"Excavators also removed a layer of mud roughly 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) thick from inside the coffin that Fényes hopes could contain more treasures."
i strongly suspect this is not "mud" but the dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue, [coffin liquor] and condensation.
Once all the bacteria have done their thing what's left? At this point thousands of years later it probably is solidly within the mud spectrum and closer to the sand end then say lakebottom or swamp mud.
I wish someone would do the math, it feels like a human body wouldn’t leave that much remains after degrading. I remember learning in the cemetery tour at New Orleans that those above ground tombs are family tombs and that they contain generations of people. The top shelf is where the body goes and it stays for one year and degrades before it is opened again and scraped into the bottom layer where multiple generations dwell forever together.
It sells newspapers unfortunately. For the longest time newspapers (and by extension much of the general public) equat archaeology with treasure hunting.
I don't know the circumstances of this dig, but it may have been a rescue dig ahead of eg massive concrete foundations going in. In many countries this is what drives (and funds) fieldwork.
While the article does not mention it, chances are that the sarcophagus was found during doing the soilwork for modern construction. In which case the construction company is obliged to report that to the ministry in charge and then the excavation can be done with proper care. If there was not a law for that we wouldn't talk about grave robbing but grave destroying instead.
There's a bit done by a comedian where they ask what the differences are between grave robbers and archaeologists, but basically it boils down to a question of time.
What an aggressive website: at the same time, there's 2 different popups, a display ad and a video ad playing without being activated. Doesn't AP make enough money selling news to news organizations? Disgusting.
limestone is porous and will allow water to eventually seep through.
a condensation cycle will occur, and drip percolate the soft tissue and adipocere into a slurry [coffin liquor] that will settle to the bottom of the sarcophagus.
Something that always immensely bothers me about these kinds of things is that all the interest and excitement about archeological finds totally overshadows the reality that we are effectively sterilizing our whole earth when we dig up and remove artifacts whenever and wherever we find them, especially burials.
It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
When you look at it that way, to me at least it feels way more similar to colonial plundering like the Hispanics in South and Central America, totally devastating whole cultures, than some kind of righteous or even ethical practice, it is after all objectively desecration of burials that were never meant to be dug up to satisfy the curiosity and career of some rather selfish and increasingly irreligious academic.
I say that while also being a bit conflicted because we have and do learn so much about things and cultures we have forgotten, were overrun, died out, or maybe were even intentionally erased from historical and cultural records. It does conflict me though in cases like this, where a burial is not respected and maybe reinterred when practical, but rather some detached and irreligious academic types pick apart the burial because they have lost all touch with the very humanity they seem to tell themselves they are studying; and the bones end up on some filing cabinet hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
And that’s without even addressing all the other sterilizing effects like digital “objects” and throwaway culture and construction that will practically leave nothing of value left behind for some future people to find.
Think about it, very little of today will be of value if it survives at all. There will be no way to discover what humans did in this period, because there is very little of anything physical that remains. My understanding is that outside of specific medium, none of the data we generate or consume will last, let alone survive something like a nuclear war or even a massive solar flair.
The treatment archeological finds get today is downright religious compared "that's a damn good stone, we'll use that stone for a lintel, chuck the skeleton in the river" that would've happened prior to the modern era.
Or worse, for centuries mummies were ground into powder for “medicine” or pigments, during the Egyptology craze hundred of mummies were unwrapped and destroyed for the idle curiosity and entertainment of aristocrats, and tens of thousands of cat mummies are attested being used as fertiliser.
>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
Well, no, because as you've said, the evidence will be in warehouses, and then at some later time also buried. The practice of human archeology is as much a part of culture that the future may study as the cultures that it itself studies.
>it is after all objectively desecration of burials
What do you mean "objectively desecration"? Whether something is sacred or not is purely a matter of opinion. "Objectively" it's just some configuration of atoms being moved from one place to another, neither action inherently having any more meaning or specialness than the other.
>that were never meant to be dug up to satisfy the curiosity and career of some rather selfish and increasingly irreligious academic.
Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.
>Think about it, very little of today will be of value if it survives at all.
