If you haven't already, give the Fall of Civilizations podcast [1] a listen. It's one of my favourites - informative, engaging and peaceful listening - about how civilizations rise and fall. Episode 8 is about the Sumerians in Iraq and might give you a picture of how these people lived (if nearly 1500 years earlier).
The History lf Rome was my first podcast I've listen to. It is such a treat to listen. I've tried to continue with The History of Byzantium and it was just not the same. So now I've picked up Revolutions since I think it was really Mike Duncan style I appreciated (well that and the Romans)
They found cuneiform tablets, that's pretty fascinating. There's a really good Royal Institution talk on cuneiform and how difficult it is to translate:
Cracking Ancient Codes: Cuneiform Writing - with Irving Finkel
There are some very intriguing links between the Mittani and the Indo-Aryans. There are very similar words in Mittani and Sanskrit. It would be interesting if some of these clay tablets provided more background on this link.
Given the Indo-Aryan character of the rulers of Mittani, it's easy to postulate that any similarity between Hurrian (the common language of the Mittani empire) and Sanskrit are an elite import to the former language, not unlike English words with a Norman-French background.
Cuneiform isn’t exactly an alphabet. It can represent sounds, letters, whole words, or broad ideas in single symbols. It true that it was used for many languages, but if this is a trove of documents from a palace or temple then many will likely be in Akkadian. Akkadian was the diplomatic language[1] of the region until the rise of the Achaemenid empire in 550 BCE.
Since the site is from Mitanni[2] then some will also surely be in Hurrian[3] and maybe Amorite.
Semantics. Some people consider Runes alphabetic and some do not because it does not follow the order of ABC. Some consider the prominent Semitic scripts, Arabic eg.، not alphabetic but Abjad because it has no vowels, although phoenician is usually considered the first alphabet. Alpha is Greek. So I can guess there's a sense of classicist classism
> Some people consider Runes alphabetic and some do not because it does not follow the order of ABC.
Even in narrow contexts, that's not how linguists use the term. Futhark runes are pretty clearly alphabets, because consonants and vowels are treated as independent symbols.
In the narrower sense, some scholars distinguish "true" alphabets from two other types of segmental script, abjads and abugidas. These three differ from each other in the way they treat vowels: abjads have letters for consonants and leave most vowels unexpressed; abugidas are also consonant-based but indicate vowels with diacritics to or a systematic graphic modification of the consonants. In alphabets in the narrow sense, on the other hand, consonants and vowels are written as independent letters.
In this sense you're correct, but it is more often refered to as specificly futhark, outside cladistics, if talked about individually, in which case ''it'' may be a subset that would not be refered to in the definite as alphabets, not at all. There are strong arguments for some changes in the order that we see, but that's overall uncertain, so the cladistics argument would be shaky anyway.
Tunnels (as mentioned below), sewage systems, foundations of large structures, detritus, glass and ceramics. Most modern concretes would decay quite rapidly on these scales, metals would disperse, plastics get eaten.
The patterns we have made on multi-kilometer scales will remain for very long timescales. We have altered floodplains, water tables, and ecosystems so much so quickly that we will recognise artificial desertification for a very long time indeed.
And we'll still be confused about whatever the fuck we were up to, other than enjoying the human condition :)
You have unreinforced concrete riddled with holes, in a shape designed to depend on the steel. It won't last nearly as long as a structure designed with unreinforced concrete in mind.
Apart from sites devastated by a natural disaster like Pompei, why are there so many artifacts left behind/discovered at so many archaeological locations?
If you look at photographs of recent ruins, say from schools or hotels that have fallen into disuse, you'll often see the same thing: desks, cabinets, chairs, computers and all sorts of other objects still in place. Maybe the only explanation that is needed is that people couldn't be bothered to dispose of low-value items and just abandoned them? You may even have some of these mini-ruins at home or work: projects you abandoned halfway but that you never consciously decided to abandon and hence didn't clean up, so they were just left there.
In fire or earthquake, buildings collapse, burying everything in situ. Any new construction goes up on top, because clearing it away would be more work nobody wants.
In a fire, cuneiform tablets turn into fired ceramic, preserving a snapshot of what would have been evanescent records. Sometimes kitchen contents are charred but remain recognizable.
Without garbage trucks, trash gets thrown out right in back, in "middens" that build up layer by layer until they get too big and are left, providing a chronology tagged with pollen grains.
If I recall correctly, these were built during Saddam's era to ensure water for his people. Iraq doesn't have many, if any, water sources that aren't controlled by other countries so they were in a rush to build these to ensure a national water supply. They didn't have the luxury to do archeology.
The dam was built in the 80s by Saddam, and it isn't clear why they didn't excavate the palace which was known to be there. There was some work in the area in 82[1], but I don't know what they excavated. I imagine the Iran-Iraq war made it impractical. There were bombings and missile attacks in Mosul and Kirkuk at the time.
my (distant) understanding -- reasons include that various waves of modern political movements attack and destroy archeological artifacts of the past, as a rite of passage to modern power.
If you're talking about ISIS please just specifically call out ISIS, it's arguable whether they ever achieved statehood but their terror base approach (toward their citizens rather than global terrorism) seems like a pretty big outlier in the modern world so I don't know if their state would have been sustainable even if major powers hadn't stepped in to erase them from the face of the earth.
