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Science

Jewels From an Ethiopian Grave Reveal 2,000-Year-Old Link To Rome 82

Posted by samzenpus from the back-in-the-day dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Archaeologists have discovered jewels from an Ethiopian grave that revealed a 2,000-year-old link to Rome. Louise Schofield, a former British Museum curator, and her team of 11 excavated the ancient city of Aksum for six weeks where the artifacts were found. The treasures offer evidence that the Romans were trading in Aksum hundreds of years earlier than previously thought. Schofield said: “Every day we had shed-loads of treasure coming out of all the graves. I was blown away: I’d been confident we’d find something, but not on this scale."
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Jewels From an Ethiopian Grave Reveal 2,000-Year-Old Link To Rome More

Jewels From an Ethiopian Grave Reveal 2,000-Year-Old Link To Rome

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  • I see what they dug there (Score:4, Funny)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @07:31AM (#49865613)
    "Every day we had shed-loads of treasure coming out of all the graves...." Holy shed, that's a lot of treasure.

  • Worth anything? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skovnymfe ( 1671822 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @07:42AM (#49865651)
    All these treasures, are they worth anything? Will the Ethiopian people see a penny from all these treasures? Will they even see the treasures? Does anyone even care about Ethiopians?

  • Rome? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Because Egypt can't trade Roman jewels with Ethiopia?

  • I guess that's all the funding they could get. Fuck you, modern world.

    • Re:Six Weeks (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Psychotria ( 953670 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @08:38AM (#49865879)

      I guess my last post was a but abrupt but it does summarise my view of the modern world pretty well. We've, in my opinion, moved into an era where knowledge and research that has no practical application equates to something that's not worth all that much. Capitalism seems to be the dominant (economic) system that drives modern research and I hate it. If there is no concrete monetary profit from a venture then good luck pursuing an avenue of research that does not yield a "return on investment".

      As an example, at the job before my last job my role was to study plants, the environment and ecology, and write plans that would direct on-ground works to achieve restoration of degraded ecosystems. At first it seemed like a dream role. After a while I discovered that the accountants classified me as a "non-earner"; i.e. my work did not directly earn income for the company (for the most part -- I did consultancy work that did, but that was pretty minor compared to my overall workload). Therefore every time pay grades and, hey I would have appreciated this even more, thanks and acknowledgement I was always at the bottom rung of the ladder despite my work guiding the on-ground teams who implemented the works, corrective interventions, etc. that I developed. They were classified by the accounting department as "money earners" whilst I remained a "non earner" and therefore of less value to the company. In the end I acknowledged that they were stupid and resigned.

      Guess what. The next company, which I only left a month or so ago, had a similar system! I was told that as a researcher I did not directly earn money for the company and therefore I could not expect to get paid as much. I was also told that because I didn't directly control a team of people (only indirectly through my plans and development of project goals) that I was worth less. They didn't use those words but that's what it boiled down to. So I left that train wreck of a company as well. But, to my dismay, every single job I've applied or interviewed for since then has the same attitude! "How can you directly earn us money". They (the managers or whoever) cannot see indirect value.

      I guess what I am trying to say is that science or research without direct fiscal benefits is not, in my experience, that the modern world wants to pay for (well, maybe in academia but they don't pay that well either and you'd be constantly seeking grants that nobody wants to provide or sponsor).

      Archaeology must be even worse... in their case there is probably not even a hope of gaining a return on investment (fiscally). It's a shame that knowledge for knowledge's sake apparently means so little to so many these days. But, that's the society we've chosen I guess.

      • Re:Six Weeks (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LoyalOpposition ( 168041 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @10:08AM (#49866389)

        We've, in my opinion, moved into an era where knowledge and research that has no practical application equates to something that's not worth all that much. Capitalism seems to be the dominant (economic) system that drives modern research and I hate it. If there is no concrete monetary profit from a venture then good luck pursuing an avenue of research that does not yield a "return on investment".

        I understand your concern, but I think you're looking at things wrongly. I'm having a little trouble putting it into words, but maybe it'll help if you look at things this way. Imagine a world in which everyone was doing research that had no immediate benefits, or any expected return for the next two or three score years. You'd starve to death. People eat immediate food, and go to immediate doctors, and live in immediate houses, and wear immediate clothes. The inescapable conclusion is that only a fraction of people can be employed in that kind of research. The way that we, as an economic system, reach an equilibrium on the amount of that kind of research is by not over-stimulating it by excessive investment in it.

        Or if you can't sympathize with that explanation, then let me ask this question. If avenues of research with no return are so important, then why are you demanding a high salary and large raises?

        ~Loyal

      • Next time you're in Los Angeles, mosey on down to the La Brea tar pits: a worthless pond of old sticky muck. Hey, what's that just north of the pond? A shiny museum with a video and displays of dire wolf bones. No, the research there can't be of any monetary value.

        Only 1000 feet away there's the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, occasionally featuring artifacts dug from Egyptian sites. People pay to get in to see that stuff.

      • ..and, hey I would have appreciated this even more, thanks and acknowledgement..

        Just leaving this here since it appears to have been overloked

  • And next (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Attila Dimedici ( 1036002 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @08:09AM (#49865745)
    Next they will announce the startling revelation that there was trade between the United States and Mexico over 100 years ago.
    Seriously, have these people never looked at a map? The Roman Empire shared a border with the Empire mentioned in the article. Of course they were trading. That's what people do.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GroeFaZ ( 850443 )
      So you suggest that the actual researchers are incompetent beyond belief, but you can't be even be bothered to look at the /. summary?

