
Lost Languages Discovered in One of the Oldest Continuously Run Libraries - MBCook
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-lost-languages-found-manuscripts-egyptian-monastery-180964698/?no-ist
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0xBABAD00C
Hmm. There are people alive today who claim to speak Caucasian Albanian (they
number in the 100s and are called Udi). Also random fact: out of this nano-
ethnicity, one became a tech executive in the US and is a cofounder of
Evernote.

It would be interesting to compare modern Udi with the discovered Caucasian
Albanian text to see if there is any resemblance.

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

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damnfine
Can we crowdfund a militia to protect and secure archives for digitizing in
conflict zones? We are losing too much priceless history to fools over ego.

~~~
FroshKiller
This comment is a gem of colonialist thought.

Those "conflict zones" are also generally the sovereign territory of the
people who live there, who are generally one half of the "fools" you mentioned
(their neighbors being generally the other half).

The "ego" they have is generally a desire to keep their sovereign territory--
their homelands, which are frequently the same places in which their ancestors
produced the "archives" you want to "protect and secure."

Those people have a right to decide what to do about the destruction of their
cultural artifacts, because they are people and have agency. They can fight,
they can ask for help from their allies, they can do any number of things.

If they don't prioritize the preservation of their culture, that's
unfortunate, but it's also their business. If they decide to destroy artifacts
of their culture rather than let them fall into invaders' hands (sound
familiar?), that's tragic, but it's still their business.

Your suspicion of value in their cultural output does not entitle you to _pay
armed men_ to swoop in and take their "priceless history," no matter how noble
you think your intentions are.

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lucozade
This comment is a gem of nationalist thought.

When the Bamiyan buddhas were dynamited, exactly whose culture were the
Taliban "preserving"?

It is entirely reasonable to believe that culture and history have an
importance independent of petty, local squabbles. Crowd funding militia may
well be questionable but to demean the sentiment as colonialist is pointlessly
insulting.

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FroshKiller
I don't think you understand what nationalism is. I admit that my reply could
be read as a tacit endorsement of tribalism, but there's nothing nationalist
about it.

You should not presuppose that conflicts are "petty, local squabbles."
Minimizing language like that reinforces the mindset that the mighty are
justified in interfering in the sovereign destiny of a people.

Anyway, my reply was thoughtful, not pointlessly insulting. If you'd like to
engage on this beyond the invocation of the Taliban bogeyman, I'm happy to.
But if you're just gonna presume that I'm equating the exercise of sovereign
rights with wholesale destruction, I'm not interested.

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pbhjpbhj
Whose conception of sovereign rights.

Sovereignty is the historic acquisition of power through violence in all cases
that spring to mind (W. European bias).

How far back do you go. Does Russia now have sovereignty over Crimean history?

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ZoeZoeBee
FYI, Crimea has been a part of Russia for over 200 years, except for the post
Soviet Union period, which in and of itself was the result of a symbolic
transfer of Crimea to the Ukranian SSR in 1954, marking the 300th year of the
Ukraine under Russian rule. A move, which was supposed to have no strategic
consequence, until the Soviet Union broke up and twenty years later NATO
attempted to bring the Ukraine into their fold.

Of course Russia could not allow their warm water port to fall under NATO
jurisdiction

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CharlesDodgson
Is it only me who thought this was going to be about a programming language!

I visited St.Catherine's before, you can get there pretty easy from Sharm el-
Sheikh in the Sinai on your way to climb mount Sinai. you can go there for
sunrise, it involves an early rise and a bit of a hike but it's beautiful at
sunrise. St. Catherine's is also host to what is considered the burning bush.
bu[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_bush#Location](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_bush#Location)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Someday in a Vernor Vinge-ish future, software archeologists could discover a
dead programming language that is being used at the core of their ancient
starship's libraries.

~~~
throwaway7645
I'm curious what we would even use to run a true starship that needs to be
100% reliable for decades. Maybe Rust will be a good candidate some day? I
think it needs to have that speed & safety, but be much higher level.

~~~
setr
I doubt the language picked will have significant impact; reliability will
mostly depend on the extensiveness/correctness of simulations. And presumably
with sufficient coverage (and at the scale, we require it) memory bugs will be
the least of our safety worries

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dzdt
There is a longer, more detailed article on this work at
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/sinai-
pe...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/sinai-peninsula-
hidden-texts/536313/).

The articles are similar enough they must originate from the same press
release, but the Atlantic's take adds more.

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aptwelephant
uncovering lost texts: michael phelps' secret to gold medals

