I live in Switzerland and I know an ancient forest where I go every year and pull out about 20kg of chanterelle and 10kg of toten trumpeten. These mushrooms come back every year, potentially for thousands of years.
One year I found a big piece of a clay cooking pan in the area where the chanterelles grow.
There are also tons of ravines, potential caves but I won't know until I climb down the ravines, but about 20 km away there are tourist caves where you can pay to enter them, part of the same ridge system.
I wanted to see if I could use a metal detector to find treasure, like in the article but it's illegal here. I suppose I could go in at night with the equipment but it's probably not worth it since while the Roman's were very active in Switzerland they weren't in this very specific region.
But still, where did the clay cooking pan come from?
mycatisblack 12 hours ago [-]
One of the projects I intend to make some day is a metal detector with 2 pickup coils(*), one in or around the sole of each shoe. Instead of an auditory signal, a vibrating element strapped to my leg or ankle. That way you can metaldetect difficult terrain/non-stop/inconspicuously.
(*) they each work independently, like two metaldetectors. Not the detector type with an RX and TX coil.
mhb 18 hours ago [-]
Why is a metal detector illegal?
fnordian_slip 13 hours ago [-]
Top stop people destroying the context, as laypeople can't (or won't even know about the need to) properly document the layers and non-metal finds around the metal. This makes dating a lot harder, and often destroys 90% of the scientific value of the find.
pjc50 15 hours ago [-]
To stop amateurs finding antiquities.
timonoko 17 hours ago [-]
Or rather "what constitutes a metal detector"? I could have such double-resonating circuitry in my shoe connected to earplug via bluetooth.
"Officer, this equipment is for detecting needles in the Geneva playground".
throw101010 12 hours ago [-]
Ever heard of the principle of "good faith" in the context of the Swiss law (Article 2 of the Civil Code)?
Sometimes I think it was a prescient concept of our law makers and judiciary, many decades ago they knew they would have to deal with this kind of reddit-tier smartassery... if you have a device to detect metal, and you use it to detect metal, it is a metal detector, no judge will give you a pass because you thought you were very clever.
timonoko 9 hours ago [-]
You can surgically insert tiny piece of magnet in your big toe. It is crazy good metal detector.
nl 9 hours ago [-]
As someone who worked on metal detectors I assure you this isn't true.
Actual metal detectors can detect gold a meter down through mineralized soil with metal scrap in between.
timonoko 8 hours ago [-]
Wasnt there somebody who did it with his finger? Results were so amazing that almost wanted to do the same. Except then you have to be very careful around powerful magnets.
bryanrasmussen 3 hours ago [-]
complicated murder horror plot involving luring fellow into area with powerful magnets unbeknownst to them.
raverbashing 6 hours ago [-]
> Ever heard of the principle of "good faith" in the context of the Swiss law (Article 2 of the Civil Code)?
This is HN, most discussions around laws fail to consider the legal context and practices, especially as it relates to (in general) Europe
Instead, people here think you can "Bazinga" the law to a judge and that GDPR enforcement will drone them if their website don't have a popup.
is_true 8 hours ago [-]
Can't you say you lost a ring or something?
Just cover holes properly. Please. With love, my ankles.
nkrisc 8 hours ago [-]
Does the law say it’s permitted if you lost a ring? That would be a useless law - everyone would be losing rings.
countrymile 1 days ago [-]
For anyone who hasn't seen the detectorists, it gives a very British perspective on this sort of work, and is one of the best British comedies of the last ten years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detectorists
louky 1 days ago [-]
So does Time Team, and they're back making new episodes.
I loved time team back in the day and I’ve just started rewatching some of them (one of the streaming services has series 13-17 here in Aus).
Might not be the same without Tony, but I see he did pop in for a cameo…
wswope 2 hours ago [-]
I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised: There was an awkward transition post-Tony, but the new hosts have finally hit their stride.
Natalie/Gus/Hilde are far more serene presences than Tony, but they let the rest of the cast shine through. Helen and Derek in particular are the standout presenters right now, and while they don’t have the same manic/ADHD vibe, they’re both passionate and curious in a way that reflects Tony’s style and keeps the narrative intriguing.
4ndrewl 1 days ago [-]
The British perspective on this is really the Portable Antquities Scheme at https://finds.org.uk/ which has been running for over 20 years.
Agreed, it's fantastic. It's not just a brilliant and warm comedy, it's also apparently a really accurate and well-researched depiction of the metal detecting world.
jvm___ 22 hours ago [-]
Detectorist was the perfect "the world is a normal place" show during the early days of the pandemic.
ascorbic 6 hours ago [-]
Mackenzie Crook also made (and stars in) Worzel Gummidge, which despite being a kids' show about a talking scarecrow, feels like very much a partner of the Detectorists and is just as lovely. Toby Jones appearing as every member of the bonfire committee is a particular treat.
ggm-at-algebras 12 hours ago [-]
Absolutely the best fictional story of the genre. Lovingly made, with nuance and some sadness: Diana Rigg, real life mother of Rachael Stirling, (who was cast as her daughter in this series) died during its later series, reflected in plots.
The theme music by Johnny Flynn and Dan Michaelson is perfect.
jl6 15 hours ago [-]
This show is a great example of how good TV comes from good writing, not high budget.
walthamstow 15 hours ago [-]
Succession had both and it was damn near perfect
BurningFrog 1 days ago [-]
Impressed that people turned in "1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts".
That gold is worth about $160k!
If I ran the program I would pay at least the metal value to anyone turning artifacts in. To remove the temptation that doubtless keeps some finds away from the science.
olalonde 24 hours ago [-]
If I understand correctly, they were paid $150k for it.
