4 comments

  • shakna 1683 days ago
    Can we switch the link to the BBC [0]?

    Dailymail, being the Dailymail is its normal over-the-top-self: "The Pompeii sorcerer's trunk: Archaeologists discover mysterious treasure trove in buried Roman town filled with dolls, skulls and miniature PENISES"

    [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49325627

  • FranzFerdiNaN 1680 days ago
    No, it's not a 'sorcerer's treasure trove'. It's a trunk full of trinkets the archaeologists don't (yet) know what it was used for. Archaeologists have this incredibly annoying and frankly, quite dumb, tendency to call anything they cant identify 'ritualistic' or 'religious' or apparently now even to do with magic.

    Just imagine if someone digs up a jewerely box. Or the box of baubles a child has collected over the years. Or a box of Dungeons and Dragons dice and figurines. How dumb would it be if it would be called a 'sorcerer's box'? Because that's the equivalent of what's happening here.

    The box is interesting enough on it's own, there is really no need to try and make it more than it is.

    • JoeAltmaier 1680 days ago
      Not so sure. These are all 'made' objects, which were pretty rare and probably valuable. Not trinkets and toys, which were made of clay and lead and not carefully hand-carved minerals and natural materials.

      Sorcerers were much closer to the public consciousness back in the day. They didn't have National Geographic and the History Channel then, to help the whole world understand one another. They worked hard at interpreting the world, and generally got it wrong and came up with strange notions about life and the universe. Calling that 'just Dungeons and Dragons' is probably pretty far off the mark.

  • jaclaz 1683 days ago
    Other thread (based on Atlasobscura):

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20709985

  • empath75 1683 days ago
    Of course the daily mail would all-caps PENISES