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> I wish we would stop framing such articles like "Le gasp! These primitive, uneducated people actually had impressive medical techniques!" nothing in the arti

> I wish we would stop framing such articles like "Le gasp! These primitive, uneducated people actually had impressive medical techniques!" nothing in the article suggests this, and nobody who knows who the byzantines were think they were primitive uneducated people; in fact, the piece makes reference to medical techniques that were passed down in writing for centuries. the entire tone of this comment is seriously bizarre

DoreenMichele 5y ago
The fact that it emphasizes that they had knowledge passed down for centuries is part of the problem. You never see articles about current surgeries framed that way though it's equally true. No one needs to say "Modern surgeons use knowledge gained over centuries -- millennia even! -- to do their job!" We all know that, so it literally goes without saying. Needing to document that this culture had hundreds of years of such teachings to draw upon implicitly signals that we generally do think they are primitive, uneducated, etc regardless of your opinion about what people knowledgeable about the culture likely think of them. The title asserts it was gold threaded. Why assert that? Combination of click bait and we think we are so smart that there couldn't be another explanation. We just flat out refuse to say "We don't really know and it's possible they had medical techniques we have absolutely no knowledge of that could potentially improve modern day surgical techniques if we learned them."
- mcbuilder 5y ago
  No, the article describes the ancient surgeon(s) who conducted this operation as "sophisticated". Instead of framing him as some folk medicine-man blindly following some ancient principle. To me it's pointing more to the Byzantines being people of knowledge. Certainly, I wouldn't consider the people of a culture drawing upon history to implicitly signal them as primitive, in fact I consider it mark of a progressive and learned society!
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    It could be cited in a manner that more clearly signals "There are limits to what we know about them, but our limited knowledge includes this historic stuff." You know, if you listen to people on the internet from various cultural backgrounds, they routinely roll their eyes at how mainstream media presents them. I'm making the same sort of observation here: That it aggravates me the way we implicitly signal our assumed superiority to older/other cultures. That aggravation is not based on a single article. It's based on noticing patterns typically seen in such articles. It aggravates me in part because I think it harms our scientific understanding. I think you need context to properly understand things and we generally do a poor job of recognizing that we lack that context.
- djur 5y ago
  This is the 14th century Byzantine Empire we're talking about here. They kept records in languages we can read, as did their neighbors and eventual conquerors. There's nothing about this discovery that is inconsistent with our prior knowledge of their medical technology, and no reason whatsoever to speculate that they were using some kind of secret lost medicine.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

The fact that it emphasizes that they had knowledge passed down for centuries is part of the problem. You never see articles about current surgeries framed that way though it's equally true. No one needs to say "Modern surgeons use knowledge gained over centuries -- millennia even! -- to do their job!" We all know that, so it literally goes without saying. Needing to document that this culture had hundreds of years of such teachings to draw upon implicitly signals that we generally do think they are primitive, uneducated, etc regardless of your opinion about what people knowledgeable about the culture likely think of them. The title asserts it was gold threaded. Why assert that? Combination of click bait and we think we are so smart that there couldn't be another explanation. We just flat out refuse to say "We don't really know and it's possible they had medical techniques we have absolutely no knowledge of that could potentially improve modern day surgical techniques if we learned them."

mcbuilder 5y ago
No, the article describes the ancient surgeon(s) who conducted this operation as "sophisticated". Instead of framing him as some folk medicine-man blindly following some ancient principle. To me it's pointing more to the Byzantines being people of knowledge. Certainly, I wouldn't consider the people of a culture drawing upon history to implicitly signal them as primitive, in fact I consider it mark of a progressive and learned society!
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  It could be cited in a manner that more clearly signals "There are limits to what we know about them, but our limited knowledge includes this historic stuff." You know, if you listen to people on the internet from various cultural backgrounds, they routinely roll their eyes at how mainstream media presents them. I'm making the same sort of observation here: That it aggravates me the way we implicitly signal our assumed superiority to older/other cultures. That aggravation is not based on a single article. It's based on noticing patterns typically seen in such articles. It aggravates me in part because I think it harms our scientific understanding. I think you need context to properly understand things and we generally do a poor job of recognizing that we lack that context.
djur 5y ago
This is the 14th century Byzantine Empire we're talking about here. They kept records in languages we can read, as did their neighbors and eventual conquerors. There's nothing about this discovery that is inconsistent with our prior knowledge of their medical technology, and no reason whatsoever to speculate that they were using some kind of secret lost medicine.