Is anyone qualified to weigh in on the academic robustness of this?
I only scanned a few bits but I was surprised to see statements like "the male skeleton had a knee injury, thus conclusively proving it was Philip" and "the female skeleton was 18 therefore proving it was Cleopatra since sources say she was young". (Paraphrasing) Etc etc. Is that all it takes to "prove" something? Could it not just be coincidence and it was someone else with a knee injury and some other ~18 year old? Or is that as far as we need to go in archeology to prove something? Put 2 and 2 together and come up with Cleopatra?
There also seems to be some sort of almost personal/ad hominem type stuff later on about other researchers who apparently criticised the author's work which surprised me ("Prag, Musgrave, and Neave continue to argue that I remain silent about Cyna ... as if it is an important issue"...)
I am only partially qualified in that I am not a professional archeologist, but I have done post-doctoral archeological studies and have read enough archeological studies to understand the larger academic context.
It is not possible to present all the data informing a judgment in such a short work. Even in a book, it would not be possible. Thus it is common in archeology for papers to be written as part of an ongoing conversation / debate with the community - which would be defined as the small handful of other archeologists doing serious research on the same specific subject matter.
Part of that context here is that these tombs are well-established to be the royal tombs of Alexander's family, spanning a few generations including his father and his son. This is one of the most heavily studied sites in Greece for obvious reasons, and that is not something anybody is trying to prove.
In that context, his arguments are trying to identify any body as one among millions, but as one among a small handful of under ten possibilities.
At the same time, the fact that he is not a native English speaker and general archeological style come into play. For example:
"the painter must have watched a Persian gazelle in Persia, since he painted it so naturalistically (contra Brecoulaki Citation2006). So the painter of Tomb II has to be Philoxenus of Eretria" sounds like a massive leap, and it is. He continues:
"... Tomb I (Tomb of Persephone) must have been painted hastily by Nicomachus of Thebes (Andronikos Citation1984; Borza Citation1987; Brecoulaki et al. Citation2023, 100), who was a very fast painter (Saatsoglou-Paliadeli Citation2011, 286) and was famous for painting the Rape of Persephone (Pliny, N. H. 35.108–109), perhaps that of Tomb I."
Another huge leap, both 'presented as conclusions'. However he then continues to indicate these are just hypotheses: "These hypotheses are consistent with the dates of the tombs..."
So his English language use of presenting things factually does not indicate certainty in the way the words would be used in everyday speech. He seems to perhaps misunderstand the force of the terms, but also appears to be working within the context of the conversation with other archeologists I mentioned to start: They all know every affirmation is as "probably", rarely anything more. So it is relatively common shorthand of the craft in that sense.
I believe you are overthinking his responses to other authors, although I understand the culture shock. It is an ongoing conversation and archeologists tend to be blunt in their assessments. Add Greek bluntness on top of this, and it does not seem to matter to the material.
As to your last question, is this legitimate research? The answer overall appears to be yes, although I could see several points (such as the identification of artists I quoted above, and various items I noticed), which I would never have put into ink the way he did. Still, most of his arguments are compelling. It is a shame that the aggressiveness of a few affirmations detract from the overall value of his work. Archeology is not code nor is it physics. It does not pursue universal truths that are more easy to verify through repeated experiments, but unique historical ones which necessarily attempt to interweave physical details and ancient historical records. Each field has its own level of certainty, and the fact that we cannot establish these details with the same certainty as we can establish the chemical formula for water does not make them useless, or pure inventions. Far from it.
I really don’t know why I stumbled into the comments section on this particular article, but while I’m here I have to commend you on writing perhaps the most thoughtful and eloquent comment I have ever read on HN.
There are some curious inclusions on that page, but the context link reveals that some highlights really aren't the comment, rather the discussion that it triggered.
A "35 child comments" note or similar alongside the highlighted comments might encourage more browsing.
Indeed, but after scanning this article that pulls in all those pieces of indirect evidence I wondered whether some type of structured knowledge database (that encodes the innumerable pieces of historical information that are known, tags them with confidence levels etc.) would not be useful to advance research in such domains.
