> sheds light on how the ancient Minoan and Mycenaean elite
Mycenaeans are considered Greek.
Minoans generally not considered Greek.
Their script, Linear A, has never been deciphered, so we don’t actually know what language they spoke, but most linguists think it wasn’t Greek, based on how poorly Linear A’s signs map onto Greek phonetics when tested as they do successfully with Mycenaean Linear B.
Culturally the Minoans also look distinct from later Greek civilization. Different religious iconography (bull-leaping, goddess-centric imagery), different art style, no clear warrior-elite hierarchy the way Mycenaean and later Greek society had.
JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago [-]
> Mycenaeans are considered Greek
It's fair to argue they aren't. The Assyrian people still exist [1] today. Their language and culture having been passed on-unbroken–by the living to the living for thousands of years.
The Myceneans–like the Hittites and others whom we know so little about we haven't even named them–are in a fundamentally distinct category. Like yes, they weren't nuked out of existence. But there is a permanent and irreparable break in the continuity of exchange that severs the timeline between then and now.
Mycenaeans are not remotely like the Hittites. The Mycenaean language is what turned into Greek, while Hittite died out and was forgotten. Myceneans were remembered and celebrated until the present day with the Odyssey and the Illiad (while I realise these were composed later, and are not a remotely perfect reflection of Mycenean society, they still refer to a memory of that time, and furthermore include authentic details from that time). The language and culture of the Mycenaeans also had an unbroken linguistic and cultural chain (of course with the big upheaval of the Bronze age collapse, but Assyrians also went through many upheavals).
Modern day Assyrians also speak Aramaic (or Arabic) rather than Akkadian which was the state language of the Assyrian empire (Aramaic did replace Akkadian as the lingua franca under the Neo-Assyrian empire however). Conversely, Greek is the descendant of Mycenaean Greek just as Coptic is the descendant of the Ancient Egyptian language.
Mycenaeans really are not like the Hittites who were essentially completely forgotten until 19th and 20th century archeology discovered them.
qup 19 hours ago [-]
> Their script, Linear A, has never been deciphered
As for Linear A decipherment claims, claiming decipherment isn't the same as decipherment. For example, here's a claim from 2014 that Linear A encodes spoken Japanese: https://konosos.net/2014/12/09/the-phonetic-method-in-linear...Does Linear A encode spoken Japanese? of course not.
andsoitis 19 hours ago [-]
I read it. The claim is still early and yet to be accepted.
throwawayffffas 21 hours ago [-]
Linear B also maps poorly to Greek as far as I know. It's clearly an adaption of a foreign script.
andsoitis 21 hours ago [-]
Linear B maps onto Greek quite well once you understand that it is a syllabary, not an alphabet. The fit is imperfect in specific, well-understood ways.
Once you correct for well-understood systematic gaps, though, the underlying grammar, vocabulary, and even some divine names (Poseidon, Zeus, Hera, Dionysus all show up) are recognizably continuous with classical Greek.
applicative 11 hours ago [-]
It is flat out Greek. I can even read some of the transliterations. I laughed like a drain when I saw that one of the leading characteristic key words of Aristotle's teaching, 'heneka' is the main connector in the oldest written Indo European text. three goats heneka one coat , i.e. 'for the sake of' in the context of a list of palace exchanges.
altmanaltman 21 hours ago [-]
The actual paper doesn't claim that, it understands they are two distinct cultures but itn covers the georgaphical Greece in the title not cultural.
Except it does partially map into Greek, they had settlements on several Greek islands, influence on the Cyclades, and talk about similar Gods.
Even the cave where Zeus was allegedly born is on Crete.
suddenlybananas 18 minutes ago [-]
They can heavily influence later Greek culture without being Greeks themselves. It's not unlike the Etruscans and Rome.
stefan_lec 22 hours ago [-]
Something about this feels very Tolkien-ish.
