bulbasaur and the people sitting down. Here's the picture I took of it the last time I was there: https://pasteboard.co/JauAUWV.jpg https://pasteboard.co/JauAUWV.jpg
- ComputerGuru 6y agoThat’s a much better picture. I’m surprised there aren’t pics of this available on Google, if it were my HQ, I’d want to show this off!
- frandroid 6y agoRelated: The Pokémon card mosaic: https://ew.com/article/2016/03/22/pokemon-pikachu-mosaic/ https://ew.com/article/2016/03/22/pokemon-pikachu-mosaic/
- jcun4128 6y agoKind of curious how they found it(surveyors). Did they use ground radar or something to find anomalies in the soil/bedrock. Probably not something you can do from a satellite right(scifi ha).
- sricciardi 6y agoThe site was actually known since 1922, but the exact location had been lost. Last year they started digging again and the first parts of the mosaic floor had been uncovered.
- toyg 6y agoI’m surprised they are doing it right now, with all that’s going on in that area too.
- sricciardi 6y agoThe activity on the site had been interrupted in February due to the lockdown, and it restarted this month after the restrictions have been gradually eased up. As you work in the open air, it's certainly less risky than a closed space (like, say, a haidresser).
- flohofwoe 6y agoLots of trial and error probably. From the article: > A note on the commune website said diggers finally made the discovery "after decades of failed attempts". Also "scholars first found evidence of a Roman villa there more than a century ago", so they knew it must be there somewhere (I guess from old texts), but didn't know where exactly to look for it.
- toyg 6y ago> commune Bbc disappointing me here - it’s not a commune but a comune, i.e. the local council / municipality.
- pjc50 6y ago
- corrupt_measure 6y agoWe take beautiful art for granted today, but imagine how breathtaking and inspiring it must have been for an Ancient Roman to see these mosaics, in a time when beautiful art and artistic form had not yet been commoditized as they are today.
- Ralfp 6y agoOh, but it was conmoditized even then. Roman society was suprisingly „modern” on many fields, and their approach to art was no exception. Rich paid the creators to create such art on their properties to increase their value.
- toyg 6y agoYeah but it was more like “Kanye West paying someone to paint his crib” than “‘middle-class couple hiring a local guy to do up their flat”. Rich people were few and far between.
- Ralfp 6y agoThis is not really true. The rich (patricians) formed entire houses and used combination of wealth and political influence to maintain their positions. Even if their number wasnt greater than few thousands, they de-facto owned the Italy during Roman Republic. Relatively speaking, they were most numerous within Rome, but they also owned lands they had lower class people and slaves farm for them that they sometimes visited.
- woofie11 6y agoFine art was available to more of the population than you'd think. The world population doubled in the past 45 years. In contrast, during the Roman period, the world population took about 500 years to double. Wealth accumulated over generations. In that time, if your great-great-great grandfather had a piece of artwork, there was a good chance it was yours now. We have negative stereotypes of the past, and there were periods of history when that was true, but there were advanced periods too. The Bronze Age empires were pretty impressive until roughly 1300 BC. We had a dark age for a while. The Roman Empire was very impressive. Then we had a dark age for a while. And you also want to think of the social structure. Rich people employed poor people in households. Even if I owned nothing personally, I'd be exposed to art in my master's household.
- Cactus2018 6y agoMany more, better, photos https://interestingengineering.com/stunning-roman-mosaic-floor-found-intact-under-a-vineyard-in-italy https://interestingengineering.com/stunning-roman-mosaic-flo...
- koheripbal 6y agoI can't even imagine how many discoveries like this are buried in Turkey, having been the center of the east Roman empire for a thousand years. I wish Turkey would allow archeological digs.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoTurkey allows archaeological digs, with only the same amount of red tape as in other nations around the Mediterranean. There have been a number of major excavations and discoveries in Turkey in recent decades.
- Mikeb85 6y agoThe 'Eastern Roman' empire is just another name for 'Byzantine' empire and there's a ton of sites already discovered from that era.
- Cactus2018 6y agoHowever, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term Byzantine came into general use in the Western world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire#Nomenclature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire#Nomenclature
- Mikeb85 6y agoI'm aware and it doesn't matter what it's called, just pointing out that Byzantine = Eastern Roman Empire and that we've already uncovered a bunch of their ruins since OP seemed to be implying that we hadn't.
- diegoperini 6y ago
- zipperhead 6y agoIf you like this stuff, I recommend checking out the UK show 'Time Team'. Each episode they do an archaeological dig spanning three days, to see if they can piece together what was going on in a particular site. Many of their digs are on old Roman sites in England. There's 17 seasons of it, most of which is on Amazon Prime (I think youtube has episodes as well). It's been my goto show lately for interesting entertainment during the pandemic.
- Antecedent 6y agoLooks like something I can buy at Walmart.
- IgorPartola 6y agoFrom what I understand, this happens in Rome all the time. Their subway system encounters a work stoppage due to stumbling onto a new buried building on like a weekly basis. Rome keeps sinking and so there are layers upon layers of buildings on top of each other. While there last May I went to a 14th century chapel they was on top of a fourth century chapel, on top of a send century chapel, on top of a first century villa, on top of an old mint. There is an underground river that would need to be diverted to see if there is something under that but it appears there is. Fun thing I saw there: this is where St. Cyril was buried and above his tomb there are about a dozen plaques thanking him for bringing literacy to places like Ukraine, Macedonia, etc. Despite them being centuries old I could read them almost perfectly since I can read Russian and Ukrainian. That was incredible.