> Aagaard, Dreiøe and their friend the late Poul Nørgaard Pedersen discovered nearly 1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts near the modern town of Fæsted, including armbands that archaeologists have interpreted as oath bands [...] Aagaard, Dreiøe and Nørgaard received just over a million kroner for the oath ring treasure, the equivalent of about $150,000.
BurningFrog 5 hours ago [-]
So they already have a system like I suggested!
I'm glad to hear it!
Less glad that I missed this fact reading the article :)
ambentzen 1 days ago [-]
How would law abiding citizen Joe Random from Nowhere even know where to offload that on the black market?
It's a bit like internet piracy, make it easy and convenient to follow the law and most people will do it.
protocolture 20 hours ago [-]
>How would law abiding citizen Joe Random from Nowhere even know where to offload that on the black market?
Considering the state of copper theft, the large number of videos on facebook and youtube describing how to melt metals into bar stock, and the low cost of the tools I dont know why this would be considered specialist knowledge.
Maybe if they needed aqua regia or something.
TulliusCicero 20 hours ago [-]
This comment reminds me of discussion when weed gets legalized in the states.
There's always people going, "psh, this won't make weed any more accessible, it's already so easy to get, anybody can do it!"
And yet, nevertheless, inevitably there are people who try it only because it's now legal and openly sold in stores. A lot of people simply don't want to do things they consider shady, no matter how easy it is. Maybe it being legalized doesn't make it any more accessible to you, but you aren't everyone.
protocolture 19 hours ago [-]
I see where you are coming from but not quite.
What I am saying is that the process is already legal and available, so the process isn't a barrier to melting and selling the gold. I don't take a position on whether someone would simply not do it because its illegal.
The process of growing and selling weed was illegal, and thus also a barrier to accessing weed.
If anything your line of reasoning makes me want to legalise and protect melting gold you find and selling it.
sandworm101 15 hours ago [-]
It isn't that easy. Anyone paying money for a homemade bar will test it first. The ancient gold will be very impure by bullion standards. The fact that it was horde gold will be found out very quickly.
protocolture 13 hours ago [-]
>Anyone paying money for a homemade bar will test it first.
There's a pretty lively market in gold on ebay. Often forged into bars or coins by end users.
I have personally dealt with retail gold buyers who legally clear gold of all sorts with little question. They pay based on purity and likely have a price for whatever purity the horde gold is smelted at.
There's also that Singapore Gold Port at the Singapore Airport. Even if they wont touch you directly, there are IIRC, in person trades in the airport which can then be deposited straight into storage.
BurningFrog 24 hours ago [-]
Can't say I've tried, but I think it's pretty easy to find buyers for gold.
Melting it removes the legal risk.
dwattttt 23 hours ago [-]
Melting it removes _a_ legal risk. I'm sure if someone looks they can find a risk or two still there somewhere.
Crime and theft happen in Denmark as in other countries. But finders get compensated for the metal value so unless they are collectors or have contacts to private collectors, there is not a lot to gain.
I know a guy who found a gold treasure on a field and he was contacted by a private collector after appearing in local news (he turned them down). So who knows how often it happens? But I don’t think finds are common enough that detecting and selling can be a lucrative business. It is usually enthusiasts with an interst in history.
euroderf 13 hours ago [-]
Wasn't it Copenhagen where the biker gangs had RPGs ?
It's enthusiasts - hobbyists willing to invest in metal detection gear, spending their free time doing this. If their aim was to get wealthy, they would be doing basically anything else.
Digging for gold artifacts and treasure is not a great strategy to become rich - these people are obviously much more interested in the history, and maybe the recognition. Of course they will turn it in.
1 days ago [-]
fudgybiscuits 1 days ago [-]
Whether that's good or not really does depend on how much gold was found though, could be that 10kg was kept for all we know!
southernplaces7 23 hours ago [-]
>could be that 10kg was kept for all we know!
Doubtful. Finding such a hoard and reporting it to the authorities for formal examination by default means showing where you found it so the site itself can be examined by archaeologists. They'd likely be able to tell if you'd found more than you reported in the cache site. It's like forensics, but for ancient artefacts and ruins, pretty sophisticated at times.
bazoom42 13 hours ago [-]
You do get compensation for the metal value.
colechristensen 1 days ago [-]
Once properly documented, I have some skepticism that it's really necessary to hold every historical artifact found, inside some museum archive basically never to be seen again.
AlotOfReading 1 days ago [-]
It isn't, but it's impossible to know what will be useful for research again in the future, so historical researchers make an effort to preserve what they can and avoid excavating if possible.
southernplaces7 23 hours ago [-]
What else should be done with the artifacts? And also why not? It's like storing your data. If you can keep it relatively inexpensive, why not keep it around just in case some future need or curiosity makes it worthwhile?
neaden 9 hours ago [-]
I mean roman coins for example are so plentiful that they are sold relatively cheaply, we have more then enough of them for all the museums of the world if they wanted them. I don't think viking era treasure is anywhere close to as common but there comes a point where it's plentiful enough.
colechristensen 21 hours ago [-]
If I find something without particular significance that's not a part of an archaeological site, say a Roman coin in a field somewhere, it's fine if there's a requirement that a museum gets to take records and do any sort of scans it wants. But unless it was some item of particular cultural heritage or research interest, the museum should give it back to me or buy it from me or give me something in return like a fair tax break.
Lots and lots of stuff gets cataloged and archived and basically never looked at again resulting in little archeological value or any other public value and is kind of just scientific hoarding.