Something like a large collection of RDF triplets against which you could run a query like "Given this new data point how (more)likely that Alexander the Great's tunic is identified in a royal tomb at Vergina?"
To me it sounds like it could (and likely would) backfire, by replacing judgment with numbers. Who is giving the confidence score? What confidence score does each confidence score receive? Why are those scores more valid than the expert in that very narrow domain? If that expert is the one giving the scores, are they not just gatekeeping? Et cetera. I don't want to see researchers rewriting their papers because their cumulative source score is 68.17, and it should be 72.5 or higher.
also, there have been points in time where established archeology was wrong, and this seems like it would produce a bias towards what we currently think is true.
for example, theories on how the Polynesian migration came to be are still in flux, to the point where one theory was attempted to be proven by actually sailing to the different islands using only traditional wayfinding.
I would phrase it otherwise: supporting judgement with numbers. Its not about altering conclusions, but making more transparent the factual basis and associated reasoning from which they are derived.
The analogy would be trying some exotic food and having a list of ingredients. Yes, good to listen to a local as to how it tastes (and whether it cures all diseases), but if the indication is: 50% sugar, thats a data point worth knowing.
I think that, effectively, the corpus of research papers and citation links is this knowledge database. It isn't structured the way I would structure it in postgres but it seems to be working quite well for the professionals in this field.
I know there have been some interesting finds when an archeologist has dug up a site report from the 1840s that had long laid ignored by academia but these are quite rare occurrences and the scale of people involved here (when we're talking about something hyper specific) is so small that they can probably just sort it out by talking to one another.
For the outside public such a neatly tagged database might be helpful if someone outside of the circle wants to independently research a subject in depth but, honestly, these folks are pretty open to questions and discussions so if you're extremely interested in Gobekli Tepe or some such there's someone out there who is happy to start a conversation with you.
> the corpus of research papers and citation links is this knowledge database
yes, I think so too. In the typical fashion of "pre-digital" information management systems it is extremely economical in the way it encodes things, with statements like "X is true as shown \cite{Y}" etc. But...
> but it seems to be working quite well for the professionals in this field
what prompted my comment is exactly the fact that didn't seem to work that well in this case :-) (nb: I am not remotely an archeology boffin, just triggered by the adversarial language of the paper).
In more quantitative fields people talk about reproducible research, here its more a question of whether similar fields would benefit from "reproducible chains of reasoning".
> it seems to be working quite well for the professionals in this field
That is the universal response to new technology: What we're doing is working fine! What they are saying is, 'everything we've accomplished has been with the old technology'.
I promise that was heard from engineers and architects encountering CAD, from cavalry asked to give up their horses (the conservative urge is so great, many died charging machine guns!), by literary scholars presented with computerized tools, .... it's always the same. One person who installed the first email systems for many businesses told me that, over and over, people would say 'our paper memos work fine - this is just technology for technology sake'. They meant, 'everything we've accomplished, we've done it with paper memos'.
New technology lets you do old things much faster and/or lets you do new things you couldn't do before - new things you didn't dream of doing, and as people discover uses for it, new things you won't know about for years.
And the universal argument that people pushing tech are making boils down to 'I don't understand your field, or the particular needs of it, but I'd like to sell you a process that I invented. I'm not going to be held responsible for any bad consequences of you adopting it.'
Unsurprisingly, people tend to resist this sort of thing.
Sometimes the local maximum people are stuck in sucks, and they need a shakeup.
That shakeup will not be well received when it comes from a complete stranger, who has no rapport with the community, with zero skin in the game.
> So his English language use of presenting things factually does not indicate certainty in the way the words would be used in everyday speech. He seems to perhaps misunderstand the force of the terms
He might or might not. It's also possible that academic practice in his native language is to use terms of equivalent force.
