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Ancient culture torched its own homes every 60 years
- MeteorMarc 3y agoIn estimating the needed fuel they seem to ignore the firestorm effect when many houses burn together. Firestorms result in much higher temperatures.
- defrost 3y agoWhat firestorm? Bankoff and Winter are not the only researchers who committed arson in the name of science. In 2018, a team of Ukrainian and British archeologists burned down not one but two historically accurate structures. Still, the results were nearly identical. The walls of both buildings were left intact, as were various clay pots and figurines the researchers had placed inside them. What’s more, neither fire managed to spread, indicating that the practice was safe and controllable. The structures have thick kiln like clay walls .. large amounts of additional fuels was required to burn the wooden walls, roof and thatching out and still the burn was contained by thick two storey high clay walls. There's no real suggestion that all the houses were all burned all at the same time, just that all the houses were regularly burnt out, with suggested reasons: * burning houses of dead people, * burning to strengthen clay walls I looked for and didn't see "burning to clear out bugs and nasties in thatchwork | organic woven walls, etc". Once a generation "maintainance" isn't a bad theory - drop the roof, replaster the walls with wet clay pushed into cracks and washout sections, new walls for new rooms, etc. and then torch to cleanse and 'fire' the clay.
- irrational 3y agoYeah, but cutting down 250 trees and making them into firewood, without chainsaws or other modern tools seems like a lot of work (actually an insane amount of work bordering on unbelievable) just for maintenance. Even with a chainsaw, doing it to one tree is very labor intensive. That is time they are not planting/harvesting/hunting. Instead they would be burning massive amounts of calories over a very extended period of time. Though, I suppose I’m making assumption about how big the trees were. I’m assuming these are old growth forests with tall and wide trees.
- arethuza 3y agoThis is obviously a random coincidence - but there are ancient structures here in Scotland that were processed using fire - so called "vitrified forts" - where large quantities of rock were partially melted - how or why being a complete mystery. So what's that got to do with Scotland? Well, Scots myths claim an origin in Scythia of all places which is pretty much in the area covered by the map in this article!
- jacquesm 3y agoLearn a new thing every day :) Thank you for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort
- soligern 3y agoI have to say, the pictures on that article and others online aren’t particularly convincing. I wonder if you could pull this off in the modern world. It would be amazing to see sheer walls of granite, completely fused together as one solid mass.
- jacquesm 3y agoIt's not completely fused together, more like loose aggregate held together by fused bits. It appears to be very brittle rather than stronger than the original wall.
- arethuza 3y agoPlaces like the Tap o' Noth look like the the ruins of any mysterious hill top fortress that we have quite a lot of in Scotland - its only when you look closer do you realise that the rubble is actually all stuck together by melted rock. The fort (or inner bastion as there was a large outer settlement) is 100m by 30m and the walls roughly 5m by 8m - which is a lot of rock!
- madaxe_again 3y agoYou can. We just had a wildfire here and in a few spots, where the rocks formed a natural chimney filled with flammable material, the rocks have vitrified and deformed. You just need intense heat for a prolonged period - if they could do it with mounds of gorse, it can still be done.
- teddyh 3y ago> while the smoke would have fumigated the living space. I feel that this is the likely reason. There might have been a common sort of bug or mold or other slow-acting form of infestation which they routinely got rid of by “resetting” the building by burning and rebuilding.
- grog454 3y agoI had the same thought. 60-80 years is probably longer than the average lifespan 5,000 years ago, so a surprising period for a "tradition".
- Filligree 3y agoAverage lifespans were pulled sharply downward by early deaths. The elders in any given community would have gotten almost as old as now, there’s just weren’t nearly as many of them.
- pessimizer 3y ago> there’s just weren’t nearly as many of them. Unless the birthrates were higher. If people gave birth to litters of fifty of which all but a few were expected to die, the average lifespan would be in the single digits.
- runnerup 3y agoWomen often died during childbirth. In medieval times some estimates put it at 30% of women died during one of their childbirths (but I can’t find rates on a per pregnancy basis and don’t know how many children they were having in average). Estimates are that up to 1-in-50 pregnancies killed the mother in antiquity. I suspect it was exceptional if a woman bore more than 6 children, although obviously some women would have more than ten. I believe the baby boomer generation had large families due to excellent modern medical care post WW2.
- pessimizer 3y ago
- emsign 3y agoMight have been their only way of hardening the clay walls. We do it still to this day, except we burn the bricks before building the walls. Lacking modern building techniques like that and like mortar, burning the walls in situ was probably pretty neat back then and gave them such an advantage that cutting down hundreds of trees seemed worth it.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> Might have been their only way of hardening the clay walls. We do it still to this day, except we burn the bricks before building the walls. Lacking modern building techniques like that That's not exactly a modern building technique. Ancient Mesopotamian wall inscriptions sometimes brag about how the bricks in the wall have been baked. (Making for a higher-quality wall; presumably sun-dried clay was still in use for non-prestige projects.)
- HarryHirsch 3y agoYou burn bricks before they are assembled into a building, not after. In the American Southwest you do encounter prestige buildings from the end of the 19th century proudly proclaiming they were built in brick when the rest of the village was built from adobe.