That's what you think because you're alive now to experience it. It's worthless to you because it's abundant. Someone a million years from now may see your PC and that sarcophagus as equally priceless artifacts, because both points in time will be roughly equally distant.
> Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.
There are many conceptions of humanity that hold the dead in equal (or indeed greater) esteem than the living. Just because you consider the dead to have vanished does not mean others agree.
Maybe there were advanced human civilizations on the planet before the current (there are such theories), but at some point they also got so advanced that they accidentally/systematically removed all of their traces, and have declined in some way. (though the theories are have better explanation for their lack of artifacts apart from a few OOPARTs)
Our age unfortunately will have long-lasting traces in the forms of various plastics and forever-chemicals.
1. A lot of archaeology is "rescue" archaeology. i.e. Either natural processes (e.g. rivers shifting) have threatened a site or the decision has been made to build, but there is a legal requirement to have the site surveyed and dug (if warranted). If you have an issue with this, then it must be with rivers shifting or people building. Rescue archaeology merely rescues the past from otherwise certain destruction.
2. Archaeologists are keenly aware that digging is a destructive act. There are countless examples of sites that were dug with unsophisticated techniques (e.g. bulldozers and dynamite) in the past that could have taught us far more were they dug with even slightly more modern (and careful) techniques. This is why, outside of rescue archaeology, excavations are done with careful deliberation. It's also standard practice to excavate sites only partially, leaving some of it intact for future archaeologists to dig with more advanced technology and techniques.
3. Rest assured, there yet remains vast quantities of history buried in the ground, waiting to be discovered. e.g. We have discovered cuneiform records referring to entire cities that remain buried and unknown. Other cities of the past are under modern settlements and are, at present, mostly inaccessible to archaeologists. It may seem like the world has been exhaustively explored, but there are still huge surprises waiting underground.
>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
My understanding is that most countries prevent areas from being wholesale dug up, but only permit smaller, limited digs for this reason. So a representative sample of a site can be reexamined at a future date with future technology to reassess understanding. Some sites have had many many digs in this fashion, and still havent dug the entire site. In fact its a criticism of some semi famous sites, usually from charlatans, that the entire site hasnt been dug therefore we are leaving evidence of their popular wackjob ideas in the ground
>because there is very little of anything physical that remains.
I dont know thats true. Lots of what we do is kept and recorded. And our activity surely leaves traces. Plastics especially.
>My understanding is that outside of specific medium, none of the data we generate or consume will last, let alone survive something like a nuclear war or even a massive solar flair.
I dont believe this is true either. We arent backing our society up to a single old spinning disk. We have documents that immediately predate data storage. We have old documents stored in multiple places. We have lost certain specific artefacts of our own history but it seems doomerish to assume thats what happens universally.
> we dig up and remove artifacts whenever and wherever we find them
Not anymore, at leats not everywhere. AFAIK there is a stop to excavations of unexplored areas in Pompei. There are several burial sites of kings and emperors in Korea and China that are intentionally left unexcavated (they excavated a few mounds, but left the rest as it is).
Until today. Open a grave one day and you are a grave robber. Open it on some other day and you are a scientist. I think the people who sealed the grave wouldn't see much of a difference.
"Excavators also removed a layer of mud roughly 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) thick from inside the coffin that Fényes hopes could contain more treasures."
i strongly suspect this is not "mud" but the dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue, [coffin liquor] and condensation.
"dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue...and condensation". Yeah - mud.
Once all the bacteria have done their thing what's left? At this point thousands of years later it probably is solidly within the mud spectrum and closer to the sand end then say lakebottom or swamp mud.
'Coffin liquor' may be the most disgusting pair of words I've ever read, and I've been on the internet a while. Wow.
I was getting the exact same thing. I will be using the term in conversation now though.
Sounds like a cocktail to me. Somewhat like a black russian but browner in colour.
Cool band name, too.
> Cool band name, too.
Coffin Liquor. It's to die for.
Haha I told my good friend (we played together in a black metal band 100 years ago) that we might want to try again with this name.
