AHTO History Tidbits & News

[Astrotoy7]

This is a new thread for AHTO where interesting news about discoveries from around the world will be related. Unlike the History Channel, I will do my best to avoid talking WW2 incessantly!

 

Please chip in if you come across a discovery you would like to add, or if you simply enjoy reading such stories.

 

To start things off:

18th Century Shipwreck found at Ground Zero in New York

 

 

Earlier this week(Tue 13th July 2010) excavators working at the Ground Zero site struck timber. On closer inspection it was found to be the remnant of a ship, now believed to have been from the 18th Century

 

From the NYTimes:

 

“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.

 

By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when another 18th-century cargo ship was discovered at 175 Water Street.

 

source article(includes more pics)

 

mtfbwya

[Ztalker]

Oh cool!

 

It's always nice to see find like this on places you least expect.

New York has quit a history regarding the 18th century...

 

If my forefathers wouldn't have blown marijuana all day long, all New York would be speaking Dutch now

 

Cool pictures too!

[Sabretooth]

If my forefathers wouldn't have blown marijuana all day long, all New York would be speaking Dutch now

 

Still would have lost to Spain.

 

[Litofsky]

Still would have lost to Spain.

 

 

I think you mean to say 'Germany.' Germany is a far more important civilization when compared to Spain, especially how Germany impacted world history for hundreds of years.

[RC-1162]

^^

I think he's running a pun based on the FIFA finals.

[Litofsky]

Close, but no cigar.

[Astrotoy7]

Oi. Theres a thread for football discussion

 

Here's another one. Some of you in the UK may have heard about it/seen the recent documentary

 

Gladiator Graveyard? Found In York

Between 2004-5 A Roman Era Burial was uncovered in York in the UK. Due to the bodies being predominately male, the nature of their injuries and region of origin, it is believed many of them may have been Gladiators or Soldiers. 45 of the intact skeletons showed signs of decapitation

 

 

The York Archaeological Trust has a nice summery page dedicated to it with further details

 

http://www.headlessromans.co.uk/

 

If you are in the UK, or behind a proxy, you can view the Channel 4 documentary here:

 

Gladiators: Back from The Dead

 

mtfbwya

[Ztalker]

^Yes, saw a report about that on the television.

 

Quite a nice find. Hadrians wall was build by the Romans, it's cool to see another element of their society was brought to England.

Russel Crowe speaking English in Gladiator is now historically accurate

[Sabretooth]

I think you mean to say 'Germany.' Germany is a far more important civilization when compared to Spain, especially how Germany impacted world history for hundreds of years.

 

^^

I think he's running a pun based on the FIFA finals.

 

I'm sure Litofsky is flexing his American intellect, RC.

[Astrotoy7]

Well done sabrez. Two totally off topic posts and not one contribution to the thread thus far

 

Russell Crowe speaking English in Gladiator is now historically accurate

Funnily Enough, Crowe's character was meant to be Iberian(which is why they sometimes called him Spaniard in the movie) The only film featuring Romans I can think of where they spoke Latin the whole way through was Passion of The Christ. I don't know Latin so I have no idea how accurate it was. Pavlos/Insidious may be able to tell us.

 

* * *

 

Here's an example of Historians, or rather journalists getting perhaps a bit too excited:

 

Historians Claim to Have Found King Arthur's Round Table

The Roman Amphitheatre Site at Chester, UK

 

Whilst Digging around at the ruins of the Roman Amphitheatre in Chester in the UK, a large wood and stone structure has been found that suggests a communal meeting place - which could have seated about 1000 people.

 

Based on some very sketchy documentary evidence, some excited Historians/Journalists claimed that this structure is King Arthur's Round Table.

 

source

 

Having read other articles at the Telegraph, I have a feeling its the journalists rather than the Historians that are blowing the inference out of proportion

 

The cosy round table we are more used to is a result of depictions in English and French depictions from the Middle Ages, and into the early Renaissance.

 

mtfbwya

[Ztalker]

^I always find lore like this extremely interesting.

