
Roman mosaic floor found under Italian vineyard - willvarfar
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52818746
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morninglight
I found many remnants of Roman mosaics in Tunisia; they seem to be everywhere.
They are especially easy to find along the beaches because even the individual
stones stand out. They have a small square shape that is unlike anything else
you are likely to see. I suspect they were from the private homes and villas
of wealthy Romans. The largest one I found was over 2 square meters, but I did
not invest much effort searching. Back in those days, I had more interesting
things to do with my time on the beach.

Two thousand years ago, the mediterranean was a much different place. Today
much of Tunisia seems barren, but one peek at the El Jem Amphitheatre and you
know things have changed. Tunisia was once a verdant agricultural land with a
booming economy that supported the building of sumptuous homes, outdoor
theatres, public baths, temples, enormous aqueducts, etc.
[http://www.tourismtunisia.com/historic-sites-in-
tunisia/](http://www.tourismtunisia.com/historic-sites-in-tunisia/)

~~~
wahern
You understate what Tunisia once was; it was once, basically, _Carthage_ , the
richest city-state in the world and the center (or one of the centers) of
several of the most advanced civilizations in the world--the Phoenician,
Carthaginian, and later Roman Empires. Carthage was razed during the Arab
Conquest so the Romans would stop attempting to take back the region. A more
modest city was rebuilt nearby but the region never came close to achieving
its former glory.

~~~
swasheck
Carthage and Corinth were Rome’s primary competition. Carthage’s final fall
coincided with Corinth's, but its history with Rome dated back much much
earlier. Roman artifacts are a relic of their occupation and rebuild of the
city. And you’re correct with the notion of the Arab/Muslim conquests. An
amazing city that was reduced to a fraction of its former glory. That such a
well-preserved artifact has been preserved is quite an amazing discovery. I’m
pretty excited by it.

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IgorPartola
From what I understand, this happens in Rome all the time. Their subway system
encounters a work stoppage due to stumbling onto a new buried building on like
a weekly basis. Rome keeps sinking and so there are layers upon layers of
buildings on top of each other. While there last May I went to a 14th century
chapel they was on top of a fourth century chapel, on top of a send century
chapel, on top of a first century villa, on top of an old mint. There is an
underground river that would need to be diverted to see if there is something
under that but it appears there is.

Fun thing I saw there: this is where St. Cyril was buried and above his tomb
there are about a dozen plaques thanking him for bringing literacy to places
like Ukraine, Macedonia, etc. Despite them being centuries old I could read
them almost perfectly since I can read Russian and Ukrainian. That was
incredible.

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ziotom78
Ah, I believe you are referring to the Basilica of St. Clemente [1]. I agree,
it's one of the most stunning places you can find in Rome!

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente_al_Laterano](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente_al_Laterano)

~~~
IgorPartola
I was! It really was an amazing place. I absolutely fell in love with Rome
while there.

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Cactus2018
Many more, better, photos [https://interestingengineering.com/stunning-roman-
mosaic-flo...](https://interestingengineering.com/stunning-roman-mosaic-floor-
found-intact-under-a-vineyard-in-italy)

~~~
koheripbal
I can't even imagine how many discoveries like this are buried in Turkey,
having been the center of the east Roman empire for a thousand years.

I wish Turkey would allow archeological digs.

~~~
beloch
They do allow digs. Turkey, as a nation, just isn't as enthusiastic about
archaeology as one might hope. This might be due to some unfounded perception
of themselves as "invaders".

To this day, many Greeks, Russians, etc. (mainly Eastern Orthodox Christians)
still refer to Istanbul as Constantinople, as though it is under some form of
illegitimate occupation. The West also still seems to view the fall of
Constantinople as the fault of the Turkish people. Is it hard to blame the
average Turkish citizen for being less then enthusiastic about exploring the
history of what everyone around them views as _somebody else 's_ historical
legacy?

This all ignores the fact that the Eastern Empire declined steadily for
centuries and lost territory to many other peoples besides the Turks,
including both Greeks and Europeans. While we may view the conquest of
Constantinople as the tragic end of the Roman empire, the fact is that the
empire lived on in the institutions of the Ottoman empire and in its people.
The Ottoman empire absorbed populations that were once Roman and, although
their descendants today may adhere to a different religion, their culturual
inheritance is still, in large part, Roman.

This alienation of Turkish citizens from their heritage is now causing serious
problems. Erdoğan's regime holds commercial interests to be supreme and has
not hesitated to throw important sites under the bulldozer over minor delays.
Roman ruins are widely viewed, not as the people's heritage, but as a foreign
nuisance that is best swept away to make room for the new. This must change.