There's a grindcore album by that name. Which I'll now have to check out ;)
https://napalmted.bandcamp.com/album/coffin-liquor
I wish someone would do the math, it feels like a human body wouldn’t leave that much remains after degrading. I remember learning in the cemetery tour at New Orleans that those above ground tombs are family tombs and that they contain generations of people. The top shelf is where the body goes and it stays for one year and degrades before it is opened again and scraped into the bottom layer where multiple generations dwell forever together.
https://historyinstone.blogspot.com/2019/07/above-ground-bur...
There's something about how this article was written that reads like grave robbing, especially the bit about them hoping to discover "more treasures."
It sells newspapers unfortunately. For the longest time newspapers (and by extension much of the general public) equat archaeology with treasure hunting.
I don't know the circumstances of this dig, but it may have been a rescue dig ahead of eg massive concrete foundations going in. In many countries this is what drives (and funds) fieldwork.
While the article does not mention it, chances are that the sarcophagus was found during doing the soilwork for modern construction. In which case the construction company is obliged to report that to the ministry in charge and then the excavation can be done with proper care. If there was not a law for that we wouldn't talk about grave robbing but grave destroying instead.
There's a bit done by a comedian where they ask what the differences are between grave robbers and archaeologists, but basically it boils down to a question of time.
If historical grave robbers left detailed descriptions of what they'd found and where they moved it to, I wouldn't mind much.
Yes. “Unlooted and unopened”… until today.
What's the difference between archeology and grave robbing. Just time.
We are much closer in time to Marco Polo than Marco Polo was to this girl.
What an aggressive website: at the same time, there's 2 different popups, a display ad and a video ad playing without being activated. Doesn't AP make enough money selling news to news organizations? Disgusting.
Underneath all of that mud there might be treasures.
Adblocking is the brush you need
Where did the mud inside come from if it was still sealed?
limestone is porous and will allow water to eventually seep through.
a condensation cycle will occur, and drip percolate the soft tissue and adipocere into a slurry [coffin liquor] that will settle to the bottom of the sarcophagus.
I honestly cannot believe that I have been listening to Death Metal my entire life, and no one has ever used the term “coffin liquor” in a song.
For what it's worth, Morpheus Descends had a song called 'Submerged in Adipocere', which is a similar kind of thing.
Just wanted to say hello to my fellow metalheads. And thanks for the song recommendation!
That's more Necrophagist kinda territory.
I think “coffin liquor” would be a great name for an absinthe.
Goddamn the website is atrocious to use on a phone, let me pinch to zoom in on the photos!
Good post though.
Something that always immensely bothers me about these kinds of things is that all the interest and excitement about archeological finds totally overshadows the reality that we are effectively sterilizing our whole earth when we dig up and remove artifacts whenever and wherever we find them, especially burials.
It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
When you look at it that way, to me at least it feels way more similar to colonial plundering like the Hispanics in South and Central America, totally devastating whole cultures, than some kind of righteous or even ethical practice, it is after all objectively desecration of burials that were never meant to be dug up to satisfy the curiosity and career of some rather selfish and increasingly irreligious academic.
I say that while also being a bit conflicted because we have and do learn so much about things and cultures we have forgotten, were overrun, died out, or maybe were even intentionally erased from historical and cultural records. It does conflict me though in cases like this, where a burial is not respected and maybe reinterred when practical, but rather some detached and irreligious academic types pick apart the burial because they have lost all touch with the very humanity they seem to tell themselves they are studying; and the bones end up on some filing cabinet hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
And that’s without even addressing all the other sterilizing effects like digital “objects” and throwaway culture and construction that will practically leave nothing of value left behind for some future people to find.
Think about it, very little of today will be of value if it survives at all. There will be no way to discover what humans did in this period, because there is very little of anything physical that remains. My understanding is that outside of specific medium, none of the data we generate or consume will last, let alone survive something like a nuclear war or even a massive solar flair.
The treatment archeological finds get today is downright religious compared "that's a damn good stone, we'll use that stone for a lintel, chuck the skeleton in the river" that would've happened prior to the modern era.
Or worse, for centuries mummies were ground into powder for “medicine” or pigments, during the Egyptology craze hundred of mummies were unwrapped and destroyed for the idle curiosity and entertainment of aristocrats, and tens of thousands of cat mummies are attested being used as fertiliser.