BurningFrog 24 hours ago [-]
You can probably do a detailed 3d scan and retain 95% of the scientific value.
heikkilevanto 23 hours ago [-]
No, at some point they want to analyze the impurities in the gold, or the isotopes, or something else we don't know yet...
BurningFrog 21 hours ago [-]
Sure, that can be done together with the scanning.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
It can't, because we don't know what yet unknown questions we might want to ask in the future or what yet uninvented technology might come to exist. Add a limited budget and storage space and it becomes clear why the preference is often not to excavate but instead to restrict public access to the site and leave things in the ground.
BurningFrog 6 hours ago [-]
We can measure impurities and isotopes extremely well, which is what the post I responded to mentioned. This is very mature technology.
You're right that we don't know what new branches of science might be developed that could produce new insights from old artifacts.
But remember the situation. My idea makes it possible to record and analyze ancient finds that currently just disappear. It only gets us 99% of what we want, but in the current system we get 0%.
The isotopes were just an arbitrary example. The important bit was at the end "or something else we don't know yet". Granted I'd guess that's fairly unlikely for coins specifically.
> currently just disappear
They don't though. The preferences are as other comments have described - to stash the artifacts away in storage or to leave them in the ground for excavation in the future.
Whether or not the laws and common practices are fair to the people who discover the items is a separate matter.
rectang 20 hours ago [-]
Thank goodness you weren't in charge of the Herculanum scrolls.
pbhjpbhj 14 hours ago [-]
We can produce 3D scans of the gold, do mass spectroscopy.
Do you feel that vikings somehow embedded secrets in their coin?
Scrolls have writing on, if we can't yet read them we'd know that there was something else to discover (known unknowns) and clearly wouldn't dispose of them.
Of course the Vikings might have embedded secret extraterrestrial technologies in their coins, but I'd take the bet that they haven't.
The downthread comment about leaving things in the ground is right though -- it was, and is imo, the right thing to do.
delusional 23 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure more than 5% of the scientific value is in the actual physical material. You can't examine the physics of the thing from a 3d scan.
23 hours ago [-]
tokai 1 days ago [-]
The budget to pay for these finds is regularly exceeded already. Paying the gold price would fleece the National Museum.
BurningFrog 24 hours ago [-]
Understood. But it's also true that you get what you pay for.
jopsen 24 hours ago [-]
Getting a cut is probably better.
Spending gold you can't document the origin of is most decidedly going to be a hassle. Certainly not without risk. And you probably don't have money laundering connections.
And you'll sleep better at night.
tokai 24 hours ago [-]
In this case it bought the most productive amateur archeology community in Europe :)
biophysboy 23 hours ago [-]
Denmark has a fantastic maritime museum right by the Kronborg castle with hundreds of model ships, wreckage artifacts and high-quality underwater photos. Would recommend visiting on a Copenhagen trip
erk__ 12 hours ago [-]
There is also a version of Danefæ for non-human made things called Danekræ
Do the detectorists get a certificate or something for their honesty?
tokai 24 hours ago [-]
They get a payment and they get to be a part of the archaeological process. I have a colleague that had a significant find recently. Her and her "crew" did the dig, cleaning, initial description and cataloguing, and surveyed the area around the site. With supervision from professional archaeologists. Without this system they would get to handover any finds to the landowner.
wewewedxfgdf 1 days ago [-]
"The swastika design next to the man's head predates the adoption of this symbol by the Nazis."
1,500 years ago!
WaitWaitWha 24 hours ago [-]
This saddens me that this had to be written.
24 hours ago [-]
Reasoning 17 hours ago [-]
Did it have to be written? Who's the hypothetical person who is confused that a 1,500 year old gold disk is older than the Nazi era.
necovek 14 hours ago [-]
Nobody is confused about that, but people are confused about whether the swastika represents something similar to Nazi ideology before the Nazis appropriated it.
trhway 22 hours ago [-]
how about hanging metal detector from a drone or just plain autonomous RC car. I think once such massive de-mining starts in Ukraine, the tech would trickle down into archaeology and the like fields.
flemhans 13 hours ago [-]
Mount the equipment on the plows that anyway traverse the fields
CrazyStat 4 hours ago [-]
Most farmers would probably not want to stop plowing to check out whatever the detector pings on.
thaumasiotes 1 days ago [-]
> Ginnerup dug up 14 glittering gold disks—some as big as saucers—that archaeologists say were buried about 1,500 years ago
> the real showstopper is an amulet called a bracteate with two stylized designs: a man in profile, his long hair pulled back in a braid, and a horse in full gallop. An expert in ancient runes says she was awestruck when she finally made out the inscription on top: “He is Odin’s man.”
> These embossed runes are the oldest known written mention of Odin, the Norse god of war and ruler of Valhalla. Ginnerup’s bracteate, which archaeologists describe as the most significant Danish find in centuries, extended the worship of Odin back 150 years
I don't think this is right. The first mention of Odin by a Germanic source could date to 500 AD. But the Romans wrote about the Germanic gods several centuries prior to that. They used the equivalence we still use today, calling Odin "Mercury". But what they say about the Germanic gods is compatible with what we know from Germanic sources; there's no reason to believe there was a change in the gods.
