alt.hn

1/15/2025 at 9:35:41 PM

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

 https://resobscura.substack.com/p/2000-year-old-wine-and-the-uncanny

by benbreen

1/16/2025 at 3:59:55 PM

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

by bglazer

1/16/2025 at 9:59:17 PM

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.

by zehaeva

1/17/2025 at 5:06:21 AM

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.

by bigstrat2003

1/17/2025 at 9:23:07 AM

> 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

by Terr_

1/17/2025 at 10:21:04 PM

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

by adynaton

1/17/2025 at 3:16:12 AM

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

by whenc

1/17/2025 at 11:53:10 AM

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.

by alexvoda

1/17/2025 at 11:05:46 PM

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

by cout

1/16/2025 at 10:25:56 PM 

  > 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.

by thesz

1/17/2025 at 12:16:09 PM

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.

by rcxdude

1/17/2025 at 4:01:59 AM

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.

by jazzyjackson

1/17/2025 at 9:11:26 AM

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.

by voihannena

1/17/2025 at 12:20:59 PM

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

by gunian

1/17/2025 at 2:58:55 PM

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

by internet_points

1/17/2025 at 1:46:25 PM

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.

by zehaeva

1/17/2025 at 12:59:28 AM

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.

by willy_k

1/16/2025 at 9:32:37 PM

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

by methyl

1/16/2025 at 5:44:41 PM

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.

by romanhn

1/16/2025 at 8:37:26 PM

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.

by ge96

1/17/2025 at 1:25:34 AM

> 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.

by thaumasiotes

1/17/2025 at 12:04:44 PM

Which defects? What reasons? Who is assuming?

by Vampiero

1/17/2025 at 11:00:30 PM

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.

by thaumasiotes

1/17/2025 at 5:17:46 PM

Uhhhh what?

by DiggyJohnson

1/17/2025 at 12:16:03 PM

Kids had school 800 years ago? If he didn't work in the fields musta been rich

insert David Lynch quote about red ants

by gunian

1/17/2025 at 1:45:09 PM

It seems like that region had a particularly high literacy rate. Texts from all classes and genders were found. The kid could have been a peasant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novgorod_Republic#Literature_a...

by bearded_comrade

1/17/2025 at 7:59:22 PM

How likely is that vs works written by the rich folk survive? A cursory GPT search implies not a lot of medieval works written by poor people in general

by gunian

1/17/2025 at 9:22:45 PM

The point is that it's not your average medieval polity. Novgorod was a merchant republic in which literacy was seemingly held in high esteem in and of itself, resulting in a social pressure to acquire it. And then on top of that they had access to plenty of birch bark, which happens to be a very convenient and cheap writing material where it's available, and does not require any ink or fancy tools to use; just a sharp stylus.

As far as survival, because of how common birch bark notes were in Novgorod, they were used for mundane everyday matters like instructions to servants to purchase such and such goods, or even just a one-liner greeting, and a lot of those were then discarded and ended up buried underground. So, again, a very different slice compared to the more typical story of expensive manuscripts in libraries, or personal correspondence of nobility.

by int_19h

1/17/2025 at 11:41:06 PM

It would be cool to study if the social pressure was applicable to servants or just the elite ruling class

Do you have any idea where to get photos of collections?

by gunian

1/17/2025 at 1:23:42 AM

I like the extreme modesty in the wikipedia article:

> One of the drawings features a knight on a horse, with Onfim's name written next to him, stabbing someone on the ground with a lance, with scholars speculating that Onfim pictured himself as the knight.

by thaumasiotes

1/16/2025 at 6:27:10 PM

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.

by thom

1/16/2025 at 5:44:16 PM

The bakers stamp on the bread is interesting branding

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

by dmix

1/16/2025 at 6:27:45 PM

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

by LeftHandPath

1/17/2025 at 5:47:29 AM

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

by j_bum

1/16/2025 at 5:59:12 PM

I think it was the equivalent of a tax stamp

by Aloha

1/16/2025 at 6:46:35 PM

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/

by binarycrusader

1/17/2025 at 12:06:24 AM

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

by pezezin

1/17/2025 at 2:27:46 AM

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

by dmix

1/17/2025 at 3:29:20 PM

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.