- mjhay 3y agoThere is the modern counterexample of ceramic houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_house
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoThe firing is energetically expensive, and doesn't really end up creating a notably longer lived result. Things last in the southwest because of the low moisture levels, whether they are fired or not. The "prestige" of brick in the southwest was all about having the money to pay for fired bricks, not really their superiority as a building material.
- 3y ago
- almostnormal 3y agoIt's the earliest recorded case of insurance fraud.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoPlease don’t do this here. Not only are jokes low-value comments on HN, but I imagine a number of readers are already aware that the earliest recorded insurance fraud was connected with bottomry in the ancient Mediterranean.
- irrational 3y agoWait, was that last part a joke? Is this like a meta joke? You chastise someone else for making a joke and then make one yourself?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Xymist 3y agoNope, not a joke. Some twit in ancient Greece insured a ship, claimed it sank, claimed on the insurance, and went to keep/sell the cargo.
- distortionfield 3y agoThis was a great TIL https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottomry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottomry
- scandum 3y agoSeems like speculation on top of speculation on top of speculation. I wonder what the archeological data looks like, 6 burned down houses and a very active imagination?
- olddustytrail 3y agoWhy don't you look at the size of the area they're talking about where these have been observed. And then, perhaps, try the process we like to refer to as "thought".
- rossdavidh 3y agoWell, vampires, it's pretty obvious really. Or, more seriously, any other infectious and/or parasitic problem that you want to get rid of.
- foreigner 3y agoDon't be ridiculous, this was clearly dragons.
- harimau777 3y agoMy understanding is that in Japanese culture buildings where traditionally torn down and rebuilt periodically (it sticks in my mind something like every 10 or 20 years, but don't quote me on that). Interestingly enough, that apparently includes culturally and/or historically significant buildings and the Japanese don't consider these to be new buildings from a "continuity" standpoint. That is to say, the Japanese would still consider a temple to be hundreds of years old even if it had been torn down and rebuilt multiple times; with all the sense of connection to antiquity that a Westerner might feel when visiting the Sistine Chapel. An advantage of this approach is that the craftsmanship necessary to build these structures is preserved. Unlike the stories you hear about in Western culture where preservationists have to reconstruct long forgotten techniques.
- mikhailfranco 3y agoPerhaps explaining why the world's oldest company (est. 578) builds Japanese temples. And maybe also why it was recently acquired (2006) - no more rebuilding? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi
- akasakahakada 3y agoI click into this post just to say the same thing. It is Ise Grsnd Shrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine But not all Japanese buildings are like this.
- nemo44x 3y agoThe old techniques didn’t fall out because building stopped. New materials and tools are why. The techniques used for some intricate carving were sure to be lost when electric tools and computer aided machine tech came into existence. The average rough carpenter is probably lousy with a hammer compared to 150 years ago but they can frame a house out just fine using a nail gun.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago> The techniques used for some intricate carving were sure to be lost when electric tools and computer aided machine tech came into existence. No. The new tools and tech were bound to succeed in a culture that valued reductions in time and labor costs. But there's nothing inevitable about such a culture, and it seems perfectly possible for there to be others that would have ranked the new tools and techniques inferior to the old ones for a variety of reasons.
- dukeofdoom 3y agoI remember reading something about how in Japan the home depreciates very quickly, has to do with liablity/insurance of an old home. Essentially it forces the prices to be about the lot, and not the home. And consequently homes are rebuilt more often. Which boosts their economy. They also have strict construction laws about blocking your neighbour's sunlight. Apparently in Florida it's very hard/expensive to get home insurance too, because of frequent termite, tornado, flood, humidity damage. So Nature might be doing the same there.
- sidewndr46 3y agohomeowner's insurance in Florida covers neither termites nor flood. So those are not causes
- SoftTalker 3y agoThose things are generally not covered anywhere in the US (at least the places I've lived), unless you have special additional coverage.
- akasakahakada 3y agoThere are more than "preserving sunlight law". In some places you need to get permission from local community council in order to build anything. The height, shape, colour, all restricted, for landscape reasons. But just rare places do this. Usually around sight-seeing spot or rich people's areas. There are still sparse farm lands everywhere but a lot of those turning into apartments and car parks recent years. Abandoned houses are converting too.
- 8note 3y agoMy understanding is that Florida's insurance problems come from fraud eg. https://news.fiu.edu/2022/the-big-reason-florida-insurance-companies-are-failing-isnt-just-hurricane-risk-its-fraud-and-lawsuits https://news.fiu.edu/2022/the-big-reason-florida-insurance-c...
- irrational 3y ago> they would have needed over 130 trees’ worth of firewood for each one-story building, and 250 trees for two-story buildings. A settlement of 100 houses would thus have required an astounding 3.8 square miles of forest. Even if they did this for ritual reasons, how would this practice even get started? I can’t imagine cutting down 250 trees worth of firewood for my 2 story home, even with modern equipment. That is an enormous amount of work and they were doing it without chainsaws.
