What Are These Mysterious Artifacts?
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
- In this video I team up with none other than my favorite Near East archaeologist and Bagdad Battery skeptic: Dr. Brad Hafford. Career archaeologist and fellow CZcams teacher (@artifactuallyspeaking) Dr. Hafford takes us on a tour through the collections of the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. We will see ancient pottery, mysterious incantation bowls inscribed with long forgotten curses and the spectacular golden artifacts of royalty. Join us as we walk the galleries of this premier institution and learn first hand from experts the stories it has to tell.
Come check out the Penn Museum for yourself!
bit.ly/3JptjcR
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:39 The First Artifact
03:52 The Second Artifact
06:39 The Third Artifact
11:35 The Fourth Artifact
13:50 The Fifth Artifact
17:56 The Final Artifact
20:54 Thank You to The Penn Museum
21:54 Credits and Thank Yous
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Wow, you created the best archeology quote ever. "Finding the game pieces is one thing. Figuring out the rules of the game is a lot harder."
thats literally a quote from any fucking archaeologist...Shit even I say that when talking about artefacts of game pieces I find on digs (I've dug out in Germany Ireland, Spain and Tunisia) I think dr Irving Finkle came up with that term
@@MrTheevilmage I can't tell if you're being super aggressive or just kinda saying
@@Love.Wynta06 just kinda sayin
@MrTheevilmage just super aggressively, but that's perfectly okay.
@@dakotathacker3821 look if you can't handle swear words in a comment maybe don't go on the internet it may not be the right place for you.
*bangs fists on tablet* Alien Glass Skeleton! Alien Glass Skeleton!
The rest has to be in the basement find it
@@BenadictTittiemilkprobably released early for patrons or whatever
Alien Glass SHEEP Skeleton!
It's obviously a glass alien knucklebone, experts agree. It's just that Big Archeology doesn't want you to know.
From Atlantis
for the "how do you hold the small piece of hemetite you are carving" discussion, it is quite possable that you would sink it into a pitch pot. Warm pitch will deform around the object, and will cool quickly giving a very strong but removable grip that wont damage the object. PItch pots have been used by jewelry makers basically as long as there have been jewelry makers
I was thinking that myself, they still use techniques like that today for things like crafting high precision lenses
In other crafts there is a stem-like piece that is cut off right at the end
Its like the bone scrapers for leather. Ancient but still gold
I've never heard of that before. It's both simple and ingenious.
That's brilliant!
Lucky dog only a handful of humans have actually touched those amazing and beautiful artifacts. You have literally touched objects from some of the earliest parts of our creative history. Thank you both for sharing your combined knowledge with with all of us
In any good museum, there are a hundred or a thousand objects in drawers and cabinets for every one object on display. I work in a natural history museum. Just yesterday I handled the bones of 13-million-year-old allodesmus (an extinct pinniped similar to a leopard seal). Today I was sorting and moving part of the largest collection of rattlesnake specimens collected over 140 years. Just for fun, I tried to find an example of a naja haje, the Egyptian cobra, just to see what the snake that killed Cleopatra looked like. Turns out we don't have one, but the looking is the fun part. It's great to have the run of the collections. If you can find a way to spend time on the science side of a good museum, do it!
Probably a lot of people have touched those back in the day. Just not recently.
@@savar86 which just adds to the wonder. How many ancient hands. What were they doing? Were they warm? Happy? Injured? Drunk?! About to get eaten by a bear? A queen? A prisoner? The tribes next meal?
yea and he got to touch these artefacts through conning his audience with land title scam sponsors which any archaeologist from england could have told him thats not how landed titles work.
Getting to hold history through unethical means. Just like all the colonist archaeologists he hates.
Correction, only a handful of modern humans have touched these.
A great thought activity is to think about how these were once everyday items. More then likely items used and played with by everyday people like us.
The first artifact was actually wild to see, because I recognized what it was in a very stupid way. I'm not much older than you, and in the mid 90's there was a thing called "Crazy Bones", which were essentially a collectible version of the knucklebone game piece. I knew it was an old game, but I didn't truly grasp HOW old it was.
Holy shit did you you just remind me of something i thought i had totally forgotten. Wow good reference
Oh, wow, I hadn't thought of Crazy Bones in ages! I remember being obsessed with them for like a month in the late 90s/early 2000s.
