Weird and Wacky Engineering
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Max the Magnificent
Wow!!! I am very impressed -- I would love to see that dolmen stone with my own ...
Frank Karkota
Having grown up in New England, I felt deprived that there is nothing more than ...
Holding the ancient past in the palm of your hand
Clive Maxfield
10/19/2011 11:08 AM EDT
I don’t know about you, but things tend to be a tad jumbled up in my head when it comes to ancient history. For example, was Stonehenge erected before or after the Great Pyramid in Egypt? And which came first – the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, or Sumerians?
Actually, now I come to think about it, I’ve always been a bit confused with regard to historical timelines. I remember watching block and white films on television when I was a kid and being convinced that the age of the “Cowboys and Indians” came long before the swashbuckling times of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Elizabethan era (which was 1558–1603). It’s funny how you view the world when you are young… but we digress…
The reason I’m waffling on about this is that I love to see ancient objects and to ponder about the people who created them. A couple of weeks ago I was perusing a magazine (either Discover or Scientific American, I cannot recall which one) when I ran across a one-page advert for a company called the Sadigh Gallery. Based in New York, these folks specialize in ancient artifacts.
What particularly caught my eye was the fact that they had some small clay tablets bearing cuneiform symbols. These were created by pressing the symbols into soft clay with the slanted edge of a stylus. The tablets were later fired to make them rock-hard. Cuneiform was not a written language like English – instead it was a picture-writing system that used symbols, similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics or the Chinese system of ideographs.
Experts can decipher these tablets, which tell about the Sumerian government, law, business practices, and religion, and also show that the Sumerians had knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.
Anyway, I couldn’t resist, I went online to take a peek. You would think that objects of this ilk would only be allowed to be displayed in museums, but it seems that thousands of them have been discovered and the smaller ones are actually very affordable. I purchased a small terracotta tablet (only 1¾ x 1½ inches) with five lines of cuneiform inscriptions on both sides. It just arrived – the picture below shows me holding it in my hand.
Just in case you were wondering – and to put things into perspective – Sumer (the purple area in the image below) was located north of what we now know as the Persian Gulf, and the Sumerian civilization spanned 5300–2900 BC. According to conventional chronology, the Egyptian civilization (the green area in the image below) coalesced around 3150 BC. Meanwhile, archeologists now believe that the first stones at Stonehenge were erected around 2400–2200 BC.
My tablet is from 2200 BC, which means that it’s 4200 years old. I cannot tell you what it feels like to hold something like this. It sends shivers down my spine. Just thinking that 4200 years ago someone was creating this for some purpose and wondering who they were and what they were like.
Was the creator of my tablet young or old? Male or female? A businessman or a priest? I wonder what they would have thought if they had known that their tablet would still be around 4200 years in the future.
If you found this article to be of interest, visit Programmable Logic Designline where – in addition to my blogs on all sorts of "stuff" (also check out my Max's Cool Beans blog) – you will find the latest and greatest design, technology, product, and news articles with regard to programmable logic devices of every flavor and size (FPGAs, CPLDs, CSSPs, PSoCs...).
Also, you can obtain a highlights update delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for my weekly newsletter – just Click Here to request this newsletter using the Manage Newsletters tab (if you aren't already a member you'll be asked to register, but it's free and painless so don't let that stop you [grin]).
Actually, now I come to think about it, I’ve always been a bit confused with regard to historical timelines. I remember watching block and white films on television when I was a kid and being convinced that the age of the “Cowboys and Indians” came long before the swashbuckling times of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Elizabethan era (which was 1558–1603). It’s funny how you view the world when you are young… but we digress…
The reason I’m waffling on about this is that I love to see ancient objects and to ponder about the people who created them. A couple of weeks ago I was perusing a magazine (either Discover or Scientific American, I cannot recall which one) when I ran across a one-page advert for a company called the Sadigh Gallery. Based in New York, these folks specialize in ancient artifacts.