I note that the image on the bracteate features a pretty prominent swastika. Maybe Hitler was accidentally on to something after all.
tokai 1 days ago [-]
It's the oldest mention of Odin in Denmark. The sciam journalist lost that detail somewhere. That is why the find pushed worship of Odin in Denmark back 150 years.
ethan_smith 23 hours ago [-]
Roman accounts using interpretatio romana (equating Germanic deities with Roman gods) aren't the same as direct written evidence naming "Odin" specifically. The bracteate's significance is that it contains the actual name in runic form, not a Roman interpretation or equivalent.
thaumasiotes 22 hours ago [-]
Sure, but claiming that it pushes back the date of Odin's worship back 150 years is wrong. It hasn't made any change to our beliefs about when Odin was worshiped, or where, or by whom.
tokai 21 hours ago [-]
>It hasn't made any change to our beliefs about when Odin was worshiped, or where, or by whom.
Why state this so strongly over something that was misconstrued?
thaumasiotes 20 hours ago [-]
Huh?
HK-NC 21 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure who decided that Hitler stole the swastika from the Hindus, but it's false. The symbol appeared in the decorations of his childhood church IIRC and wasn't an alien symbol to germans elsewhere.
thaumasiotes 20 hours ago [-]
Where do you think he got the term "Aryan" from?
Reasoning 16 hours ago [-]
From contemporary ethnologists who used the term to refer to the proto-indo-europeans? Because the term aryan is common amongst the languages descended from the proto-indo-european language (Arya, Iran, Alans, Arios)?
Nazi philosophy grew out of 19th century ethnology which was heavily influenced by Darwinism. They believed the proto-indo-european ("Aryan") homeland was in northern Europe and that the spread of "Aryan" language was do to "Aryan" immigration to those regions and that in ancient times those regions were led by an "Aryan" "master race" who ruled over the "lesser races" do to their natural superior genes developed through generations of natural selection in the harsh northern climate.
To be clear, I believe that is all BS but I wrote all that to clarify that the Nazis didn't steal the term Aryan from the Hindu, it's a term used by the Indo-Iranians to self-designate which was erroneously misattributed to the proto-indo-europeans by early European ethnologists.
thaumasiotes 16 hours ago [-]
So Hitler was jealous of the fact that the Romance speakers had history and the Germanic speakers didn't. And he solved that problem by appropriating the history of India and claiming it was also the history of the Germans. He used Indian symbols and Indian words.
But that doesn't mean that he took them from India? That's crazy. What else would you say he did? That they were from India was the point. Without their Indian identity, they would have failed to serve his purpose of giving a history to the Germans.
versteegen 11 hours ago [-]
You are missing Reasoning's point (although I think you're right about the Nazis needing to create or appropriate some other people's heritage). 'Aryan' was a linguistic term previously mistakenly used to mean Proto-Indo-European. Hitler didn't personally invent Nazi master-race ideology and look to India, it's a small pseudo-intellectual extension of (European) 19th/early 20th century ethnology and eugenics, and that's a very important distinction to make, to understand how the Nazi came to believe what they did through a product of many often-plausible steps and all-too-common character flaws, not through one man.
thaumasiotes 6 hours ago [-]
> You are missing Reasoning's point
Note that the comment here is from HK-NC:
>>> I'm not sure who decided that Hitler stole the swastika from the Hindus, but it's false. The symbol appeared in the decorations of his childhood church IIRC and wasn't an alien symbol to germans elsewhere.
You're saying I shouldn't be reading this as a claim that the Nazi swastika was an indigenous development, unrelated to the Indian symbol despite the fact that it symbolized an official ideology naming the Indians as a sister tribe to the Germans and adopting the tribal name of the Indians for the Germans, and the fact that it was referred to by its Sanskrit name?
> Hitler didn't personally invent Nazi master-race ideology and look to India
Why is this relevant? He is the one who adopted the ideology on behalf of the German state.
So, "written mention of Odin" seems to mean written as "Odin', and not as "Mercury".
It also mentions some debate over if the Goths actually worshiped Odin/Mercury, but I am too ill-informed to make sense if that's relevant.
I did manage to find a scholarly reference to the topic at https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/c11e69e... ("Pre-print papers of THE 18TH INTERNATIONAL SAGA CONFERENCE SAGAS AND THE CIRCUM-BALTIC ARENA. Helsinki and Tallinn, 7th–14th August 2022")
> The problem of Mercury
> Despite lack of Germanic evidence for the existence of a cult of Wodan/Óðinn before the fifth (or perhaps even the sixth) century, as presented above, many scholars maintain ancient roots. For example, disregarding critical scholarship on various individual sources, Schjødt reiterated that “taken together, they strongly indicate that Óðinn, although not exactly the same as the god that we know from the Nordic sources, has roots reaching far back in time, probably as early as the Indo-European era (at least 3000 BC)” (Schjødt 2019: 67). ...
> The reading of interpretation romana maintains that Tacitus’ famous description of Germanic deities, Deorum maxime Mercurium colunt, should be understood to signify Wodan/Óðinn. Of course, it has already been shown by Karl Helm that this was a historical trope copied from Herodotus, and/or Caesar’s Commentarii de bello gallico (Helm 1946: 7-12). The fact that Caesar was talking about Celts, and his description of religion among the Germani mentions worship of the sun, moon, and fire, does nothing to secure the reliability of such ‘historical’ sources. Either way, the argument that the foremost deity interpreted by Tacitus as a ‘Mercury-type’ must be Wodan/Óðinn is a projection of the latter’s supremacy in Old Norse material onto a Germanic society several centuries older. This becomes a circular argument and cannot be leading.
never_inline 18 hours ago [-]
> “taken together, they strongly indicate that Óðinn, although not exactly the same as the god that we know from the Nordic sources, has roots reaching far back in time, probably as early as the Indo-European era
A reader might be interested in Kris Creshaw's "The One-eyed god" which reiterates Odin's similarities with other Indo-european analogues, specifically Apollo and Vedic Rudra.