I can't remember if they were given away with cereal boxes etc but good GOD that was a flashback. 😢
I have a whole bunch I picked up at a thrift store! It definitely sent me reeling. Don't know that I ever actually played a game with them, more so just collecting but still a blast from the past
Holy shit, I remember those! Thanks for the reminder, and likewise I had no idea that game was practically as old as civilization.
My parents used to be involved in medieval reenactments, and we used to gamble using sheep's knuckles, using candy coins and cool rocks and shiny trinkets as money. As soon as Dr. Hafford said the first lapis piece was shaped to be a knuckle bone, I knew that it was used as either dice or bone-reading/casting!
Idea:
Once Milo has produced enough episodes of Awful Archaeology to make up a decent roster of cocktails, Milo and Dr. Hafford should meet up again and just drink and talk about whatever. I'd watch that.
hes already made god knows how much lying to his audience about land title names which any British archaeologist could say to him "thats not how land titles work you deceitful little liar" but because it would a british person telling him he won't listen cause they are "Cringe" and therefore the enemy so its better to just lie, never pick up a book on land titles and just take your audicne for fools.....cause you people will still simp for this unethical bullshit regaurdless. Yes it is unethical archaeology...I also studied archaeology like Milo but unlike him I also did theory and in theory the shit he advetised to make money was fake and by the laws of Archaeolgcal theory; money obtained through bad practice is bad archaeology espeically because its related too history. Its not difficult to advertise stuff related to history in anyway as an archaeologist, you know whats bullshit and what isn't.
Milo knew it was buillshit...did not care and advertised it anyways....That is a bad archaeologist no matter how much you arse kiss him.
why just Dr Hafford? Maybe make it a series where he sits down for drinks and talks with other archaeologists about their research and projects.
@@keithharper32 Yeah that'd be awesome too. I just defaulted to Dr Hafford because he tried the Baghdad Battery cocktail.
Cuts to Milo getting shitfaced and starting to talk about Graham Hancock again.
Spot on@@unexpected2475
The knucklebone thing just opened up my long forgotten memories. We played with such things when I was a kid in Kazakhstan. We played with actual sheep knucklebones, but sometimes there were wooden or glass ones. This is so bizarre, they were literally the same as this one
Hey ! Same stuff here in France. At my granpa's farm I used to play with metal knucklebones. There were 5, with one hand you throw one in the air and grab the others on the ground in time to catch the falling bone.
@@cookiesenpai1641 hold on a hot minute I used to play that game in Primary school in Vietnam! Somebody started playing one day and before you know it we all started playing. Didn't use knuckle bones though.
We do the same thing over here in Mongolia. ✌
I love these collaborations with Dr. Hafford!! Please do it again! I'm living vicariously through you, Milo, don't let me down!
Just to think that this all came from Dr. Hafford making a video critiquing Milo's work. Just shows that CZcams doesn't always have to turn into drama
One thing that always gets me is the fingerprints the object can be thousands of years old and we may know nothing about it but someone somewhen took their time to make it. Who knows it could be a souvenir from someone's vacation 🤷🏻
A friend once caught 2 small bass on 1 lure in 1 cast once. He still has the pictures.
That pendant was someone's fish story picture
The duck weights having to be carved to the exact mass isn't so difficult. They all have flat bases so if it's too heavy you just take more off the bottom.
Shaping the tail like that also means you can shave bits of it off to have more fine control over the weight.
Milo saying, "I SEE," was the perfect parallel to the conspiracy theorist saying of, "It looks like," lol. Loved this video! It made me want to go back to school.
Talking about how to hold those small pieces while working on them, even today jewelers use a bowl of bitumen to do that. Just warm it up, press the piece in, and let it cool. The piece is not going anywhere until you warm it up again.
I was just going to mention this! My dad used to work on polishing small cabochons with the stone fixed to a rod with jeweler's pitch. It's incredibly tenacious stuff.
It’s funny I’m a jeweler and I just commented pretty much the same thing
So this is how bones they were throwing looked! It makes sense now, I was always imagining they were throwing like big bones from dinner or something. This looks much more user friendly..
I'm sure after some focus group testing they were able to develop a user friendly bone interface
Didn't you ever play knuckles as a kid?
It's metal to throw skulls 😂
Maybe it's my age, but I knew that 'rolling bones' was identical to 'throwing dice.'
