Archaeologists just mapped a Bronze Age megafortress in Georgia

This recently mapped Bronze Age fortress is just one among hundreds.

See full article...

 

[Albino_Boo]

Fun facts about classical Latin:

“Veni, vidi, vici” was pronounced “whenny, weedy, weeky”.

“Julius Caesar” was pronounced “Yule-e-oose Kai-zar”.

(Which is indeed where “czar” and “Kaiser” come from)

View: https://youtu.be/kx_G2a2hL6U?si=G69QGZmrvnJTLVZx

 

[araczynski]

I love how nature constantly reminds us that humanity is nothing more than an endless source of fertilizer.

 

[janhec]

It's a level of technology. Per your own source: "An ancient civilisation is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age if it either produced bronze... or traded other items for bronze"

That's why the page keeps talking about when the Bronze Age started in each region. There was no Bronze Age in the Americas; they were late neolithic until the colonial powers came in with late Iron Age tech.

That sort of begs the question how much bronze there is/was in the America's. Probably no real difference with other parts of the world, still fun to look into. I don't get a lot of references at first try, but would be surprised if bronze like for statues had to be imported.

 

[janhec]

Fun facts about classical Latin:

“Veni, vidi, vici” was pronounced “whenny, weedy, weeky”.

“Julius Caesar” was pronounced “Yule-e-oose Kai-zar”.

(Which is indeed where “czar” and “Kaiser” come from)

That's fun, because I always believed that the pronunciations could not be tracked. What's your source?

 

[The Dark]

That's fun, because I always believed that the pronunciations could not be tracked. What's your source?

Not the OP, but for "veni, vidi, vici," Greek documents transliterated Latin v as Greek ou regardless of whether it was a consonant (VENI) or vowel (AVGVSTVS), and VENI in particular was mentioned as being a trisyllabic word. You can get there with ou-eh-nee, but it's harder to see a hard v pronunciation as anything other than veh-nee.

 

[Migz-DH]

Its occupant went to the next life with beads, copper-alloy arrowheads, and pottery.

Do we know that they actually believed in some kind of afterlife, or is just an assumption?

 

[Oldnoobguy]

That's fun, because I always believed that the pronunciations could not be tracked. What's your source?

Jumping in here. I took Latin while studying to be a Roman Catholic priest. I learned that classical Latin pronunciation is as Celery Man describes. Church Latin changed the pronunciation.

As far as my authority on this subject goes: I never became a priest, (Thank $DEITY); I took Latin in 1978; the teacher had a thick Boston accent, so all words ending with a vowel sounded like they ended in "er"; and I'm some random guy posting on an online forum.

 

[thrillgore]

Fun facts about classical Latin:

“Veni, vidi, vici” was pronounced “whenny, weedy, weeky”.

“Julius Caesar” was pronounced “Yule-e-oose Kai-zar”.

(Which is indeed where “czar” and “Kaiser” come from)

I too, played Fallout New Vegas.

I kid, of course. I'm trying for an easy reference.

 

[Glorified Desktop Support]

That sort of begs the question how much bronze there is/was in the America's. Probably no real difference with other parts of the world, still fun to look into. I don't get a lot of references at first try, but would be surprised if bronze like for statues had to be imported.

There was bronze smelting in South America by the Incas and others. While pre-Columbian bronze statues and tools exist, its usage never became common enough to replace stone. So if just demonstrated capability to make bronze artifacts is the goalpost, some South American cultures passed that. If it is that bronze became the standard material for such items as weapons, it did not.

 

[LowellG]

To what extent would the walls have been helpful for reasons besides military fortification? Say, as a windbreak for crops or livestock?
[Speaking from curiosity, not knowledge...]

 

[daveishereagain]

Sorry double post.

 

[daveishereagain]

To what extent would the walls have been helpful for reasons besides military fortification? Say, as a windbreak for crops or livestock?
[Speaking from curiosity, not knowledge...]

They could well have been protection from animal predators as well as human ones.

 

[Ronin007]

One man's cistern is filled from another man's keister.

OnlyPans

 

[Chuckstar]

That depends on whether you are using the term "Bronze Age" to describe a period of time or a level of technology, doesn't it?

That’s how it’s used.

There were certainly people in the Americas during the Bronze Age time frame, which Wikipedia dates from c. 3300 – c. 1200 BC, even if they weren't actually using bronze.

That’s the dates of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean Basin. That same Wikipedia article points out that for any particular culture, the Bronze Age is dated based on when that particular culture started using Bronze.

