Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[The Brain]

Cool. I just came back from a visit to the Gold Room at The Swedish History Museum (I also checked out their general Viking and pre-Viking stuff).

[viper37]

A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

Sep 25th 2021
That vikings crossed the Atlantic long before Christopher Columbus is well established. Their sagas told of expeditions to the coast of today's Canada: to Helluland, which scholars have identified as Baffin Island or Labrador; Markland (Labrador or Newfoundland) and Vinland (Newfoundland or a territory farther south). In 1960 the remains of Norse buildings were found on Newfoundland.

But there was no evidence to prove that anyone outside northern Europe had heard of America until Columbus's voyage in 1492. Until now. A paper for the academic journal Terrae Incognitae by Paolo Chiesa, a professor of Medieval Latin Literature at Milan University, reveals that an Italian monk referred to the continent in a book he wrote in the early 14th century. Setting aside the scholarly reserve that otherwise characterises his monograph, Mr Chiesa describes the mention of Markland (Latinised to Marckalada) as "astonishing".

[...]

[jimmy olsen]

Neat!

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/06/world/obsidian-mirror-aztecs-queen-elizabeth-i-scn/index.html?utm_content=2021-10-07T02%3A46%3A04&utm_source=twCNNi&utm_medium=social&utm_term=link

Obsidian 'spirit mirror' used by Elizabeth I's adviser has Aztec origins
Ashley Strickland-Profile-Image
By Ashley Strickland, CNN

Updated 2302 GMT (0702 HKT) October 6, 2021

(CNN)An obsidian "spirit mirror" used by a confidant of Queen Elizabeth I is actually a product of the Aztec culture, according to new research. An analysis of the obsidian mirror, made from volcanic glass, and three other similar objects at the British Museum revealed their Mexican origins.

The obsidian mirror with the Elizabeth I connection belonged to John Dee, an adviser of hers from when she became queen in 1558 and through the 1570s. Dee served as the queen's astrologer and also consulted with her on science. This included Dee acting "as an advocate of voyages of discovery, establishing colonies and improving navigation," said Stuart Campbell, study author and professor at the University of Manchester.

"John Dee is a remarkable historical figure, a Renaissance polymath -- interested in astronomy, alchemy and mathematics -- and confidant of Elizabeth I," Campbell wrote in an email. "Later he became involved in divination and the occult, seeking to talk to angels through the use of scryers (those who divine the future), who used artifacts -- like mirrors and crystals.

While it had been previously suspected that the mirror had been made by the Aztec culture, there were no records accompanying the object to show how it came into Dee's possession.

A team of researchers used geochemical analysis to target the four obsidian objects with X-rays. This in turn caused the objects to emit X-rays, helping the scientists determine their composition by revealing the elements of the obsidian. In addition to Dee's mirror, they studied two other Aztec mirrors and a rectangular slab of obsidian.

The analysis showed that all four were made using Mexican obsidian. Dee's mirror and a similarly designed mirror were made using obsidian from Pachuca, a city that is a source of obsidian the Aztecs used. The third mirror and the slab are made of obsidian from the town of Ucareo, another obsidian site in Mexico.

A study on the findings published Wednesday in the journal Antiquity.

The researchers estimate that Dee's mirror is about 500 years old, most likely made in the final decades before the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521, Campbell said.

"We know that Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés sometimes commissioned items from Aztec craftsmen so he could send them back to the Spanish court," Campbell said. "So it is even possible that some of the circular mirrors like John Dee's were specially made by Aztec craftsmen at the time of the conquest of the Aztec Empire to send back to Europe."

While researchers haven't been able to pinpoint the obsidian mirrors' intended use in Aztec culture, depictions remain that show circular obsidian mirrors made at this time.
"They're shown particularly in drawings of the god Tezcatlipoca, in place of a missing foot, or attached to his chest or head," Campbell said. "The mirrors that have survived may well have actually been attached to statues of the god. Tezcatlipoca was the god of divination and providence, amongst several other things, and the obsidian mirrors were probably much more than simply symbols of power -- they also seem likely to have been used for divinatory purposes."

Tezcatlipoca's name also means "smoking mirror."
The Aztecs believed that obsidian had spiritual significance, and it was used in their medicinal practices, as well as a way to ward off bad spirits or even capture souls by using the reflective nature of the volcanic glass.