@@martinwallace5734 We did it with jacks or marbles, hearing bones always made me think of like chicken bones
A pottery shard I found has a very distinct fingerprint. It remains one of the coolest things I have.
I think I'd cry if found something like that
it's such a small thing but god it's just so... deeply human
@@emmakayisnotok7322
Oh, it was exciting to say the least. Even though it’s just a broken piece, it’s among my greatest treasured artifacts.
I had forgotten about it until his comment. Perhaps I’ll make a short video with it.
@@choccolocco if you do ill definitely tune into it !!! id love to see it !!
and i def get why its a fave for sure !!!
That duck weight is beautiful. I love how beautiful art can last for thousands of years so that it can be appreciated long after the creator is lost to time.
Also, making something that is just mundane and then turning it into the shape of a duck. Beautiful
When I went away to boarding school at age 10 (for context this was 1996 in Aotearoa New Zealand), knucklebones was absolutely one of the most popular games among the (mostly) farmers daughters I lived with. My mum was not a farmer but a wool classer (responsible for sorting and classifying raw sheep fleece in a shearing shed) and she gifted me with two sets of knucklebones: one was a pewter set from her own childhood, and one was actual sheep knucklebones. The latter was awesome to look at but a bit of a challenge to hold in my 10-year-old hands.
At my school in 1960s France - in a suburb 17 minutes train ride from Paris - "les osselets", ie knucklebones, was a game everyone knew. Don't remember what the pieces were made of exactly, but I don't think they were actual bones.
@@gerardvila4685 How do you actually play it? Are the ends marked? Do you have to roll them like dice? Or is it more like playing beads or curling or petangue where you have to hit a place/object?
@@Washeek Depends on the region, but we used to throw them in the air and try to catch them all on the back of your hand, if you drop all the bones you lose.
@@nathanlewry633 The what?! Thanks that's something I'd have never imagined. Enlightening.
Haha me too. Kiwi kid growing up in early 80s. Parents splashed out for metal replicas rather than real bones (hmm .. now thinking about it the dogs probably ate them!). But yeah that was 100% my first thought
I make jewelry, and I use fairly simple tools. It's easy to visualize how the ancients made these things. I think Milo calling it right thinking it was blue glass.
As a Geologist, I think you might be right, but that kind of product would be glass slag (leftovers) from other products and I have no idea if that would be era appropriate. I would love to know if there are many other examples of this 'type' of lapus found and how it compares
oh as someone with a fishing interest the double fish pendant thing is a very familiar sight! A catch of two or multiple fish looks like that when you pass a loop of string or tough grass between both gills; their bellies all meet and their heads are the same height. The "handle" thus created would be exactly where the string would sit if you passed one through that loop on the top of the pendant. It's the best way to carry fish home if you don't have a modern cooler or similar!
"Aah Atlanteans!" and the surprised cackle from Dr Hafford 😂
Also I'm pretty sure I remember correctly that the astragalus of artiodactyls, like goats, is specially shaped, and such a shaped bone in transitional whale fossils was part of how we figured out that whales had evolved from terrestrial artiodactyls.
YW
I saw that "knucklebone" out of Lapis, and was proud of myself for recognizing it *as* a knucklebone, not realizing how special it was to be made of Lapis.
What a fascinating set of interesting little items!
I envy you, Milo. I love your enthusiasm and the respect you have for these objects.
Thanks for sharing this moment with us.
Hello David how are you doing 😊
@@helenarusso Fine, thank you.
@@frenchfriar Nice to meet you here David 😊
I was surprised Milo didn't clue in, maybe it's a more esoteric concept than I thought.
Regarding how they hold something that small for the final artifact. You've stated they had access to bitumen for some other pieces. They may use it or pitch to act as a holding device. Jewelers and goldsmiths use pitch in a half-sphere to hold onto small things that require multiple angles to work on the piece. When pitch is warmed up, it can conform to the piece, and once cooled, it has very strong holding power. One other advantage for pitch, depending on it's temperature, it's viscosity changes. When cold, it can take blows, but it's still a little bit compliant. When warmed up a little bit, it'll have more compliance.
Another option is something like a jeweler's hand vice. Mechanically, it's very simple, you shove a wedge on one side that forces the jaws to close.