by rcostin2k2

1/17/2025 at 12:23:17 PM

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

by gunian

1/16/2025 at 4:22:44 PM

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?

by abeppu

1/16/2025 at 11:01:14 PM

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.

by kragen

1/17/2025 at 9:31:56 PM

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).

by int_19h

1/16/2025 at 5:46:13 PM

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.

by klik99

1/16/2025 at 5:27:36 PM

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.

by scottLobster

1/16/2025 at 6:32:49 PM

> 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.

by ryandrake

1/17/2025 at 3:06:34 AM

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').

by OJFord

1/17/2025 at 7:57:25 AM

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.

by wqaatwt

1/16/2025 at 7:35:15 PM

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

by libraryofbabel

1/16/2025 at 6:46:34 PM

> 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.

by keybored

1/16/2025 at 10:12:35 PM

Even recent kings have this grand education from the best of the best if not from actual geniuses, examples abound like Alexander the great and Aristotle, and usually there’s other examples in wikipedia articles for most recent kings, even without tutoring here’s a list of books that could have been used to educate royalty in less ancient times than this case but of course maybe a book wont teach craftsmanship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrors_for_princes

The elite/aristocracy of these old ages was at the top for reasons that make some sort of sense even though it could be violent it would be perhaps not completely uncorrelated with ability, if a prince is born into it they’d sometimes get taught multiple languages, music, poetry, on top of the reasonable politics and warfare, strategy etc. As for craftsmanship that is a good question since it’s working with ones hands but with the examples here so far it would make sense if they could just get instructed by the best craftsmen as well to learn that too of course this is maybe too far backwards and another continent to extrapolate

by Frummy

1/16/2025 at 4:40:43 PM

Well, everyone needs a hobby :)

Here's another one, different king, similar inscription: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear_of_Fuchai - seems likely it should be read more as "caused this to be made".

by rsynnott

1/16/2025 at 4:27:34 PM

Well kings have always said they made/build anything they ordered. I would simply not believe Yue's claim. It's much like the things Wolfram "creates".

by tokai

1/16/2025 at 4:59:29 PM

Julius Caesar made the dang calendar. People had a lot of free time.

by codemonkey-zeta

1/17/2025 at 12:32:50 AM

That was kind of his job (as pontifex maximus), tho.

by rsynnott

1/16/2025 at 8:52:10 PM

One of the most interesting parts of Pompeii for me was seeing the area where they've restored a vineyard, to the point of planting the rows of vines in the exact spots that held vines 2000 years ago. While large areas of the city consists of ruins of buildings that you kind of have to infer the layout of from the floorplans, the vineyard was the one of the spots where I most felt like I was looking back in time, and seeing the spot more-or-less as it would have looked in 79CE.

by ThinkingGuy

1/16/2025 at 9:35:57 PM

One interesting recent discovery at Pompeii was what appears to have been, for all intents and purposes, a fast food restaurant - complete with a serving counter set up much like a modern-day steam table. Many of the original wall paintings are intact - it's not hard to imagine what it would have looked like, and it's surprisingly familiar.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/archaeologists-excav...

by duskwuff

1/17/2025 at 12:24:09 PM

Make fast food great again respect the ancestors

by gunian

1/17/2025 at 4:14:47 PM

The thing that surprised me the most was to discover that there was patchouli perfume. I always associated it hippies and the hippie trail from the 60s and was thinking it was from Asia

by poulpy123

1/17/2025 at 4:22:59 PM

After checking patchouli is indeed a south Asian plant, that is not endemic from the Mediterranean area, so it's even more fascinating than the wine

by poulpy123

1/17/2025 at 6:06:09 AM

OMG! The only question is did anyone try it?

by myrandomcomment

1/17/2025 at 3:41:26 PM

According to wikipedia:

> Analysis of mineral salts in the wine revealed a high concentration of potassium salts, indicative of the cremains in the wine

I kinda wanted to try it too before I read this.

by carlob

1/16/2025 at 5:47:41 PM

41 AD was a very good year.

by mcswell

1/17/2025 at 8:18:13 AM

Fascinating! The wine discovery reminds me one scene from the book 'The Dark Forest'[0] when the protagonist drinks a wine from some centuries before... spoiler: it wasn't good.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest

by scaglio

1/16/2025 at 9:21:50 PM

"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again" --Battlestar Galactica (originally from Peter Pan though)

by sedatk

1/17/2025 at 7:07:11 AM

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun."[1] from Ecclesiastes 1:9. Apparently the quote not only describes the phenomenon, but has become witness to itself.