 

[Chuckstar]

That sort of begs the question how much bronze there is/was in the America's. Probably no real difference with other parts of the world, still fun to look into. I don't get a lot of references at first try, but would be surprised if bronze like for statues had to be imported.

No bronze in North America until the Europeans brought it.

 

[Albino_Boo]

To what extent would the walls have been helpful for reasons besides military fortification? Say, as a windbreak for crops or livestock?
[Speaking from curiosity, not knowledge...]

The only thing that I know is that on the Scottish islands they use dry stone walling as wind breaks. The walling style has sufficient gaps in it not to blown over in the storms but sufficient to cut the wind to give shelter to animals and plants.

 

[daveishereagain]

That’s how it’s used.

That’s the dates of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean Basin. That same Wikipedia article points out that for any particular culture, the Bronze Age is dated based on when that particular culture started using Bronze.

I guess technically and academically that is the proper usage of the term but I tend to see it as an era in time during the neolithic before the Iron Age circa 3,000 to 1500 BCE in Europe, Mideast and Asia. Just a personal time reference for my own head to use.

 

[dragoninnaMINI]

That sort of begs the question how much bronze there is/was in the America's. Probably no real difference with other parts of the world, still fun to look into. I don't get a lot of references at first try, but would be surprised if bronze like for statues had to be imported.

Bronze isn't mined; it's made by combining copper and tin (or arsenic). And bronze statues didn't show up until the colonists in the 17th century, as noted above.

 

[DovePig]

Oh, THAT Georgia.

A hint:

The US one was admitted in 1,788 CE or so. Basically yesterday.

The other was founded around 0-300 BCE, or nearly two millennia before, and even a lot earlier if you count all the previous civs there going back to the Bronze Age. Even the current country harkens back to around 400-600 CE or so.

And given it's the very birthplace of wine, nearly everybody outside the US knows that Georgia is in the Caucasus, not in the US...

 

[Veritas super omens]

They do seem to be more in the Stone Age than anything else.

Stop insulting the stone age folk, they hadn't been informed that there was a better way to do things and decided to ignore it.

 

[BruceLGL]

The confusion here is another reason that I strongly think all Ars articles need to spell out when something applies to the US specifically. It will even help the US Defaultism people when there are articles that aren't about the centre of the universe.

 

[The Dark]

Stop insulting the stone age folk, they hadn't been informed that there was a better way to do things and decided to ignore it.

Heck, we still use Stone Age technology for eye surgery (obsidian scalpels).

 

[Albino_Boo]

I guess technically and academically that is the proper usage of the term but I tend to see it as an era in time during the neolithic before the Iron Age circa 3,000 to 1500 BCE in Europe, Mideast and Asia. Just a personal time reference for my own head to use.

The whole Iron, bronze and stone ages nomenclature comes from the time when there was no dating available. Its was only known that the deeper you went the older you got and that's tool material found. The first change was the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The pushed back the horizon of written records thousands of years, followed by the other fertile crescent writing systems. Then again man named Flinder Petrie started to do proper archeological digs across the Middle East and Mediterranean. He used written records to date certain styles of pottery and then apply that information to sites that lacked secure dating. So suddenly you could date Agean bronze age sites because of Agean pottery found in sites dateable pottery and dateable pottery found in Agean sites. There was still no idea how that the North Europe related to the dateable pottery. Then a bronze age cemetery was found in Austria that contained Agean bronze age weapons and pottery as well as North styles. So the naming of ages is a very lose term from an era when there wasn't any fixed points and context to relate different sites. If you were starting now that breakdown would be very more fine grained than stone/bronze/iron

 

[Albino_Boo]

The confusion here is another reason that I strongly think all Ars articles need to spell out when something applies to the US specifically. It will even help the US Defaultism people when there are articles that aren't about the centre of the universe.

There's way to many different uses of language to make that a serious proposition. In the UK a public school is an incredibly expensive fee paying educational establishment somewhere around 300 years old. I doubt the majority of US journalists would even know there's a difference in definitions. Most people quickly work out from the context what's being talked about.

 

[graylshaped]

\

Fun facts about classical Latin:

“Veni, vidi, vici” was pronounced “whenny, weedy, weeky”.

“Julius Caesar” was pronounced “Yule-e-oose Kai-zar”.

(Which is indeed where “czar” and “Kaiser” come from)

Curious: was the "v" actually a "w" sound, or more the very soft not-quite a "b" sound that a "v" makes in modern Spanish? My wife has a cousin named Viri whose name I would have sworn was "Beady" based on what my ear told me the family called her the first time I met her.

 

[taxythingy]

The German word "Kiste" means "box".

It's also called a cask in English.