My parents gave me an actual bone for playing knuckle bones but I was really bad at it so I never played with them. That was like 20 years ago, I'm sure there are other rural kids that still play with those today
Yep 😂 played with real bones.
Milo's genuine glee and curiosity is so contagious. This is 100% my favorite set of videos from this channel
Fourth artifact definitely looks like it could have been made with a mold. Clay pressed into a one-sided mold and sticking two back legs on it afterwards. You can even see the clay folding over the edge of the mold in places. That should mean this sculpture was produced in large quantities!
Makes me think it could've been something that people would buy to put in their houses, similar to crucifixes in modern day.
Seeing the fingerprints really hammered home how it was made by someone who hasn’t been with us for thousands of years. You kinda mentioned it already, but the stuff didn’t just magically appear, it was made by someone, and seeing the fingerprints really showed that
You know what. You should do a video creating lore about our time through the lens of a future archeologist looking at random stuff on wish.
In college i had an anthropology text anthology that was science fiction short stories chosen to discuss anthropological concepts.
@@kathyjohnson2043 the nacirema?
@@waltersoares4264 interestingly, no. I can't remember too much (it was a LONG time ago) but one was about the aftermath of a war with the USSR where they had developed a weapon that destroyed all American infrastructure while we had used a weapon that killed the entire population. In order to survive, the US population moved to the USSR with everything being written in Russian and the related culture. Thus, after a generation, the question was who had actually 'won.' That is, what makes a social group: our genetics or our culture.
@@kathyjohnson2043 chatgpt said it is "The Third Wave" by Alvin Toffler.
Ancient fishing is, obviously, fascinating to me
This should be a regular series. Absolutely fascinating stuff to see ancient gaming pieces and figurines.
ive personally played knuckle bones and other ancient games during my time in the SCA- i recognized it immediately haha
This reminds me of one of the the reason I am studying archaeology in the first place. You can tell that everyone in the field are very passionate about what they are doing. There is something about hearing a professor in their 40s, 50s or 60s being so genuinely passionate about the subject they are lecturing about that inspires me so much.
Conspiracies are born of a combination of a lack of knowledge about a subject, a lack of willingness to acknowledge that some things have no concrete answer, and disbelief in coincidence. We will never know for certain what was going through the heads of the people making these artifacts, there's no way to know for certain what something represents, and that's okay.
All this is to say, I really appreciate that when Dr. Hafford is talking about prehistoric artifacts he never speaks in absolutes unless he has an absolute answer. "Possibly" is a wise man's favorite word.
Yeah Milo I'm going to need more of this content bro. This was such a delight to watch.
I absolutely love how this professional friendship has grown, you two are great and I love the content! I’ve learned so much from this channel!!!
15:24 I never understood this, same with the Egypt stuff, can't you cut/carve rocks with just a harder rock? Saying they couldn't have done it with copper or without iron feels like saying ice sculptures can't be done without a chainsaw...
Very true. We’ve found household notes written in stone.
If aliens are passing great knowledge, I doubt it’s being used to write “don’t forget to stop at the wine shop tonight” on a tablet.
Paper was for the wealthy.
You don't actually need harder materials. Rocks are generally harder even than iron/steel but they are much more brittle. I've seen an argument about granite being harder than copper so it supposedly could not be cut with it multiple times and it's nonsense.
@@novh4ck yeah, if hardness was all it took then we'd be finding diamond hand axes all over
@@novh4ck I get the feeling that a lot of people don't know how stone is split and quarried, probably because all they have ever seen are granite countertops that have been sawed and machine-polished. It kind of boils down to a lack of cultural imagination.
The fish “medallion” looks like a tool for shucking reeds. As far as the unique and specific carving, think of the crane scissors a lot of seamstresses have used for decades… if that is a part of your craft, you may want to personalize your tools.
Interesting
Or show off your skills as the maker of the tools, or even be whimsical.
The double fish as a pendant is very old and very common motif. It had a spot on it for hanging as one, too. It's a very common fertility symbol. It didn't have any blade-like portions on it, despite the broken off section--there didn't seem to be an indication of any kind of area there that would indicate it was a tool. It think it just an common amulet or pendant.
@alexquintanilla8338 - Perhaps it is an amulet meant to bring the fishers good luck in their work.
I love how they talked about the skills of the people who made these things. That is what pisses me off about ancient aliens, they disrespect the amazing work humans have been doing for so long.
