Hacker Remix

2k-year-old wine and the uncanny immediacy of the past

236 points by benbreen 2 days ago | 86 comments

bglazer 2 days ago

Nice article about artifacts that make the past more immediate, that allow us to connect our experiences to people hundreds or thousands of years ago.

My favorite example is the writings of Onfim, who was a little boy in the 1200s in present day Russia whose scribbling and homework were exquisitely preserved on birch bark fragments. It’s so immediately recognizable as a little boy’s endearing doodles about knights and imaginary beasts, yet its 800 years old.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim

zehaeva 1 day ago

Similarly, when I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius I was struck by how normal everything seemed. While he was an Emperor the everyday banality of what he talked about going through 2,000 years ago was amazing.

Humans really haven't changed that much at all.

bigstrat2003 24 hours ago

One of the things which really brought that into focus for me was when I was old enough to look past the flowery language of Shakespeare and understand the meaning of what the characters were going through. It first hit me when I realized that Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" speech was really about him wanting to commit suicide, but being afraid that he might go to hell. It's not really an earth shattering insight, but as a young man it blew my mind. I had never really thought about the fact that humans living in the past might have had the same psychological struggles and problems we still have to confront to this day.

Honestly, learning about how little humans have changed throughout history has been both one of the most delightful and sad things I have learned. It's wonderful to think about the real kinship we have with people long since dead, but it's also sobering to realize we still make a lot of the same mistakes despite their example. But regardless of whether it's good or bad, I find the relatable humanity of historical people to be endlessly fascinating.

Terr_ 20 hours ago

> has been both one of the most delightful and sad things I have learned

Reminds me of this exchange between an adoptive maternal figure and a troubled youth with low self-esteem.

> "[He] is a great man. [...] I don’t confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is... the higher achievement." She gave him a crooked smile. "It should give you hope, eh?”

"Huh. Block me from escape, you mean. Are you saying that no matter how screwed up I was, you’d still expect me to work wonders?" Appalling.

She considered this. "Yes," she said serenely. "In fact, since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same."

-- Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

adynaton 7 hours ago

Vorkosigan Saga is one of the most underrated sci fi universes. It should be way more popular.

whenc 1 day ago

We come mentally of age when we discover that the great minds of the past, whom we have patronized, are not less intelligent than we are because they happen to be dead -- Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

alexvoda 17 hours ago

Does that(the patronization) happen frequently? I far more frequently witness people lionizing people of the past in all sorts of benign and malign ways.

cout 6 hours ago

I wonder how often this happens and we _don't_ recognize it.

thesz 1 day ago

  > Humans really haven't changed that much at all.

I guess you are quoting Woland from The Master and Margarita [1], the words he said in a show at the Variety theater.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita

Woland is the Satan in the novel. What he said has a deeper meaning, but superficial one is most probably wrong.

rcxdude 17 hours ago

I'm sure it's been said at many points by many people, fictional or real. It's not a particularly unique insight (especially amongst historians and archeologists), though one I think that bears repeating often as it's easy to lose sight of it.

jazzyjackson 1 day ago

I don't know that OP was quoting a Russian satire but I'm glad you turned me onto the book, I never would have heard of it but sounds intriguing. There's a wealth of covers to choose from on eBay, Goodreads lists over 1,200 editions. I got the one with the cat holding the playing cards smoking a cigar while a topless woman sails past the moon on a flying pig. at least I think it's a pig. Published in '97 by Picador.

voihannena 20 hours ago

It's such a great book, both hilarious and sad at times. I also went to eBay to search for a copy before realizing I already own the book.

gunian 17 hours ago

Where is ChatGPT when you need it smh think of the time wasted instead of diving deep into a masterpiece

internet_points 14 hours ago

The one translated by O’Connor and Burgin? That's a good translation.

zehaeva 15 hours ago

For as well read as I am, I am not so clever to quote the works that have influenced me.