Indeed, much of the Odin's acts and characteristics find similarities in the deeds of Rudra or Indra in Vedic myth. The Vedics even had a conception of afterlife similar to Valhalla, where the most excellent people and fallen warriors reach Indra's realm, carried by Apsaras.
Indra is also god of sacred verse, "vipratamo kavinam", which is similar to odin mastering the runes, giving a dual priest-king and warrior king function.
The efficacy of "several great deeds" is emphasized for both. Eg: The Havāmal: "140. word following word, I found me words, deed following deed, I wrought deeds.". The Rig Veda (1.101.4) - Praised, he is firm at every deed of his.
thaumasiotes 15 hours ago [-]
> Indra is also god of sacred verse, "vipratamo kavinam", which is similar to odin mastering the runes
That seems pretty tenuous; at the time Indo-Iranian diverged from the European branch, runes didn't exist at all, and most likely the proto-Indo-Europeans had no writing of any variety.
For example, different families' words for writing:
- write [English], from PIE *wrey;
- scribere [Latin], from PIE *(s)kreybʰ;
- graphein [Greek], from PIE *gerbʰ; (cognate with English carve)
- likhati [Sanskrit], from PIE *reyk(ʷ)h₂;
- neveshtan [Persian], from PIE *peyḱ (cognate with English paint)
[all taken from wiktionary]
This doesn't look like a concept that was around before the groups diverged.
thaumasiotes 23 hours ago [-]
Tacitus isn't the only interpretation of the Germanic gods. He is thought to refer to Thor as Hercules, but there are other references where a Jupiter is mentioned. There is a Roman complaint that the Germanic peoples see Mercury as the father of Jupiter when it should be the other way around.
And while it's possible, it would be extremely surprising for Odin to be a new addition to the Germanic pantheon when we find him attested under that name in the 5th/6th century. He's in charge of the whole thing! The norm is for gods - all gods - to have very deep roots. Where we can prove that a god is novel, we can also often show that it's a borrowing of a foreign god with deeper roots (e.g. Adonis < Tammuz) or that it is an explicit deification of a human (e.g. if you go to the temple of the city god in Shanghai, there's an informative plaque explaining that the city god was posthumously appointed to the position by an emperor of the Yuan dynasty).
I do understand that after cassava or maize was introduced somewhere in Africa, anthropologists documented a new goddess associated with the crop. Innovation exists. But pantheons are very conservative overall. "Several centuries" is not an amount of time where we expect to see pantheonic turnover.
vintermann 14 hours ago [-]
> He's in charge of the whole thing!
But he may not always have been. In most European mythologies, the thunder god is the most "in charge". In Norse mythology, the thunder god is the son of the chief god instead. My assumption is that Thor was the main god until they syncretistically tried to incorporate new beliefs about "the father and the son" and self-sacrifice on a tree, which even by this super-early mention of Odin, was over 500 years old.
thaumasiotes 6 hours ago [-]
> In most European mythologies, the thunder god is the most "in charge".
Most? It's true of the Greeks. It's true of the Romans after their mythology is unified with the Greeks, and there's a good chance it was also true before.
But that's it, as far as I see. It's not true of Celtic mythology and Slavic mythology is barely known.
Amezarak 10 minutes ago [-]
Given the meaning of Jupiter and the extreme importance of Jupiter even in the time of the Roman kings, I think there's much more than a "good chance."
Slavic mythology isn't that unknown. We know that a thunder god (Perun) was on top of it. In Finnish mythology, it's pretty clear Ilmarinen (a sky/weather God) is on top of it. Though it has a specific thunder god (Ukko), they seem to think he came later and took over thunder from the sky god.
Celtic mythology doesn't have a sky god on top, it's true. But it has the same issue as Norse mythology: in the form we know it, it's much younger (and probably influenced by) Christianity.
jltsiren 4 hours ago [-]
Very little about Finnish mythology is clear. Pretty much everything known about it was written down centuries after Christianity had become established in Finland. And the same applies to other Finnic and Uralic peoples as well.
In some sense, talking about gods in Finnish mythology is a mistake. The entities now understood as gods were not the same kind of big important guys as Indo-European gods. Finnish mythology was more focused on spirits, most of which had narrow and/or local domains. "Gods" were more like spirits with wider domains.
Then there is the confusion around names Ilmarinen, Ukko, and Jumala, which possibly referred to approximately two entities in total. And to make the matters worse, "Jumala" and "jumala" in modern Finnish translate as "God" and "god".
Or that could just be what people remembered centuries after the pre-Christian Finnish society was gone. Very little about that society is known. The traditional treatment of Finnish history is mostly based on archaeological evidence until the semi-mythical Swedish Crusades.
eesmith 17 hours ago [-]
Were all gods worshiped?
By my limited understanding, the question isn't if Odin was part of the pantheon, but rather if there was a specific cult of Odin.
thaumasiotes 16 hours ago [-]
I don't understand your question. All gods are worshiped by definition.
I am a software developer with little knowledge of the topic.
What do we call a personified supernatural being who is not worshiped? Are there really no such entities?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God informs me: "In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped". The "often" tells me that a god is not always worshipped.
How should I make sense of this line from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Pe... : "There is no direct, undisputed evidence for the worship of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and the existence of a cult of Odin among them is debated."
Definition 1 starts 'The veneration, devotion and religious rites given to a deity'. What veneration, devotion, and religious rites are attested?
thaumasiotes 6 hours ago [-]
> How should I make sense of this line from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Pe... : "There is no direct, undisputed evidence for the worship of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and the existence of a cult of Odin among them is debated."
