
5,000-year-old sword discovered by archaeology student at a Venetian monastery - HenryBemis
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/5000-year-old-sword-discovered-in-italy-trnd/index.html
======
arminiusreturns
Wow, this is very interesting and right up my alley. One of my many random
hobbies is collecting images of artefacts and I have a huge dir dedicated just
to ancient swords. Bronze tends to look very similar due to the casting
methods but it's cool to see an older iteration and compare it to say the
Scythian (my personal favorites), Mycenaean, Greek, Mesopotamian, Egyptian,
etc.

Funny enough, the ones I have marked as oldest are called "The Swords of
Arslantepe" [1] (which the article mentions in passing) from the same general
region as this one, and are said to be also ~5k old, and of a very similar
chemical composition. The weapons of the royal tombs of Ur [2] are right
behind these in age.

[1]
[https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=Swords+of+Arslantepe&iax=im...](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=Swords+of+Arslantepe&iax=images&ia=images)

[2]
[http://sumerianshakespeare.com/117701/118301.html](http://sumerianshakespeare.com/117701/118301.html)

edit: From the article, a new one to me: "and the sword found in the Tokat
Museum in Turkey", now I have a new something to search for!

~~~
arethuza
What do you make of the myth that Scots came from Scythia - e.g. in the 1320
Declaration of Arbroath:

 _They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the
Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the
most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however
barbarous._

Now I'm not say there is much chance of historicity of this myth - but I've
been puzzled as to why anyone would pick on Scythia as a place to come from?

[https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_Text...](https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_TextArbroath01.htm)

~~~
cat199
> why anyone would pick on Scythia as a place to come from?

still a bit of a thing today

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-
Europeans#Steppe_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-
Europeans#Steppe_theory)

~~~
restalis
I wanted to answer to arethuza but you just provided a reference to the
essence of what I was going to say: _" The [...] Indo-Europeans, a nomadic
culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, expanded in several waves during the 3rd
millennium BC. Their expansion coincided with the taming of the horse."_
Basically, using horses as an overpowering advantage over others, the people
living in the space that was later inhabited by Scytians spread all over,
including westward. Not much room for "picking a place to come from", as I
understand it.

~~~
arethuza
I think that was a poor choice of phrase by me - what I meant was, how did the
Scots (who definitely have historical roots in Ireland) get this idea from?

NB Scots in the sense of Dál Riata Scots, who eventually became the most
powerful grouping in what became Scotland in the 9th century.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata)

------
lb1lf
-One of my wife’s ancestors found a sword dating back some 1,300 years on the farm we currently live on, and it has caused lots of annoyances over the years.

The problem is that the national Norwegian archive of ancient artifact
findings only register the property something is found on, not the exact
location.

Hence, a hundred years after a sword was found in a mountainside a mile away
from where we live, I have to obtain permission from an archaeologist every
time I put a shovel in the ground, more or less...

The sword looks cool, though. (On display in a museum; no such thing as
finder’s keepers for such old things - very rightly so!)

~~~
TSiege
Do you have a link to the piece in the collection? I'd love to see it.

~~~
lb1lf
I’ll ask - I have to admit I’ve only seen it once - when at the museum, I
asked kindly and a curator took mercy upon me, gave me a cup of coffee and
proceeded to locate the sword from storage. I know a sizable part of the
collection is being digitized - I’ll check!

~~~
TSiege
Thanks!

------
ggm
A better headline is "Sword in Venetian monastery collection discovered to be
5,000 years old"

~~~
tarheels100
Accurate, but not as "grabby". Of course, I don't think the author was
necessarily aiming for accuracy.

------
tarheels100
This seems to stretch the meaning of "discovered." Hey look, I just discovered
a dinosaur at the natural history museum! It's older than they thought it was!

~~~
irjustin
I'll take the opposite end and say it was discovered.

If you "discovered a dinosaur" that was completely mislabeled and of the
oldest dinosaurs known to man "hiding in plain sight" \- you deserve it.

~~~
tarheels100
Certainly it is a significant contribution, but I have to admit that my mental
image when reading someone dicovered an ancient sword is of someone digging it
out of the ground.

~~~
sfifs
Well yes. From the article the digging out of the ground part likely happened
but maybe a 100 years previously.

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rvz
Reminds me of the discovery of a 1,500 year old sword at the bottom of a lake
thought to be King Arthur's legendary excalibur which was said to have been
thrown in that same lake in Cornwall in England [0].

𝔄𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔬 𝔶𝔢 𝔩𝔢𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔡 𝔬𝔣 𝔈𝔵𝔠𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔟𝔲𝔯 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔱𝔯𝔲𝔢...

[0] [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-
news/schoolgirl-e...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-
news/schoolgirl-excalibur-king-arthur-lake-discover-dozmary-pool-cornwall-
bodmin-moor-matilda-jones-a7930881.html)

~~~
outworlder
Where does it say that it is 1500 year old? The article says "the family
doesn't think it is very old, probably an old film prop".

~~~
tpmx
I first thought the previous comment was about that 8-year old girl in Sweden
who found a 1500 year old sword:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-45753455](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45753455)

and

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/9lgdaf/girl_8_pu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/9lgdaf/girl_8_pulls_a_1500yearold_sword_from_a_lake_in/)

(the puns never really end...)

Why are so many young girls finding viking age swords in lakes?

