Thursday
Jun112009
Archaeology Rocks
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 12:01AM
A short Frenchmen decides to invade Egypt around 1800. OK, 1799, if you want to get technical.
He charges a few men called “archaeologists” with the task of poking around for items of historical significance.
Soon, they stumble across a big rock. It’s a little less than four feet tall and little over two feet wide. It weighs almost two thousand pounds. This rock has three different languages written on it: hieroglyphic, demotic and classical Greek.
Because it has the same phrase written in all three of these languages, these men are able to finally decipher hieroglyphs, thereby ushering in a whole new realm of knowledge about the development of human civilization.
And, because this rock is found in a place called Rosetta and also because “Rosetta Rock” would never sell as a foreign language software, this artifact becomes known as the Rosetta Stone.
About a hundred years later, another French guy stumbles across some tablets in the Middle East. The text on this rock is seriously bossy. It says stuff like, “If you build a house for someone and it falls on their head, you shall be put to death,” and “if you kidnap someone’s son, you shall be put to death,” and “if you read someone’s blog but never leave comments, you will be put to death.”
I might have embellished on the last one a bit.
So, anyway, it turns out that this rock is bossy because the person who had it written happened to be a Mesopotamian king and was in charge of... well, Mesopotamia or something like that.
If you’re ever in Paris, you can visit this artifact at the Louvre. It happens to be the oldest recorded set of human laws in existence, yet it sits relatively alone and unacknowledged while two floors up people climb over each other for an hour with the hopes of getting a rushed glance at what turns out the be a rather disappointing and highly mediocre painting known as the Mona Lisa.
I live for stuff like this.
Archaeology seems to hold the potential of a spiritual discovery that promises to transcend discrete personal experiences. As an archaeologist, it seems that a person has the opportunity to discover the spirit of entire civilizations. Even of all humankind.
This fascination of mine will hit me at odd times during the day. Like today, it happened when I was standing in line at the grocery store.
I don’t know why, but the first thing that popped into my head were the Rosetta Stone and Hammurabi’s code.
I pictured a dusty 28th century futurewoman in her space suit (you know, because we won’t have a breathable atmosphere by then), wading through the remnants of a 21st century Winn Dixie. Plastic bottles and shredded rubber abound. Wasted down cash registers litter a cracked tile floor while a soft wind blows a few wayward plastic bags past her feet.
This is what they drank from, she thinks as she turns the bottle upside down. Sturdy. For a primitive civilization, they displayed a great deal of ingenuity.
She examines a candy bar wrapper, and plugs the symbols into her handheld device. S-n-i-c-k-e-r-s. She doesn’t recognize the word. Obviously this paper wrapped around this thing called a Snickers. Perhaps an electronic device? Or, she squints at the word “Ingredients”... Ahh, it was some sort of a processed food.
Her perusal of the place will lead her to more than one conclusion. This is either where these people purchased their food or where they stored it.
The structure is rather grand. She closes her eyes and imagines what is now wasted and forgotten as it might have been nearly eight hundred years ago... clean, airy, full of light, and rather glorious.
She’ll be fascinated. She’ll know that for all the development of the subsequent centuries, our civilizations are not that different... we hoped, we dreamed, we loved... we ate.
She’ll realize that though we are dead and gone, we were a noble civilization and, hence, her pursuit of uncovering who we were proves just as noble.
With these thoughts swimming through my head, I absorbed my surroundings with a renewed perspective.
Then, I saw these.
I then surmised that it's very fortunate for us and futurewoman that we don’t write on two thousand pound rocks, anymore.
He charges a few men called “archaeologists” with the task of poking around for items of historical significance.
Soon, they stumble across a big rock. It’s a little less than four feet tall and little over two feet wide. It weighs almost two thousand pounds. This rock has three different languages written on it: hieroglyphic, demotic and classical Greek.
Because it has the same phrase written in all three of these languages, these men are able to finally decipher hieroglyphs, thereby ushering in a whole new realm of knowledge about the development of human civilization.
And, because this rock is found in a place called Rosetta and also because “Rosetta Rock” would never sell as a foreign language software, this artifact becomes known as the Rosetta Stone.
About a hundred years later, another French guy stumbles across some tablets in the Middle East. The text on this rock is seriously bossy. It says stuff like, “If you build a house for someone and it falls on their head, you shall be put to death,” and “if you kidnap someone’s son, you shall be put to death,” and “if you read someone’s blog but never leave comments, you will be put to death.”
I might have embellished on the last one a bit.
So, anyway, it turns out that this rock is bossy because the person who had it written happened to be a Mesopotamian king and was in charge of... well, Mesopotamia or something like that.