You should read "the worship of Odin" and "the existence of a cult of Odin" as meaning the same thing. The sentence wouldn't mean anything different if it said "there is no direct, undisputed evidence for a cult of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and its existence among them is debated", or "there is no direct, undisputed evidence for the worship of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and it is debated whether he was part of their pantheon".
> Definition 1 starts 'The veneration, devotion and religious rites given to a deity'.
There are two concepts here:
1. Belief that a god or spirit exists.
2. Rituals intended to communicate with, maintain good relations with, propitiate, or placate a god or spirit.
"Worship", "veneration", and "devotion" all refer to both of those concepts. "Religious rites" refer to the second one.
So a reference to belief in a deity is an attestation of "worship", "veneration", and "devotion". For rites, Tacitus mentions that Mercury receives animal and human sacrifices while other deities only get animals.
> What do we call a personified supernatural being who is not worshiped? Are there really no such entities?
In the ordinary sense, obviously not, because acknowledging that something is a supernatural entity is worshiping it. But even in the sense of particular rituals, there are no such entities. All supernatural beings receive prayers some of the time.
One year I found a big piece of a clay cooking pan in the area where the chanterelles grow.
There are also tons of ravines, potential caves but I won't know until I climb down the ravines, but about 20 km away there are tourist caves where you can pay to enter them, part of the same ridge system.
I wanted to see if I could use a metal detector to find treasure, like in the article but it's illegal here. I suppose I could go in at night with the equipment but it's probably not worth it since while the Roman's were very active in Switzerland they weren't in this very specific region.
But still, where did the clay cooking pan come from?
(*) they each work independently, like two metaldetectors. Not the detector type with an RX and TX coil.
"Officer, this equipment is for detecting needles in the Geneva playground".
Sometimes I think it was a prescient concept of our law makers and judiciary, many decades ago they knew they would have to deal with this kind of reddit-tier smartassery... if you have a device to detect metal, and you use it to detect metal, it is a metal detector, no judge will give you a pass because you thought you were very clever.
Actual metal detectors can detect gold a meter down through mineralized soil with metal scrap in between.
This is HN, most discussions around laws fail to consider the legal context and practices, especially as it relates to (in general) Europe
Instead, people here think you can "Bazinga" the law to a judge and that GDPR enforcement will drone them if their website don't have a popup.
Just cover holes properly. Please. With love, my ankles.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtpbubYLW2fdf9ySyCS0f...
I loved time team back in the day and I’ve just started rewatching some of them (one of the streaming services has series 13-17 here in Aus).
Might not be the same without Tony, but I see he did pop in for a cameo…
Natalie/Gus/Hilde are far more serene presences than Tony, but they let the rest of the cast shine through. Helen and Derek in particular are the standout presenters right now, and while they don’t have the same manic/ADHD vibe, they’re both passionate and curious in a way that reflects Tony’s style and keeps the narrative intriguing.
You'll find details of research papers and the Staffordshire Hoard, probably one of the largest collections of Anglo-Saxon metalwork ever found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staffordshire_Hoard
The theme music by Johnny Flynn and Dan Michaelson is perfect.
That gold is worth about $160k!
If I ran the program I would pay at least the metal value to anyone turning artifacts in. To remove the temptation that doubtless keeps some finds away from the science.
> Aagaard, Dreiøe and their friend the late Poul Nørgaard Pedersen discovered nearly 1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts near the modern town of Fæsted, including armbands that archaeologists have interpreted as oath bands [...] Aagaard, Dreiøe and Nørgaard received just over a million kroner for the oath ring treasure, the equivalent of about $150,000.
I'm glad to hear it!
Less glad that I missed this fact reading the article :)
It's a bit like internet piracy, make it easy and convenient to follow the law and most people will do it.
Considering the state of copper theft, the large number of videos on facebook and youtube describing how to melt metals into bar stock, and the low cost of the tools I dont know why this would be considered specialist knowledge.
Maybe if they needed aqua regia or something.
There's always people going, "psh, this won't make weed any more accessible, it's already so easy to get, anybody can do it!"
And yet, nevertheless, inevitably there are people who try it only because it's now legal and openly sold in stores. A lot of people simply don't want to do things they consider shady, no matter how easy it is. Maybe it being legalized doesn't make it any more accessible to you, but you aren't everyone.
What I am saying is that the process is already legal and available, so the process isn't a barrier to melting and selling the gold. I don't take a position on whether someone would simply not do it because its illegal.
The process of growing and selling weed was illegal, and thus also a barrier to accessing weed.
If anything your line of reasoning makes me want to legalise and protect melting gold you find and selling it.
There's a pretty lively market in gold on ebay. Often forged into bars or coins by end users.
I have personally dealt with retail gold buyers who legally clear gold of all sorts with little question. They pay based on purity and likely have a price for whatever purity the horde gold is smelted at.
There's also that Singapore Gold Port at the Singapore Airport. Even if they wont touch you directly, there are IIRC, in person trades in the airport which can then be deposited straight into storage.
Melting it removes the legal risk.
I know a guy who found a gold treasure on a field and he was contacted by a private collector after appearing in local news (he turned them down). So who knows how often it happens? But I don’t think finds are common enough that detecting and selling can be a lucrative business. It is usually enthusiasts with an interst in history.
Digging for gold artifacts and treasure is not a great strategy to become rich - these people are obviously much more interested in the history, and maybe the recognition. Of course they will turn it in.
Doubtful. Finding such a hoard and reporting it to the authorities for formal examination by default means showing where you found it so the site itself can be examined by archaeologists. They'd likely be able to tell if you'd found more than you reported in the cache site. It's like forensics, but for ancient artefacts and ruins, pretty sophisticated at times.
