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CommentAuthorPatrickBrown
- CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
No, the Germans are just like that. Most of the early scholars of Irish were German. -
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- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
I think a lot of it has to do with proximity. Having lived in both countires, I'd describe their relationship as similar to that of America and Mexico; Turks go to germany to work in low paying jobs that everyone hates them for anyway, and the Germans see Turkey as this nearby but exotic place.
And having worked at Troy for some time, Scliemann was a terrible, terrible archaeologist, and most of the Germans at the site (mostly from University of Tübingen) are horribly ashamed to call him a fellow German archaeologist, which the team members from America and Turkey enjoy ribbing them about to no end :P -
- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
It's always puzzled me that he could be credited with "discovering" something that had never been lost. -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMar 12th 2009
Mostly he was good at using TNT to find gold. He Blasted a 200 yard long, 50 foot deep trench directly through the middle of the hill that is the Troy Dig site. He found the gold he was looking for, but ruined a lot of archaeology. We'd know at least 100% more about troy if he hadn't done that. The stratigraphy problems alone caused by his explosions are a huge nightmare. At the sorting tables I've handled pottery shards in the same layer that date 1000 years apart. It makes Archaeologists jobs way harder. Luckily for me, I'm a historian, so I don't normally have to do that grunt work :P I mostly get to work in a world of air conditioning and hotel suites. -
@Nygaard: i dont know if its waht you are looking for but you could try concepts of cleanliness by georges vigarello in which he studies how the concepts of cleanliness, health and hygiene have changed with different moral properties attributed to the human body from middle ages to present time.
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@looneynerd, ngebe - thanks, both of you. Will check them out.
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- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMar 16th 2009
Time has one of the biggest fails ever!
Link
What they don't tell you in the article? Most people involved in serious scholarship think the Dead Sea Scrolls were probably fakes. -
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CommentAuthorRootfireember
- CommentTimeMar 16th 2009
Yeah but the 'truth' isn't as interesting as a CONTROVERSY. At least according to some.
Controversy sells. How long until there are books out on this? -
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- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMar 16th 2009
Oh there are lots. Unfortunately most of them run through academic presses, so unless you specifically know about the book they're more or less impossible to find... -
- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeMar 16th 2009 edited
"Most people involved in serious scholarship think the Dead Sea Scrolls were probably fakes. "
I never knew that. Can you expand on it a little.
Are they thought to be modern fakes or ancient works falsely attributed to the Essenes? -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMar 16th 2009 edited
Well, what I was saying isn't exactly accurate. Let me expand a bit.
A lot of people think that they are the orignal writings put into the bible, or written around the same time. They're not... they're just the oldest ones we currently have access to. There are a few problems with them though academically. We aren't sure they were all written at the same time. Or by the same person. The only note we know about them authentic is that they corroborate later writings. The problem with this, of course, doesn't mean that they're originally what the books said.
We also can't date things that accurately, at least not things that're that old. Though we date them to the 2nd Century BCE, a skilled forger during the 3rd Century CE (when the first major ecumenical councils were taking place) could have easily created them.
The problem with documents is that they're fairly easy to forge. During the early 20th century, a scholar claimed to have found an original manuscript of one of the gospels of Mark. For the next fifty years or so biblical scholars took him on his word, and biblical scholarship was changed by what he'd found. Then in the 1980's, an intrepid historian decided to go to the monastery in Ethiopia where the man had claimed to find the document. It turns out none of the monks there knew what he was talking about; in fact, the man had never been to the monastery, or even Ethiopia. He was discredited, and biblical scholarship was radically affected.
Therefore, because of this and similar incidents, if we can't completely verify a document's authenticity, most scholars ignore them or assume that they're fakes, forgeries, or are copies from later than originally thought.
The dead sea scrolls are farther affected by two facts: Their owners won't let most people study them up close. This is soon to change, as they're in the process of opening up the archive where they're stored and making digital copies available. Further, it was found that a number of "scholars" writing about them were themselves fakes; they'd been posing as doctors and reputable scholars online to write good book reviews, academic journal entries, and such on the scrolls. Therefore, within biblical scholarship, we normally try to think of things outside the terms of the scrolls if at all possible.
That's not to say that within the next few years our technology or understanding may improve, and it turn out that they're completely genuine. And not everyone agrees with my sentiments. I'm just speaking from my experience dealing with historians involved with MESA.