Or literally used as firewood to power steam engines
>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
Well, no, because as you've said, the evidence will be in warehouses, and then at some later time also buried. The practice of human archeology is as much a part of culture that the future may study as the cultures that it itself studies.
>it is after all objectively desecration of burials
What do you mean "objectively desecration"? Whether something is sacred or not is purely a matter of opinion. "Objectively" it's just some configuration of atoms being moved from one place to another, neither action inherently having any more meaning or specialness than the other.
>that were never meant to be dug up to satisfy the curiosity and career of some rather selfish and increasingly irreligious academic.
Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.
>Think about it, very little of today will be of value if it survives at all.
That's what you think because you're alive now to experience it. It's worthless to you because it's abundant. Someone a million years from now may see your PC and that sarcophagus as equally priceless artifacts, because both points in time will be roughly equally distant.
My original IBM PC looks pretty sad now. I remember buying it and how it smelled when I unpackaged it.
> Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.
There are many conceptions of humanity that hold the dead in equal (or indeed greater) esteem than the living. Just because you consider the dead to have vanished does not mean others agree.
Maybe there were advanced human civilizations on the planet before the current (there are such theories), but at some point they also got so advanced that they accidentally/systematically removed all of their traces, and have declined in some way. (though the theories are have better explanation for their lack of artifacts apart from a few OOPARTs)
Our age unfortunately will have long-lasting traces in the forms of various plastics and forever-chemicals.
1. A lot of archaeology is "rescue" archaeology. i.e. Either natural processes (e.g. rivers shifting) have threatened a site or the decision has been made to build, but there is a legal requirement to have the site surveyed and dug (if warranted). If you have an issue with this, then it must be with rivers shifting or people building. Rescue archaeology merely rescues the past from otherwise certain destruction.
2. Archaeologists are keenly aware that digging is a destructive act. There are countless examples of sites that were dug with unsophisticated techniques (e.g. bulldozers and dynamite) in the past that could have taught us far more were they dug with even slightly more modern (and careful) techniques. This is why, outside of rescue archaeology, excavations are done with careful deliberation. It's also standard practice to excavate sites only partially, leaving some of it intact for future archaeologists to dig with more advanced technology and techniques.
3. Rest assured, there yet remains vast quantities of history buried in the ground, waiting to be discovered. e.g. We have discovered cuneiform records referring to entire cities that remain buried and unknown. Other cities of the past are under modern settlements and are, at present, mostly inaccessible to archaeologists. It may seem like the world has been exhaustively explored, but there are still huge surprises waiting underground.
>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.
My understanding is that most countries prevent areas from being wholesale dug up, but only permit smaller, limited digs for this reason. So a representative sample of a site can be reexamined at a future date with future technology to reassess understanding. Some sites have had many many digs in this fashion, and still havent dug the entire site. In fact its a criticism of some semi famous sites, usually from charlatans, that the entire site hasnt been dug therefore we are leaving evidence of their popular wackjob ideas in the ground
>because there is very little of anything physical that remains.
I dont know thats true. Lots of what we do is kept and recorded. And our activity surely leaves traces. Plastics especially.
>My understanding is that outside of specific medium, none of the data we generate or consume will last, let alone survive something like a nuclear war or even a massive solar flair.
I dont believe this is true either. We arent backing our society up to a single old spinning disk. We have documents that immediately predate data storage. We have old documents stored in multiple places. We have lost certain specific artefacts of our own history but it seems doomerish to assume thats what happens universally.
> we dig up and remove artifacts whenever and wherever we find them
Not anymore, at leats not everywhere. AFAIK there is a stop to excavations of unexplored areas in Pompei. There are several burial sites of kings and emperors in Korea and China that are intentionally left unexcavated (they excavated a few mounds, but left the rest as it is).
>catalogued and archived in some warehouse
"We have top men working on the Ark right now."
>> Untouched by looters and sealed for centuries,
Until today. Open a grave one day and you are a grave robber. Open it on some other day and you are a scientist. I think the people who sealed the grave wouldn't see much of a difference.
And open a grave a third day, and you're just an ordinary grave digger, reusing the cemetery land.