Lots and lots of stuff gets cataloged and archived and basically never looked at again resulting in little archeological value or any other public value and is kind of just scientific hoarding.
You're right that we don't know what new branches of science might be developed that could produce new insights from old artifacts.
But remember the situation. My idea makes it possible to record and analyze ancient finds that currently just disappear. It only gets us 99% of what we want, but in the current system we get 0%.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Nirvana...
> currently just disappear
They don't though. The preferences are as other comments have described - to stash the artifacts away in storage or to leave them in the ground for excavation in the future.
Whether or not the laws and common practices are fair to the people who discover the items is a separate matter.
Do you feel that vikings somehow embedded secrets in their coin?
Scrolls have writing on, if we can't yet read them we'd know that there was something else to discover (known unknowns) and clearly wouldn't dispose of them.
Of course the Vikings might have embedded secret extraterrestrial technologies in their coins, but I'd take the bet that they haven't.
The downthread comment about leaving things in the ground is right though -- it was, and is imo, the right thing to do.
Spending gold you can't document the origin of is most decidedly going to be a hassle. Certainly not without risk. And you probably don't have money laundering connections.
And you'll sleep better at night.
https://samlinger.snm.ku.dk/en/danekrae/
There is a lot less specimens in that collection as it only includes specimens that are deemed important in some ways, right now there are 1054.
They can be viewed online here: https://collections.snm.ku.dk/en/search?dataset=5b5305ae-35d...
(edit: That online collection only seem to contain biological specimen, meteors and geological specimens are not included as far as I can tell)
1,500 years ago!
> the real showstopper is an amulet called a bracteate with two stylized designs: a man in profile, his long hair pulled back in a braid, and a horse in full gallop. An expert in ancient runes says she was awestruck when she finally made out the inscription on top: “He is Odin’s man.”
> These embossed runes are the oldest known written mention of Odin, the Norse god of war and ruler of Valhalla. Ginnerup’s bracteate, which archaeologists describe as the most significant Danish find in centuries, extended the worship of Odin back 150 years
I don't think this is right. The first mention of Odin by a Germanic source could date to 500 AD. But the Romans wrote about the Germanic gods several centuries prior to that. They used the equivalence we still use today, calling Odin "Mercury". But what they say about the Germanic gods is compatible with what we know from Germanic sources; there's no reason to believe there was a change in the gods.
I note that the image on the bracteate features a pretty prominent swastika. Maybe Hitler was accidentally on to something after all.
Why state this so strongly over something that was misconstrued?
Nazi philosophy grew out of 19th century ethnology which was heavily influenced by Darwinism. They believed the proto-indo-european ("Aryan") homeland was in northern Europe and that the spread of "Aryan" language was do to "Aryan" immigration to those regions and that in ancient times those regions were led by an "Aryan" "master race" who ruled over the "lesser races" do to their natural superior genes developed through generations of natural selection in the harsh northern climate.
To be clear, I believe that is all BS but I wrote all that to clarify that the Nazis didn't steal the term Aryan from the Hindu, it's a term used by the Indo-Iranians to self-designate which was erroneously misattributed to the proto-indo-europeans by early European ethnologists.
But that doesn't mean that he took them from India? That's crazy. What else would you say he did? That they were from India was the point. Without their Indian identity, they would have failed to serve his purpose of giving a history to the Germans.
Note that the comment here is from HK-NC:
>>> I'm not sure who decided that Hitler stole the swastika from the Hindus, but it's false. The symbol appeared in the decorations of his childhood church IIRC and wasn't an alien symbol to germans elsewhere.
You're saying I shouldn't be reading this as a claim that the Nazi swastika was an indigenous development, unrelated to the Indian symbol despite the fact that it symbolized an official ideology naming the Indians as a sister tribe to the Germans and adopting the tribal name of the Indians for the Germans, and the fact that it was referred to by its Sanskrit name?
> Hitler didn't personally invent Nazi master-race ideology and look to India
Why is this relevant? He is the one who adopted the ideology on behalf of the German state.
So, "written mention of Odin" seems to mean written as "Odin', and not as "Mercury".
It also mentions some debate over if the Goths actually worshiped Odin/Mercury, but I am too ill-informed to make sense if that's relevant.
I did manage to find a scholarly reference to the topic at https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/c11e69e... ("Pre-print papers of THE 18TH INTERNATIONAL SAGA CONFERENCE SAGAS AND THE CIRCUM-BALTIC ARENA. Helsinki and Tallinn, 7th–14th August 2022")
> The problem of Mercury
> Despite lack of Germanic evidence for the existence of a cult of Wodan/Óðinn before the fifth (or perhaps even the sixth) century, as presented above, many scholars maintain ancient roots. For example, disregarding critical scholarship on various individual sources, Schjødt reiterated that “taken together, they strongly indicate that Óðinn, although not exactly the same as the god that we know from the Nordic sources, has roots reaching far back in time, probably as early as the Indo-European era (at least 3000 BC)” (Schjødt 2019: 67). ...
> The reading of interpretation romana maintains that Tacitus’ famous description of Germanic deities, Deorum maxime Mercurium colunt, should be understood to signify Wodan/Óðinn. Of course, it has already been shown by Karl Helm that this was a historical trope copied from Herodotus, and/or Caesar’s Commentarii de bello gallico (Helm 1946: 7-12). The fact that Caesar was talking about Celts, and his description of religion among the Germani mentions worship of the sun, moon, and fire, does nothing to secure the reliability of such ‘historical’ sources. Either way, the argument that the foremost deity interpreted by Tacitus as a ‘Mercury-type’ must be Wodan/Óðinn is a projection of the latter’s supremacy in Old Norse material onto a Germanic society several centuries older. This becomes a circular argument and cannot be leading.