Amazing collab, you two! What a treat.
I would never have expected to out-archeology Milo on even one point, but I immediately thought that Lapis object looked like one of those cow or sheep bones that ancient people used as dice, which I learned about from Irving Finkel's paper on the Royal Game of Ur.
I almost never comment, but I just wanted to say, this channel, and especially this series, is really entertaining. Thank you :)
Ancient craftsman: okay, gotta carve this 5-pound duck weight
Two weeks later: Done! But it's just 2 pounds now 👍
Congrats on the book man, just pre-ordered and can’t wait to read it!
Same! Can’t wait to be suprised in October
How did they hold small objects so they could work on them? I work in a museum and small sandbags are my go-to tool to hold fossils while I prepare them. Alternatively, they could use a 5-pound lump of wet clay. Simply push the object into the clay for a good solid hold, pull it out and push it in again to work on a different part.
I don’t know how they did what they did, but if I can come up with a couple of reasonable ideas in a minute, we know they could do at least as well.
Very interesting to see the artifacts! I have a hematite necklace and earrings set that I got from my grandmother.. I really need to wear it more
“Can I roll it?!” Milo’s saying what we all wish we could😂😂
I respect the self control that must have been necessary to not immediately roll the 4600 year old D6
as for holding (fixturing) small things, and i know i'm referencing things a few thousand years later, but the ancient greeks used tree pitch. so basically get a "large heavy" rock, plonck it down somewhere, melt a bit pitch and smush your object into it and wait for it to cool. drill your hole, then warm up the pitch again.
"Lets appreciate the human and the effort they made to produce these things." very well said.
Hell yes! Speciality craftspeople are being done a disservice by ignorant folks.
The Baghdad Watch Battery, for the backlit wrist sundials used at night.
It's so amazing seeing how excited you are to hold these objects based on your shaking
Living my archeology dream life vicariously through Milo as my parents wanted a doctor in the family.. never stop dude
It's never too late. Maybe when doctoring has paid its dues you can become a different kind of doctor.
@@lysolcoke2HD ☺️ hopefully someday!!
Same here
Oh wow! That first one, I was like... that looks like a knuckle bone... I had a set of... probably plastic, but might have been some kind of resin... knuckle bones as a kid. Had no idea how to play it, it was just something that was at my grand parents place (bear in mind that my childhood was likely far closer to Dr Hafford's than to Milo's )
YESSS! I just finished watching that critique-reaction-reaction of the Baghdad battery and I thought "Man, wouldn't it be cool to see a collab episode with both of you?!"
As an artist I find the carvings so fascinating, I always wonder how we did things without all the power tools we have now.
Skill and time.
Art, and especially sculpture, have always been intertwined with materials science (even before science as a concept existed). I think a lot of artists are lateral thinkers. An artist sees something with a utilitarian use, and devises a way to use it to create what they imagine. There are ancient fish hooks that were just as intricately carved. I'd bet a lot of those people used those same skills to create beautiful art.
@@aaronzimny8201- Or a way to show off their skills by adding extra flourishes or designs to things.
Slowly is how. Thing is, because we "can" do things quickly, we tend to disregard taking a long time to do anything. It's not something we'd consider, so we think the same of our ancestors. But they would have looked at it differently. To them, something took as long as it took. They would never "not" do something because it took a long time to accomplish. Everything took a long time and a lot of effort, but manpower and time was not in short supply then.
I've recently gotten into rock tumbling. I recently looked up Lapiz Lazuli to see if I could tumble it, I probably could but the closest rock I have is sodalite, but I've been surprised by how clear many of them can be!
Sodalite often has translucent spots, but I've rarely found any on Lapis Lazuli. It's almost always a very solid, opaque, weighty stone. It tumbles nicely, but it has has a fairly large grain to it, so it's polish comes out fine enough, but don't expect a mirror finish. You'll still have a bit of pitting on the surface, with a bit of shine.
Just imagining Graham Hancock watching this quaking 😂
As much as I love all your other videos the branching out to do a video with Dr. Hafford is so so cool and really shows me (someone very unfamiliar with all archeology) the challenge in not only finding these artifacts but then interpreting their use, meaning, etc.
Amazing video!!
