Top products from r/ArtefactPorn

There is an interesting book called The Origins of the World's Mythologies by a Harvard professor named E.J. Michael Witzel which provides a great deal of information on this topic. I haven't actually read it yet, I've just read the description and a sample chapter but it's very interesting. I'll attach a link and the description from Amazon below, but what seems to be the major underlying theme of the book is that just like all people came from Africa long ago so too did the World's mythologies.

>This remarkable book is the most ambitious work on mythology since that of the renowned Mircea Eliade, who all but single-handedly invented the modern study of myth and religion. Focusing on the oldest available texts, buttressed by data from archeology, comparative linguistics and human population genetics, Michael Witzel reconstructs a single original African source for our collective myths, dating back some 100,000 years. Identifying features shared by this "Out of Africa" mythology and its northern Eurasian offshoots, Witzel suggests that these common myths-recounted by the communities of the "African Eve"-are the earliest evidence of ancient spirituality. Moreover these common features, Witzel shows, survive today in all major religions. Witzel's book is an intellectual hand grenade that will doubtless generate considerable excitement-and consternation-in the scholarly community. Indeed, everyone interested in mythology will want to grapple with Witzel's extraordinary hypothesis about the spirituality of our common ancestors, and to understand what it tells us about our modern cultures and the way they are linked at the deepest level.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199812853/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=247VMV2CMXW7Z&coliid=I1HWP702NS4MC7

Sure! I like this one. It has a good balance of historical continuity, supported by archaeological evidence. I also recall that it does a good job of impressing upon the reader just how interesting and unique Etruscan art and technology was for the region and time period. We still don't know exactly how the Etruscans created some the pottery and jewelry they were famous for.

If you're interested in acquiring a book on it, let me recommend the one from Chronicle Books, The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day. I've owned a few books on it and while others have more scholarly interest, they can also be dry reading. The Chronicle Books edition shows images of the scroll, and then gives you the translation underneath, which I found incredibly visually interesting as a non-Egyptologist.

If you want more scientific detail and analysis, I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will recommend a more recent book. I got my start three decades ago with The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum, by E. A. Wallis Budge. Lots of fascinating historical detail, even if his conclusions have probably all been refined or refuted since then.

> What do most people today have in mind when they say that they want their partner to be "faithful"?

Bit of a silly question. One usually doesn't demand a partner be faithful with no other factors. It's a mutual exchange of trust between partners agreeing to be faithful to each other. But the doll here represents a desire to control another person without their consent.

I don't think it's "horrible", it's just typical desperation from lonely people. The modern equivalent is the self-help section in the book store, "How to make him fall in love with you." #1 #2 #3 #4 [on and on]

Of course, we still have "magick"-based superstition...

Im pretty sure that the start of the Middle Ages is know put at the 8th century, it certainly is for the Middle East, as someone interested in the period you should read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Inheritance-Rome-History-Europe/dp/0140290141

I have an MA in Archaeology, research landscapes of the Sassanid Empire (GIS + CORONA) and work here in Australia as consultant archaeologist, I have worked on research excavations in the Middle East and Caucasus.

These scrolls are a really big deal. IIRC, only the outer layer was carbonized, which meant that some of the writing is preserved in the interior layers. Some fragments from finds like this were what brought the ancient work "De Rerum Natura" (On the Nature of Things) to the attention of early scholars.

According to Greenblatt in The Swerve, the rediscovery of this work is what kicked off much of the secular/scientific turn in European history.

I read the Swerve a while back and I'm currently reading a translation of De Rerum Natura when I'm on the shitter, and it's utterly fascinating. It's an epic poem that basically lays out the vision of a secular/scientific view of the universe. It's one of those works (like the dome of the Pantheon, etc.) which makes clear how much was lost in the fall of the Roman Empire.

I've been fascinated by Celtic art since I saw photos of the Book of Kells, Book of Durrow and the Lindisfarne Gospels when I was a kid.

I found this book (Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction by George Bain) that explains how these kind of drawings were made. It's amazing how something so complex can be made with very simple methods.

You should read Guns Germs and Steel! It's a super interesting analysis of why it happened that way.