Nobody mention it to Peter Thiel, he doesn’t need any more ideas.
mr_toad 20 hours ago [-]
Speaking of myths, one explanation of the mysterious metal adamantine is that it was iron, forged from meteors.
To Bronze Age Greeks, lacking the ability to smelt iron, an iron weapon would have been surpassingly strong, sharp and rare.
Later, during the Iron Age, Adamantine got retconned into something else (like diamond).
neaden 14 hours ago [-]
This doesn't really hold water. Iron weapons aren't really any better than Bronze, it's stiffer and lighter with an equivalent size blade but not any harder or sharper. Bronze can be cast in more complex shapes that can help with weapon effectiveness and even during the Iron Age bronze Weapons were used alongside iron ones. Iron is much more abundant so the revolution of the iron age was having much cheaper and accessible metal, not superior. It isn't until Steel that you really see bronze (and iron) become clearly inferior.
16 hours ago [-]
xbmcuser 22 hours ago [-]
In ancient times with no light pollution they could probably see and track meteorites falling. And it could have been easier to access to get those metals than mining.
wood_spirit 21 hours ago [-]
Perhaps sometimes they saw it hit and went to find it? But the night is long and people should be indoors asleep near the fire and meteorites fall all around the clock anyway?
So perhaps they mostly just picked weird rocks up off the ground, as the Inuit did? When you spend time outside with the herds you probably notice unusual wrongs.
nkrisc 15 hours ago [-]
The Inuit probably had a much easier time finding them, as they would stand out quite starkly among snow and ice.
Not exactly the same, but I’ve seen video of meteorite collecting on the Antarctic ice sheet near the South Pole and they just fan out in a big line and walk across the ice picking up meteorites.
whycome 14 hours ago [-]
And part of the year is full day of darkness
russdill 18 hours ago [-]
They go completely dark at a very high altitude. I feel like a bright sunny day would give you a better chance of seeing a falling rock, at least once it gets closer to the ground
rithdmc 23 hours ago [-]
They're still fashionable! ... or maybe I'm a geek.
I don't know where my wife got mine, but I'm also on Team Meteorite (inset into a titanium band -- CP titanium so I don't need to worry about it being cut off in an emergency).
mock-possum 18 hours ago [-]
Can I ask how much? The site doesn’t show prices, and I’m worried that’s “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” territory.
0xffff2 16 hours ago [-]
I was also curious. A bit of searching suggests that it's in the mid 4 figure range. Honestly not nearly as bad as I expected.
well mine was bought back in 2009 for about US$1600
Meteorite Ring, Wide Rails and Lining of 18k Yellow Gold,
Semi-Round 6mm wide size T (US 9.75)
I would expect that to have gone up a decent chunk in the mean time given the price of gold has skyrocketed since then.
SoftTalker 18 hours ago [-]
Iron is iron. All the iron on earth is the remains of ancient stars. How is it different that it "came from a meteorite?" How could you even verify that? Or put another way, all iron came from meteorites, originally.
Why should it cost any more than a couple of nails from the hardware store?
SideburnsOfDoom 33 minutes ago [-]
> Iron is iron. How is it different that it "came from a meteorite?"
Actual metals are never 100% pure any one element. There are always alloys and impurities that speak to it's origins and history.
e.g. "The significant nickel concentration and consistent occurrence of cobalt confirm the meteoritic origin of the iron blades"
If I get lucky in IPO land I'll have my eye on a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch with a meteorite dial, so I guess things have not changed all that much in the last 3500 years :P
AdmiralAsshat 21 hours ago [-]
My engagement ring contains meteorite, supposedly from the Gibeon Meteorite, although the fact that a single meteorite is a component advertised in so many rings makes me somewhat suspicious as to the quantity or authenticity. But it looks pretty, anyway.
It proves nothing - but from just 100kg, you could put 1/2 carat bits of meteorite in 1,000,000 rings.
rithdmc 20 hours ago [-]
I believe the 26 tons includes the fragments.
bell-cot 20 hours ago [-]
Point.
