
Grave of ‘Griffin Warrior’ at Pylos Could Be a Gateway to Ancient Civilizations - diodorus
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/science/a-warriors-grave-at-pylos-greece-could-be-a-gateway-to-civilizations.html
======
erickhill
That things like this can still be discovered -- a Mycenaean warrior's grave
discovered at Pylos, complete with weapons, Linear B tablets
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B)),
jewels, etc. Don't forget that "sandy Pylos" was the home of Nestor, whom
Telemachus consulted to see if he knew anything about his father, Odysseus.
Wise old Nestor (90 years old) had also fought at Troy, but he did not know
what had become of Odysseus. Interestingly, the "Griffin warrior" recently
unearthed at Pylos had trappings of the Minoan civilization (Crete), although
Pylos is more associated with the Mycenean civilization.

------
marktangotango
>>The top of the warrior’s shaft grave lies at ground level, seemingly so easy
to find that it is quite surprising the tomb lay intact for 35 centuries.

>>“It is indeed mind boggling that we were first,” Dr. Davis wrote in an
email. “I’m still shaking my head in disbelief. So many walked over it so many
times, including our own team.”

One wonders how many other discovery are similarly near the surface.

~~~
dalke
[http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/22/europe/viking-sword-
norway...](http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/22/europe/viking-sword-norway/)

> 1,200-year-old Viking sword discovered by hiker

> ... The rusted weapon was lying under some rocks on a well-known path across
> a high mountain plateau, which runs between western and eastern Norway.

------
grok2
Seems like the tech for making gold necklaces hasn't changed too much in 35
centuries!
[http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/27/science/27PYLOSJP1...](http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/27/science/27PYLOSJP1/27PYLOSJP1-articleLarge.jpg)

~~~
scoot
It wasn't so much that the technique is still the same that struck me, so much
as that the technique, and the technology to fabricate using it, existed 3500
years ago!

~~~
jacquesm
The main reason we're ahead of these folks is because we went about our
research a bit more methodical, not because we're smarter or more precise with
our fingers.

If not for a handful of men and women we'd be stuck trying to find the
philosophers stone.

------
coldcode
I'm reading a book on that era and this is pretty fascinating to read.
Archeology seems like a science of studying small bits and trying to
understand the big picture from them. I bet you have to be really patient to
be an archeologist.

~~~
mmanfrin
It is terribly fascinating what they can infer from the smallest of objects. I
remember reading about the Viking settlements on Greenland and how
archaeologists were able to deduce that Greenland Vikings _did not eat fish_
because of the lack of fishbones found in refuse sites.

Archaeology feels like a low-tech version of the machine that rebuilds the
fifth element in the movie of the same name, from just a fragment.

~~~
steve19
Reading pop-archaeology online (mainstream articles, not journals), I find
they frequently seem to overreach in what can be inferred by some small find
or, just as often, what they did not find at some small site.

Find one badly preserved jawbone of a humanoid and immediately we have a new
species, without consideration that it might be deformed, juvenile, or from a
population with unusual genetics [0] [1] (edit: see Pygmy peoples for example
of Homo sapiens sapiens with unusual genetics [2] [3])

All to often they jump on what is not present in one place at one time and
make wild assumptions. No fish at one refuse pit of one settlement could be
explained by many different things and might not apply to a wider population.

Maybe I am just overly skeptical ....

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#Pathological...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#Pathological_hypotheses)

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-34192447](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34192447)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples#/media/File:Afri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples#/media/File:African_Pigmies_CNE-v1-p58-B.jpg)

~~~
douche
I love dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts, but that's pretty much the way I feel
about paleontology. All too often you'll read some science-y piece about some
fantastic new insight- a new species, animal X did Y with regards to raising
its young, etc. Then you go through a couple of layers of redirects to see the
actual information, and find that the new species is classified on the basis
of a partial skeleton, or just a handful of bones, or some incredibly
fragmentary DNA extracted and compared from two poorly preserved specimens.

10000 years from now, our descendants will be digging through our garbage
dumps and trying to find significance from the substantial deposits of shiny
metallic plastic jewelry etched with the obscure glyphs "AOL" on one side.