Items of such significance to the Aztecs would have been intriguing to the Europeans exploring Mexico.

"The 16th century was a period in which new exotic objects were being brought to Europe from the New World, and opening up exciting new possibilities in the intellectual world of the period," Campbell said.

Dee, the first person known to use the term "British Empire," would have been fascinated by the idea of the mirrors if he heard stories of how the Aztecs used them, Campbell said. Dee had an interest in the occult early on, and once he obtained the obsidian mirror, he used it to try communicating with spirits, according to the study.

Understanding the origins of the obsidian mirror can help researchers retrace the paths of such objects from a time when appropriation occurred frequently.

"To me, it helps us understand something of the way in which the European voyages of discovery and engagement with other parts of the world, often through disastrous conquest, was matched by intellectual attempts to understand how the world worked," Campbell said. "Novel artifacts brought back to Europe from the Americas entered collections of nobility and of intellectuals, and were used and appropriated in the efforts of people, who -- like John Dee -- saw themselves as scientists, to understand the world in new ways."

During his time as Elizabeth's confidant and adviser, she visited him several times at his home, Campbell said. Dee was considered to be one of the reigning intellectuals of that period; he had the largest library in England and one of the greatest in Europe, Campbell said.

"The surviving record of (the library) is actually of major importance in understanding 16th- and early 17th-century intellectual thought," Campbell said.

To Dee, the supernatural was indistinguishable from science. "It may have been his growing interest in those areas of study that gradually undermined his role in the court by the end of the 1570s," Campbell said.

[The Brain]

Nice to have it confirmed. When I saw it in 1991 it was labeled as being of Aztec origin.

[jimmy olsen]

This book looks interesting, though the article is quite long

Argues against the traditional thesis of "egalitarian hunter gathering tribes" --> agriculture causes inequality and stratification  --> urban centers lead to autocratix political and religious hierarchy

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/graeber-wengrow-dawn-of-everything-history-humanity/620177/

[Malthus]

This book looks interesting, though the article is quite long

Argues against the traditional thesis of "egalitarian hunter gathering tribes" --> agriculture causes inequality and stratification  --> urban centers lead to autocratix political and religious hierarchy

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/graeber-wengrow-dawn-of-everything-history-humanity/620177/

Haven't read the book, but the claims in the article appear intent on kicking the shit out of a bunch of straw men.

It is not the case that until this brilliant book appeared, everyone believed in an inevitable and unvarying progress from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to agricultural states, progressing through rigid and unvarying states of progress. At least, it was not taught in that form to undergraduate anthropology students in the 1980s. It has, at least since that time, been recognized that analogies from present-day hunter-gatherers are rough anachronisms - as most (but not all) hunter-gatherers do not exist in some hypothetical state of nature, but alongside existing agriculturalists and pastoralists. They are generally (but not always) living on marginal lands; in the past, of course, this would not be the case, so the possible cultural expressions of hunter gatherers, living in the past on very productive lands now inhabited by agriculturalists, are going to be a lot different.

Admittedly, there have been some relatively recent surprises - like Gobleke Tepe. It was previously generally thought that truly monumental architecture would require agriculture, though the example of the Northwest, in which fishing the salmon run provided sufficient surplus for monumentalism, should have provided a counter-example.

[The Brain]

Yeah, sounds a bit like "the Vikings actually didn't have horns on their helmets" type of history.

[PDH]

It sounds to me that this is not a revolutionary take, but rather an attempt to broaden what Anthropology has been teaching for decades (mostly to bored undergrads who forget it after the test).

Dispelling these myths is hard, we still have "man the hunter" ideas, the Fertile Crescent model of urbanization as the norm, and that foraging women were just waiting around without tops to have their picture taken by National Geographic photographers.

[jimmy olsen]

A radioactive spike has been dated in some of the wood used by the vikings in New Foundland. That spike happened  in 993 and the wood was cut 28 years later.

So the settlement was made exactly 1000 years ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-solar-storm-pinpoints-viking-settlement-americas-exactly-1000-years-ago

[mongers]

A radioactive spike has been dated in some of the wood used by the vikings in New Foundland. That spike happened  in 993 and the wood was cut 28 years later.