      " that the Romans were trading in Aksum hundreds of years earlier than previously thought"
      • And yet, the Roman Empire already bordered on Aksum those hundreds of years earlier...how stupid did someone have to be to think they were not trading?

        • The same people who didn't know Men and Women are different.

        • It's quite dumb if they though there was no trade. I mean the Nile river goes there in Ethiopia. It's hardly surprising there was a trade route from Egypt to that part of Africa.

        • Not having evidence that they were trading is not the same as thinking that they weren't trading.
          • The summary says that the evidence shows that they were trading "hundreds of years earlier than previously thought." That phrasing indicates that they were thinking that they weren't trading. If it was just a matter of not having evidence the phrasing should have been "evidence that the Romans were trading in Aksum hundreds of years earlier than previously." By sticking the word "thought" on the end they are saying that no one thought they were trading that early.
            • Yeah, I was deconstructing that part of the article, and the objections to it, and wondering if it was worth the effort. Then something came up and I had to go and attend to the real world.

              Sloppy writing by the journalist, and unjustifiably sensationalist claims. So unheard-of.

      • Yeah, but is "earlier than previously thought" anything other than "gee, we never thought of it but now it seems obvious"?

        Because, honestly, if you look on a map they're pretty darned close and the whole surprise that the Romans might have had a broad reaching influence (and trade) seems a little silly.

        They had animals from all over the world, and who knows what else.

        If you showed me a map of the Roman empire and the location of Ethiopia when I was in middle school and said "do you think these people traded

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Muros ( 1167213 )
          I think any surprise voiced by archaeologists might be an unconscious echo of some of the rather racist "pirate" comments further up in this thread. People only trade with someone who has something of value to them, and despite knowing that that Ethiopia was once one of the great nations of the world, people will doubtless still think in terms of the poverty stricken, warlord ruled, lawless, desolate warzone it is today.

    • Personally, as a long-time reader of Archaeology magazine and enthusiastic amateur in the field, what I keep being surprised by is the field's routine assumptions that people before us were somehow stupid. Not just ignorant in the sense of technologically, but scholars seem to always be 'amazed' when ancient peoples are discovered to have done things that were rather clever.

      Considering that you'd HAVE to be much more 'on the ball' all the time to even survive in ancient eras (where a relatively trivial cut

      • Re:And next (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Attila Dimedici ( 1036002 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @12:15PM (#49867853)

        Personally, as a long-time reader of Archaeology magazine and enthusiastic amateur in the field, what I keep being surprised by is the field's routine assumptions that people before us were somehow stupid.

        It derives from the "progressive" view that is taught so thoroughly in most schools (especially colleges and universities) that "new" means "better" and that history is irrevocably moving from worse to better.

        • Personally, as a long-time reader of Archaeology magazine and enthusiastic amateur in the field, what I keep being surprised by is the field's routine assumptions that people before us were somehow stupid.

          It derives from the "progressive" view that is taught so thoroughly in most schools (especially colleges and universities) that "new" means "better" and that history is irrevocably moving from worse to better.

          Unless you believe that there was some Atlantean super civilization or earthly paradise now lost, on the evidence we have new does mean better and there has been progress.

          I would rather be an unemployed single parent mother in the Twenty First Century in the US or Europe than an emperor two thousand years ago.

  • After six weeks of carting out "shed-loads", you'd think they would be able to snap a few more pictures than a grainy shot of a perfume vial.

  • Is this surprising to us?

    I though we knew that the Romans had contact throughout Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, and all sorts of places.

    I thought it was pretty much a given that Ethiopia would be one of them ... the whole Cleopatra thing says they were definitely in the region.

    The archaeology is really cool, but I didn't think finding Roman influence there would surprise anybody.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )
      Not so much "if" they were trading, but "when" it all started. These findings push back the known start of trade by a couple of centuries.

      • Yeah, but some of this stuff always strikes me as a little bit of modern hubris and arrogance.

        People act like the Greeks and Romans suddenly appeared, and had engineering, society, agriculture, and all sorts of things -- and that before them people lived in mud huts and foraged.

        It always seems like the more we understand of what was happening in antiquity the more we realize our assumptions about them barely rising up out of the mud is just plain bullshit.

        The Egyptians, the Asyrians, the Babylonians and who

  • Look up "Kingdom of Axum" on Wikipedia. Prominent by 1st Century CE. Middle-man for ivory trade and trade between Rome and India.

  • The Bible doesnt mention such. And somepeole in Ethiopiia remember it. And there are genetic markers fo Choen genes in some Ethiopians. One city calims to have the Ark of the Convenant.

    • It is mentioned in the bible, Queen of Sheba, consort to Solomon the King of Israel.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Muros ( 1167213 )
        Also widely known of in recent history. A lot of Ethiopean Jews [wikipedia.org] were evacuated to Israel after the state's post WWII formation. Unfortunately, they still experienced many similar difficulties [bbc.com] with life in a different culture to black people in America, with widespread racism and discrimination despite being a faithful part of the most persecuted religion, and being brought to its centre to save them from persecution elsewhere.
  • And they know for 100% they were trading directly with Romans and not a third party who traded with Romans and Ethiopians how exactly?

    The video tapes they found at the site?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      This is the part that's puzzling me. Proof of a direct trade link would be interesting, but easily a thousand years earlier everyone in the Mediterranean would traded with each other and with the Nile Valley/Red Sea area. The Carthaginians especially.

      Though the quantity they found does suggest bigger volume of trade, whether direct or indirect, than previously estimated.

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