 

Speaking of which, I believe that movie with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley was more historically accurate then most of the other stuff? Placing the legend around 500-600 AD instead of Medieval Brittain?

 

It would be so cool if proof would be found of such legends

 

Every nation has it's own legends, it's nice to see they're still 'alive' to some extend.

[Astor]

Speaking of which, I believe that movie with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley was more historically accurate then most of the other stuff? Placing the legend around 500-600 AD instead of Medieval Brittain

 

It was historically accurate in terms of setting (sort of), but inaccurate in terms of just about everything else.

 

My own contribution for today -

 

900 Unexploded Bombs discovered underneath an Okinawa Restaurant

[Pho3nix]

I thought this thread would be about the history of Ahto

[Astrotoy7]

I thought this thread would be about the history of Ahto

 

lolz..... ah yes, those heady days of 2005 are a blur now

 

 

900 Unexploded Bombs discovered underneath an Okinawa Restaurant

 

The cleanup process will take 80 years! phaw! I'm assuming the US Forces had moved all that stuff in before the nukes were dropped and it just got stuck there since?

 

mtfbwya

[Litofsky]

Um...

 

Well, if I was going to actually make a post, I thought I might hit things off with something fairly... known. Now, let the multi-decade clean-up begin!

[Astrotoy7]

Um...

 

Well, if I was going to actually make a post, I thought I might hit things off with something fairly... known. Now, let the multi-decade clean-up begin!

 

Whilst technically, anything being committed to record is History in a sense, perhaps such epic and contemporary news belongs in its own thread

 

Anyway, for those who are curious, Litofksy's link is to a UK article about BPs alleged stopping of the leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Click it if you like your history fresh and oily

 

mtfbwya

[Darth Avlectus]

Many inventions attributed to European countries actually came from China.

[Bob Lion54]

Many inventions attributed to European countries actually came from China.

 

Not exactly. The European inventors had no knowledge of the previous invention, and by the time Europe came up with an idea, the Chinese didn't know they invented it either! To say they came from China implies that the Europeans got them from China and took credit. This isn't the case.

 

In Europe progress happened very slowly due to the church considering anything new to be blasphemy. If people thought for themselves, the church would lose power. They tried to stamp out anything that could (even remotely) alter the status quo. That, and the general strife of the Dark Ages meant that people didn't have time to invent new things. But when they did, if it was good, even the (almost) absolute power of the church couldn't stop it from coming into common use. The printing press is a great example of this. Try as they might, the church couldn't stop the printing press from becoming a common device.

 

The overall result, though, was that progress happened very slowly. Though it did happen.

 

China's progression was even slower, despite inventing many things hundreds (and in a few cases thousands, yes, plural) of years before Europe. The government didn't care what they invented and there wasn't a church to answer to, but the Chinese people were very traditionalist. It was okay to come up with new inventions, but the people as a whole wouldn't care to use them. "If my father didn't need it, then I don't either," was the belief.

 

If you made a new clock that was more accurate than traditional means, people would applaud your efforts, but they wouldn't see the need to incorporate it into their daily lives. A few brilliant inventors made some incredible things, but other than a few "oooohs and ahhhhs," their inventions were mostly forgotten.

 

Sometimes, someone would recognize how great something was. Occasionally this was a ruler, someone in power, or just someone with a good hiding place. When the right person decided your invention shouldn't be lost forever, it would get hidden away like a family heirloom that has no practical purpose, but you don't want to part with. These are the inventions we are finding today and realizing just how long before they were invented someone else had already made them.

 

Anyway, for it to have "come from China" an invention would have had to spread from China to Europe. This didn't happen. It would be like you having an idea for a thread here on the forums but never making it, only to have someone else have the same idea a bit later and actually making the thread. It didn't come from you. It came from them, just after you already thought of it.

[adamqd]

The middle school my sister attended (3 miles from my house) was built on the area of land where an archery competition was held by Prince John, in which Robin Hood competed and won. The near by Castle, was the original setting for many of the scenes in Sir Walter Scott's classic tale 'Ivanhoe'... As you can see from the link above, the castle was badly damaged during the Cival war (1642–1651).

