Hacker News with Generative AI: Ancient History

A 2k-year-old battle ended in fire, and a tree species never recovered (arstechnica.com)
The buried roots and stumps of an ancient forest in southern China are the charred remains of an ancient war and the burning of a capital city, according to a recent study from researchers who carbon-dated the stumps and measured charcoal and pollen in the layers of peat surrounding them.
Peru's ancient irrigation systems turned deserts into farms because of culture (theconversation.com)
Seeing the north coast of Peru for the first time, you would be hard-pressed to believe it’s one of the driest deserts in the world.
7k-year-old skeletons from the green Sahara reveal a mysterious human lineage (smithsonianmag.com)
Researchers recently sequenced the genomes of two naturally mummified women found in Libya
Comparing economic inequality between the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty (phys.org)
A trio of researchers from Bocconi University, in Italy, the University of Cambridge, in the U.K., and Stanford University, in the U.S., has found that there was more economic inequality under the Han Dynasty than during the Roman Empire.
2,200-year-old pyramid filled with coins and weapons found near Dead Sea (livescience.com)
Ancient DNA Shows Stone Age Europeans Voyaged by Sea to Africa (nature.com)
Ancient DNA shows Stone Age Europeans voyaged by sea to Africa
The Siege of Syracuse: A Roman General vs. a Greek Genius (2020) (historynet.com)
The Second Punic War, fought between ancient Rome and Carthage, is most well-known for the clashes of the legendary Hannibal with Roman commanders. An often-overlooked engagement during this war is the Siege of Syracuse, from 213-212 BC, which tested strategic military might against feats of engineering. This contest pitted Marcus Claudius Marcellus, a Roman general renowned for his power in single combat, against the Greek mathematical genius Archimedes.
Ostrich Egg-Shell Cups of Mesopotamia, Ostrich in Ancient, Modern Times (1926) (publicdomainreview.org)
In the early 1920s, British archaeological excavator Ernest Mackay unearthed an egg at the Sumerian cemetery of Kish, in modern-day Iraq’s Babil Governate.
Ancient human DNA recovered from a Palaeolithic pendant (nature.com)
Artefacts made from stones, bones and teeth are fundamental to our understanding of human subsistence strategies, behaviour and culture in the Pleistocene.
Woman's DNA discovered in 20k year old deer-tooth pendant (2023) (cbc.ca)
Scientists have discovered a woman's DNA preserved in a 20,000 year old deer-tooth pendant.
Game Theory and Settling the Debts of the Deceased in Ancient Times (blogspot.com)
Humans who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago often get a bad rap.
Why Vermont farmers are using urine on their crops (bbc.com)
Urine was used as fertiliser in ancient Rome and China. Now farmers in Vermont are bringing this practice back to boost harvests and grow crops in a more sustainable way.
First pharaoh's tomb found in Egypt since Tutankhamun's (bbc.com)
Egyptologists have discovered the first tomb of a pharaoh since Tutankhamun's was uncovered over a century ago.
Seeing Through the Spartan Mirage (worldhistory.substack.com)
If you’re American, you’ve probably seen it on the rear window of a car or perhaps on a too-tight T-shirt on a muscly guy: two Greek words, “ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.”
Who carved South America's mysterious ancient tunnels? [pdf] (unesp.br)
Major discovery of a pre-Roman necropolis in Trento (heritagedaily.com)
Archaeologists in Trento, Italy, have discovered a monumental pre-Roman necropolis containing high-status tombs and associated grave goods.
Ancient Celtic tribe had women at its social center (npr.org)
Ancient DNA reveals that during the Iron Age, women in ancient Celtic societies were at the center of their social networks — unlike previous eras of prehistory.
Derveni Papyrus (wikipedia.org)
The Derveni papyrus is an Ancient Greek papyrus roll that was discovered in 1962 at the archaeological site of Derveni, near Thessaloniki, in Central Macedonia.
2,100-year-old Alexander the Great mosaic analyzed for restoration (phys.org)
In 333 BCE, near the small Pinarus River along the modern-day borders of Turkey and Syria, a fierce battle took place between the forces of Alexander the Great and the Persian king Darius III.
Byzantine-Sassanian War (602-628 CE): The Last Great War of Antiquity (2023) (thecollector.com)
After many years of conflict, the Sassanians and Byzantines fought one last great war that nearly destroyed both empires.
Ancient DNA may rewrite prehistory in India (bbc.com)
New research using ancient DNA is rewriting prehistory in India - and shows that its civilisation is the result of multiple ancient migrations, writes Tony Joseph.
Reading the Unreadable: Seales and Team Reveal Dead Sea Scroll Text (uknow.uky.edu)
LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 23 2020) — It’s a 25,000-piece puzzle that researchers have longed to solve. That’s because the 25,000 fragments represent the Dead Sea Scrolls, and inside are ancient secrets — mysteries that have been locked away for 2,000 years.
Storing 3D scans in a grain of wheat (wafaabilal.com)
Splicing ancient Mesopotamian civilization with post-cultural planetary futures through a poetic act of preservation, my latest work, In a Grain of Wheat, is an interdisciplinary artwork that archives the 3,000 year-old Winged Bull of Nineveh inside the DNA of Iraqi wheat seeds.
Ancient Indus Valley Script Deciphered (indusscript.net)
The official Indus inscriptions repository
Ancient clay remedy may have potential to boost modern gut health (phys.org)
A team of scientists has discovered that an ancient medicinal clay known as Lemnian earth (LE) could inspire new understanding of how to support present-day gut health.
Study reveals mammoth as key food source for ancient Americans (uaf.edu)
Scientists have uncovered the first direct evidence that ancient Americans relied primarily on mammoth and other large animals for food.
Precursors of Copernicus' heliocentric theory (wordpress.com)
Sometime between 410 and 420 AD, Martianus Capella came out with a book saying Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun, while the other planets orbit the Earth!
Ancient texts reveal how Mesopotamians experienced emotions in their bodies (phys.org)
From feeling heavy-hearted to having butterflies in your stomach, it seems inherent to the human condition that we feel emotions in our bodies, not just in our brains. But have we always felt––or at least expressed––these feelings in the same way?
Ancient Sumerians created the first writing system (lithub.com)
In the middle of the fourth millennium before Christ, men and women could feed themselves and their families, much of the time, but almost nobody else. They did not yet have the wheel. They could fight, but they did not have the capacity to make war. They could not read or write, for there was no writing. Without writing, there was no history. There were stories but no literature.
A Dark Age Beacon (2019) (archaeology.org)