[1] https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16462/jewish/Ch...

by taneliv

1/17/2025 at 5:26:09 PM

Just as it was before, so it will be again. -Vashista

The same events will repeat in every Yuga -Vishnu Purana (1.3.1-2)

by dyauspitr

1/16/2025 at 5:53:52 PM

While the tomb was sealed it wasn't a vacuum, so how did the liquid not evaporate over time?

by insane_dreamer

1/16/2025 at 6:19:30 PM

Looking at the images in the article, I think c), d) and e) in the first group, and the close-up image a couple of paragraphs later, are all the same item.

So. e) looks like d) with a top covering taken off. And, from the curved "handles" visible in c), e) and the close-up, they could all be the same glass vessel. We can see in c) that the vessel does have a lid. In e) and the close-up, there appears to be a residue where the lid rested against the container.

So it's possible that liquid from the jar got to the join, evaporated, and left behind a substance that sealed the container against further evaporation?

You'd probably have to read the full report for an actual explanation, but that's my guess from what's reported in the linked article itself.

by Karellen

1/17/2025 at 12:03:41 AM

The vessel was probably sealed intentionally by the Romans. They certainly knew how to seal wine and glass containers. But it was also in a lead case and the tomb itself was sealed allowing for very little air transfer over the years.

by chrisco255

1/17/2025 at 12:16:44 AM

I'm curious how dangerous it would be to drink the wine?

by pea

1/17/2025 at 9:19:23 AM

Probably not that dangerous. The ethanol has likely evaporated leaving behind vinegar and unpleasant byproducts. There’s a risk of mold and bacterial contamination depending on how well the seal has remained intact. Depending on the process used, it’s possible the wine could contain lead salts (for sweetness), which are toxic. I doubt it would kill you, but it’d likely be very unpleasant to drink.

by tmountain

1/17/2025 at 12:38:58 AM

Wine? More likely vinegar I'd guess

by temp0826

1/17/2025 at 6:15:23 AM

Oh mon dieu, since when did Spanish make anything other than vinegar. ah ah ah.

by postexitus

1/16/2025 at 11:27:09 PM

How on earth did the wine not evaporate out of the vessel over such a long period of time?

by NL807

1/16/2025 at 11:56:29 PM

The vessel was made of glass and airtight. It was also in a lead case in a sealed tomb underground.

by chrisco255

1/17/2025 at 12:54:57 PM

[dead]

by paulg2222

1/17/2025 at 1:27:16 PM

The most profound story of this type is the account of finding a leaf, in 10's of million year old clay, that when exposed, was green, but then very very rapidly oxidised and crumbled.Ref: from somewhere in the great lakes region? 90's mag, likely sciam.Also similar storys of other very ancient soft tissues, somewhat contentious, though it is understood that,unless lithified, ancient organic remains are exceptionaly fragile and do crumble quickly without meticulous and complicated preservation tecniques, the three common reasons for presevation in situ are freezing ,water saturation, or drying/mumification. The shear volume of artifacts that humans have, and are leaving behind, insures plenty of interesting finds availible into the far future.

by metalman

1/17/2025 at 12:08:30 AM

I can't wait to read about the uncanny immediacy of the unreasonable effectiveness of the timeless aesthetic of the past.

by CyberDildonics

1/16/2025 at 7:52:12 PM

It is always fascinating when Americans re-discover that old things actually exist.

But, as they say, an American thinks that 100 years is a long time while a European thinks that 100 miles is a long way.

by teddyh

1/16/2025 at 7:53:05 PM

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN. That's a pretty insulting variant of it.

(I love the adage you quote, though. When I first heard it it said "Canadian" and "Englishman", which probably says something about how far back it goes.)

by dang

1/17/2025 at 4:12:04 PM

I didn't even notice the author was American. You don't need to be one to be fascinated by archaeology.

by poulpy123