No, I am afraid that I was being more of a follower of Wallace here, I was being sincere with my words. I truly do marvel that humans really haven't changed that much at all.

willy_k 1 day ago

I think they’re just saying that humans haven’t really changed much at all, if I had to guess they weren’t referencing any one quote. The only thing that’s really changed is the tools we can use, but we’ve made little (some would say backwards compared to certain reference points) progress in why and what we use them for.

methyl 1 day ago

I’ve had similar feeling when realizing that the bells that we sometimes hear in old cities of Europe are exact same bells producing exact same sound as 1000 years ago

internet_points 14 hours ago

Or the rune-rods which were "the medieval snapchat" https://www.nrk.no/vestland/gamle_-norske-ord-for-kjonnsorga... (google translate isn't half bad on this article)

or a more PG version https://sprakprat.no/2017/06/22/middelalderkvinner-og-runeku... where a rune-rod simply says "Gyda says you have to come home" (I guess hubby had been out too late with his no-good friends?)

romanhn 1 day ago

Wow, haven't seen this before, thank you. Amazing that the writing can still be read by a modern reader (that said, really helps to know what it's supposed to say though). The note I found most relatable is the one with greetings to his classmate.

ge96 1 day ago

Do some eyebrows convey emotion or coincidence? (near bottom of page)

Edit: I'm also curious how much time (thousands of years) for there to be noticeable difference in the capability of the brain like abstract thinking. Language may be the real problem.

thaumasiotes 1 day ago

> I'm also curious how much time (thousands of years) for there to be noticeable difference in the capability of the brain like abstract thinking.

It's not thousands of years. French Canadians are enriched for some of the same brain-related defects that Ashkenazi Jews can get; we assume for the same reasons.

Vampiero 17 hours ago

Which defects? What reasons? Who is assuming?

thaumasiotes 6 hours ago

You know, you can just look these things up. This isn't some piece of obscure trivia.

> Which defects?

Ashkenazi Jews are prone to a whole host of genetic defects that affect the brain, of which the most famous is Tay-Sachs.

> What reasons?

A lifestyle focused on commerce as opposed to foraging or agriculture.

> Who is assuming?

Everyone, basically.

In the case of the Ashkenazi Jews, as far as we can tell they've been like that for as long as records of the group have existed. But the French Canadian specialization in commerce postdates the discovery of North America.

DiggyJohnson 12 hours ago

Uhhhh what?

thom 1 day ago

I agree these objects (just like colourised photos) help bridge the distance to the past. But I've had the same experience purely with text. If you read Cicero's letters and diaries, and then just imagine him - suffering writer's block, wracked with anxiety and self-doubt, desperate for his friends to cheer him up - as a neurotic, terminally-online Twitter user, it fits perfectly and breathes life into his every word.

dmix 1 day ago

The bakers stamp on the bread is interesting branding

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_...

int_19h 8 hours ago

While we're on the subject of ancient bread, ACOUP had a nice and extensive series of posts detailing how it was made and distributed, with a lot of info on Romans specifically:

https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...

LeftHandPath 1 day ago

It is! I found the sword quite fascinating as well. The older Chinese lettering on it looks really neat, too

j_bum 23 hours ago

Agreed, this was the most poignant object for me in the article!

Aloha 1 day ago

I think it was the equivalent of a tax stamp

binarycrusader 1 day ago

My recollection from a previous article was that in many cases, ovens were communal, so the mark was so that they knew which items belonged to a particular baker:

https://wheatbeat.com/bread-stamps/

pezezin 1 day ago

That is correct. In my home country, Spain, such ovens still exist, although nowadays they are few and far between. The few people who still use them keep signing their bread, a tradition that goes back to at least the Ancient Egypt. You can read a bit more in this Wikipedia article (no English version, sorry)

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sello_de_pan

dmix 1 day ago

Interesting, do you have to stamp it at a certain point in the baking process? I'm guessing after it expands at a certain point

rcostin2k2 13 hours ago

At certain religious events, even today, Orthodox Christians serve a handmade bread that has such a seal applied after it is shaped into a cross but before it rises and is baked in the oven. Once it rises, the mark expands but remains clearly visible after baking.

gunian 17 hours ago

I guess the share your home BS started hundreds of years before my time makes life seem more futyl

abeppu 2 days ago

The inscription on the Sword of Goujian, the translation for which is displayed in the article, says that the King of Yue made and used the sword himself. How literally do people with knowledge of the period take that? Is it surprising / unlikely for a king of that period to make anything themselves, especially something so ornate, rather than commission it?