Context is always important. Think of the plastic or cheap metal tokens in a board game: a thousand years from now, the cardboard and paper are gone. The tokens are mysteries until/unless the other household items are found, at which point archeologists argue over which are game pieces, which are decoration, and if any may be religious tokens.
With the last artifact, in regards to producing such a small weight from such a hard material, could it be possible that whoever made it had it still attached on one end to a long portion of the material it was made from? Like how a glass blower uses a Punty.
Genial!
Bro about to announce he's gonna start a personal feud with Zahi Hawass
as an old guy that became a stonemason at the age of 28 after doing many different jobs, you would be amazed at just how much you can do and learn when not sitting on your ass watching TV every night. all these people that think it must have been aliens just astonishes me.
when you are sitting around a fire at night with nothing else to do you will make stuff or tell stories to fill in the gaps.
its always amazing to me that man learned smelting of metals. so smart guy would have to have been watching very closely how certain stones formed and then made a way to do it himself to get copper and bronze. man has not really changed in the last 10,000 years but people like to think modern man is smarter. you go out into the woods today and see how long you last with nothing but what is out there. early man was just as smart as we are and maybe more so.
So amazing, thanks for doing all that you do! I love this museum and this is inspiring me to go visit again cause it's been a long time. Cheers Milo!
Such an interesting discussion about these mystery objects! Love how you and Dr. Hafford bring your knowledge and enthusiasm literally to the table for this episode.
I’ve been to the Penn once and the lay out of the museum feels like your in a abandoned/haunted house
Thank you to Dr Hafford also!
You can see how they're both stoked about each other nerding out. Dr. Hafford is excited that a younger man finds his knowledge useful and interesting. Milo is excited because you can see how much he loves the field and values a professional seeing him as a colleague.
ad the first artifact: in my language game die is still called "bone" in diminutive (kost > kostka) basically, it like etymologically stuck to it, so that is interesting
It’s so cute when Milo closes his eyes for each piece
Immediately subbed Dr. Hafford, how could any thinking being not?
To talk to such an expert with such a deep well of knowledge is a huge privilege. I got to speak to a fairly important Paleo-Osteologist as an expert for my college thesis and it was always so amazing to hear what he had to say.
I absolutely love that this series began from a back and forth about some ancient historical facts, and you've made new partnerships and present it all with such enthusiasm. Excellent teamwork here, professional AND fun!
Next video we see he'll be a penn employee
P nas
How Dice of all things have stayed basically the same, while yeah cube-ish shapes are easy that they used dots in basically the same patterns instead of any number of other things, is kinda amazing. The little figures might have had a similar use as saint statues in modern Catholicism, used in shrines and buried with owners.
I totally missed these in Milo’s video lists, but so glad Milo and Dr. Hafford got to meet up and do collaborations! Much professional respect for one another!
I'm amazing how you can just SEE Milo is just absorbing everything Dr. Hafford is saying. Like he doesn't break contact while he speaks and interjecting to show he's listening but not wanting to intrude. It's amazing to see someone just listening and hearing what someone is saying instead of just making comments here and there for content. I hope you two work together more in the future, learning from those before is what archaeology is about in a sense right?
I love you two in videos together. It’s so good. I love how much you both love the artifacts you are looking at! Would love to visit the museum myself one day.
I swear to God my first thought upon seeing the first artifact was 'dice.' I was playing settlers of catan in my other window!
My immediate thought about the fish pendant was "that looks like a lure". Or maybe a bobber, if it floats lol
Made of hard stone. My immediate thought was "sinker".
This is dope AF you got together with this guy. Your overview of his response to your Baghdad battery vid is one of my favs. He is very knowledgeable and has a great way of presenting
5:40, hahaha it would be so cool to find “the box the game came in” with an instructional slab intact.
12:42, that’s so beautiful, to me it looks like she’s peeling a banana, holding an eighth note, and wearing a balloon animal hat.
oh my goshhhhhh I get to see archeologists actually inspect artifacts that's so coollllllll I am so enthusiastic about archeology I wish I could be an archeologist
This series has been positively fascinating and brought me back to sixth grade and getting excited for history for the first time. Mesopotamia is such an interesting region and era with so much we can learn from.
As part of my seminary degree, my OT professor had us do a scavenger hunt in the Penn Museum covering the ANE, Egyptian, Roman, and Greek collections. It's a fantastic museum and love visiting it when I can.