Of course, if somebody was studied in archeology and the Greek language, and had read and was friends with a variety of Greek and many other ESL scholars working in the field, perhaps their comments would hold more weight than total speculation. Despite all the contextual clues, since the words are there as they were written, I cannot state for a fact he did not intend for them to come across exactly they way they do to the ever-so-elusive "reasonable native English speaker".
That's not what I was saying. The words have a certain force by definition. The way they're used is a separate concern; it's possible that in another language, the correct academic practice is to use words indicating certainty while it's just understood that the certainty isn't really present. In such a case, he might accurately understand what the English words he's using mean - they convey total certainty - without understanding that English speakers will interpret them as conveying total certainty.
The force with which you express disagreement is also a general cultural issue. In some cultures, disagreement is expressed as indirectly as possible; in others, nobody really thinks you're actually disagreeing unless you're practically shouting (or so I was given to understand by Russian colleagues). And English lies somewhere in the middle, where you're expected to express your disagreement politely (while framing your obvious scathing contempt in ambiguous Jane-Austen-like wordplay).
Yes, in particular the points you cite have been widely discussed since the late 70s. The 'proofs' in question are not absolute mathematical proofs but strong hints around which cases have been made including a lot of elements. The cases are not that clearly cut,and there is not a lot of positive evidence for one thesis or the other but the phrasing here is good approximation.
The research appears serious, but at first sight it doesn't seem to disprove any of the dominant thesis around Vergina.
The question "who is in tomb II?" is still open. Though recent research has provided evidence against the occupant being Philip II (and being rather Philip III) there is still a good deal of evidence "for" Philip II. The case (for Philip II) made at the (very impressive) exhibition at the Vergina museum is well explained.
The case for Cleopatra is even more tenuous but also very well explained.
The history of the elites in this period is quite well documented from multiple sources. There are some minor royals - third and fourth sons - where little is known other than some titles and lands granted, but the historical record is both comprehensive and considered accurate, particularly for those whose stories were quite shocking like the 7th wife of Philip II (Cleopatra Eurydice, the young woman whose remains are being discussed), whose death may have been suicide, or a murder made to look like suicide...
The thread they're pulling on seems to start here, from the paper:
> There is a unanimous agreement that Tomb III belongs to King Alexander IV, the son of the Great Alexander. This is important because it shows that the Great Tumulus belongs mainly to the Kings of the Argead dynasty, and this contributes significantly to the identification of Tombs I and II as belonging to either Philip II or Arrhidaeus
If accept that unanimous agreement is well-founded, and it is beyond any reasonable doubt that Tomb III belongs to the son of the Great Alexander, then it seems very likely that Tombs I and II must belong to Philip II or Arrhidaeus. The paper seems to then try and work out which one belongs to who.
Now you look through the historical record of each, and you identify that there are multiple sources indicating that Philip had a young wife (Cleopatra Eurydice), who had a young son who was murdered [1]. Then you find a tomb that along with a male, has a younger female with an infant son interred. There is no other known tomb that contains similar remains. That matches Philip II, but does not match Arrhidaeus.
You then look at the other tomb, and realise those remains better matches Arrhidaeus.
This is not proof in a scientific sense, it's not irrefutable, but you have to ask if the young woman and infant are not Cleopatra Eurydice and her son Caranus, who exactly are they? Which other persons match the known historical records? If they're people from outside of the known record, just how likely is it that they would be buried in this specific context of a tomb neighboring Alexander IV? Unless you then want to unpick that assumption of Alexander IV of course, which you're entitled to do, but you're now pushing back against a collective assumption with some significant weight (and I presume, evidence), behind it.
The rest of the paper starts to pull at the logic of other papers published over the last 60 years or so to help develop the case further, but in reality without some better science that seems absent (radio carbon dating, DNA analysis to show familial relationships of remains, and so on), it might be hard to get it over the line from "seems very likely to be the best explanation given what we know today" into "almost impossible to be explained any other way".
And if someone thinks this guy is wrong, then they can write an article with their opposing evidence and interpretations. And that’s how we do science.
