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Ola
Jul 19, 2004

CleverHans posted:

This is one of those theories that, though probably impossible to definitively prove, is so convincing I feel like it has to be right.

Like, imagine you are a practical, non-gullible stone age person who stumbles upon a plesiosaur skeleton on the top of a mountain.

:science: "Well, actually, those wings are really flippers because this is millions of years old when everything around here was underwater and also these things basically turned into chickens."

:what:"Yeah right buddy, I know a dragon when I see one."



Or maybe they found ones with actual wings.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhenyuanlong

But Wikipedia says Eastern variants are usually wingless anyway. I guess the basic monster creation concept is pretty simply anyway, take scary indigenous animal, imagine big mean version of it, throw in some scary traits from other animals for good measure. Greece has both snakes and lizards, so if they can come up with something without dinosaur bones, someone else can too.

A similar origin explanation I've heard is the cyclops myth coming from dwarf mammoth skulls found on Crete.



Not at all difficult to imagine.

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Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

For the cyclops another explanation is that the word originally meant "cattle thief" but because of sound changes the word began to resemble "circle eye" so a folk etymology was created and then the myth of the cyclops changed accordingly. Something similar may have been going on with Aphrodite, since the etymology of her name given by Hesiod is "born of foam" and she was supposedly born when Uranus' testicles were thrown into the sea by Cronus, but modern scholars think this is a folk etymology and so the false etymology would have come first, then the myth.

Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.

CleverHans posted:

This is one of those theories that, though probably impossible to definitively prove, is so convincing I feel like it has to be right.

Like, imagine you are a practical, non-gullible stone age person who stumbles upon a plesiosaur skeleton on the top of a mountain.

:science: "Well, actually, those wings are really flippers because this is millions of years old when everything around here was underwater and also these things basically turned into chickens."

:what:"Yeah right buddy, I know a dragon when I see one."

This isn't a subject I know much about at all, but there's a PBS Eons episode (which is presented by an actual paleontologist) that iirc says that people randomly stumbling across fossils in history is pretty unlikely, they're apparently way harder to detect in the wild than most people think, at least for the really ancient fossils like dinosaurs.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Koramei posted:

This isn't a subject I know much about at all, but there's a PBS Eons episode (which is presented by an actual paleontologist) that iirc says that people randomly stumbling across fossils in history is pretty unlikely, they're apparently way harder to detect in the wild than most people think, at least for the really ancient fossils like dinosaurs.

It reaally only needs to happen a few times and that poo poo does generally pop up sometimes in drainages and canyons so it's not insanely uncommon. We had a fairly recent discovery of a new dinosaur because someone noticed the bones on a beach.

euphronius
Feb 18, 2009

I read a book on paleontology and it’s common to find bones literally lying in the ground

Well fossils not bones. You know what I mean

(It is common for paleontologist to find them.)

sullat
Jan 9, 2012
IIRC the Lewis and Clark expedition found some exposed fossils that the local tribes had venerated, so naturally they nicked them and shipped them off to Washington where they were destroyed en route.

quote:

On September 10, 1804, four members of the Lewis and Clark expedition recorded in their journals a fossil discovery along the banks of the Missouri River in what is now Gregory County of south-central South Dakota. The find was a 45-foot-long articulated vertebral column with some ribs and teeth associated that was located at the top of a high ridge. The men interpreted the remains as originating from a giant fish, but today scientists think the specimen was probably a mosasaur, or maybe a plesiosaur. The expedition sent back some of the fossils, but these were later lost.

ughhhh
Oct 17, 2012

Ammonites and trilobites are common fossils along riverbeds and valleys past the tree line in Nepal due to the land being formed by tectonic uplift. People tend to gather rocks and breaks them from the rivers for making houses, and due to the way erosion works (gross end up being the perfect size and contour). They also are used as representations of gods for some people (Shiva and Vishnu).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaligram

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Discussion about empire came up on a TG thread, with the Assyrians in mind where the issue comes up of presenting yourself as an unstoppable juggernaut is a bit of a binary thing; it works right up until it doesn't, especially if a plucky band of rebels manage to foil your scheme, then suddenly your entire external presentation is broken, and everyone you've pissed off (which is often everyone near you) is eager to gang up on you. This thread's description of Rome during the Punic Wars suddenly came to mind; they kinda did the opposite, simply refusing to give up and accept defeat long after the point where the invaders expect you to.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Discussion about empire came up on a TG thread, with the Assyrians in mind where the issue comes up of presenting yourself as an unstoppable juggernaut is a bit of a binary thing; it works right up until it doesn't, especially if a plucky band of rebels manage to foil your scheme, then suddenly your entire external presentation is broken, and everyone you've pissed off (which is often everyone near you) is eager to gang up on you. This thread's description of Rome during the Punic Wars suddenly came to mind; they kinda did the opposite, simply refusing to give up and accept defeat long after the point where the invaders expect you to.

