Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Nebra Sky Disk. Source: See Wikipedia link below. |
The disk, two bronze swords, two hatchets, a chisel, and fragments of spiral bracelets were discovered in 1999 by Henry Westphal and Mario Renner while they were treasure-hunting with a metal detector. Archaeological artifacts are the property of the state in Saxony-Anhalt. The hunters were operating without a license, and knew their activity constituted looting and was illegal. They damaged the disk with their spade and destroyed parts of the site. The next day, Westphal and Renner sold the entire hoard for 31,000 DM to a dealer in Cologne. The hoard changed hands within Germany during the next two years, being sold for up to a million DM. By 2001 knowledge of its existence had become public. In February 2002 the state archaeologist, Harald Meller, acquired the disk in a police-led sting operation in Basel from a couple who had put it on the black market for 700,000 DM. The original finders were eventually traced. In a plea bargain, they led police and archaeologists to the discovery site..
The precise dating of the Nebra sky disk depended upon the dating of a number of Bronze Age weapons, which were offered for sale with the disk and said to be from the same site. These axes and swords can be dated typologically to the mid-second millennium BCE. Radiocarbon dating of a birchbark particle found on one of the swords to between 1600 and 1560 BCE confirmed this estimate. This corresponds to the date of burial, at which time the disk had likely been in existence for several generations.
Research published in 2020 by archaeologists from Gothe University Frankfurt and Ludwig Maxmilian University of Munich casts doubt on this dating, however. After reevaluating prior research and the circumstances of the disk's discovery, the authors argue that the disk was likely not part of the cache of Bronze Age weapons, and therefore, cannot be dated with these artifacts. Instead they assert that the disk should be evaluated as an individual find. Since the authors contend it bears hallmarks of an Iron Age item, they place its origins instead in the first millennium BCE. This younger age, they argue, would significantly change the sometimes far-reaching cultural and historical conclusions that have been attributed to the disk.
According to an initial analysis of trace elements by x-ray flourescence by E. Pernicka, then at the University of Freiberg the copper originated at Bischofshofen in Austria, while the gold was thought to be from the Carpathian Mountains. A more recent analysis found that the gold used in the first phase was from the River Camon in Cornwald, United Kingdom. The tin present in the bronze was also of Cornish origin...
Now that is what I call an interesting artifact.
These days people often say "follow the science," but science may not be exactly what they think it is. First of all, science is a process that should be characterized by large doses of humility and skepticism. You don't see that when scientists become celebrities or TV experts. Science, at its best, is a continual process of collecting and analyzing data and revising theories. That is why they call it REsearch.
Despite the fact that you often see people who proudly announce their snap decisions about an item at first glance, this case shows that even after much study by highly accomplished authorities, there were still basic questions, such as the age and source of the items, that were not answered with absolute certainty.
One course that I think should be a required course for all college students is the philosophy of science. And one topic of that course that should definitely be taught is operationism.
Amy Adams, as Giselle in the movie Enchanted, addressed the epistemological issue in the Academy Award nominated song How Do You Know. ; ) But that is an important question. How do you know? What criteria did you use? How did you measure it?
Very often we just accept consensus or expert opinion, but experts are often wrong, and they change their mind. And different experts will often have different opinions. Scientists should be open to changing their mind.
Operationism says that definitions should be defined in the terms (or operations) used to measure (or determine) them. If you give a weight, for example, how was it determined. If you are talking about yourself and your weight, maybe you got on a particular home scale, as accurate or inaccurate as it is, and looked at the number closest to the dial. But if you got on another scale, maybe your weight would be different. And if you got weighed while on the space station, it would be different. You need to describe the relevant procedures that are used so the conclusion can be understood and verified.
In the case of the Nebra disk, exactly how was the age determined? First they used a radiocarbon dating procedure on a piece of bark associated with one of the swords, not the disk itself, which is helpful information, but in a scientific setting more specifics would be necessary. There are some people who believe that the disk is not from the same hoard as the swords, so that makes a big difference. I am always skeptical of radiocarbon dating anyhow, but here we don't even know if the disk is associated with the sword, or how the bark got on the sword. If you know the specifics of the operations used, you are in a much better position to accept, question or test the results.
Operationism is not only useful in science, it is useful anytime you want to be precise and understood. You need to know how terms are defined, and in operationism, that means knowing the procedures used to measure them.
If you make claims about the race of a person, how did you determine their race, for example. Race is a social construct. There is no good test for race. People sometimes use skin color, self-report, or stories of ancestry - all of which are poor tests, as we've seen. We know that those kinds of things can be wrong, but what about tests such as Ancestry.com. Here is what their website says.
Creating an ethnicity estimate based on your DNA sample is a complex process based on probability, statistics, shared DNA, and ongoing research and science. AncestryDNA calculates your ethnicity estimate by comparing your DNA to a reference panel made up of thousands of people. Because reference panels and the way we analyze your DNA both change as we get more data, your ethnicity results can change as we get more data, too.So here we are making a big deal out of race and ethnicity, although we should know that it is a social construct - an invented classification system without any good test or criteria.
There is no way to test, determine, or prove the race of a person. You'd think for reparations, you'd need some reasonable criteria for class inclusion, but they'll avoid that at all costs for reasons I don't need to elaborate on.
Did you know black and white are not colors?
Chroma is the attribute of color that expresses its purity. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color and defines a color in terms of how close it is to white or black. Chroma and value are independent characteristics of color. For example, a color with a low chroma can have a light value while another low chroma color can have a dark value.
The use of operational defintions would advance many of our discussions and help solve many of our problems - both scientific and social. It would help if people could actually give a good definition for the terms they use rather than trying to manipulate feelings. Evil can only operate in obscurity, darkness and confusion. That is why they sow it.
John 1:5 - The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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April 12 is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.
On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired the opening shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumpter in South Carolina. This month marks the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the war, the deadliest conflict ever fought on American soil. The Civil War lasted four years and resulted in an estimated 620,000 deaths and 1.5 million casualties. Approximately one in four soldiers that went to war never came back home. This impacted families, communities, and the entire country for generations to come...Here is that link for more about that.
April 12, 1861: The Civil War Begins | Fold3 HQ
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed,com. |
Nothing much going on at the beach other than beach-goers and recent drops.
I was back on the vacant lot again for a little while. The mosquitos are bad.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net