Among humanist sciences, history is probably the most satisfying one for geeks, because there is a concept of truth that, once established, is almost as indisputable as a law of nature. We know Julius Caesar was publicly stabbed by multiple people - that is a fact. You can argue about killers' identities, location, motives, repercussions, etc etc, but nobody can realistically deny that it happened without an even stronger theory of how to make all sources consistent.
I think you mean "mathematical sense" as proofs are deductive implications (apriori). Science, an abductive and empirical practice (posteriori) does not have proofs either.
> Put 2 and 2 together and come up with Cleopatra?
This is exactly the problem. History is built on stories, it's just story upon story. Licensed historians are able to augment the existing history. The stories need have nothing to do with the truth of whatever might (or might not) have happened.
Whenever you try to find the sources for this or that claim, it is impossible to do so, especially with anything ancient. When I have tried to do so, I come away feeling extremely dissatisfied, and in disagreement with whatever conclusions are being presented as fact. In every single case.
Based on the Wikipedia article linked in that comment, it refers to papyrus fragments specifically, the most recent one being from aprox. the IXth century. [1]
More recent texts were copied into more durable materials:
> By the beginning of the fourth century A.D., the most important books began to be manufactured in parchment, and works worth preserving were transferred from papyrus to parchment. [2]
By the way, I don't know enough about history or archaeology to agree or disagree with the comment, I just looked up the sources because I was also confused by the phrasing.
This is the Cleopatra that was also known as 'Clee'. Different to 'Patty', 'Cleo' or 'Trish'. All of whom were the most beautiful woman in the world in their time :)
Honestly seems about as robust as any other ancient history (not including pre-history). Herculaneum. Or great civilizations of the Americas. Or art “restoration.” Or “early music” performance
There is what we know, what we think we know, what we think and don’t know, and what we don’t know. And the size of those is in exponential ascending order
None of this is to denigrate the robust and important work of historians and adjacent fields. It’s just the reality
> The revered tunic is is in fragmentary state and many small pieces less than 6cm (2.3 inches). It's pictured here in a shot from its discovery at Vergina in 1977
As a side note, purple dye was a Veblen good. Anything purple instantly signified wealth because they made purple dye by collecting 10k snails per gram of dye https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple
Just like rich people buy fancy watches that serve no purpose other than signifying wealth, imagine walking down the road in clothing that took thousands of laborers (slaves) thousands of hours to produce. Epic level of flexing on the peasants
There are so many other things described in ancient texts that have yet to be discovered. Herodotus for example is filled with references to places and things that were later discovered. However there are still many examples of pretty credible places and objects that remain undiscovered.
Also, fwiw, people for some reason think it’s ok or cool to criticize Herodotus’ history. It’s actually very good and he always says when he observed something for himself, or it’s something that is said by others and he felt it was important to document. However his assumptions and methods are always stated. I think honestly the main problem is it’s just a really long book so few ever read it.
Thucydides is even better.
It’s such a shame there is virtually nothing surviving from people who personally knew Alexander. His entire rise is foreshadowed all throughout Thucydides, which is amazing considering that it predates him considerably.
> It’s such a shame there is virtually nothing surviving from people who personally knew Alexander.
To me it's also just incredible how short his life was, and I imagine that contributes to how scarce first-hand accounts are. He started taking part in military campaigns at 16, became king at 20, and was dead by 32. The Wikipedia article about him mentions he had a historian (or more than one); it's a shame none of those accounts survived to today.
Sure, life expectancy back then was not what it was today, but he was still fairly young, and did a remarkable amount of conquering and expansion in a decade.
> It’s such a shame there is virtually nothing surviving from people who personally knew Alexander.
Did you forget the guy who's texts were the foundation of our civilization? Most of Aristotle's works are lost, but there is still much to read from Alexander's tutor.
> the sacred Persian mesoleucon sarapis which belonged to Pharaoh and King Alexander the Great
[italicizing added]
sacred means something religious or divine. While Alexander the Great is very famous, does or did anyone who came after consider Alexander to be divine? For example, while people very much admire Abraham Lincoln, nobody would associate Lincoln with divinity.
