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Archaeologists unearth ancient Sumerian riverboat in Iraq

105 points by diodorus 5y ago

bobsmooth 5y ago
I could never be a historian or archaeologist. I'd go insane thinking about all the lost history we will never know about. So few materials can last thousands of years. Makes me think about all the digital data created in the past 20 years. How much of that will still exist in the next 20, never mind 2000.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  This is why it would be something I would love to do. I would get bits of knowledge all my own and get my own personal puzzle to solve.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    I did it for awhile before before returning to tech. It's a fun field in many respects, but it's an absolutely terrible career. Much less puzzle solving than you might imagine though. Most evidence is far too underdetermined for that.
- jjulius 5y ago
  I dunno, I kinda think that the ephemerality of life and everything in the universe is kinda beautiful.
- shakna 5y ago
  I recently tried to find an archive of popular chain emails from the 90s... They're gone. Most of the popular data from that era just wasn't collated by anybody. The data hasn't survived 20 years. How little will exist in 100 years? Let alone 2000?
- firecall 5y ago
  I think this is how it should be. Take keeping Birthday Cards for instance. The person sending you the card didn't intend you to keep it forever! When I give a gift, I don't intend it to be kept forever! When I make something; I don't expect it to last forever. When I tweet something, I don't want that to be tweeted forever. In fact, I run an auto tweet delete bot. Things should be transient. The few scraps of history that we do found have value in their scarcity. If society preserved everything, we'd be crushed and destroyed under its weight. We can say the same of societies rituals as well. We must constantly reinvent to progress for the better of us all. One of Steve Jobs first actions when he returned to Apple was to dispose of the archives. (He gifted them to a University I think)
Hayvok 5y ago
> “the boat sank in a river, which swiftly buried it and preserved it for the next 4,000 years. That ancient river has long since silted up, but a few years ago, it began to yield at least one long-held secret: erosion revealed the outline of the boat” Just seeing the phrase “ancient river” in the context of a human artifact is enough to make my head spin a bit. This boat is so old, not only has the civilization that created it come and gone, but the river is gone too. What other secrets of our past still lie buried beneath the sands and waves of our changing planet?
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > This boat is so old, not only has the civilization that created it come and gone, but the river is gone too. Is it? "Silted up" would usually imply that the river moved, not that it disappeared. A river that isn't there can't deposit silt. The article kind of suggests that the river in question was the Euphrates: > Archaeologists found the boat in an area that, 4,000 years ago, would have been the bustling hinterlands of the largest city in the world: Uruk. Founded in 5000 BCE from the merger of two smaller settlements on the bank of the Euphrates River, Uruk was one of the world’s first major cities The Euphrates is still around.
  - versteegen 5y ago
    Wikipedia [1]: > Uruk was extremely well penetrated by a canal system that has been described as, "Venice in the desert."[13] This canal system flowed throughout the city connecting it with the maritime trade on the ancient Euphrates River as well as the surrounding agricultural belt. > The original city of Uruk was situated southwest of the ancient Euphrates River, now dry. Currently, the site of Warka is northeast of the modern Euphrates river. The change in position was caused by a shift in the Euphrates at some point in history, which, together with salination due to irrigation, may have contributed to the decline of Uruk. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Sadly, very little of it still reaches the sea anymore. From 20,000 up until 8000 years ago, the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers drain into, was continuously filling in, and thousands of square miles where people lived were disappearing beneath the waves.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
There will be an explosion of archaeological potential in the next two decades. * underwater drones to capture settlements and boats (particularly in the anoxic Black Sea) * advances in ground penetrating sensors combined with ML-based recognition * new funding models through popular media like Netflix
- sandworm101 5y ago
  And a rapid increase in the number of multimillionaires ready to hand over cash for antiquities, either personally or through thier funding of museums. Ancient relics are the new cool for the super rich, as dinosaur bones were a few years back, and painting before that.

105 points by diodorus 5y ago

I could never be a historian or archaeologist. I'd go insane thinking about all the lost history we will never know about. So few materials can last thousands of years. Makes me think about all the digital data created in the past 20 years. How much of that will still exist in the next 20, never mind 2000.

MattGaiser 5y ago
This is why it would be something I would love to do. I would get bits of knowledge all my own and get my own personal puzzle to solve.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  I did it for awhile before before returning to tech. It's a fun field in many respects, but it's an absolutely terrible career. Much less puzzle solving than you might imagine though. Most evidence is far too underdetermined for that.
jjulius 5y ago
I dunno, I kinda think that the ephemerality of life and everything in the universe is kinda beautiful.
shakna 5y ago
I recently tried to find an archive of popular chain emails from the 90s... They're gone. Most of the popular data from that era just wasn't collated by anybody. The data hasn't survived 20 years. How little will exist in 100 years? Let alone 2000?
firecall 5y ago
I think this is how it should be. Take keeping Birthday Cards for instance. The person sending you the card didn't intend you to keep it forever! When I give a gift, I don't intend it to be kept forever! When I make something; I don't expect it to last forever. When I tweet something, I don't want that to be tweeted forever. In fact, I run an auto tweet delete bot. Things should be transient. The few scraps of history that we do found have value in their scarcity. If society preserved everything, we'd be crushed and destroyed under its weight. We can say the same of societies rituals as well. We must constantly reinvent to progress for the better of us all. One of Steve Jobs first actions when he returned to Apple was to dispose of the archives. (He gifted them to a University I think)

Hayvok 5y ago

> “the boat sank in a river, which swiftly buried it and preserved it for the next 4,000 years. That ancient river has long since silted up, but a few years ago, it began to yield at least one long-held secret: erosion revealed the outline of the boat” Just seeing the phrase “ancient river” in the context of a human artifact is enough to make my head spin a bit. This boat is so old, not only has the civilization that created it come and gone, but the river is gone too. What other secrets of our past still lie buried beneath the sands and waves of our changing planet?

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> This boat is so old, not only has the civilization that created it come and gone, but the river is gone too. Is it? "Silted up" would usually imply that the river moved, not that it disappeared. A river that isn't there can't deposit silt. The article kind of suggests that the river in question was the Euphrates: > Archaeologists found the boat in an area that, 4,000 years ago, would have been the bustling hinterlands of the largest city in the world: Uruk. Founded in 5000 BCE from the merger of two smaller settlements on the bank of the Euphrates River, Uruk was one of the world’s first major cities The Euphrates is still around.
- versteegen 5y ago
  Wikipedia [1]: > Uruk was extremely well penetrated by a canal system that has been described as, "Venice in the desert."[13] This canal system flowed throughout the city connecting it with the maritime trade on the ancient Euphrates River as well as the surrounding agricultural belt. > The original city of Uruk was situated southwest of the ancient Euphrates River, now dry. Currently, the site of Warka is northeast of the modern Euphrates river. The change in position was caused by a shift in the Euphrates at some point in history, which, together with salination due to irrigation, may have contributed to the decline of Uruk. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Sadly, very little of it still reaches the sea anymore. From 20,000 up until 8000 years ago, the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers drain into, was continuously filling in, and thousands of square miles where people lived were disappearing beneath the waves.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

There will be an explosion of archaeological potential in the next two decades. * underwater drones to capture settlements and boats (particularly in the anoxic Black Sea) * advances in ground penetrating sensors combined with ML-based recognition * new funding models through popular media like Netflix

sandworm101 5y ago
And a rapid increase in the number of multimillionaires ready to hand over cash for antiquities, either personally or through thier funding of museums. Ancient relics are the new cool for the super rich, as dinosaur bones were a few years back, and painting before that.