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Evidence of the use of silk by Bronze Age civilization
- lupusreal 2y ago> Silk residues were successfully detected, which confirmed the early use of silk as a material carrier to communicate between Heaven and Earth That last bit seemed to jump out of nowhere. Maybe I'm missing some implications of the grid-like oval bronze thing? Very mysterious.
- jhwhite 2y agoI'm probably wrong but since it was discovered in a sacrificial pit I assumed the bronze age people burned the silk as a way to "communicate with heaven".
- pempem 2y agoStill, a very pretty sentence for an abstract.
- mikhailfranco 2y agoSilk does not burn in normal flame. If you are buying a 'silk' garment it is common to ask the shop-keeper to hold it to a cigarette lighter to prove it does not contain a synthetic petroleum-based fabric, such as polyester.
- gota 2y agoI'm noy bothered by it but I wonder if it betrays some sort of religious belief from the authors? Which ideally should be either avoided or disclaimed explicitly
- NateEag 2y agoWhy does religious belief require a disclaimer? Do other philosophical positions, like atheism or panpsychism?
- OJFord 2y agoIf you want your writing to be taken as establishing facts, you need to base it on a priori established facts; if you base it on hypotheses and beliefs then you're just expanding on the hypothesis, contributing further belief. I suspect though that it's not the author's beliefs, just an ambiguously written way of saying that it was done by those people with that belief - in the same way that an atheist or follower of some other religion may say that Christians pray in order to communicate their wishes to God. Of course there is the rude and angry for no clear reason brand of atheist who could never bring themselves to say such a thing, but to the rest of us there is no problem in describing someone else's actions by their own reasons for doing them, even if we don't share that motivation. I have colleagues who run for pleasure; though I do not for mine.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoA Western academic would phrase it very differently. If you read the paper, they claim that a document called the "Jiatu Zhijia" describes a very similar object called a jiatu that supposedly resembles a divine turtle that caused legendary emperor Yao to abdicate to Shun, i.e. acting as a material carrier between heaven and earth. I can't actually find other English uses of that name, and while I can guess that they're referring to one of a small set of documents discussing the (possibly mythological) abdication of Yao, those documents were written thousands of years after the events. I'm not wholly opposed to the argument, but you should explicitly justify it in cases like this instead of accepting the symbolism uncritically.
- jihadjihad 2y agoThey talk about it later on: > Similarly, silk was also used as a sacrificial object, such as in the form of silk books or paintings on silk, with the silk serving as a carrier to convey the content of the calligraphy and painting upon it to Heaven. But it does seem that there is some context that would be helpful here, at least for this Western reader.
- hosh 2y agoAll the authors are Chinese. They might have been confirming a cultural transmission about the origins of using silk that otherwise had no direct archaeological evidence. They got a bit of the history of the Silk Roads incomplete. The Silk Roads, as it is understood now, isn't just about trading in silk, but the idea that the ancient world was connected and globalized through an extensive trade network. It isn't just overland routes, but also maritime routes for spice trade with India, and connections from North Africa deep into the interior of the African continent. Paper was worth more than silk along the Silk Roads. However, from the lens of Chinese history, silk was something that the Chinese monopolized for a while and was sought after by other cultures and civilizations connected through the Silk Roads.
- hinkley 2y agoI wonder how different African history would be if there were a major river emptying into the Indian Ocean instead of rather small ones. You have some minor rivers and the Red Sea. Not great for making a trading superpower like Egypt.
- olddustytrail 2y agoYou mean like the Ethiopian Empire?
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- shagie 2y agoOne of the recent videos that I watched was RealLifeLore : How Africa’s Geography Traps it in Endless Poverty https://youtu.be/Y8m95sCDEf0 https://youtu.be/Y8m95sCDEf0 A chunk of it is about the nature of the lack of good harbors along the coast that would be able to shelter trading ships from the open ocean. Zanzibar is the noted example of a port https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar#Before_1498 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar#Before_1498 > From the 9th century, Swahili merchants on Zanzibar operated as brokers for long-distance traders from both the hinterland and Indian Ocean world. Persian, Indian, and Arab traders frequented Zanzibar to acquire East African goods like gold, ivory, and ambergris and then shipped them overseas to Asia. Similarly, caravan traders from the African Great Lakes and Zambezian Region came to the coast to trade for imported goods, especially Indian cloth. Before the Portuguese arrival, the southern towns of Unguja Ukuu and Kizimkazi and the northern town of Tumbatu were the dominant centres of exchange. Even the large rivers that do empty into the ocean, they have significant portions of rapids that make it impractical to use as a trading route.
- powerapple 2y agoChinese burn paper items, such as paper money, when paying respects to their ancestors. We believe it will go to the other world. It is actually common in other cultures as well.
- dr_dshiv 2y ago“Silk residues were successfully detected, which confirmed the early use of silk as a material carrier to communicate between Heaven and Earth” Love that the work was strong enough that they could slip a line like this into their abstract.
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- wordofx 2y ago[flagged]
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- dudeinjapan 2y agoShouldn't we call it the Silk Age then?
- masklinn 2y agoCan't really make weapons out of silk.
- hinkley 2y agoA lot of martial arts can teach you how to defend yourself with rope. You’re not going to kill a mammoth or conquer Normandy with it but that’s still a weapon.
