Ancient History

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  • Beeswax

    Starting this thread thinking couple of people are interested in this topic

    The 2,300-year-old Grand Theater of Ephesus in Turkey, before and after excavation.


    This major port town of the ancient times is about 1.5 hours away from my hometown. It used to be an important trade hub on asia-minor and considered the second most important city in Roman empire, although city's history extends to the neolithic age (1000 BC).

    Today the city is about 7km(4.3mi) inland from the sea shore. The river that flows adjacent changed the coastline by filling it and brought the demise of this city.
    It's quite extraordinary that this city was almost completely covered and lost. Makes you think that our cities one day can have the same fate.

    It used to have one of the seven wonders of the world, The Artemis Temple. Today maybe a couple of columns left from the temple, but the rest of the city still has great architectural structures like this library building, public baths and toilets, sophisticated sewage and aqueduct systems, a 24000 people capacity amphitheater etc.

  • Continuity1

    @Beeswax, that looks sensational. I'd give my left nut — err no, not mine. Set's left nut — to see it!

  • OBBTKN0

    I'm into it too!! Bye set's right nut...

    Thanks for sharing, it's wonderfull

  • _niko0

    I'm surprised Erdogan hasn't converted it into a mosque yet.

    • He’s too busy buying his next electionGnash
  • Gnash2

    I’ve been there a few times. Great site. Ephesus was a Greek city, built by Greeks not Romans. While the Roman’s added some of the better preserved buildings, it was a major Greek center for 1000 years before the Roman’s got there

    • city may have been built by Greeks but so many different cultures passed through this region. Today there are only legends about who may have built it.Beeswax
    • They’re mythical origin stories about many cities. But the building of city Ephesus is quite well documented by both archeology and historical documentsGnash
    • * there areGnash
    • but it what's known is that it rose to prominence during Lydian, Ionian/Greek & Roman rules. The area is a mesh full of different civs from east and west.Beeswax
    • The city was founded as a Greek colony. Of course many other peoples have occupied the same coordinates previously. But what is now known as Ephesus, is GreekGnash
    • please share your well documented source so I get enlightened. So far its only based on mythical stories. ancient history is not something you can attest 100%Beeswax
    • "According to legend, the Ionian prince Androclos founded Ephesus in the eleventh century B.C."Beeswax
    • "Another legend says Ephesus was founded by the Amazons, a tribe of female warriors, and that the city was named after their queen, Ephesia."Beeswax
    • Ya, every city back then had mythical origin stories.Gnash
    • I wrote that its history goes back to neolithic age, that's at least 5000 years before greek colonies.That's what they found when hey excavated. Not a legend :)Beeswax
    • The city of Ephesus was not founded in 5000bc, though. Obvs there was something going on before the Greeks founded the cityGnash
    • Legend has it that Rome was founded by a couple of wolf furries but that doesn’t mean we don’t know how Rome was actually foundedGnash
    • It was aliens.palimpsest
    • Greek aliensGnash
  • HijoDMaite2

    Been into the Hardcore History Podcast lately. It’s pretty good.

    • His podcasts are great. Better at more recent history though. BBC do a great a great one called In Our TimeGnash
    • Also, Tides of History is pretty good. And. Of course, Fall of CivilizationsGnash
    • Ephesus blew my mind when I visited.thumb_screws
  • Gnash5

    “... Ben Bacon analysed 20,000-year-old markings on the drawings, concluding they could refer to a lunar calendar.

    It led to a specialist team proving early Europeans made notes about the timing of animals' reproductive cycles.

    Mr Bacon said it was "surreal" to work out for the first time what hunter-gatherers were saying.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-engl…

  • scarabin1

  • jpgjpg2

    this has been very refreshing, maybe obvious but casts ancient humans (hunter gatherers) as intellectual equals. I studied social sciences and it's really incredible how pervasive the alternate view of primitive people as barely surviving until the wealth of agriculture is.

    • Makes sense. You can't really survive and evolve if you're as dumb as a rock.Continuity
    • especially societies without documented or written histories, all their current and ancient knowledge was stored in their brains and passed down. Incredible._niko
    • I’m almost done this book. Some interesting perspectives but I’m not convince by their argument so farGnash
  • scarabin3

    I asked chatGPT for recipes we can try at home based on dishes in the Yale Babylonian Culinary Tablets from around 1700 BCE. The tablets are notoriously vague and often just list ingredients without instruction or quantity. It gave me the following useable recipe, among others like fried chickpea patties and lentil soup:

    Barley Stew with Mushrooms

    Ingredients:

    1 cup barley
    2 cups water
    2 cups sliced mushrooms
    1 onion, chopped
    1 garlic clove, minced
    1/2 tsp. cumin
    1/2 tsp. coriander
    1/2 tsp. salt
    2 tbsp. olive oil

    Instructions:

    Rinse barley and soak for 30 minutes in water.
    Drain barley and place it in a pot with 2 cups of water.
    Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 30 minutes.
    In a separate pan, sauté onion and garlic in olive oil until softened.
    Add sliced mushrooms and sauté for an additional 5 minutes.
    Add cumin, coriander, and salt to the mushroom mixture and stir.
    Add the mushroom mixture to the pot with the cooked barley and stir. Simmer the stew for an additional 10 minutes.

    Most of the recipes it gave me contained cumin, coriander, and garlic. It said the babylonians used those spices a lot.

    Pretty interesting stuff if you like to try ancient foods.

    • hmmm, no mutton? would not bang_niko
    • There are desserts and meat dishes, but i didn’t research those. Lots of soups and stews.scarabin
  • Beeswax5

  • PhanLo2

    Quite like this guy, cool that he got out there and actually saw it.
    -

  • Beeswax0