The Assyrians (I'm simplifying here, since we're talking about three empires spanning thousands of years) had similar attitudes to war, especially near the end of their empires they often spend a lot of time just walking armies from one end of the empire to the other, putting down rebellions, never even once considering a non-violent approach to the uprisings of their tributaries. The way they let the great Phoenician city of Tyre suffer before razing it to the ground also comes to mind as an example for the sort of determined patience the Romans were known for. The only difference is the Assyrians didn't bother with propaganda before setting out to destroy Tyre.

The major difference between Rome and Assyria was that Assyrians weren't really into this whole "turn foreigners into citizens"-thing the Romans had. So eventually, every Assyrian empire hit the point where their resources were spread too thin to continue onwards. That's when the collapse started.

CleverHans
Apr 25, 2011
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!

Telsa Cola posted:

It reaally only needs to happen a few times and that poo poo does generally pop up sometimes in drainages and canyons so it's not insanely uncommon. We had a fairly recent discovery of a new dinosaur because someone noticed the bones on a beach.

Ya, and I imagine "here is indisputable physical proof of a giant loving monster" does not get forgotten easily in any culture, as you could never be 100% sure with contemporary technology that they weren't still out there.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


As much as Americans like to bring up the Romans as an inspiring empire, I find the Neo-Assyrians to be a more meaningful one, in large part because on top of the Neo-Assyrian Empire being extremely bloodthirsty motherfuckers, they also very much had an intellectual empire, and went to great lengths to preserve and advance knowledge as much as possible. But I might be thinking this way because I was an academic for a while and so are a fair few family members, and the interconnection of the academy and the empire feels very...heavy to me.

And to their credit, the Neo-Assyrian Empire lasted 300 years, no slouches on longevity, and survived a couple of civil wars before their final death spiral.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Telsa Cola posted:

It reaally only needs to happen a few times and that poo poo does generally pop up sometimes in drainages and canyons so it's not insanely uncommon. We had a fairly recent discovery of a new dinosaur because someone noticed the bones on a beach.

It's common enough Augustus had a dinosaur fossil collection that he would show visitors. It was definitely a thing by the classical era at least.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Dinosaur fossils were probably a lot more common to find just lying around before there existed whole academic departments just devoted to finding and seizing them. In the US anyway all the really obvious and cool fossils got yoinked 150 years ago and mailed back to the east coast to get dodgily preserved in a university basement.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Also palentologists have resources stretched fairly thin AND want to be the only people who are allowed to dig out fossils, which currently results in a good number of fossil finds on public land getting reported, ignored, and eroded away by the elements.

euphronius
Feb 18, 2009

If the fossils are from a well studied strata there isn’t much being lost

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

Other than the irreplaceable treasure that took millions of years to create.

eke out
Feb 24, 2013



Tulip posted:

As much as Americans like to bring up the Romans as an inspiring empire, I find the Neo-Assyrians to be a more meaningful one, in large part because on top of the Neo-Assyrian Empire being extremely bloodthirsty motherfuckers, they also very much had an intellectual empire, and went to great lengths to preserve and advance knowledge as much as possible. But I might be thinking this way because I was an academic for a while and so are a fair few family members, and the interconnection of the academy and the empire feels very...heavy to me.

And to their credit, the Neo-Assyrian Empire lasted 300 years, no slouches on longevity, and survived a couple of civil wars before their final death spiral.

curious if anyone has good podcast recs on the assyrian empire(s)?

i've been listening to 'the ancient world' and that guy has got me interested in more detailed bronze age content

CrypticFox
Dec 19, 2019

"You are one of the most incompetent of tablet writers"

eke out posted:

curious if anyone has good podcast recs on the assyrian empire(s)?

i've been listening to 'the ancient world' and that guy has got me interested in more detailed bronze age content

The Thin Edge of the Wedge is a great podcast, about various topics in the Ancient Middle East. Almost all the episodes are interviews/guests with particular expertise, so you can just jump around to the ones you are interested in, since they do not need to be listened to in order.

http://www.wedgepod.org/

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Gaius Marius posted:

Other than the irreplaceable treasure that took millions of years to create.