What particularly caught my eye was the fact that they had some small clay tablets bearing cuneiform symbols. These were created by pressing the symbols into soft clay with the slanted edge of a stylus. The tablets were later fired to make them rock-hard. Cuneiform was not a written language like English – instead it was a picture-writing system that used symbols, similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics or the Chinese system of ideographs.
Example of cuneiform
Experts can decipher these tablets, which tell about the Sumerian government, law, business practices, and religion, and also show that the Sumerians had knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.
Anyway, I couldn’t resist, I went online to take a peek. You would think that objects of this ilk would only be allowed to be displayed in museums, but it seems that thousands of them have been discovered and the smaller ones are actually very affordable. I purchased a small terracotta tablet (only 1¾ x 1½ inches) with five lines of cuneiform inscriptions on both sides. It just arrived – the picture below shows me holding it in my hand.
Just in case you were wondering – and to put things into perspective – Sumer (the purple area in the image below) was located north of what we now know as the Persian Gulf, and the Sumerian civilization spanned 5300–2900 BC. According to conventional chronology, the Egyptian civilization (the green area in the image below) coalesced around 3150 BC. Meanwhile, archeologists now believe that the first stones at Stonehenge were erected around 2400–2200 BC.
Historical Atlas created by William Shepherd circa 1923
(Click Here to see a larger, more detailed version)
(Click Here to see a larger, more detailed version)
My tablet is from 2200 BC, which means that it’s 4200 years old. I cannot tell you what it feels like to hold something like this. It sends shivers down my spine. Just thinking that 4200 years ago someone was creating this for some purpose and wondering who they were and what they were like.
Was the creator of my tablet young or old? Male or female? A businessman or a priest? I wonder what they would have thought if they had known that their tablet would still be around 4200 years in the future.
If you found this article to be of interest, visit Programmable Logic Designline where – in addition to my blogs on all sorts of "stuff" (also check out my Max's Cool Beans blog) – you will find the latest and greatest design, technology, product, and news articles with regard to programmable logic devices of every flavor and size (FPGAs, CPLDs, CSSPs, PSoCs...).
Also, you can obtain a highlights update delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for my weekly newsletter – just Click Here to request this newsletter using the Manage Newsletters tab (if you aren't already a member you'll be asked to register, but it's free and painless so don't let that stop you [grin]).
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Max the Magnificent
10/19/2011 11:29 AM EDT
When this little beauty arrived it came with a catalog -- one of the things I saw (for only a few hundred dollars) was a stone axe from 1.8 million years ago from the Great Rift valley in Africa -- the mind boggles!
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Duane Benson
10/19/2011 11:57 AM EDT
4,200 years from now, some journalist will be looking at a catalog of ancient artifacts. In that catalog, will be your tablet and others like it. There will be a stone axe or two and replicas of that round Minoan Phaistos Disc that they still can't decipher. From our era, that journalist will be able to purchase plastic grocery sacks and CDs that lost all their data 4,160 prior to the publication of the catalog.
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Max the Magnificent
10/19/2011 12:00 PM EDT
So young ... so cynical :-)
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HeHo
10/21/2011 1:29 AM EDT
Es gibt keinen Grund zu befürchten, man könne unser Zeitalter irgendwann vergessen. in einigen millionen Jahren werden sich Forscher fragen, woher die seltsamen Anhäufungen von Plutonium kommen.
MfG
HeHo
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Max the Magnificent
10/21/2011 12:06 PM EDT
Very true -- but having said that, did you hear about the naturally occurring "Nuclear Reactor" they discovered in Africa -- I read about it in Bill Bryson's book "A Brief History of Nearly Everything"...
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Duane Benson
10/19/2011 12:26 PM EDT
Here in the US, we tend to think of something 50 years old as being old. Something that's 150 years old is really old. In the Pacific Northwest, we have an even shorter definition of "old" because everything gets covered in moss and dissolves in the rain so quickly.
It is absolutely mind-blowing to be able to actually buy something that is 4,200 years old.
Do you, by chance, know any experts that can decipher your for you?
