guidoLaMoto

Amazing bit of archeological work. Better living thru chemistry, as the saying goes....It's a common and wise survival strategy for a pathogen to have at least two host species to infect-- kill off one and hide in the other until the population of the first recovers. Squirrels are just rats with bushy tails....Those of us who live where hardwoods are the norm are accustomed to seeing squirrels fill the niche living in the canopy and eating nuts... In southern California (where the nuts live in mansions & sea side villas) the trees are palms and the common rat has taken over the niche of living in the canopy and eating the date nuts-- big problem in some neighborhoods in LA.

Nice dissertation....But, like Marlowe. I know little Latin and less Greek, so I'll have to take your word for it. Good effort outlining the linguistic evidence of the evolution there. According to Dionysius of Halocanarsus, a Greek writing for Greeks, all of the western Mediterranean was settled by Greek colonists- even the Trojans were originally Greeks....kinda reminiscent of old Soviet propaganda history.

Ingenious..... ....but given the large number discovered there must have been huge number actually in use.....One has to wonder how many goldsmiths there were? OTOH-- there were huge numbers of lorica hamata in use for at least 600 yrs by the mi!itary. How was that chain mail manufactured?...by tedious hammering one link at a time, or by quickly weaving iron wire like this?... ...used in making chain mail, this would also help to explain the geographic distribution...iron more common to the north vs gold more common to the south. --just cogitating.

The ancients named the prevailing winds. The Weather Channel thinks we need ned to name every stinking thunderstorm. Hannibal unwisely tried to cross the Alps, losing half his men and all but one of his elephants to the cold and snow, yet still vandalized the Italian peninsula for fifteen years. I took the Romans another generation or two to recover from that activity. One has to wonder "What if..." had Hannibal his full army & menagerie?

Granite & quartz are well known to be sources of radiation but the amount is too small to be of concern compared to other common environmental sources although risks could be higher in poorly ventilated spaces like tombs. We would expect lung cancer to be a bigger risk than blood problems...Leukemia/lymphoma are well known to be associated with a significantly increased risk of those blood dyscrasias after exposure to benzene.... Do archeologists often use that as a solvent in cleaning artifacts?

Welcome back, Neil. I can't remember you because I've only been amember here for a short time. I'm looking forward to what will probably be interesting contributions from you. That's quite an eclectic little curriculum (would that make it a curriculum-ulum?) vitae you've outlined. (Have you considered seeking counseling?) I see we share an Interest in 2-wheeling. My screen name is a play on words in Italian.

More amazing to me is how technology can allow us to read the carbonized scrolls, and the episode about slavery adds significantly to the richness of the history. Pin-pointing Plato's grave brings to mind the story of how they finally located the exact position of Mozart's grave. He was buried in a mass grave for paupers....It seems one day not long ago a groundskeeper heard music coming up out of the ground. Experts realized it was Eine Kleine Nachtmusik being played backwards.....They figured it was Mozart de-composing.

65% for worms!! Wow....and these mummies were presumably the well to do class. Imagine the rates among the poor with more crowded living conditions. Malnutrition both from lack of adequate meat intake as well as nearly universal parasitic disease is probably a problem under appreciated by modern historians. It's been suggested that Caesar's "falling sickness" was anything from primary epilepsy or CVAs (both unlikely in a non-diabetic, non-smoker in his 50s) to cystocicersis from eating pork in Egypt (also less likely given the intermittency of his attacks). Tertiary syphylis may be the best fit of his symptoms.

Interesting etymologies you've presented. Thanks... In regards transiliterations & changes in pronunciation as words evolve from one language to another, consider, for example, how the word Yankee derives from the way the American Indians pronounced the word English. One small detail-- Carthago is the nominative case for Carthage; Carthaginis is the genitive and the root for the other case declensions. And a caveat-- translations of ancient poetry put into rhyming jingle in English are often not very true to the original but just give a general idea of what's going on.

I was referrkng to D of Halacanarssus. His Roman Antiquities was published in 7 BC.

In regards the Pillars, did not Plato claim they were mountains at Gibraltar, and did he not pre-date the other authors cited above? In regards religion, don't forget we're not talking verifiable science/history but figments of human imagination (When you talk to God, you're praying. When He talks to you, you're schizophrenic.)...Notice how St Nick morphed over the years from a nice old priest leaving apples on doorsteps to the fat guy in red velvet invented by a Cocoa Cola advertising guy, eventually flying thru the air with reindeer, acquiring elves and a North Pole toy shop. Dionysus emphasized the Greek origins of the Italians. They no doubt evolved different details in the religion originally carried to Italy. Cf-- an early 20th century prayer meeting in Appalachia to High Mass by The Pope in Rome.

It looks like modern biker chicks descended from Scythian women....Tattoos were of course a customary practice from the earliest times. Otzti the Bolzano Ice Man had them 5000 yrs ago....Internalizing a vanquished foe by drinking his blood or eating his heart also is more ancient than the Scythians. It was a practice still in vogue among the Amerindians when first encountered by Europeans. We moderns should avoid judging the ancients by our own standards of morals and conduct.

I thought the common wisdom was that the Carthaginians were Phoenicians (poenus or punicus in Latin, hence Punic Wars). I should think that Dido was a poetic invention of Vergil. That whole dalliance was not mentioned by Dionysus of Halicanarssus in his history of the origins of Rome. Vergil meant the story to be a romantic explanation of the continued competition between the two cities.... He was probably looking forward to selling the movie rights to The Aeneid and figured it needed a love interest to spice it up for improved box office appeal. You know how that goes. Carthago delenda est!

Decimation was far more brutal than that. Started by Appius Claudius Sabinus in 471 BC in the Volscian War when troops exhibited cowardice, a cohort was selected and every tenth man, selected by casting lots, was condemned to being beaten to death with clubs wielded by his nine comrades....I guess old Appius never heard of the phrase "verbum sapienti sufficit." Indivuals found to exhibit cowardice were scouraged in front of their comrades and then beheaded. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0160%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D59

It's a bit of a stretch to equate charcoal found against a wall as proof that the Roman culture persisted for a long time. That sounds more like squatters seeking refuge in an abandoned building....Maybe if the fire was in a fireplace? OTOH-- logical deduction can bring us to the outline of plausible scenarios in the second half of the film. After all, when the govt fell, there was no "last helicopter out of Saigon." The Romans were left behind to fend for themselves. There is strength in numbers, so they would have organized themselves in smaller, local groups. They would not have immediately abandoned walled, better protected towns (where would they go?)...Outlying villas were selfsustaining, so lack of central govt would not effect their day to day functioning-- better for the peons to stay on with steady room &board than to venture out on their own to what?