Ehhhhhhh, ultimately depends on the fossil imo, theres not much scientific value in standard trilobite fossil 128476 if the species has been very well represented in the record.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Telsa Cola posted:

Ehhhhhhh, ultimately depends on the fossil imo, theres not much scientific value in standard trilobite fossil 128476 if the species has been very well represented in the record.

gently caress scientific value. A rock with a giant dead bug in it is cool

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

skasion posted:

gently caress scientific value. A rock with a giant dead bug in it is cool

Sure, but when you have thousands and thousands and thousands of rocks with dead bugs in it, you run out of room store them and the ability to properly manage them. They then sit for 50+ years on the off chance someone remembers they exist and does something with it.

Archaeology deals with similar poo poo, moderately sized museum collections contain millions of artifacts.

Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 21:28 on May 8, 2021

Ola
Jul 19, 2004

It's not perhaps from the ancient bit of history this thread is aimed at, but it is sort of Roman... and if we're talking about trilobites, Neanderthals are ok too.

https://twitter.com/Jamie_Woodward_/status/1391107687077851138

CrypticFox
Dec 19, 2019

"You are one of the most incompetent of tablet writers"

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Discussion about empire came up on a TG thread, with the Assyrians in mind where the issue comes up of presenting yourself as an unstoppable juggernaut is a bit of a binary thing; it works right up until it doesn't, especially if a plucky band of rebels manage to foil your scheme, then suddenly your entire external presentation is broken, and everyone you've pissed off (which is often everyone near you) is eager to gang up on you. This thread's description of Rome during the Punic Wars suddenly came to mind; they kinda did the opposite, simply refusing to give up and accept defeat long after the point where the invaders expect you to.

There's a person I follow on twitter who has now just finished a PhD about the last century and collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He put up a very interesting twitter thread about a year ago to explain his research, and he argues that the collapse of the Assyrian empire resulted more from internal structural weaknesses then from external enemies: https://threader.app/thread/1275789885882937344

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

Telsa Cola posted:

Sure, but when you have thousands and thousands and thousands of rocks with dead bugs in it, you run out of room store them and the ability to properly manage them. They then sit for 50+ years on the off chance someone remembers they exist and does something with it.

Archaeology deals with similar poo poo, moderately sized museum collections contain millions of artifacts.
They need to sell them. I want a cool bug rock, stick 'em in the gift shop.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Gaius Marius posted:

They need to sell them. I want a cool bug rock, stick 'em in the gift shop.

A paleontologist/archaeologists assigning monetary value to poo poo like that leads to looting.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

That reminds me of the Forgotten Weapons guy complaining about how many museums in his field don't properly record all their donations and things that get donated to museums basically vanish as opposed to private collectors being easier to get a hold of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO6F9CfgMg4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqar7if25bA

I guess a thing worth thinking about.

Telsa Cola posted:

A paleontologist/archaeologists assigning monetary value to poo poo like that leads to looting.

When the alternative is the items being either destroyed or lost because the paleontologists just can't be bothered doing anything with it, it seems like a waste.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

The smithsonian is notorious for stealing artifacts as well, never send them anything for analysis because no matter what they claim, they won't ever give it back.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

SlothfulCobra posted:

That reminds me of the Forgotten Weapons guy complaining about how many museums in his field don't properly record all their donations and things that get donated to museums basically vanish as opposed to private collectors being easier to get a hold of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO6F9CfgMg4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqar7if25bA

I guess a thing worth thinking about.


When the alternative is the items being either destroyed or lost because the paleontologists just can't be bothered doing anything with it, it seems like a waste.

Private collector's loving suck to get a hold of lol. They don't want you touching or testing or looking at their poo poo because they paid big $$$ for their often looted goods and they are afraid you will either tell them it's fake, or take it away or damage it. A dude who has an orignal painting or a great fossil or something isn't going to advertise that, or let the public see it. It's a conversation piece for them.

Plus you think they are going to keep any detailed records about it? First thing you need to know when you deal with anything paleontology or archaeology related is the items provenance and depth. Without it you basically have no context and its fairly worthless as an item of research beyond the most basic descriptive stuff.