~~~
pm90
That is really sad to hear. Regardless of the past, archaeological ruins are
collective humanities’ shared treasure and must be preserved.

Somewhat OT, I wonder if there’s a way to teach history that wouldn’t make
people’s dislike it just because of perceptions like this. The Roman and
Ottoman empires don’t exist anymore, what do people get my being angry at
states that are gone?

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corrupt_measure
We take beautiful art for granted today, but imagine how breathtaking and
inspiring it must have been for an Ancient Roman to see these mosaics, in a
time when beautiful art and artistic form had not yet been commoditized as
they are today.

~~~
Ralfp
Oh, but it was conmoditized even then. Roman society was suprisingly „modern”
on many fields, and their approach to art was no exception. Rich paid the
creators to create such art on their properties to increase their value.

~~~
toyg
Yeah but it was more like “Kanye West paying someone to paint his crib” than
“‘middle-class couple hiring a local guy to do up their flat”. Rich people
were few and far between.

~~~
woofie11
Fine art was available to more of the population than you'd think. The world
population doubled in the past 45 years. In contrast, during the Roman period,
the world population took about 500 years to double.

Wealth accumulated over generations. In that time, if your great-great-great
grandfather had a piece of artwork, there was a good chance it was yours now.

We have negative stereotypes of the past, and there were periods of history
when that was true, but there were advanced periods too. The Bronze Age
empires were pretty impressive until roughly 1300 BC. We had a dark age for a
while. The Roman Empire was very impressive. Then we had a dark age for a
while.

And you also want to think of the social structure. Rich people employed poor
people in households. Even if I owned nothing personally, I'd be exposed to
art in my master's household.

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Ma8ee
Except something like 98% of the population were farmers and most of them were
never allowed into a rich man’s house

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Retric
More like 70% to 90%, just the city of Rome got up to 750k-1M people let alone
all the other cities in the empire. A great deal of this was due to Egyptian
farmers ability to grow multiple crops per year on the same land. Fishing was
similarly extremely productive in terms of labor to food production.

~~~
Gibbon1
I remember reading somewhere that urbanization in Roman Empire was higher than
before and after. Like 20% or something.

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jungletime
As someone that just spent over 10K on a botched marble floor job. This just
pissed me off more at my installer. The guy didn't level the floor. Told me he
had 10 years of experience laying tiles. He had 1 by 2 foot tiles, took over a
month to lay down 1000 sqft. Not even mosaic. I feel drunk walking on the
floor, since it goes up and down so much.

~~~
nkoren
Check out the floor of the Pantheon, in Rome. THAT IS THE ORIGINAL FLOOR.
People have been walking on it for 2,000 years and it's still gorgeous.

The sheer competency of these guys was unbelievable.

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Infernal
So I wanted to check out a picture to see what you were talking about -
incredible to imagine building something that last so long looking so nice,
really:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Einblick...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Einblick_Panorama_Pantheon_Rom.jpg)

But the woman and man in the lower right of the picture are weirding me out.
It seems there are two men almost identical walking one in front of the other,
next to two women who also look almost identical walking one in front of the
other - but the woman's clothing has changed colors. I'm assuming it is some
panorama software weirdness as I see other strange artifacts, but changing the
colors to give the impression of different people following each other is...
interesting.

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robbintt
Wait until you notice half of her torso in the dead center of the photo.

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Infernal
Hah, yes I saw that but that makes more sense to me as a panoramic artifact.
The duplicated woman with different colors seems like a (possibly ML-driven?)
attempt to make a more “realistic” looking photo.

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irrational
It looks there are about 4-5 feet of earth of the mosaics. I know it has been
thousands of years, but where did the earth come from? Did it move there
naturally from some place higher up? Is it flood debris from a nearby river?
Was it placed there by people?