A reader might be interested in Kris Creshaw's "The One-eyed god" which reiterates Odin's similarities with other Indo-european analogues, specifically Apollo and Vedic Rudra.
Indeed, much of the Odin's acts and characteristics find similarities in the deeds of Rudra or Indra in Vedic myth. The Vedics even had a conception of afterlife similar to Valhalla, where the most excellent people and fallen warriors reach Indra's realm, carried by Apsaras.
Indra is also god of sacred verse, "vipratamo kavinam", which is similar to odin mastering the runes, giving a dual priest-king and warrior king function.
The efficacy of "several great deeds" is emphasized for both. Eg: The Havāmal: "140. word following word, I found me words, deed following deed, I wrought deeds.". The Rig Veda (1.101.4) - Praised, he is firm at every deed of his.
That seems pretty tenuous; at the time Indo-Iranian diverged from the European branch, runes didn't exist at all, and most likely the proto-Indo-Europeans had no writing of any variety.
For example, different families' words for writing:
- write [English], from PIE *wrey;
- scribere [Latin], from PIE *(s)kreybʰ;
- graphein [Greek], from PIE *gerbʰ; (cognate with English carve)
- likhati [Sanskrit], from PIE *reyk(ʷ)h₂;
- neveshtan [Persian], from PIE *peyḱ (cognate with English paint)
[all taken from wiktionary]
This doesn't look like a concept that was around before the groups diverged.
And while it's possible, it would be extremely surprising for Odin to be a new addition to the Germanic pantheon when we find him attested under that name in the 5th/6th century. He's in charge of the whole thing! The norm is for gods - all gods - to have very deep roots. Where we can prove that a god is novel, we can also often show that it's a borrowing of a foreign god with deeper roots (e.g. Adonis < Tammuz) or that it is an explicit deification of a human (e.g. if you go to the temple of the city god in Shanghai, there's an informative plaque explaining that the city god was posthumously appointed to the position by an emperor of the Yuan dynasty).
I do understand that after cassava or maize was introduced somewhere in Africa, anthropologists documented a new goddess associated with the crop. Innovation exists. But pantheons are very conservative overall. "Several centuries" is not an amount of time where we expect to see pantheonic turnover.
But he may not always have been. In most European mythologies, the thunder god is the most "in charge". In Norse mythology, the thunder god is the son of the chief god instead. My assumption is that Thor was the main god until they syncretistically tried to incorporate new beliefs about "the father and the son" and self-sacrifice on a tree, which even by this super-early mention of Odin, was over 500 years old.
Most? It's true of the Greeks. It's true of the Romans after their mythology is unified with the Greeks, and there's a good chance it was also true before.
But that's it, as far as I see. It's not true of Celtic mythology and Slavic mythology is barely known.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jupiter
Celtic mythology doesn't have a sky god on top, it's true. But it has the same issue as Norse mythology: in the form we know it, it's much younger (and probably influenced by) Christianity.
In some sense, talking about gods in Finnish mythology is a mistake. The entities now understood as gods were not the same kind of big important guys as Indo-European gods. Finnish mythology was more focused on spirits, most of which had narrow and/or local domains. "Gods" were more like spirits with wider domains.
Then there is the confusion around names Ilmarinen, Ukko, and Jumala, which possibly referred to approximately two entities in total. And to make the matters worse, "Jumala" and "jumala" in modern Finnish translate as "God" and "god".
Or that could just be what people remembered centuries after the pre-Christian Finnish society was gone. Very little about that society is known. The traditional treatment of Finnish history is mostly based on archaeological evidence until the semi-mythical Swedish Crusades.
By my limited understanding, the question isn't if Odin was part of the pantheon, but rather if there was a specific cult of Odin.
"The cult of Odin" would refer to anything and everything related to Odin. See sense 1 here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cult , or sense 3/4 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult .
What do we call a personified supernatural being who is not worshiped? Are there really no such entities?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God informs me: "In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped". The "often" tells me that a god is not always worshipped.
How should I make sense of this line from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Pe... : "There is no direct, undisputed evidence for the worship of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and the existence of a cult of Odin among them is debated."
Definition 1 starts 'The veneration, devotion and religious rites given to a deity'. What veneration, devotion, and religious rites are attested?
You should read "the worship of Odin" and "the existence of a cult of Odin" as meaning the same thing. The sentence wouldn't mean anything different if it said "there is no direct, undisputed evidence for a cult of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and its existence among them is debated", or "there is no direct, undisputed evidence for the worship of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and it is debated whether he was part of their pantheon".
> Definition 1 starts 'The veneration, devotion and religious rites given to a deity'.
There are two concepts here:
1. Belief that a god or spirit exists.
2. Rituals intended to communicate with, maintain good relations with, propitiate, or placate a god or spirit.
"Worship", "veneration", and "devotion" all refer to both of those concepts. "Religious rites" refer to the second one.
(Compare https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worship : "to honor or show reverence for as a divine being or supernatural power".)
So a reference to belief in a deity is an attestation of "worship", "veneration", and "devotion". For rites, Tacitus mentions that Mercury receives animal and human sacrifices while other deities only get animals.
> What do we call a personified supernatural being who is not worshiped? Are there really no such entities?
In the ordinary sense, obviously not, because acknowledging that something is a supernatural entity is worshiping it. But even in the sense of particular rituals, there are no such entities. All supernatural beings receive prayers some of the time.