If you’re ever in Paris, you can visit this artifact at the Louvre. It happens to be the oldest recorded set of human laws in existence, yet it sits relatively alone and unacknowledged while two floors up people climb over each other for an hour with the hopes of getting a rushed glance at what turns out the be a rather disappointing and highly mediocre painting known as the Mona Lisa.
I live for stuff like this.
Archaeology seems to hold the potential of a spiritual discovery that promises to transcend discrete personal experiences. As an archaeologist, it seems that a person has the opportunity to discover the spirit of entire civilizations. Even of all humankind.
This fascination of mine will hit me at odd times during the day. Like today, it happened when I was standing in line at the grocery store.
I don’t know why, but the first thing that popped into my head were the Rosetta Stone and Hammurabi’s code.
I pictured a dusty 28th century futurewoman in her space suit (you know, because we won’t have a breathable atmosphere by then), wading through the remnants of a 21st century Winn Dixie. Plastic bottles and shredded rubber abound. Wasted down cash registers litter a cracked tile floor while a soft wind blows a few wayward plastic bags past her feet.
This is what they drank from, she thinks as she turns the bottle upside down. Sturdy. For a primitive civilization, they displayed a great deal of ingenuity.
She examines a candy bar wrapper, and plugs the symbols into her handheld device. S-n-i-c-k-e-r-s. She doesn’t recognize the word. Obviously this paper wrapped around this thing called a Snickers. Perhaps an electronic device? Or, she squints at the word “Ingredients”... Ahh, it was some sort of a processed food.
Her perusal of the place will lead her to more than one conclusion. This is either where these people purchased their food or where they stored it.
The structure is rather grand. She closes her eyes and imagines what is now wasted and forgotten as it might have been nearly eight hundred years ago... clean, airy, full of light, and rather glorious.
She’ll be fascinated. She’ll know that for all the development of the subsequent centuries, our civilizations are not that different... we hoped, we dreamed, we loved... we ate.
She’ll realize that though we are dead and gone, we were a noble civilization and, hence, her pursuit of uncovering who we were proves just as noble.
With these thoughts swimming through my head, I absorbed my surroundings with a renewed perspective.
Then, I saw these.
...
I then surmised that it's very fortunate for us and futurewoman that we don’t write on two thousand pound rocks, anymore.
Reader Comments (40)
On the other hand, it's all saved digitally, so the real queation is how good are backups, really?
The Rosetta Stone is now at the Louvre? Because when I was in London in 1991 it was at the British Museum. And it seemed perfectly at home there along with that chunk of the Parthenon. Seeing these objects there seemed to epitomize the British Empire at its peak. "Hi. We've landed in your country and now we're just going to take a few souvenirs home."
I bet that the future Winn Dixie will still have a gallon of milk where the expiration date has been changed from 2009 to 2909 with a magic marker.
Oh my GOD, Kristen Steward ant Robert Pattinson are like OMG totally like together now? Squeeeeee!
*snort*
I'm still trying to understand "Yes! They're Love!" Either someone is missing a word or the copy-editors need to check they're spelling...
I've read some interesting discussions about the fact that the modern age is so focused on digital media that there may not be as complete a record of our era as previous ones, given decay and degradation of information and media. As easily damaged as paper is, if something horrible happened to a Winn Dixie, some of the paper would be preserved, but it's unlikely that any flash or magnetic media would survive that duration.
Ironically, the phrase that was used to translate hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone was "Mommy, you are mean!"
Or "Mummy, you are mean!". Something like that.
Oh, rest assured they will still have gossip then - just as they had gossip thousands of years ago.
The desire to intimately know people who lived centuries ago and feel a connection to them is really not so different than the desire to intimately know celebrities - people who live in fantastical, far away places.
@Miss Britt, can you imagine what Twitter would have been like thousands of years ago?
RT @Miriam: Great. Now I have leprosy. All because I gave my brother @Moses crap about marrying a Cushite woman whom he's no longer sleeping with...
(Numbers 12 + commentary, for those of you keeping track...)
So -- yes. squabbling lives on forever! Woo hoo!
OTOH we've found that Pompeii has restaurants with separate menus for the low and upper classes, lewd signs on the walls in public places and whore houses everywhere. Methinks 28th century person won't be too spun in.
@shiny, I imagine #Jesus would have trended for a while.
I wonder what future woman will think of Brangelina.
@Ren, You think they backup OK! ? Why would they do that? It seems like a waste of money.
@Kailyn, You are correct. The Rosetta Stone is at the Louvre, Hammurabi's code is at the Louvre. I was talking about the Code when I mentioned the Louvre.