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Max the Magnificent
10/19/2011 12:33 PM EDT
Don;t talk to me about rain -- I'm from England -- I was 20 years old before I first saw the sun :-)
I love driving along in the states and seeing a sign that says "Historical Marker" and pulling over to discover something along the lines of "50 years ago today, General Goober shot himself in the armpit on this very spot"
The last house I owned in England was built the year of the French revolution ... and no one thought that was worth commenting about...
I don't know any experts who could decipher my tablet -- maybe one day, at which time I will probably discover that it's something like a laundry list that says "3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of underwear, no starch!"
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ReneCardenas
10/19/2011 12:31 PM EDT
Thinking in the lines of information lifetime, do I recall correctly that considering contermporary materials,none will survive and will perish after elements accelerates decomposition, mostly organic petroleoum derivatives.
So my question is: would that piece of clay outlast our fancy high tech gear?
So, provided we don't exterminate ourselves, what legacy will remain to future generations?
The gold record in Voyayer 2, would that be one of only human relics?.
Interesting to think of what objects will outlast us all!
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Max the Magnificent
10/19/2011 12:36 PM EDT
I remember reading that when the first men went to the moon, in addition to photographs and videos that were taken of them, NASA also had artists creating oil paintings using the same materials and pigments as the great masters on the basis that at least we knew these would survive for several hundred years (we couldn't say the same for videos and suchlike)
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David Ashton
10/19/2011 6:15 PM EDT
"I cannot tell you what it feels like to hold something like a 4200-year-old Sumerian tablet; It sends shivers down my spine..."
So it turnes out that Steve Jobs (bless his cotton socks) was not that innovative with the Ipad after all... ;-)
When I was about 8, we were holidaying at Victoria Falls in what is now Zambia, staying in the national park accomodation. While my folks were having their afternoon nap, I wandered about the camp and picked up some unusual stones from the side of the road. My mom recognised them as stone-age tools and took them to the local museum when we got back home, and the guy there told her they were a few thousand years old. I think she still has them somewhere.
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ologic
10/20/2011 4:29 AM EDT
Beautiful object.
Please always consider buying a copy when possible. They are normally a lot cheaper and almost as magic. Possibly from a large museum or recognized institution where the money could find its way back into research.
While there are thousand of tablets like this, a lot of them are part of an illegal traffic of objects from IRAQ.
Many of these tablets are part of an archive or a book (such as the epic of Gilgamesh). When they are separated and sold, they lose their context. A huge number of these tablets are still untranslated and might contain important parts missing from other groups of tablets.
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Max the Magnificent
10/20/2011 10:13 AM EDT
You make very good points -- I guess that when I saw the advert for this company in Scientific American or Discover that allayed any thoughts about illegal trafficking.
Another thing that made me not even think about illegal trafficking was when I was in Israel 15 or so years ago and I picked up a clay oil lamp from 2300 years ago (300 BC). I would have thought that this was a historical artifact but it was sold from a government run shop and I was told that there were simply so many of them around that there was no problem in selling them.
But your point is well taken about something like this being part of a larger manuscript -- on the other hand, I don't see any way to reunite it with its companions (assuming there are any)...
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Monkey_noise
10/20/2011 5:02 AM EDT
That's one hell of a coincidence. On Sunday (16th) Stephen Fry's language documentry 'Fry's Planet Word' on BBC2 (See BBC iPlayer if you missed it), they were talking about the exact same type of tablets. There's arguments over who started writing first.
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Max the Magnificent
10/20/2011 10:14 AM EDT
Damn that Stephen Fry -- he's always trying to get the lead on me...
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bwmetz
10/20/2011 2:28 PM EDT
You can likely do a loose translation on your own. I recall checking books out of my local library on the subject when I was a kid. Thanks to Indiana Jones, I was dead set on being an archaeologist. Now there are scores of on-line resources. It might take you a few hours of googling but you'd probably enjoy it. I'm surprised the company didn't provide a translation for you.
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Max the Magnificent
10/20/2011 2:40 PM EDT
Re your comment: "I'm surprised the company didn't provide a translation for you." I'm embarrassed to say that I just discovered that they did...