- sam0x17 2y ago> Can't really make weapons out of silk. Someone will always find a way, and then everyone will copy them source: every public internet thing ever
- olddustytrail 2y agoA garrote
- fredsmith219 2y agoGreat for assassins, but not terribly useful in a large battle.
- olddustytrail 2y agoVery true. Also not useful for space battles. Or rhinoceros training. Useful information.
- euroderf 2y agoIdle question: If I am caught carrying one, what is my excuse ? What could it be besides a garrote ?
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
- gpvos 2y agoInteresting, but silk use in the bronze age is not a new discovery.
- dentemple 2y agoMy understanding is that it's not a well-known discovery, so that alone should make it interesting enough for discussion.
- gpvos 2y agoIndeed, see the word that I started my comment with. But the point I am making was not referenced in the discussion. In fact, I think the main point of the linked article is actually not that silk was being used at all in the bronze age by the Yangtze River civilization, but that the silk is being used for sacrificial purposes, but the title on HN does not reflect that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- contingencies 2y agoStudied ancient Chinese history but not a silk expert, here's my 2c. Critical background is that silk takes a lot of labour to prepare. First you must have the right kind of insects (various species of moth in the larval stage are commonly known as "silkworm"), then you must have the right kind of trees to feed them (commonly mulberries), then you add a lot of labour for capture, harvesting, spinning, dyeing, weaving. In modern times I have only really seen it prepared commercial scale in Jiangsu province (near Xuzhou). If you head too far north the insects probably suffer from the cold, and if you head too far south any artificial farming monoculture is probably readily outcompeted by other flowering plants and predatory insects which are more suited to the tropics (on account of higher moisture, food availability and temperature). Relative to existing fabrics such as hemp, silk has at least in other contexts been of value militarily because of its relative strength to weight ratio and dense weave when applied to important tasks such as resisting arrows, although I'm uncertain if this use had emerged yet. Any military use would tend to reinforce a cultural link between life and death owing to its spatiotemporal proximity to mortality events. The fact that it is soft and labour-intensive (expensive / in short supply) means it was probably reserved for the wealthier or higher ranking figures. Although the paper doesn't state it clearly, it actually deals with the archaeological findings of a non-Han Chinese civilization in the area of Sichuan which was illiterate and was based around what appeared to be a bird and tree cult (the Shu kingdom of the Sichuan basin[1]). It is therefore possible that a kind of soft, reflective-refractive, feather-like, readily dyed textile with a fine weave may have contributed to some sort of ritual purpose in line with these beliefs. Later this civilization was destroyed by the Han Chinese. The wicking properties of silk are fair (I was unable to find a quantitative reference) as was the major early textile of hemp (which is also tough and therefore long-lasting) which is significant as we know that Sichuan in the Shu kingdom period was a vast, tropical inland basin criss-crossed by regularly flooding rivers descending from the Himalayas, thickly forested and with crocodiles, elephants, rhinos, giant cats, colourful birds, etc. Both silk and hemp textiles would help to cool anyone wearing them, relative to other options (animal skins, etc.). Furthermore, in the absence of modern medicine, fine-weave capable wicking fabrics would assist with resisting potentially lethal bacterial and fungal infections in the tropical environment and may therefore have been used as wound dressings or undergarments. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shu_(kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shu_(kingdom)
- unit149 2y agoEven early piratical man - ranging from the seafaring Athenians to Han Chinese - who developed extensive seafaring capabilities utilized these materials in peace and in war. Thus, the Chinese idiom "turning war into jade and silk" is a means of communication with the gates of heaven.
- superkuh 2y agoJust for fun: any culture with silk could have made lighter-than-air hot-air balloons. And the way to prepare strong inorganic acid compounds was known then. Combined with metals like the tin in bronze it could produce hydrogen which could be trapped in oiled silk.
- otabdeveloper4 2y agoSeems like a huge waste of tin and silk.
- superkuh 2y agoManned silk hydrogen balloons as battlefield surveyors played a hugely important role in the american civil war. But yeah, it might be a bit much given the very remote sites of tin mining for most of the bronze age. Other metals like iron also work but are almost equally scarce at the time.
- OJFord 2y agoIt would have been quite extraordinary for transport at the time.
- wordofx 2y ago[flagged]
- walrus01 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlEteVT6RLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlEteVT6RLE
- suraci 2y agoThere is a question that has been bothering me: Why you guys always calling the Party 'CCP' while its official name is 'CPC' What's the reason and intention behind this
- ricardobeat 2y ago“CCP” is the direct translation of the party’s name in China. But apparently this discussion goes all the way back to the 40s.
- wordofx 2y agoThe CCP gave itself the name CCP up until after the civil war when it tried to change it to CPC to distance itself from anything written about the CCP and attempt to deny any association. CCP/CPC is the same thing, same party, same history.
- hoseja 2y agoRelease the genome of the first emperor!
- mikhailfranco 2y agoI highly recommend the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou, which was the center of the imperial silk industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Silk_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Silk_Museum https://web.archive.org/web/20170907005855/http://en.chinasilkmuseum.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170907005855/http://en.chinasi... It has complete royal robes ~1,000 years old, and a few damaged garments more than 2,000 years old IIRC.
- senderista 2y agoI found it odd that the article seemed to imply that silk was used in human sacrifice ("sacrificial clothing"), but it never explicitly stated this--perhaps too unpleasant to admit outright? It wouldn't be surprising since the Shang practiced human sacrifice on a massive scale (comparable to the Aztecs).