- Loughla 3y agoAnecdotal. To build the barn on our property, my great grandfather fell trees, cut planks, and assembled it without power or gas tools. One tree made up the entire floor, loft, and feed bunk walls (~8000 sq.ft.) of 2"x12" lumber. He moved that tree roughly 3 miles by himself (with mules). There are tens of thousands of board feet of lumber making up this barn. What I'm getting at is that this amount of work is just unbelievable. I would never even think of trying it, and he did it in two months. By himself. So. Take the fact that they had no choice, and it was all they knew, it doesn't seem surprising. Modern life really is much, much easier than it used to be.
- api 3y agoHe probably knew a lot of tricks for doing this kind of work fast and efficiently and was also probably ripped. People doing a lot of manual labor back then would have been in far better shape than most people today except athletes and people very into working out. I wonder if there was a good body of common knowledge about how to work without injuring yourself. That would have been important given the absence of advanced medicine.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoSurely it's very unusual to do such work (in the past) by oneself. One hears of individuals making small dwellings (log cabins, over a period of 6+ months), but communities would get together to make barns. Not wanting to be insensitive, but was your grandfather an outcast; no relatives or friends that would help?
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- karaterobot 3y ago> On top of that, why would anybody destroy their own property on purpose? As a home owner, I have a number of theories about why someone would burn down their own property. Obviously the archaeological record would not provide evidence of the Cucuteni-Trypillia standing a short distance away, cackling with wild glee as the flames danced in their eyes.
- eastbound 3y agoEspecially in the US, but also in Europe, neighborhoods are fashionable / modern / developing for 30 years, then they are left to rot by developers until they are a bit rundown, then the city (=the developers with connections at the town hall) decide to refurbish the neighborhood, at which point they are bought wholesale and rebuilt. Aren’t we rebuilding most houses every 60 years in Europe and USA?
- beebeepka 3y agoNever heard of this. Then again, "Europe" can mean a 1000 completely different things depending on who you ask. At least around here in Bulgaria, there is no such thing as developers building entire neighborhoods as seen in the US movies.
- smoyer 3y agoMy house here in the US is over 100 years old. We just put a new roof on it which will give it another 50 years. Except for water ingress a wood structure will last a surprisingly long time.
- jimmySixDOF 3y agoThere is also the Torah and Old Testament concept of Jubilee which was a 49 year cycle and involved the reset of the whole economy amongst other socio religious things so all Debts were erased for example and property rights were renegotiated. It would come as no surprise if the practice of Jubilee was related through the ages to this “burned house horizon" story.
- googlryas 3y agoIt sounds like a system where it would just be really hard to get a loan for 5 years every 50 years.
- baq 3y agomaybe that's the point? maybe becoming slaves to banks and mortgage firms isn't a good thing in the grand scheme of things?
- b112 3y agoMortgages weren't even really a thing, until 70 years ago, at least in Canada. Even then, most people saved, bought land, and slowly built their house. Others just bought land from a neighbour, and paid them over a few years. And of course, even into the early 80s, there were still places in Canada where you could go, stake (fence) and work land in for 5 years, and it was then yours.
- tejohnso 3y agoIt's hard to imagine that such a strong cultural financial norm wasn't popular just 70 years ago. I have a relative who was in his late 20s that long ago so I'm going to ask him about his early experiences with home ownership next time I see him. Do you have any relevant reading you can recommend? > saved, bought land, and slowly built their house. That's what I'm trying to do now. It seems like there is opposition of some kind every step of the way. For example, it isn't uncommon to have a time limit on your building permit. So you can't just slowly build. And you can easily end up buying land that you're not allowed to build on at all. And I'm not just talking about zoning.
- martindbp 3y agoA striking resemblance to Nightfall by Asimov!
- l72 3y agoThere is an interesting short sci-fi story called “Exile’s End” by Carolyn Ives Gilman based around similar cultural ideals. The author is a historian that focuses on Native American history.
- user6723 3y ago[dead]
- saiya-jin 3y agoProbably unrelated, when old helvet clans went on some ancient war rampage, they burned down their entire villages so they had more resolve to fight and not quickly run away back to their homes to easy life. Some motivation... This was from story where young Julius Caesar defeated such war party, and instead of massacring all of them spared them and IIRC made them their vassals. I mean 4th official Swiss language is still raeto-romansch, with origins in Roman empire just south of them and whole current Suisse was a Roman colony back then if that's the right term.
- ComputerGuru 3y agoThis is uncannily reminiscent of Asimov’s Nightfall – a real gem if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading this short story before! http://www.whitehole.net/storyPages/files/misc/Nightfall.pdf http://www.whitehole.net/storyPages/files/misc/Nightfall.pdf
- jbottoms 3y agoSome Latin countries practice burning of certain home contents once a year. This "Noche de Diablos" (Night of the Devil) where straw and fabrics are burned help rid the community of pests, but is troublesome for cities. Guatemala's government asks people not to burn things in the street as it stresses the asphalt. But there are small bonfires all across the city on December 6th. And used toilet papers are regularly burned on the pavement once a week. Such is life in an agrarian culgure.