Another comment says that English may not be the first language of the author, so perhaps 'sacred' wasn't meant precisely. And it could be used, even by an English speaker, imprecisely (hopefully not in published research) or in an exaggerated fashion (also probably doesn't belong in published research).
Still, I find it interesting how a little overenthusiasm and subtle shift in terminology can change perceptions of someone.
EDIT: Better stated: Here is a modern historian calling the sarapis sacred. Why? Sacred to whom?
Quite famously, during his own lifetime, Alexander claimed some kind of "divine descent". He made an out-of-the-way journey to a famous religious site in the Libyan desert, to underline this.
Some would have believed him. Others, wouldn't.
The mere fact that he used to fight in the frontline of every battle, and still walked away (the only other military leader who can match him in this was Khalid bin Walid) - that would tend to sway opinion on the "wow, he's indestructible" debate.
When news of his death reached Greece, people stalled celebrating, as he was not really considered "merely human".
(Remember, Alexander was still recognized as Macedonian, not Greek - and in fact 50,000 Greek hoplites went with Memnon of Rhodes to fight for Iran against Alexander - which they did till the end. It's only much much later that Greek society appropriated him as one of their own. In fact, historical accounts showed that Alexander himself tired of aspiring to be Greek, and took on many trappings of the Iranian court & system, till his end)
> much later that Greek society appropriated him as one of their own
His father generally put in a lot more trying to “fit in” and be accepted by other Greeks. Alexander was a bit more ruthless and the whole “divine king” didn’t really fly in in Athens etc. I’m not sure he really tried but rather just wanted to do his own thing (entirely razing once of the most ancient cities in Greece didn’t help much either).
Thanks. It's not that I'm ignorant of that. I'm trying to explore which historical contexts - and possibly modern ones - consider Alexander to be 'sacred' and why.
Haven't most royal figures been considered "sacred" as their claim of, and acceptance by others, of being hand picked by a god or two; of divine right? Since people would never actually see a real god in the physical world, this sacredness is projected onto those being "divinely appointed".
Thus "sacred" to some. As in people who held this view wont just stroll up to them and chat about the Dodgers (or weather etc) or give them a hug (unless that person is Michelle Obama) and not be marched out of town, jailed or worse, and is why they enjoyed so much personal space.
Unless, I am misunderstanding what you mean by "sacred".
Many royal figures in many cultures have claimed some divinity, divine blessing, etc.
What I'm wondering is, who saw Alexander as divine? Contemporaries? Later ancient people in Greece or Rome? Authors or religions since then? Anyone today, in some way or to some extent?
> people would never actually see a real god in the physical world
fwiw I think people in many cultures believed they saw gods in human guise, including the Greeks.
Are you suggesting that only people who believe in objects being sacred (whatever that means) should be allowed to use the term? To those who don't, why would the current liveness status of those who do/did matter in their usage of the term?
Only the people who believe something is sacred are likely to apply the term, though others may use it out of respect for the believers. Dead people don't say much.
In the context of history I’d say it was sacred to the Greeks. There’s not really anything wrong with the wording; they aren’t saying it’s a religious artifact to modern society or holds any magic.
All excellent examples. I particularly enjoyed the George Washington example. Another interesting reference point would be the English coronation ceremony, which is chock full of sacred symbols and rituals, and references to what God does or does not want.
My summary: they claim (with evidence) that they found the sacred purple sarapis (tunic) of Alexander the Great, and possibly some of his other things.
I'll go a bit further and say that they don't claim it's Alexander's tomb, but someone that was buried with Alexander's artifacts (namely, his brother)
This is correct. Alexander is burried in Alexandria, Egypt. This discovery means that some of his artifacts were inherited by one of his siblings, moved back to Greece and burried with them.
It would never have occurred to me that a Greek would assume that Alexander the Great was just a local hero!
In the US, anyone who remembers any ancient history will remember Alexander the Great. He's a part of every single world history curriculum, and for good reason. Whether by his own skill or luck, he reshaped most of Eurasia in his lifetime.