 

[Albino_Boo]

\

Curious: was the "v" actually a "w" sound, or more the very soft not-quite a "b" sound that a "v" makes in modern Spanish? My wife has a cousin named Viri whose name I would have sworn was "Beady" based on what my ear told me the family called her the first time I met her.

Part of the issue is the great vowel shift in English that took place between 1400 and 1600. This resulted in entirely different pronunciations from of vowels. Old English vowels was closer to modern Dutch than modern English. The Frisian language, spoken on the Dutch/German border, is the closest to Anglo-Saxon

 

[taxythingy]

\

Curious: was the "v" actually a "w" sound, or more the very soft not-quite a "b" sound that a "v" makes in modern Spanish? My wife has a cousin named Viri whose name I would have sworn was "Beady" based on what my ear told me the family called her the first time I met her.

I found almost the opposite issue in Ireland. Trying to pronounce Siobhan was a challenge that I nearly got the hang of over several years, because it is almost a 'v', but not quite!

Now I'm trying to learn Korean and finding that whoever produced or otherwise supported the accepted romanisation was a fekkin' gobshite. In order to 'make it more accessible', they made it rather inconsistent, forcing a learner to have an extra parsing layer when reading that crap. As a learner, one has to get past it asap to make it easier to hear, speak and spell correctly.

For anyone wondering, it's mainly around the use of a 'w' to sometimes replace what should be an 'o' or 'u' at the start of a vowel-like syllable and to then condense multiple spellings into something like 'we'.

 

[Chuckstar]

But a lot of people don't know that.

I'm thinking let me read the article to find out why something can't exist in the United States, especially not in the state of Georgia

The article title should have said "the country of Georgia"

Very misleading !

OMFG, you had to read the first sentence of an article to clarify between Georgia the country and Georgia the state. I can’t imagine a worse thing to happen to you. Are you OK? Do you need a hug?

 

[Colm]

OMFG, you had to read the first sentence of an article to clarify between Georgia the country and Georgia the state. I can’t imagine a worse thing to happen to you. Are you OK? Do you need a hug?

Should we invite Bella Hadid?

 

[graylshaped]

I found almost the opposite issue in Ireland. Trying to pronounce Siobhan was a challenge that I nearly got the hang of over several years, because it is almost a 'v', but not quite!

Now I'm trying to learn Korean and finding that whoever produced or otherwise supported the accepted romanisation was a fekkin' gobshite. In order to 'make it more accessible', they made it rather inconsistent, forcing a learner to have an extra parsing layer when reading that crap. As a learner, one has to get past it asap to make it easier to hear, speak and spell correctly.

For anyone wondering, it's mainly around the use of a 'w' to sometimes replace what should be an 'o' or 'u' at the start of a vowel-like syllable and to then condense multiple spellings into something like 'we'.

Oui. Je comprends.

 

[jock2nerd]

To what extent would the walls have been helpful for reasons besides military fortification? Say, as a windbreak for crops or livestock?
[Speaking from curiosity, not knowledge...]

Depends on the height of the walls, and the height being estimated is three times what would be require to contain livestock, so reasonable to assume it was for defensive reasons, probably to protect people and livestock.

 

[graylshaped]

A hint:

The US one was admitted in 1,788 CE or so. Basically yesterday.

The other was founded around 0-300 BCE, or nearly two millennia before, and even a lot earlier if you count all the previous civs there going back to the Bronze Age. Even the current country harkens back to around 400-600 CE or so.

And given it's the very birthplace of wine, nearly everybody outside the US knows that Georgia is in the Caucasus, not in the US...

I admit to a moment of speculation about the need to protect Coca-Cola's recipe far earlier than anyone knew...

 

[AdrianS]

You can't leave all those peaches undefended.

I'd freeze them.

 

[Me Myself And I1]

So Highlander wasn't that far off

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kurgan

 

[staskaya]

Oh, THAT Georgia.

Yeah, the one which also includes Iberia and Albania in its borders.

 

[Albino_Boo]

Do we know that they actually believed in some kind of afterlife, or is just an assumption?

All of the Indo European cultures when they enter into recorded history have religion. The first documentation of the Hindu gods comes from the Mitanni Empire from roughly 1600 BC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_superstrate_in_MitanniIn most of the Indo European groups you can trace similarities in the pantheons. The Vedic Varuna, the Greek Poseidon and the Germanic Njord all have common attributes as the sea god.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology

 

[Albino_Boo]

Yeah, the one which also includes Iberia and Albania in its borders.

There was the Kingdom of Iberia in what's now Southern Georgia between 300 BC and 500 AD, just to add to the fun