GIANT EDIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After consulting with a friend who works more closely in this field (Ecumenical Byzantine Research), it appears that this opinion has changed in they years since I studied the subject. My apologies for putting my foot in my ass then my mouth. -
That is not a problem when you continue to edumacate us so well.
I take it that all the problems mentioned are still valid, it's just that the majority belief is the scroll are valid.
I've read there was going to be wider access to the scrolls, do you know much about the timetable? I haven't heard much about the owners, have they restricted access on grounds of damage to them or is it more of like the fear of defamatory scholarship or religious grounds? -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMar 16th 2009
The restricted access is nominally so that religious fanatics won't get their hands on them. I'm guessing all of the problems that you stated are issues as well, though.
As of right now, High res pics the scrolls are available as digital copies through scholarly networks (Like h-world and jStor). They've been working on getting them up online for public view for free, but I dunno where the progress on that is. As of now, you can buy the same copies that academics use on disk or book for a small fee through a few university presses. Not of the scrolls include biblical passages, and these can be viewed through different downloadable software applications that I'm sure you can find via google. -
re: scrolls - vague recollection says some kind of committee sat on about 50% of the scroll material for decades, and that they've either recently lost their grip or is beginning to?
I really want to get hold of Vigarello now; so much that I'd be willing to brush up my french to read the only copies of his work available here. What stopped me was having to order the books from the other side of the country. Amazon shopping binge looms on the horizon again. I did manage to troll up Armestos "So you think you are human". Looking very interesting, if barely relevant so far :) -
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CommentAuthorRootfireember
- CommentTimeMar 17th 2009
When they had a thing on the scrolls in chicago, I went to see it, and they were doing some restoration on-site. Beyond the fact that the writing on the scrolls makes my eyeballs bleed for it s smallness, what's there to prevent a restorer from just writing whatever he/she wants on the scrolls? -
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- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMar 17th 2009
@Rootfire
Absoloutely nothing. The best restorers also happen to make the best forgers, much in the same way that the best engravers make the best counterfeiters. Normally, this is why Historians tend to like to have impartial people working on a subject; if you don't belong to a certain religion, country, organization, etc., you're more likely to analyze it objectively.
In my above example, the reason that no one within the community questioned the Historian about the discovered gospel was because he was really good at tricking people. He first forged the document, using all of his linguistic and archaeological skills (Linguists are scary people, don't let people tell you otherwise). Then he did something REALLY smart; he took a picture of it, and claimed that the monks wouldn't allow the original document to leave the monastery (for understanable reasons. We very rarely get to keep the documents we find, so pictures normally suffice within the community). Therefore, no way of dating it beyond how it looked was possible.
The Advantage to the scrolls is that most art restorers aren't linguists. Therefore, even though they might be repairing letters and the document itself, I doubt they have the knowhow to accurately add information and make it look real. Even though I know classical Arabic, I don't know enough about common writing trends, grammar rules, spellings, etc. used during any given timeframe, but you can bet that any historian concentrating on the Arabian Penninsula in the 3rd century will, and would catch my attempted forgery in a heartbeat. -
Animated Maps were mentioned earlier.
I found this one http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf
form the site Maps of War
I'd be interested to know if anyone feels the site has any obvious bias. It claims not to but the title and layout makes my gut say otherwise.
The animated maps themselves are pretty but I have no idea if they're accurate. -
also on the animated maps
Time Map -
- CommentAuthorlooneynerd
- CommentTimeMar 17th 2009
A few problems with the middle eastern one.
It simply lists "The Caliphate". I assume it's talking about the combined extent of the Umayyad and Abbassid empires, but I'm not sure.
It lists "the Mongols" as one empire, when in fact it was many, such as the Eastern Khanate and the il-Khanid empire. The Il-Khans ruled much more of the middle east than the map shows (including all of Modern Day Iraq).
It also fails to mention any of the Mahgreb sultanates, such as the Almohads or Almoravids.
Also, it fails to mention any of the other Middle-East powers, such as Yemen, the Kingdom of the Hijaz, etc.
And the Crusader section is a bit misleading. In truth, the Crusader states had very little control outside of the cities that they ruled. -
A lot of maps will just group all the Mongol empire territories under one blob, but yeah they were actually four states- the Ilkhanate in the middle east, the Golden Horde in Russia, the Chagatai Khanate in central Asia, and the Yuan dynasty in China. For a while they did all pay tribute to a single great Khan, but that era didn't last very long.