- loeg 6y agoYeah, there are Roman mosaics are all over the area the Roman empire used to span.
- ziotom78 6y agoAh, I believe you are referring to the Basilica of St. Clemente [1]. I agree, it's one of the most stunning places you can find in Rome! [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente_al_Laterano https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente_al_Laterano
- IgorPartola 6y agoI was! It really was an amazing place. I absolutely fell in love with Rome while there.
- d4nt 6y agoWhy is Rome sinking?
- lazyant 6y agoHow old is the mosaic? article doesn't say and I'm curious since there's a cross motif and wondering if popular theme (coincidence) or post-Constantine Christian imagery.
- morninglight 6y agoI found many remnants of Roman mosaics in Tunisia; they seem to be everywhere. They are especially easy to find along the beaches because even the individual stones stand out. They have a small square shape that is unlike anything else you are likely to see. I suspect they were from the private homes and villas of wealthy Romans. The largest one I found was over 2 square meters, but I did not invest much effort searching. Back in those days, I had more interesting things to do with my time on the beach. Two thousand years ago, the mediterranean was a much different place. Today much of Tunisia seems barren, but one peek at the El Jem Amphitheatre and you know things have changed. Tunisia was once a verdant agricultural land with a booming economy that supported the building of sumptuous homes, outdoor theatres, public baths, temples, enormous aqueducts, etc. http://www.tourismtunisia.com/historic-sites-in-tunisia/ http://www.tourismtunisia.com/historic-sites-in-tunisia/
- wahern 6y agoYou understate what Tunisia once was; it was once, basically, Carthage, the richest city-state in the world and the center (or one of the centers) of several of the most advanced civilizations in the world--the Phoenician, Carthaginian, and later Roman Empires. Carthage was razed during the Arab Conquest so the Romans would stop attempting to take back the region. A more modest city was rebuilt nearby but the region never came close to achieving its former glory.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoCarthago Delenda Est (Carthage must be destroyed)! Possibly the most famous sentence by Cicero, even if this is the abbreviated form. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est
- swasheck 6y agoCarthage and Corinth were Rome’s primary competition. Carthage’s final fall coincided with Corinth's, but its history with Rome dated back much much earlier. Roman artifacts are a relic of their occupation and rebuild of the city. And you’re correct with the notion of the Arab/Muslim conquests. An amazing city that was reduced to a fraction of its former glory. That such a well-preserved artifact has been preserved is quite an amazing discovery. I’m pretty excited by it.
- abotsis 6y ago“This damn rocky soil is playing hell with the tiller!”
- irrational 6y agoIt looks there are about 4-5 feet of earth of the mosaics. I know it has been thousands of years, but where did the earth come from? Did it move there naturally from some place higher up? Is it flood debris from a nearby river? Was it placed there by people?
- delcaran 6y agoAfter the collapse of the Empire, Roman building where stripped and left to rot, floors where covered with dirt for making crops or just for hiding pagan images.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoI am also amazed by amount of dirt, not by the fact it is covered (it came by process of top soil formation ); but by the sheer amount of it. If that was just after 2-3 thousand years, it makes me wonder what other things can we dig which are much deeper? But again not prehistoric kind of deep, more in range of last million years.
- sjg007 6y agoUmm fossils maybe?
- Bayart 6y agoThere's no rubble over the floor so it's most likely silt or mud from flooding/mud slide.
- SeanFerree 6y agoVery cool!
- jungletime 6y agoAs someone that just spent over 10K on a botched marble floor job. This just pissed me off more at my installer. The guy didn't level the floor. Told me he had 10 years of experience laying tiles. He had 1 by 2 foot tiles, took over a month to lay down 1000 sqft. Not even mosaic. I feel drunk walking on the floor, since it goes up and down so much.
- nkoren 6y agoCheck out the floor of the Pantheon, in Rome. THAT IS THE ORIGINAL FLOOR. People have been walking on it for 2,000 years and it's still gorgeous. The sheer competency of these guys was unbelievable.
- jungletime 6y agoI was there in person when I was a kid. Amazing place.
- dboreham 6y agoThe roof being original is a bit more impressive imho.
- abrowne 6y agoThe world's largest unreinforced concrete dome, and almost 1900 years old.
- nkoren 6y agoOh, of course the roof is amazing, one of the crowning achievements of human ingenuity, IMHO. But for some reason the floor impresses me at least as much. If you're a Roman working on that roof, you know you're doing something totally unprecedented in human history. So you pull out all the stops with an utterly heroic feat of engineering and construction. That's very impressive, but when it comes to the floor -- well, plenty of buildings have floors, nothing groundbreaking about that. So, y'know, just call the flooring contractors and have them install something nice. The fact that something relatively ordinary is still performing so well, a couple thousand years later, is what blows my mind. Today, I'm sure that a gathering of the world's greatest engineers would be capable of designing a dome that would last for millennia. But I doubt there's any flooring contractor on earth who would give even a hundred-year guarantee on their work.
- Ma8ee 6y agoJust a reminder (I think it has been posted here) of this wonderful read about the many layers of Rome: https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/