So the settlement was made exactly 1000 years ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-solar-storm-pinpoints-viking-settlement-americas-exactly-1000-years-ago

Nope, it just shows the building work was done at that time; it might have taken place sometime after the settlement was established, more towards the end of it's occupation or indeed perhaps at the very start of it's development, but there's no evidence for when it took place within the history of the outpost.

[Jacob]

Is the story of the "Seven Sisters" and the Pleiades 100,000 years old?

In the northern sky in December is a beautiful cluster of stars known as the Pleiades, or the "seven sisters." Look carefully and you will probably count six stars. So why do we say there are seven of them?

Many cultures around the world refer to the Pleiades as "seven sisters," and also tell quite similar stories about them. After studying the motion of the stars very closely, we believe these stories may date back 100,000 years to a time when the constellation looked quite different.

The sisters and the hunter

In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas. He was forced to hold up the sky for eternity, and was therefore unable to protect his daughters. To save the sisters from being raped by the hunter Orion, Zeus transformed them into stars. But the story says one sister fell in love with a mortal and went into hiding, which is why we only see six stars.

A similar story is found among Aboriginal groups across Australia. In many Australian Aboriginal cultures, the Pleiades are a group of young girls, and are often associated with sacred women's ceremonies and stories. The Pleiades are also important as an element of Aboriginal calendars and astronomy, and for several groups their first rising at dawn marks the start of winter.

Close to the Seven Sisters in the sky is the constellation of Orion, which is often called "the saucepan" in Australia. In Greek mythology Orion is a hunter. This constellation is also often a hunter in Aboriginal cultures, or a group of lusty young men. The writer and anthropologist Daisy Bates reported people in central Australia regarded Orion as a "hunter of women," and specifically of the women in the Pleiades. Many Aboriginal stories say the boys, or man, in Orion are chasing the seven sisters—and one of the sisters has died, or is hiding, or is too young, or has been abducted, so again only six are visible.

An Australian Aboriginal interpretation of the constellation of Orion from the Yolngu people of Northern Australia. The three stars of Orion's belt are three young men who went fishing in a canoe, and caught a forbidden king-fish, represented by the Orion Nebula. Credit: Ray Norris based on Yolngu oral and written accounts
The lost sister

Similar "lost Pleiad" stories are found in European, African, Asian, Indonesian, Native American and Aboriginal Australian cultures. Many cultures regard the cluster as having seven stars, but acknowledge only six are normally visible, and then have a story to explain why the seventh is invisible.

How come the Australian Aboriginal stories are so similar to the Greek ones? Anthropologists used to think Europeans might have brought the Greek story to Australia, where it was adapted by Aboriginal people for their own purposes. But the Aboriginal stories seem to be much, much older than European contact. And there was little contact between most Australian Aboriginal cultures and the rest of the world for at least 50,000 years. So why do they share the same stories?

Barnaby Norris and I suggest an answer in a paper to be published by Springer early next year in a book titled Advancing Cultural Astronomy, a preprint for which is available here.

All modern humans are descended from people who lived in Africa before they began their long migrations to the far corners of the globe about 100,000 years ago. Could these stories of the seven sisters be so old? Did all humans carry these stories with them as they traveled to Australia, Europe, and Asia?

Moving stars

Careful measurements with the Gaia space telescope and others show the stars of the Pleiades are slowly moving in the sky. One star, Pleione, is now so close to the star Atlas they look like a single star to the naked eye.

But if we take what we know about the movement of the stars and rewind 100,000 years, Pleione was further from Atlas and would have been easily visible to the naked eye. So 100,000 years ago, most people really would have seen seven stars in the cluster.

We believe this movement of the stars can help to explain two puzzles: the similarity of Greek and Aboriginal stories about these stars, and the fact so many cultures call the cluster "seven sisters" even though we only see six stars today.

Is it possible the stories of the Seven Sisters and Orion are so old our ancestors were telling these stories to each other around campfires in Africa, 100,000 years ago? Could this be the oldest story in the world?

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-world-oldest-story-astronomers-global.html

[jimmy olsen]

A radioactive spike has been dated in some of the wood used by the vikings in New Foundland. That spike happened  in 993 and the wood was cut 28 years later.