To see these two archeology nerds geeking out over this stuff together, both young and not so young, is such happiness for me and for it to be "local" to me is a bonus.
I’m so happy I actually got the notification on time
The expert says that's lapis lazuli, but I've never seen that stuff transparent. It really looks like cobalt glass to me.
Mate this whole episode is an exercise on things not always being what they initially look like. Trust the guy ❤
@@domedwards6996 the guy even says maybe it’s cobalt glass toward the end of that segment
@@domedwards6996 the guy literally says hes not sure. I think this a situation where you can question it a little bit
Dr. Hafford has posted a video on his own channel which includes some parts of this video here, and he does indeed confirm in that video that it was mis-logged as lapis lazuli and it Is glass! he also mentions some more background on the item and how the museum acquired it which is pretty interesting :)
Agreed. My first job was in a jewelry store and I've collected gemstones my entire life. There's no way that's lapis. Blue obsidian or spinel would be my guess.
I made a dice out of clay and left it in the sun to dry in 2002ish? and I still have it with me here on my desk! its cool to know its gonna last much longer
Your collaborations with Dr. Brad Hafford are some of the most disgustingly wholesome content I've ever seen on CZcams. This... intergenerational conversation between two people united by a common interest and field of study. It is a kind of learning that I never encountered outside of the strictly regimented environment of, say, a classroom. At once spontaneous and informative. Quite literally a passing down of the wisdom of our elders, in a way. What could be more appropriate to archaeology?
I hope this is but the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between your two channels!
Well, I'm glad Dr. Hafford said that a lot of the deities look alike, because that goddess figure to me reminded me of a portrayal I've seen of the goddess Ishtar (another notable Babylonian goddess).
It's not totally impossible that Bao was inspiration for Ishtar, I mean the roman adopted gods/goddesses from the greek and egyptian pantheon.
@@kittehgo But Ishtar would be a contemporary of Bao, and Inanna (her earlier form) goes back to Sumer. The professor said the symbology is key for identifying deities; Ishtar was an 8 pointed star and or a lion.
And yes, the Greeks and Romans did pick up deities - Ishtar/Inanna is seen as a precursor to Aphrodite and Venus, though I don't now if that's a direct 1 to 1 or if its just that they're in the sexy-and-influential love goddess archetype which can also be found more generally.
@rashkavar OH?, I missed that they were contemporary. But still, when they created their pantheon. Would it be impossible to borrow bits?, I mean, after some 10+ gods. It wouldn't surprise me if they kinda copied bits..
@@kittehgo (At least, I think they're contemporary. I know they're both Babylonian (Ishtar is in many cultures of the region) but for all I know, Babylon may have replaced some or all of their pantheon at some point. I know *very* little about Babylon's history and culture, so I tend to see them as a monolith, which tends to lead to mistakes.
@@rashkavar You and me are in the same boat 😀, I just know surface stuff of that age
As soon as I saw that knucklebone piece, I knew it was a die.
9:45 could you imagine looking at baroque art in the distant future and concluding that humans must have had odd proportions? lol
Love how I guessed the blue knuckle to be a die, only for him to pull out an actual die 😂
You encouraged me to go to college for archeology so thank you.
Excited!!
Hi hunny😂
My first guess with the knucklebone was a gamepiece, but I wouldn't have guessed it was lapis!
It isn't. It is blue glass. Not sure why Milo didn't include that clarification.😢
Milo, it seems that you have found a friend, a colleague, and, (dare I say it?), mentor.
Once again, you have thoroughly, engaged, entertained, and educated me... love it, and keep on doing so❣️
The boobed lizard statue, is who takes you to the after life, and the face is so when you get to "hell", you can have that "person" take your spot, so you can go to "heaven".
I know its not, but If it's a "knuckle" could it have been used as a hinge? With the connecting bone, and a few strings couldn't you make a piece of jewelry or something that moved in the same was as a sheep hoof?
I had a similar thought of perhaps an ornate recreation of a skeleton decorating the home of someone with high status, perhaps a respected scholar.
That giggle at the end was full of such a childlike delight Milo. If you ever wonder why all of us love your videos, it's because of your genuine fascination, wonder and joy at everything in archeology.
My heart soared when I found out that I had guessed that the first artifact was an imitation knucklebone correctly. My archaeological/historical education finally paid off.