@Avitable, Agreed. I'm almost as grossed out by Winn Dixie as I am by Wal Mart. Almost.
@Hilly, And, OMG, like, you totally spelled her name right, which, like, makes me totally doubt that yer kidding. :D
@shiny, I think the page is folded back.
@SciFi Dad, They probably have everything ever written backed up in some underground facility that's impermeable to any conceivable disaster. I've been watching too many movies.
@B.E. Earl, Hahaha, good one.
@Miss Britt, While I can't speak for anyone but myself, my desire to study history is not grounded in the desire to submerge myself in another time or place, although that's a fun side effect. I study history because I want to know the answers to questions regarding whether human development is continuous or discrete, whether we're progressing or repeating the same cycles, etc. Brangelina? Will *never* answer those questions for me.
@Hilly, Wait, what IS her name? Ohhhh Stewart...with a "t".
Doobie doo.
@Faiqa, I expect they do, just so they can refer back to articles and images in future issues.
@Miss Britt, Or #RomansSuck
@RW, HA!! My new world domination agenda: A Return to Pompeian (sp?) Values... I want my own menu, dammit. And I'm willing to look at some smut to get one. Plus, I hear whorehouses are very empowering for certain woman. That's what I *hear*.
@Finn, She'll think, "I wonder why this lizard woman took this ten year old boy as a mate?" Heh. I think Angelina is gorgeous, but she is a little reptillion.
@Faiqa, really?
I think finding out whether or not people were obsessed with Cleopatra's lovers back then would be interesting and say a lot about whether or not this is a recent development in our social behaviors.
Seriously? You wonder if we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over? Ah. Yes. Talk to me in twenty years when you will have discovered that - at least on a personal level - the answer is YES! :)
But I am an archeology/history freak too. Because at the very bottom of it all, we are SO much the same. And that tickles me
@Miss Britt, It would definitely be worthy, and obviously her escapades have been the subject of many studies.
I don't think I made myself clear or maybe I wasn't clear on what you were saying. I meant that the following statement doesn't necessarily apply to me:
"The desire to intimately know people who lived centuries ago and feel a connection to them is really not so different than the desire to intimately know celebrities. People who live in fantastical, far away places."
I am... *uneasy* with the comparison. Wanting to know about the marriage problems of celebrities and whether or not Cleopatra really loved Marc Antony or was using her sexuality as a power mechanism don't feel the same to me. To. Me. Maybe to others, it's comparable.
@Nanna, Really? You don't think we self correct even in the slightest or on the most minimal level? That's sort of depressing.
@Faiqa, I can understand why that would make you uncomfortable, but I don't think it has to.
I don't mean to suggest that they are exactly the same. But I do believe they are different expressions of a similar human instinct- we want to know about other people. To feel connected, to learn, and out of simple curiousity.
Of course YOuR method of expressing that instinct isn't trashy. ;)
@Miss britt, As long as we've established I'm not trashy. No, seriously, understood and agreed. And shouldn't you be on a plane or something?
@shiny, She got leprosy?!! That's scary. I know I'm never complaining about my in laws again.
I think people are and have been the same for eons. We're humans. Some may learn and progress, but the majority just follows along in a line..
Anyway, I also love archaeology. There's something so fricking COOL about even the potential of discovering something important! I mean, as a kid, I was thrilled to find fossils in rocks, you know? My daughter is the same way. Finding an arrowhead was the SHIZZ.
Oh man, that was a good one.
So right about the Louvre! During my first visit I attempted to see Mona but I am short and the crowds were tall. What I did manage to see was the guard smacking people over the head with a book if they tried to take a picture. I looked at my friend and said, "Oh, god," and we left.
@Sybil Law, Ooooh, an arrowhead? Cool!! As far as people being the same over time, uh, yeah, I guess I sort of agree. But...I think, maybe we're getting better about the mindless violence. Our genocides are far more well thought out as time progresses. Sigh.
@Kimberly, Smacking people on the head? Really? I must have gone on that guy’s day off. Thank goodness. ;)
when i come here, i am profoundly reminded of how poor a writer i am. i love your stuff.
@Slyde, Awww, I think you're a pretty damn good writer, actually. You're one of my favorites.
My daughter saved up her pet sitting and babysitting money to spend $75 on a fossilized shark tooth while in South Padre. But she did it because she loves sharks, not a love for history or archaeology. But maybe it'll become that.
@Faiqa, Won't that piss off some archeologist when he digs through 10 layers of sediment and then gets stopped by reinforced concrete and stainless-steel blast doors. I can hear it now, "We're gonna need a bigger trowel!"