I was looking at something else on their site when I noticed a note that said something like: "Each artifact will be shipped with a 'Certificate of Authenticity' and documentation regarding the culture and history of the artifact"
I thought to myself "I didn't see that that", so I rummaged through the trash can in my office and found the shipping package and looked inside and found the documentation" (curse me for a fool).
The translation reads as follows (which shows how much information they could compress into relatively few cuneiform characters):
I (am) Untash-Napirisha, the son of Hubanummenna, the king of Anza and Susa, in order that I have my health and will being and that I have no "heart freezing" bitter disaster, (death) for that reason I build that sanctuary with a Kukkum of Ubqumia and gave it to Inshushinak, the God of Sijankuk. What has been built and improved by me, may it be preserved for me forever by Inshushinak.
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one_armed_bandit
10/20/2011 4:05 PM EDT
The real translation:
Thanks for you order of clay. Complete ISO documentation to follow in 146 carts by next spring. Clay shipped separately. Yours Truly, Joe-Bob, Quality Inspector.
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Max the Magnificent
10/20/2011 4:10 PM EDT
Good One!
Can anyone else come up with alternative (potential) translations?
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one_armed_bandit
10/20/2011 4:20 PM EDT
Actually, that was the part I could remember from a joke I have somewhere in my archive. But .. I would love to see other ... translations. How about a Dear John? Also - this assumes the entire text is on the single stone.
Of course, data compression would have advanced much faster if we had to do every document with clay and a stick. Perhaps in an alternative history... The obfuscated C contest would be a normal part of our lives, or we would have just stopped computer language development with APL.
I suggest "Snow Crash" as an interesting thought experiment of programming languages that can be spoken to program our brains. (A bloody great yarn, too, with swords, pizza delivery, virtual reality, and the Mafia thrown in.)
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Max the Magnificent
10/20/2011 4:14 PM EDT
The real translation: "Doctor Fandangos Incredible Suppository (with free magic symbols) ... the use of which is guaranteed to take your mind off any other medical problem! (or your money back)"
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one_armed_bandit
10/21/2011 3:00 PM EDT
"I am the widow of the late Untash-Napirisha, the son of Hubanummenna, the king of Anza and Susa. I will give you $USD 10 million if you help me move his gold out of the country. Send your name and bank account information to (rest of message lost)"
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Max the Magnificent
10/21/2011 4:40 PM EDT
Very, VERY funny!
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Duane Benson
10/21/2011 4:46 PM EDT
It's a bill of materials for an ARM based embedded controller board. The only problem is that two of the passive components needed for the A/D section are on back-order with a 4,201 year lead-time.
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TFCSD
10/23/2011 12:09 AM EDT
I wonder if my CDs/DVDs will still be readable in 4200 years?
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Max the Magnificent
10/23/2011 6:28 AM EDT
As soon as I finish my time machine I'll bounce forward and see and then come back and tell you :-)
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Robotics Developer
10/25/2011 9:56 PM EDT
As a kid I often thought about archeology and really old artifacts. I wonder if I could get something like that today? Don't get me wrong, I love engineering, the creating the building and getting to work. But history is more real than many things that we do and holding a piece of history must indeed be really cool.
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Max the Magnificent
10/26/2011 4:34 AM EDT
It really is incredible to hold this tablet and think that someone was making these marks in the clay 4200 years ago -- it makes you stop and think about things for a bit...
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Frank Karkota
10/29/2011 4:43 PM EDT
Having grown up in New England, I felt deprived that there is nothing more than a few hundred years old to observe. Recently, I took some photos of rocks where I played as a boy. I posted them at:
http://home.comcast.net/~j1rzk/boulders_east.htm
http://home.comcast.net/~j1rzk/pedestal_stone.htm
It turns out that the round boulder was put there by the Indians. It is called a dolmen stone. An amateur archaeologist estimated that it is over 8000 years old. A tribal leader was buried under the stone, which I estimate weighs over 22 tons.
I have found other similar artifacts which range from as recent as 500 years. All right in my back yard!
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Max the Magnificent
12/5/2011 2:58 PM EST
Wow!!! I am very impressed -- I would love to see that dolmen stone with my own eyes -- thank you for sharing these photos
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