• fiat_lux@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    recitation of a previously unknown extinct language. The language was hidden on a cuneiform tablet containing a ritual text written in Hittite. The Hittite ritual text refers to the lost tongue as the language of the land of Kalašma, an area that likely corresponds to where the towns of Bolu or Gerede in northern Turkey are located today.

    Very very cool. They know it’s indo-european but not much else.

  • DarienGS@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was wondering why the researchers hadn’t released any pictures of this newly discovered language, but on careful re-reading I realise it was transcribed in cunieform… so to me it would be totally indistinguishable from any other Hittite tablet.

  • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yeah sure fuck it. Let’s just read the ancient mystery tablet and see what happens. I’m willing to roll those dice right now.

    • justastranger@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Back when they didn’t have virtual machines so they had to hand-transpile it into Fortran and encode that onto punch slabs to put in their stone computers

  • Nobody@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “My cousin Nanni in Akkadia warned me not to buy copper from you, but I foolishly did not heed his warning…”

      • lath@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No you won’t. As was explained by an actual archaeologist, the domain is likened to a ponzi scheme where you spend more time trying to convince investors to finance your digging through the mud than actually finding anything worth investing in. You will give everything you have and more to the lowest bidder, because all the rich people you’d look to invest are already taken by professors much older and much more experienced than you are. Dirty deeds are abound and everywhere you go there will be no escape from smuggling, money laundering or corporate interests clashing with your own. The archaeology profession is synonymous with nepotism and corruption because all the purists are already buried deep next to the relics they so wished to uncover.

        • ratz30 @lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You could always work in cultural resource management. Here in Canada archaeological assessment is a legal requirement before any major construction, so there’s always work to do without begging for investors. That said you’ll be more educated and less paid than other trades-people you’ll encounter on site, and that makes all the hard work certainly feel less rewarding.

        • fiat_lux@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          So, I believe you, but the bad news is that you could replace archaeology with just about any other discipline and it would be just as true.

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This is spot on. Anthropology is similar, except that there is absolutely no money whatsoever and the fights are over community college gigs.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          1 year ago

          Honestly, digs interest me less than landscape archaeology, which is a whole different ballgame, as it requires very little funding. You can do a lot of it with a map and a bicycle if you know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing though.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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              1 year ago

              I’m 46 and don’t have the time, money or energy to go back to school at this point. But it’s a nice thought and I’ll continue to read up on Ohio’s Hopewell Culture and the Mississippian culture to the West that came after it and all of the amazing marks they left on the landscape (although so many have been destroyed).

  • bfg9k@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I had a thought of some archaeologists dusting off a first-gen ipad and peering at it through a microscope

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Hey, who swapped my Fertility Ceremony tablet with my Funerary Rites tablet!?