The "good enough" scenario I guessed at has a semi-honest treasure hunter finding a 100kg-ish fragment somewhere in those 10,000 sq. mi., then selling it to someone making rings. Lab work (isotope ratios, grain structure, etc.) could confirm that it was very likely part of the Gibeon meteorite - whether or not the ownership paperwork was legit.
rithdmc 18 hours ago [-]
Oh, I agree with you that it's probably legit from some of those scattered findings.
Something I saw while googling is that the composition & crystal structure of this meteorite makes it very attractive for use in jewellery.
karim79 21 hours ago [-]
I'm 100% certain that such rings grant superpowers determined by a cosmic RNG.
qrios 17 hours ago [-]
> Rings forged from meteorites
When I first read the title, it sounded to me like a classic case of Kessler syndrome.
Brendinooo 20 hours ago [-]
I wonder how many meteorites were laying around in the early days of humans caring about metal.
jayGlow 19 hours ago [-]
apparently several thousand small meteors strike earth per year. eventually they'd get buried but there would likely be a pretty huge number of them lying around after a few million years.
applicative 11 hours ago [-]
There are some places, like Cape York, where the meteorite was immense so fragments are in a long line and cold forging gets developed. That is, you keep bumping into bits in the same area so you start to think. Sometimes people are interested in the recurrent fragments but do not forge, as Canyon Diablo, which I think is tough to handle anyway. They know the bits are from the stars, which is quite enough to delight. In Egypt there seems anciently to have been an activity of hunting for where 'iron from the sky' landed, before there was hot forging. I don't know if there is a case of a spectacular strewn zone there, but the phenomenon had been taken on board, and continued much later. I dimly remember first reading about it when a bedoin's camel was found somehow outfitted with something beaten from a meteorite.
metalman 13 hours ago [-]
It should read Egyptian rings forged from meteorites were fashionable within the regional trading area in ancient times.
But : cultural misapropriation
IAmBroom 21 hours ago [-]
The opportunity for fraud is immense, unless the elite sourced their own meteorites.
throwawayffffas 21 hours ago [-]
Iron smelting had not been invented yet. Meteorites were the only readily available source of iron. Upon the invention of smelting all iron rings appear to be smelted.
mrec 21 hours ago [-]
How so? This was the Bronze Age; smelting iron ore wasn't really a thing yet, so meteoric iron was pretty much the only kind available.
SideburnsOfDoom 21 hours ago [-]
> The opportunity for fraud is immense
At the time, not so much. It was called "The Bronze Age" and "The Iron age" came later. The names aren't random.
From the article:
> The use of meteoritic iron particularly stands out during the Bronze Age because of the lack of iron smelting at the time.
In other words, the main source of this special metal was when the Gods occasionally threw down a piece, in a column of fire.
I can't get past the Cloud<bleep> check. I guess the site/information is for G(r)eek elites only too.
aftbit 20 hours ago [-]
Usually I'm with you but it let me in this time without any XHRs or frames off-domain (my standard µMatrix settings).
binaryturtle 15 hours ago [-]
No. No luck here with any form of settings (I generally use uBlock origin in hard mode by default).
It always loads the 'Just a quick check -- We’re checking your connection to prevent automated abuse' page. Depending on my settings I may or may not load the actual Cloudflare checkbox.
And at that point I just don't want to bother with that site anymore really. Obviously I must be some 11th world country on some random sanctioned list (aka Germany). :-)
NeoByte 59 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
hn4yci687u 20 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 09:46:45 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Mycenaeans are considered Greek.
Minoans generally not considered Greek.
Their script, Linear A, has never been deciphered, so we don’t actually know what language they spoke, but most linguists think it wasn’t Greek, based on how poorly Linear A’s signs map onto Greek phonetics when tested as they do successfully with Mycenaean Linear B.
Culturally the Minoans also look distinct from later Greek civilization. Different religious iconography (bull-leaping, goddess-centric imagery), different art style, no clear warrior-elite hierarchy the way Mycenaean and later Greek society had.