One of the things drilled into us is that excavations are inherently destructive and that you should never excavate without a very specific goal in mind. Things are more often then not safer in the ground then outside of it and exposed to the elements.

Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 23:31 on May 8, 2021

Ola
Jul 19, 2004

Private illicit collection of items valuable to science seem to me as incredibly irrational and anachronistic. It made sense for a 1700s guy to keep a dino skull, it wasn't illegal and he could brag about it openly. Some Cayman Islands dirtbag who does it can only brag to his fellow criminals. Same for stolen art.

Nothingtoseehere
Nov 11, 2010


There's plenty of antiques which aren't unique or important enough to be held in collections - items for which hundreds if not thousands of examples survive. There's nothing wrong with people collecting those (roman coins is a decent example) The problem is distinguishing between the two groups is left to the collectors themselves - although they can also collect things archivists are not yet interested in.

BigglesSWE
Dec 2, 2014

How 'bout them hawks news huh!
I did an internship at a museums' storage facility. While I photographed and measured animal traps from the Congo area, the archaeology students had to wade through heaps of Cyprian pottery shards and boat nails from Viking ships.


God I envied them so.

I did get to see a mummified head that was the spitting image of Rudy Giuliani so that was nice.

Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




Ola posted:

Private illicit collection of items valuable to science seem to me as incredibly irrational and anachronistic. It made sense for a 1700s guy to keep a dino skull, it wasn't illegal and he could brag about it openly. Some Cayman Islands dirtbag who does it can only brag to his fellow criminals. Same for stolen art.

I mean, most of the naturalist collecting (and archaeological looting) kind of stuff happened more in the 1800s. And I don't think there's a huge difference between the average Victorian capitalist/aristocratic dirtbag and the average current-day Cayman Islands dirtbag.


Gaius Marius posted:

They need to sell them. I want a cool bug rock, stick 'em in the gift shop.

You can, in fact, buy stuff made of black marble with ammonite fossils in it. eg:

https://welldonegoods.com/search?q=orthoceras

I have no idea what the ethics of that are, but it's probably at least not as bad as the late 1800s, when they were digging up entire fossil beds to use as fertiliser.

Scarodactyl
Oct 22, 2015


Owning fossils is normal and not a big deal. There are a lot of them and most of them don't have much scientific significance, and they are inherently fun and interesting. They're also a pretty important gateway for kids to become interested in earth sciences.
Side-note, ammonites were named that by the Greeks because their take on Ammon was depicted with curly ram's horns (as seen in the Egyptian portraits of Alexander).

sullat
Jan 9, 2012
Yeah you can buy chunks of dirt with fossils embedded in it so your kids can "excavate" them. $19.99 on Amazon. There's also a little town called "Fossil" in my state where you can dig up and keep fossils that you find. Mostly leaves, I think you're supposed to turn over animal fossils you find, but it's entirely unsupervised so...

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


It really depends on the fossil too. Like around where I grew up was shallow seafloor during the Ordovician so those fossils were quite literally everywhere. Any place with exposed rocks and you'd be drowning in fossils in five minutes. There's a spillway not too far away where you can just walk around and find loose trilobites lying around.

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit
We literally use diatomaceous earth as an abrasive and as an absorbative and as pest control and to make dynamite

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

sullat posted:

Yeah you can buy chunks of dirt with fossils embedded in it so your kids can "excavate" them. $19.99 on Amazon. There's also a little town called "Fossil" in my state where you can dig up and keep fossils that you find. Mostly leaves, I think you're supposed to turn over animal fossils you find, but it's entirely unsupervised so...

Yeah you basically need a permit for vertebrate fossils iirc.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

there are a few places which require permits to collect vertebrate fossils (and often it's just :fivecbux:), but there isn't like an ownership permit or anything. You can just go and buy a fossil turtle or a fossil fish or whatever, there are millions of 'em so the scientific value of any particular one is basically nil.

Hell my uncle turns up dino bones of varying intactness on his farm regularly, the local dino museum doesn't even want them because they're so common.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Tunicate posted:

Hell my uncle turns up dino bones of varying intactness on his farm regularly, the local dino museum doesn't even want them because they're so common.

I'll take them.

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Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




CleverHans posted:

Ya, and I imagine "here is indisputable physical proof of a giant loving monster" does not get forgotten easily in any culture, as you could never be 100% sure with contemporary technology that they weren't still out there.

They weren't 100% sure about it at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition. One of the goals of that expedition was to find mastodonts.

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