~~~
NiceWayToDoIT
I am also amazed by amount of dirt, not by the fact it is covered (it came by
process of top soil formation ); but by the sheer amount of it. If that was
just after 2-3 thousand years, it makes me wonder what other things can we dig
which are much deeper? But again not prehistoric kind of deep, more in range
of last million years.

~~~
sjg007
Umm fossils maybe?

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zipperhead
If you like this stuff, I recommend checking out the UK show 'Time Team'. Each
episode they do an archaeological dig spanning three days, to see if they can
piece together what was going on in a particular site. Many of their digs are
on old Roman sites in England.

There's 17 seasons of it, most of which is on Amazon Prime (I think youtube
has episodes as well). It's been my goto show lately for interesting
entertainment during the pandemic.

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Ma8ee
Just a reminder (I think it has been posted here) of this wonderful read about
the many layers of Rome:

[https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/](https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-
of-rome/)

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rident
I watched a lot of old Time Team episodes lately and this looks like more of
the same from the era. Really nice, complex looking work but overall what can
be expected for the time period. Cool that it's so well preserved though and
hasn't suffered from having a plow or seismic event turn it into a puzzle.

~~~
timthorn
I worked on an episode as part of a team reconstructing a mosaic a couple of
decades back. (Basildon/"The Intercity Villa")

Unfortunately, it turned out that the GWR railway line had obliterated the
original villa. :(

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ComputerGuru
It’s remarkably well-preserved! Aside from some fading and needing some
polish, it’s impossible to believe it’s really that old. The “resolution” (to
use a modern turn of phrase) is much higher than I would have expected for
something that large.

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qubex
You made me laugh because people used to describe pixels in terms of mosaic
tiles. Now we’ve got to the point where we do the opposite and descrive
mosaics in terms of pixels.

~~~
fatbird
In the entrance of the Pokemon Company International in Bellingham, WA, one
wall is decorated with an image from one of the games, blown up so that the
pixels are 1" x 1", filling a space that's about 20' x 10' tall. What makes it
cool is that a transparent tile was put over it, where the tiles are 1" x 1",
making the whole wall look like a mosaic, giving something totally modern a
wonderful antique air.

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wtetzner
Do you have a link to a picture of it? I can't seem to find one.

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DanBC
I'd love to know if this is it, and if there's a better picture of it.
[https://media.glassdoor.com/l/74/a2/5e/2a/pokemon.jpg](https://media.glassdoor.com/l/74/a2/5e/2a/pokemon.jpg)

~~~
fatbird
Yeah, that's it, between Bulbasaur and the people sitting down. Here's the
picture I took of it the last time I was there:
[https://pasteboard.co/JauAUWV.jpg](https://pasteboard.co/JauAUWV.jpg)

~~~
ComputerGuru
That’s a much better picture. I’m surprised there aren’t pics of this
available on Google, if it were my HQ, I’d want to show this off!

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jcun4128
Kind of curious how they found it(surveyors). Did they use ground radar or
something to find anomalies in the soil/bedrock. Probably not something you
can do from a satellite right(scifi ha).

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sricciardi
The site was actually known since 1922, but the exact location had been lost.

Last year they started digging again and the first parts of the mosaic floor
had been uncovered.

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toyg
I’m surprised they are doing it right now, with all that’s going on in that
area too.

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sricciardi
The activity on the site had been interrupted in February due to the lockdown,
and it restarted this month after the restrictions have been gradually eased
up.

As you work in the open air, it's certainly less risky than a closed space
(like, say, a haidresser).

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cpach
Incredibly beautiful!

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lazyant
How old is the mosaic? article doesn't say and I'm curious since there's a
cross motif and wondering if popular theme (coincidence) or post-Constantine
Christian imagery.

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abotsis
“This damn rocky soil is playing hell with the tiller!”