It's fair to argue they aren't. The Assyrian people still exist [1] today. Their language and culture having been passed on-unbroken–by the living to the living for thousands of years.
The Myceneans–like the Hittites and others whom we know so little about we haven't even named them–are in a fundamentally distinct category. Like yes, they weren't nuked out of existence. But there is a permanent and irreparable break in the continuity of exchange that severs the timeline between then and now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrians
Modern day Assyrians also speak Aramaic (or Arabic) rather than Akkadian which was the state language of the Assyrian empire (Aramaic did replace Akkadian as the lingua franca under the Neo-Assyrian empire however). Conversely, Greek is the descendant of Mycenaean Greek just as Coptic is the descendant of the Ancient Egyptian language.
Mycenaeans really are not like the Hittites who were essentially completely forgotten until 19th and 20th century archeology discovered them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48600107
As for Linear A decipherment claims, claiming decipherment isn't the same as decipherment. For example, here's a claim from 2014 that Linear A encodes spoken Japanese: https://konosos.net/2014/12/09/the-phonetic-method-in-linear... Does Linear A encode spoken Japanese? of course not.
Once you correct for well-understood systematic gaps, though, the underlying grammar, vocabulary, and even some divine names (Poseidon, Zeus, Hera, Dionysus all show up) are recognizably continuous with classical Greek.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...
Even the cave where Zeus was allegedly born is on Crete.
Nobody mention it to Peter Thiel, he doesn’t need any more ideas.
To Bronze Age Greeks, lacking the ability to smelt iron, an iron weapon would have been surpassingly strong, sharp and rare.
Later, during the Iron Age, Adamantine got retconned into something else (like diamond).
So perhaps they mostly just picked weird rocks up off the ground, as the Inuit did? When you spend time outside with the herds you probably notice unusual wrongs.
Not exactly the same, but I’ve seen video of meteorite collecting on the Antarctic ice sheet near the South Pole and they just fan out in a big line and walk across the ice picking up meteorites.
I would expect that to have gone up a decent chunk in the mean time given the price of gold has skyrocketed since then.
Why should it cost any more than a couple of nails from the hardware store?
Actual metals are never 100% pure any one element. There are always alloys and impurities that speak to it's origins and history.
e.g. "The significant nickel concentration and consistent occurrence of cobalt confirm the meteoritic origin of the iron blades"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S12962...
Composition and the physical structure of the metal. Entry through the atmosphere really affects it.
> How could you even verify that?
Composition can be tested, but really, a lot of it is visual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widmanst%C3%A4tten_pattern
tbh its just a geeky coolness thing.
It proves nothing - but from just 100kg, you could put 1/2 carat bits of meteorite in 1,000,000 rings.
The "good enough" scenario I guessed at has a semi-honest treasure hunter finding a 100kg-ish fragment somewhere in those 10,000 sq. mi., then selling it to someone making rings. Lab work (isotope ratios, grain structure, etc.) could confirm that it was very likely part of the Gibeon meteorite - whether or not the ownership paperwork was legit.
Something I saw while googling is that the composition & crystal structure of this meteorite makes it very attractive for use in jewellery.
When I first read the title, it sounded to me like a classic case of Kessler syndrome.
At the time, not so much. It was called "The Bronze Age" and "The Iron age" came later. The names aren't random.
From the article:
> The use of meteoritic iron particularly stands out during the Bronze Age because of the lack of iron smelting at the time.
In other words, the main source of this special metal was when the Gods occasionally threw down a piece, in a column of fire.
See also in ancient Egypt:
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2013/09/01/23856/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S12962...
It always loads the 'Just a quick check -- We’re checking your connection to prevent automated abuse' page. Depending on my settings I may or may not load the actual Cloudflare checkbox.
And at that point I just don't want to bother with that site anymore really. Obviously I must be some 11th world country on some random sanctioned list (aka Germany). :-)