[Jae Onasi]

Many inventions attributed to European countries actually came from China.

 

There are a lot of contributions from the Middle East/Ottoman empire as well--algebra, some aspects of medicine, and advances in astronomy and optics being some of the big contributions. Europe had no lack of innovation, either--the Greeks and then later the Italians made significant contributions to medicine. The problem was the lack of a printing press in the Middle Ages (making mass communications difficult) and travel was very challenging (making dissemination of information also difficult). The other problem was the average lifespan was fairly low until the mid 1900's or so. People sometimes died before they were able to reach the ground-breaking findings.

[Darth Avlectus]

@ Jae and not-so-silent Bob: You do both realize I was just being a jackass, right?

[Sabretooth]

Lost Chaplin film found at antiques fair

A 1914 silent film, A Thief Catcher, featuring Charlie Chaplin, has been discovered at an antiques fair. American cinema historian Paul Gierucki found a can of an old film marked ‘Keystone’ at a Michigan sale. Months later, he was amazed to see Chaplin emerging from the bushes in a

too-big police uniform, armed with a nightstick.

 

The 10-minute movie was made by Mack Sennett for his Keystone film company, which produced a series of films about a group of incompetent policemen, the Keystone Cops, between 1912 and 1917. The film will be screened for the first time in nearly a century at the annual Slapsticon Film Festival in Arlington, Virginia.

 

(Source)

 

Remains of William Shakespeare's first theatre found

Archaeologists have found the remains of London’s first theatre in London yard — the site where William Shakespeare’s plays were performed. Archaeologists have been digging since 2008 and have uncovered a section of outer wall and floor surface from the building, completed in 1576 and known simply

as ‘The Theatre’ — whose timbers were later used to build ‘The Globe theatre’.

 

(Complete Story et Source)

[Pavlos]

Speaking of which, I believe that movie with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley was more historically accurate then most of the other stuff? Placing the legend around 500-600 AD instead of Medieval Brittain

If (and that is a massive if) King Arthur existed and if (an equally large if) he fought against the 'invading' Saxons he would have fought at the Battle of Mons Badonicus around the turn of the sixth century.

 

He is generally considered to be the bane of early medieval scholars, though.

[Astrotoy7]

cheers Sabrez

 

@Pavlos - why a bane? Is this because the veracity of sources was equally sketchy back then??

 

Many inventions attributed to European countries actually came from China.

 

There was actually a great podcast about this at HowStuffWorks.com, focussing specifically on the common misconception that Pasta came from China via Marco Polo. The evidence actually shows it was more likely from the middle east.

 

blog post: Did Marco Polo Bring Pasta From China

 

podcast mp3: Marco Polo Pasta Myth

 

 

* * *

 

@Jae. Here's one in your neck of the woods.

1400 Year Old Native American Village Unearthed in Illinois

Archaeologists working on a site in Jerseyville Illinois have uncovered evidence of a Native American settlement dating circa 600CE, with further findings going back 4000 to 5000 years.

 

From the Chicago Tribune Report:

 

The excavations on the west side are yielding very well-preserved bone fragments, as well as pottery pieces, .... It appears this was a large communal village, but may not have been used year-round. Our later analysis of our data will have to tell us that.

 

Some of the pits on the west side excavations are large, some smaller; some are storage pits, and some were trash pits. Two appear to have been kiln pits. To date, archaeologists have not found any evidence of homes, because they haven't discovered any post pits. The large bell-shaped storage pit with the flagstone flooring is shaped such that it easily could have been sealed with a clay plug to keep rodents and other small animals out of the goods stored inside.

 

Amazing stuff

 

mtfbwya

[Pavlos]

@Pavlos - why a bane? Is this because the veracity of sources was equally sketchy back then??

More that he's mostly a creation of French literature, despite being primarily associated with Britain, and it is often the predominant image that people have in mind when this particular period of British history is brought up.

 

As I recall, it was a source of great annoyance to Tolkien that hundreds of years of British, more specifically English, history had somehow managed to disappear from the popular consciousness to be replaced by tales of chivalry of a very different quality to the events and culture of the time.