I mean, it was in the curriculum in Fiji where I studied. Stupid of course, because we had to learn the histories of far away places (literally on the other side of the world) more than our own history.
Whatever late corner of earth that didn't yet know who Alexander the great was, that history was forever changed, once personal computers & the golden age of PC computing came to be.
The entire western world draws its cultural lineage through the ancient greek civilizations, most of us sub-consciously consider ancient greek history "our" history. Even relatively un-educated New Zealanders on the exact opposite side of the world know who Alexander the Great is.
Alexander the Great was taught in my US high-school world history class. I was very fuzzy on the details of his life (time period, exactly where he was from and what he did), but he was Kinda a Big Deal for the world, not just ancient Greece.
Isn’t Alexander the Great the most famous (at least in the western world) conqueror of all time? At the very least he’s up there with Ghengis and Atila.
Probably they’re afraid of a place like HN picking up on some small detail that invalidates the claim. Can’t think of any other reason to withhold an image, especially since they obviously are capable of adding images to this format.
I bet you could clone 1000 Alexanders, and none of them would be The Great. You'd need Aristotle as a tutor, and to inherit one of the best armies in the world from your dad, the king, and probably a million other little things would have to align in order to give you that combination of ambition and ability. If you can arrange all that, my intuition is that the genetic factors are probably of secondary importance.
New Great Filter just dropped: Once a technological civilization develops cloning and ancient DNA analysis they decide to revive all the greatest warlords and conquerors in their history and, to everyone's surprise, all the Will to Power types cause a global thermonuclear conflict
But they can't fetch the memories and psychological traumas right? The person would just look like the old person then and no personality resembling the old one.
It has everything to do with shortening the distance!
You see there was a prophecy among the Bene Gesserit that a careful human breeding program could produce a genetically perfect man who could survive taking the water of life. This would enable in him an ability similar to that the Guild Navigators employ to guide their ships, but for the course of all humanity rather than the course of a single heighliner.
This gave me a good head scratcher. Taking the terms to be religious, I started to unravel it.
Bene Gesserit sounds like it would be Hebrew or Yiddish ("sons of decree" or something like that) although Google Translate does not hesitate to call it Latin. Water of life sounds like too common concept to trace it back to any specific religion, but Guild Navigators? Now that sounds like a more modern concept, and I would not be surprised if that was present in Mormon teachings or within the church of Scientology. Finally, heighliner, that's not a type of ship that either me or wiktionary is familiar with, so what are we even talking about?
I would be so lost without the sibling comment hinting towards the fictional world of Dune.
Huh... all these hebrew/yiddish linguistic ties are fascinating. There are other things that hint at Judaism or some evolution of it with the Bene Gesserit:
* They are a deeply matriarchal group tracing lineages more by motherhood than fatherhood. (Although with a more over feminist slant too - in that they are all women)
* They are referred to by some in ways that are similar to antisemitic stuff - schemers, conspirators, shadowy powerbrokers, etc. (although in that universe they actually do that stuff too)
* the mesiah prophecy referred to above
* their beleif system and source holy book are a basis for many religions
* a bunch of random little references throughout the books suggest that their ancestors may have been jewish (10k years ago, back on tera)
Dune is a really really good example of world building - at least the ones written by Frank Herbert. Lots of subtlety, the societies and groups in it evolved from ones on earth, and he pulls from a variety of cultures and religions to create the fictional ones. All of it is presented in a way that isn't super expository, but rather you just have to figure it out as you go in a fairly well written way. I recommend reading them - I think you'd see a lot of interesting stuff in there that I've missed.
The top 3 scores for 20th century atrocities are held by people who started off as nobodies.
People who rise to the occasion in times of national crisis seem to frequently be people who are on the line between somebody and nobody with people like George Washington and Caesar toward the "somebody" end and people like Napoleon and Eisenhower on the nobody end.