I don't know who Toby de Silva is, but I do know that Paul Koudounaris published an amazing book on this: Heavenly Bodies.

It wasn't FOR the living (hence the name book of the Dead) It was meant to be read to you as you lay dyeing ...or to your mummy after you were prepaired.

Think last Rites or the The Tibetan Book of the Dead , It was meant to teach you how to get to the boat of the sun god to ask him to accept you into his boat party (heaven)...if you got eaten by crocodiles before you got there, well that would suck.

Finished this a couple of days ago and that's what it says. He was worshipped as a god for a long time after he died; guess Gods are prettier than that.

Not only lucky for the baby but considered lucky for others, too. Farley Mowat wrote about his caul being sold to a sailor. (IIRC the sailor drowned!)

The book Escape from Sobibor is a good read to get more information about those that actually lived in the camps. The author interviewed a lot of the (very few) survivors. Very good, very sobering read.

I highly recommend the entertaining illustrated "anthropological" book Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay, the author and illustrator of the The Way Things Work series, as well as other similar books. It features a team of researchers in the far future excavating a hotel room from 1985 and getting everything completely wrong.

You might enjoy Motel of the Mysteries.

>It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

Sooo good. The Power Broker

For those interested, there was a book published a little while ago with full-colour photos of these skeletons. http://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Bodies-Treasures-Spectacular-Catacombs/dp/0500251959

Yall should read https://www.amazon.com/History-World-100-Objects/dp/0143124153
It's got so much of similar shit like this. It's my favorite book

Anything is possible, I suppose. However, it's unique until proven otherwise. Someone had to be the first, and maybe it was these folks. I had a mentor tell me once that young archaeologists are too stupid to know when they're wrong, and that's why we go out and end up changing paradigms with our research. (Within reason, of course - archaeology is destructive, which is why sites aren't excavated fully anymore. We would destroy all our data if we did.)

Based on what we know now, these people would have been hunter-gatherers (perhaps practicing very early forms of horticulture and pastoralism), who believed in an animistic/totemistic/shamanistic religious tradition. This is what is represented at Gobekli Tepe.

Equally as old in the Incan world isn't possible. The Incan empire started in the 13th century CE. Concerning theories about human population of the Americas, people could have populated the New World as early as 30 ky BP, but the most current theory argues for a population period of c. 11 ky BP (right around when Gobekli Tepe was built).

There are a bunch of publications that, from your comments, I think you might enjoy. Ian Hodder has written a lot about Catalhoyuk (The Leopard's Tale for example), which is another very old site, extremely well researched. The Olmecs would also be of interest to you, they're notable for a lot of cultural features, especially megalithic art.

Here is the mobile version of your link

> memoirs of conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo

Is that this book?
https://www.amazon.ca/Conquest-Spain-Bernal-Diaz-Castillo/dp/0140441239/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539103814&sr=8-1&keywords=Bernal+Diaz+del+Castillo+memoir

I'm familiar with the book, it was recommended to me by a Medieval History lecturer when we were talking about the 6th and 7th centuries (hmm..!) but I didn't get around to reading it yet. But I just looked at the first pages on amazon and he mentions somewhere at the start (ctrl+f it to look it up at the look inside on amazon) that:

>The most copious of all early medieval chroniclers, Gregory, bishop of Tours (d. 594), who wrote a long history ...

That book basically puts an author who lived from 538-594 -well before the Franks Casket- as being early medieval. And I did notice, he did go into the fact that the common definition of medieval has its problems in the introduction but he, as most other scholars who have come to this conclusion, does actually seem to consider the 6th century to be medieval already, as per the example I provided.

In fact, that very same author wrote a book called Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800, which should by the title alone tell you enough about the author's view on this subject.

Honestly, I don't really feel like arguing this further because I've made my point and at this point it's just tiresome... And whatever your credentials are (and the fact that you thought the Eastern Roman Empire "ended" with the Arab invasions of the 7th/8th century casts some doubt on that claim that you specialized in the Sassanid empire tbh..), I can't verify them on the internet. I prefer to rely on academic sources here, and they seem to prove my point just fine. And of course, the periodization of anything is always something that can be debated, but especially for the purposes of an imageboard like this, it is really quite reasonable to use the classic periodization.