So the settlement was made exactly 1000 years ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-solar-storm-pinpoints-viking-settlement-americas-exactly-1000-years-ago

Nope, it just shows the building work was done at that time; it might have taken place sometime after the settlement was established, more towards the end of it's occupation or indeed perhaps at the very start of it's development, but there's no evidence for when it took place within the history of the outpost.

I thought they were there for only 1-2 years?

[jimmy olsen]

Is the story of the "Seven Sisters" and the Pleiades 100,000 years old?

In the northern sky in December is a beautiful cluster of stars known as the Pleiades, or the "seven sisters." Look carefully and you will probably count six stars. So why do we say there are seven of them?

Many cultures around the world refer to the Pleiades as "seven sisters," and also tell quite similar stories about them. After studying the motion of the stars very closely, we believe these stories may date back 100,000 years to a time when the constellation looked quite different.

The sisters and the hunter

In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas. He was forced to hold up the sky for eternity, and was therefore unable to protect his daughters. To save the sisters from being raped by the hunter Orion, Zeus transformed them into stars. But the story says one sister fell in love with a mortal and went into hiding, which is why we only see six stars.

A similar story is found among Aboriginal groups across Australia. In many Australian Aboriginal cultures, the Pleiades are a group of young girls, and are often associated with sacred women's ceremonies and stories. The Pleiades are also important as an element of Aboriginal calendars and astronomy, and for several groups their first rising at dawn marks the start of winter.

Close to the Seven Sisters in the sky is the constellation of Orion, which is often called "the saucepan" in Australia. In Greek mythology Orion is a hunter. This constellation is also often a hunter in Aboriginal cultures, or a group of lusty young men. The writer and anthropologist Daisy Bates reported people in central Australia regarded Orion as a "hunter of women," and specifically of the women in the Pleiades. Many Aboriginal stories say the boys, or man, in Orion are chasing the seven sisters—and one of the sisters has died, or is hiding, or is too young, or has been abducted, so again only six are visible.

An Australian Aboriginal interpretation of the constellation of Orion from the Yolngu people of Northern Australia. The three stars of Orion's belt are three young men who went fishing in a canoe, and caught a forbidden king-fish, represented by the Orion Nebula. Credit: Ray Norris based on Yolngu oral and written accounts
The lost sister

Similar "lost Pleiad" stories are found in European, African, Asian, Indonesian, Native American and Aboriginal Australian cultures. Many cultures regard the cluster as having seven stars, but acknowledge only six are normally visible, and then have a story to explain why the seventh is invisible.

How come the Australian Aboriginal stories are so similar to the Greek ones? Anthropologists used to think Europeans might have brought the Greek story to Australia, where it was adapted by Aboriginal people for their own purposes. But the Aboriginal stories seem to be much, much older than European contact. And there was little contact between most Australian Aboriginal cultures and the rest of the world for at least 50,000 years. So why do they share the same stories?

Barnaby Norris and I suggest an answer in a paper to be published by Springer early next year in a book titled Advancing Cultural Astronomy, a preprint for which is available here.

All modern humans are descended from people who lived in Africa before they began their long migrations to the far corners of the globe about 100,000 years ago. Could these stories of the seven sisters be so old? Did all humans carry these stories with them as they traveled to Australia, Europe, and Asia?

Moving stars

Careful measurements with the Gaia space telescope and others show the stars of the Pleiades are slowly moving in the sky. One star, Pleione, is now so close to the star Atlas they look like a single star to the naked eye.

But if we take what we know about the movement of the stars and rewind 100,000 years, Pleione was further from Atlas and would have been easily visible to the naked eye. So 100,000 years ago, most people really would have seen seven stars in the cluster.

We believe this movement of the stars can help to explain two puzzles: the similarity of Greek and Aboriginal stories about these stars, and the fact so many cultures call the cluster "seven sisters" even though we only see six stars today.

Is it possible the stories of the Seven Sisters and Orion are so old our ancestors were telling these stories to each other around campfires in Africa, 100,000 years ago? Could this be the oldest story in the world?

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-world-oldest-story-astronomers-global.html

Some aboriginal tales from Australia are already know to be at 40,000 years old. Once you get that old, saying there's a 100k is not too unbelievable.

[The Brain]

There is also a theory that the story of The Headache may be more than 100k years old.

[Razgovory]

Huh?  Which star is supposed to be missing?