Even ideologically extreme countries like Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia have placed a strong emphasis on historical preservation - there are always compromises and violations, but I think that's a pretty safe broad generalization.
The Taliban, who've achieved statehood at least twice, blew up the absolutely amazing Buddhas of Bamiyan during their earlier reign in 2001.
"The statues were destroyed in March 2001, after the Taliban government declared that they were idols. International and local opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas."
> To avert further damage to the important site by the rising water, the excavated buildings were completely covered with tight-fitting plastic sheeting and covered with gravel fill
Recently I was reading about how an ancient settlement in Turkey was discovered to have been deliberately buried thousands of years ago, with no explanation as to why it had been buried ( https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/does-an-unknown-extraord... ). Perhaps it was just the work of ancient archaeologists seeking to preserve the site. :)
It doesn't really seem that weird, Mosul is in Iraqi Kurdistan. It's a lot more like referring to some as specifically Basque or Catalonian rather than Spanish. Kurds have a language and culture that is very distinct from their Arab neighbors. Unlike your example, Iraqi Kurds have had their own constitutionally defined regional, semi-autonomous government.
I guess I should have been more specific and a bit less sloppy. Mosul is directly adjacent to Iraqi Kurdistan in the disputed region and the majority of the population is Kurdish. However Kemune, the site, and Duhok where the team is based are in the undisputed part of Kurdistan. It seems like an odd nit to pick, I imagine the researcher just requested to be identified as Kurdish, he is after all the head of the Kurdistan Archaeology Organization. It isn't that odd, I've seen publications refer to a researcher as Catalonian or Scottish in the past, I'm not sure about Basque with respect to science but it pops up in the arts.
The article definitely goes out of its way to point out that the researchers were Kurds, which if you know anything about the region makes complete sense: Catalan researchers would insist on being identified as Catalan researchers and not Spanish. Scottish researchers might reasonably insist on not being identified as English. This identification was almost certainly requested by the Kurish researchers themselves.
The only thing odd here is your taking umbrage at someone else's need for visible political identity, which makes you seem reactionary or at best naive.
So this was the impetus for your original comment. You just wanted to point out that Mosul didn’t belong to the Kurds. What a waste of time and energy and it’s very transparent and counter productive.
Nothing belongs to “the Kurds” — this isn’t the 13th century, we don’t assign land to ethnic groups?
I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. Would anybody in the right mind say that Ohio belongs to the Whites? Or Chicago belongs to the Blacks? Yet somehow you’ve managed to completely misread my post, ignored the fact that the first mention of Mosul was in a reply, and then made a reference to a region “belonging” to an ethnic group.
It’s probably why hopelessly racist, hyper political publications like this one get a pass.
Outside the Middle East: “we’re all one!! Undivided!”
Inside the Middle East: “if you’re not divided on racial, religious and ethnic groups then you’re unhappy!”
I've noticed many comments on HN of late have tilted radical right-wing. I only mention this because for many many years I have never had any feeling of political leanings on HN.
This is silly. There aren't any radical right-wing comments in this thread, and such comments are routinely (and IMO rightly) downvoted into oblivion. Calling out suspicious ethnic subtext is still very much the purview of liberals and progressives--if it feels "radical right wing" to you, I suspect (and hope!) the explanation is that your bubble is far to the left of the broader population.
It's a de facto independent state the same way that Scotland is a de facto independent state. Probably even less so. But now imagine prepending every Scot with "The Scot" in a publication -- just in case you don't confuse them with some other member of the UK.
It isn't really a racial distinction. The Kurds in northern Iraq view themselves as being distinct from the rest of Iraq and even speak a different language. They're. different cultural and ethnic group. They're only part of Iraq because after WWI the allied powers split Kurdistan up and divided it among neighboring countries.
I don't see how you can possibly call it racist. What is your basis for that claim?
They're doing the dig in coordination with the Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage in Duhok, which is in the officially recognized Kurdistan Region, the local archeologists are all Kurdish. The site, Kemune, is also in the Kurdistan region. Dr. Hasan Ahmed Qasim is also the chairman of the Kurdistan Archaeology Organization. It doesn't seem odd to use the word "Kurdish" a paltry 3 times in the article. It seems like specificity that adds clarity rather than anything else.
Why do you think this is about ethnicity? The more plausible interpretation is that some scientists are considered (in this article) as German because they come from German universities, while the locals are supported by the Kurdish government/organizations, as explained in the article.
I don't have an opinion either way, but if you're going to disagree with the article, please at least make it explicit (and provide reasoning if possible).
In fact, the article addresses this with:
> It is located at Kemune in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
... and:
> chairman of the Kurdistan Archaeology Organization
... and:
> took place in January and February 2022 in collaboration with the Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage in Duhok (Kurdistan Region of Iraq).
To be fair, I believe there is some disputed evidence that the Kurdish (partially) descend from the Hittani. The arabs living in Iraq do not. Well... I guess in reality it is so far back that probably everyone in Eurasia descends from the Hittani.
Still, I can imagine it makes a difference if you identify yourself with Hittani as ancestors or you do not
My understanding is that the region is pretty much de facto independent. So there's probably politics at play: The German team works with the local Kurdish authorities and must keep good relations with them.
Definitely politics in play. "There are Kurdish authorities here to do good work with the Germans" is the statement they wanted to emphasize more than the archeology.
[1]: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/