Friendly reminder that the modern country of North Macedonia has no connection whatsoever to the ancient Kingdom of Macedon which was a Greek state, similar to the other Greek city states (Athens, Sparta).
Ancient Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, had Greek names and practiced the Greek religion. Modern Macedonians are for the most part Slavs that speak a Slavic language and have no historical connection to ancient Greece.
The naming confused me until I visited Vergina in Greece and had a chance to learn more about the EU politics behind it.
I was listening to a podcast with Naval and David Deutsch yesterday. They talked about this. He said these kind of studies are kind of pointless. Yes. It's likely twins will more or less end up with same outcomes in life. Because they look the same and society has a tendency to treat people who look certain in certain way. But that does not mean what they can do in life is limited by their genes. What they think plays much more important role than their genes.
There's a rather good story by Poul Anderson from 1990ish where Machiavelli and Frederick the Great are reconstructed by training LLMs on historical corpora (seriously! of course they don't use the term "LLM") -- and employed as advisers in strategy. This turns out to be a bad move for humanity.
In Alexandria, destroyed in the ~5th century. Its was a holy site for centuries and we have many sources on it. But we don't know what happen to his mummy during the destruction.
> There is, of course, no way of knowing how accurate Dewey-Hagborg’s sculptures are—since the samples are from anonymous individuals
From the second one. So who knows, it is fairly likely to just be a guess? If it were real, I'd expect better uses of it than just by bored artists.
Edit: I should have checked the first one, they at least show an experiment (if a sloppy one). The results are...not great it seems if the goal is it being recognizable as the person in question.
To destroy every existing country from Egypt to Pakistan, replacing them with a one-man-rule empire? And killing a large number of people to get there? And leaving behind a number of feuding generals when he dies, who create their own one-man-rule sub-empires?
No thanks. What we have now isn't great, but I'm not sure that's an improvement.
That episode presents quite a plausible scenario for why notable historical figures might be cloned, in my opinion: Participants in a contemporary power struggle wanting to use their talismanic status for political ends.
As usual, "Conjecture Presented as Fact in Headline"
They found a fabric in a royal tomb in Greece that fits the description of Alexander's famous sarapis.
What is more likely - that this is Alexander's sarapis itself or that a very rich guy had one made just like it?
> What is more likely - that this is Alexander's sarapis itself or that a very rich guy had one made just like it?
I read through the original article though not very closely, and the authors wrote that the construction of the sarapis was unique in that nobody would have been allowed to construct one, and that the physical construction of the sarapis would have been profoundly expensive.
It could be the case that another rich guy went and had one made, sure, but given the above two priors you'd have to answer:
Who else at the time could afford to have such a sarapis constructed?
Is there a record of anyone with a similarly designed and constructed sarapis? Historians seem to have a good idea of who was rich and/or noble in the area at the time.
If someone at the time constructed a similarly designed sarapis in the region, who would have built it and why wouldn't have someone basically told on them for trying to copy the God King?
I don't think your point is invalid, but it would raise more questions that as far as I'm aware there seems to be little evidence for and introduce impractical logistics for the time period.
I think people forget that in those times production was tightly controlled and most likely the construction of such a cloth without permissions would most likely be met with execution.
This is awesome and very historic. I’m hoping it ends up in a glass case at Meta HQ though so many people can appreciate it rather than in a closet in Palo Alto.
I only scanned a few bits but I was surprised to see statements like "the male skeleton had a knee injury, thus conclusively proving it was Philip" and "the female skeleton was 18 therefore proving it was Cleopatra since sources say she was young". (Paraphrasing) Etc etc. Is that all it takes to "prove" something? Could it not just be coincidence and it was someone else with a knee injury and some other ~18 year old? Or is that as far as we need to go in archeology to prove something? Put 2 and 2 together and come up with Cleopatra?
There also seems to be some sort of almost personal/ad hominem type stuff later on about other researchers who apparently criticised the author's work which surprised me ("Prag, Musgrave, and Neave continue to argue that I remain silent about Cyna ... as if it is an important issue"...)
Is this legit research?
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