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4th BC Century Defensive Wall Unearthed
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting that Greek archaeologists have discovered a 2,600 meter defensive wall whose design was 'inspired by Alexander the Great.' In addition to the wall itself 4th-century BC bronze coins were also found inside the structure. From the article: 'The discovery was made in the archaeological site of Dion, an ancient fortified city and key religious sanctuary of the Macedonian civilization, which ruled much of Greece until Roman times.'"
To nitpick: Macedonians wanted to be Greeks, but "True Greeks" looked down on them as barbarians.
It's true--Macedonia was a city state. However, from an Athenian's perspective, the Macedonians certainly were *another* people because they considered them barbarians (hence I leave out the term "civilisation"). Of course, Aristotle himself was born in Macedonia, and Alexander would go on to conquer them. Probably as much jealousy and ill-will in the Athenian sentiment as there is truth to it.
Myself included, many nerds have an interest in classical civilisations stretching back to their studies of Latin at school.
Nerdom extends beyond the realm of computers.
This article is talking about the 4th Century B.C. or B.C.E., however you want to designate it.
That's not a good reason to leave out the term civilization. The ancient Greeks called any people who didn't have Greek culture barbarians unless they were obviously even more sophisticated in many ways, such as the ancient Egyptians.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
On the other hand, it is precisely because there are people who do hand in such amazing discoveries that so much is known about the ancient world. There are many sites, throughout Europe, which were discovered precisely because of a reported find leading to a study and finally an excavation.
I have often been critical of archaeologists, and the current state of Italy's archaeological remains doesn't give me much confidence in the competence of world heritage organizations either. Many of the major sites are at the point of collapse, one section of wall at a major site DID collapse last year and would have killed a few hundred tourists if it had happened during the day. Emergency repairs, required within the next year or two, will require between ten to twenty times the money budgetted for ALL Itallian archaeology and maintenance for the next decade, simply in order to prevent massive casualties.
Discoveries are of the utmost importance, proper excavation and documentation are vital, but all of that is useless if proper preservation of finds is ignored. The exceptionally fine ancient monument returned from Italy - a massive obelisk that had been plundered during World War II and was in exceptionally good condition, was smashed into three pieces in order to return it on the cheap. If this is the way things are going to happen in future, the Rosetta Stone will be returned to Egypt as a fine powder - the Egyptians can always glue the grains together again, after all.
Sorry if I sound cynical - well, maybe not entirely sorry. I have a very hard time reconciling demonstrable gross incompetence and money hoarding with any kind of respect for heritage or history. As I've said often enough before, we have many possible futures. Futures are a dime a dozen. We can take our pick of those. However, we only ever have one past. Lose that, and it's gone. You don't get another go. Whatever is destroyed is lost and can never be replaced.
Hey, for some things, that probably doesn't matter too much, and there's just too much history to preserve everything 100% from the information level through to the artifacts themselves. The world is only so big and we're running out of room as it is. Besides which, it is really the information that matters anyway, provided you have gathered as much as is practical and lose as little as possible.
In the "perfect world" (at least, perfect in my highly opinionated world view) no effort would be spared to gather all the information that technology can extract, with that information distributed as widely and as freely as the available technology supports. After that, artifacts become relatively unimportant and sites become more useful for tourism than for study. Provided they don't fall down.
I'm not seeing that kind of study going on, though. The new burial site that has been found, for example - there should be plenty of DNA and mDNA that can be extracted for testing to get an idea of the ethnic makeup of the people of the time. They could even put the mDNA markers up on one of the numerous DNA family history sites, to see if living relatives exist and to encourage a greater participation by average folk in the whole archaeology thing. People will be far more willing to invest a little extra time and money on a project if they feel involved - even if only highly superficially - than they will if it is purely seen as the idle musings of some University types with a trowel fetish.
The pendant is another good example. Gold i
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
For those of us in the old world, I reckon the possible Alexander connection is the interesting bit. Maybe a re-titling of the headline to reflect this? 4th century BCE walls and remains? got them all over the place. Maybe the date is more exciting to folks whose archaeological records only stretch back a couple of hundred years ;-)
Actually, several classical sources mention that Macedonians did not, typically, understand Greek. Sure, the upper crust did - it was the language of culture commerce and art. But the rank and file Macedonians, such as those that made up Alexanders personal bodyguard unit, required translators.
There isn't enough of the Macedonian language preserved in extant sources to say for sure what sort of language it was, but it clearly was not Greek, whatever else may or may not have been true of it. And no classical author considered Macedonians to be Greek - while many explicitly classified them as barbarians.
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