kragen 1 day ago

I don't think anyone knows enough about the period to answer that question. Our main written source is the Annals of Spring and Autumn (春秋), from Lu (not Yue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yue_(state)) which spends 18000 words on 242 years, in chronological order. For many of those years it simply says something like "螽" ("locusts"). It does not go into any detail on questions like which hobbies the kings of other countries spent their spare time on, and that's a difficult thing to infer from archaeological evidence, too. The written records of Yue were destroyed by order of 秦始皇 in the 焚書坑儒.

So we kind of have to guess. My guesses are not the most informed.

The sword (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Goujian) is bronze, so it was probably cast (you can forge bronze but the cost/benefit ratio is terrible). You could imagine a king pouring the hot bronze into the mold—that would be much quicker than forging an iron sword—but you probably wouldn't want him to make a habit of it, because contaminants in the metals would expose him to arsenic vapor, though this sword in particular is almost arsenic-free.

Then all that's left is sharpening the blade, which any warrior has to be good at, and what is a king if not a warrior foremost? So it's plausible that a king might have put in most of the work embodied in the blade himself, with a grindstone, even if he didn't go around casting bronze regularly.

klik99 1 day ago

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he actually made it himself (though I agree the inscription is hardly proof). We have this view of Kings as fat, lazy bureaucratic blowhards because we're closest to the tailend of the history of monarchy. When this King was around there were a lot more regional leaders who fought and strength was admired the most, if a King was seen as weak he had just as much internal attempts that were way more physical than the political coups of today. You could not be a king or survive being a king without being a good fighter and knowing a bit about how weapons are made and used.

int_19h 7 hours ago

It wouldn't be unprecedented. Every now and then you get a monarch who just happens to like doing something with his hands. It's rare enough that it's usually specifically noted when it happens, but e.g. consider Peter the Great of Russia, who famously partook in building ships for his fleet as a carpenter (although in his case it seems to have been driven more by relentless perfectionism and dissatisfaction with quality of other people's work).

scottLobster 1 day ago

When you have some sort of divine right to rule, the most money, a palace filled with servants and responsibilities that can be neglected with no immediate consequences, well you have a lot of free time.

That said, while it's possible this King was really into swordsmithing, more likely he's just taking credit for the work or something gets lost in the translation. Like if Elon said he "built the Falcon 9". It's not explicitly true, he certainly wasn't machining parts or writing code for it, but he was involved enough that no one would really call it a lie either.

ryandrake 1 day ago

> Like if Elon said he "built the Falcon 9". It's not explicitly true, he certainly wasn't machining parts or writing code for it, but he was involved enough that no one would really call it a lie either.

Yea, that would be the way I read it: He "built" the sword just like the executives of your company "built" its products. It's like those home remodeling TV shows, where the remodelers don't really do anything besides write checks and drive around talking on their phones to other people who don't really do anything either. All the actual building is done by silent building contractors who are mostly off-camera.

OJFord 1 day ago

I don't even think it's an foreign concept or lost to time - Trump said he would build a wall (and 'did' a bit, afaiu?); British PMs have said they'll build Hinkley Point, HS2, Northern powerhouses, etc. It's understood what their role is in building such a thing, I think it's just the unfamiliarity with kings commissioning swords that makes that example read more literally, and if it were something more unusual then the language would be less ambiguous ('used swords he even made himself').

wqaatwt 21 hours ago

Swords are usually made a by a single or a handful of people at most.

Nuclear power plants or walls that are supposed to cover an entire border require thousands of workers and engineers. At that point the organizational/management aspects, acquiring of funding etc. become much more important than the direct contribution of any specific engineer or craftsman.

libraryofbabel 1 day ago

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?

The books are filled with names of kings.

Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?

- Bertolt Brecht, Questions of a Worker who Reads

keybored 1 day ago

> It's not explicitly true, he certainly wasn't machining parts or writing code for it, but he was involved enough that no one would really call it a lie either.

Or you’ve been taught well.