~~~
ackbar03
Because young girls discovering swords in other scenarios probably can't make
its way onto news sites

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beaner
I wasn't even aware things were really made of metal before like 2,000 years
ago. Crazy!

Is there a history of metal somewhere? Bronze, copper, tin, steal, gold,
harvesting, forging, etc. It would be an interesting read of history, science,
and discovery.

~~~
tptacek
Wasn't 2000 years ago basically the height of the Roman Empire?

~~~
DrScump
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

~~~
soylentcola
People called Romane they go the 'ouse?

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danso
Tangent, but I can't help but recall one of my favorite headlines and subheds
in the Guardian, from a couple years ago:
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/19/experie...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/19/experience-
pulled-a-1500-year-old-sword-lake-saga-vanecek)

------
tomcam
Appears to be more of a dagger, but you can't fault the ergonomics.
Beautifully designed, and I would guess not just for ceremonial use.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I would guess not just for ceremonial use.

The article has words to the effect that swords were "first forged[] both as
weapons and as symbols of authority".

Of course that can't possibly be true. They were weapons first. Without the
use as weapons, there would be no reason to see them as symbols of authority.

~~~
mehrdadn
Isn't that what a crown is, though? It's not a weapon but it's a symbol of
authority.

~~~
mirimir
Weapons come before crowns etc.

Although crowns are presumably abstracted from helmets.

~~~
mehrdadn
> Weapons come before crowns etc.

I don't think anyone suggested weapons didn't exist before these swords
either?

~~~
thaumasiotes
In the Iliad (much more recent than this sword, but nonetheless informative in
some ways), swords are symbolic of nothing. The text is very clear on what the
symbol of royal authority is -- it's a club. ("Scepter")

I'd be pretty comfortable with the idea that clubs are no more recent than
weapons in general.

~~~
inawarminister
Yes, even until the Hellenistic era, the weapon of virtue and honour was...
the spear. As exemplified by the poetic sense of a conqueror's demense: his
spear-won land.

However, other peoples from deep antiquity held sword to higher regard. Like
the Celts and Germans. Especially the Germanic tribes, who couldn't make their
own swords and need to win them in trade or raid.

~~~
krapp
Also IIRC, samurai initially prized archery and the spear over using a sword
as marks of their noble status - melee combat with a blade for a samurai was a
sign of desperation born of ineptitude with "proper" weapons and tactics. It
wasn't until the Edo period when the samurai were relegated to a bureaucracy
that the cult around the katana was formed, and sort of retroactively applied
to the popular interpretation of history.

------
nl
Given that it's a bronze sword it seems fairly clear it wasn't medieval.
Surprising that this took so long.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Why would that be clear? You can buy new bronze daggers today.

~~~
nl
Because bronze was outdated by Roman times (let alone 1000 years later), and
high quality weapons were prestigious.

You can get one now because it's fun.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I'm not a historian / archaeologist, so I can't really be sure here, but I
would have assumed bronze would have been valued throughout history for-at
least-it's appearance?

I also would have assumed the fun-factor has been a historical constant too?
If you're wealthy enough, at any time since the bronze age, you might want a
bronze version of [thing] for the same reasons people want a bronze [thing]
now?

~~~
lokedhs
You raise an interesting point, and one that I have thought about quite often.

In archaeology, there seems to be an assumption that people in the past only
ever did things for two reasons: Utility and religion. If an object doesn't
seem to have an obvious usefulness, it's assumed that the artifact is of
religious nature.

People have not changed much in the last few thousand years, and thins that we
find interesting today must surely have been interesting in the past. In your
example, why wouldn't a person 1000 years ago consider a replica "ancient
thing" just as interesting as we do today?

Just imagine a future archaeologist looking at the modern work with the
mindset of current archaeologists? What kind of religious symbolism would they
ascribe to a picachu cosplay outfit?

~~~
dvbxcmxn
Archaeologist here.

> In archaeology, there seems to be an assumption that people in the past only
> ever did things for two reasons: Utility and religion. If an object doesn't
> seem to have an obvious usefulness, it's assumed that the artifact is of
> religious nature.

> I wonder if archeologists actually do believe everything was either
> utilitarian or religious, or if that’s just the way it gets reported?

This is definitely now how archaeologists think. Archaeology is a subfield of
anthropology. Our goal is to understand how people live through the lens of
material culture, i.e. how people inhabit a world made out of stuff. Of course
it is common to consider the pragmatic aspects regarding why weird things
might have been created or the purposes that they might serve in people's
lives, but chocking the unexplainable up to ritual or religion is just dumb
and amateurish. No archaeologist I know actually does this. Archaeologists
generally feel comfortable acknowledging that we can't explain certain things
from our current standpoint, saying that it's ritual without a basis for that
claim is just plain dumb and is never taken seriously. It is an extremely
outdated trope.

> People have not changed much in the last few thousand years, and thins that
> we find interesting today must surely have been interesting in the past. In
> your example, why wouldn't a person 1000 years ago consider a replica
> "ancient thing" just as interesting as we do today?

Note in my definition of archaeology I don't focus on the past? That's
intentional, since archaeologists very commonly examine contemporary material
culture.

> Just imagine a future archaeologist looking at the modern work with the
> mindset of current archaeologists? What kind of religious symbolism would
> they ascribe to a picachu cosplay outfit?

As an archaeologist, my understanding is that pikachu products exist to make
money for the people who sell pikachu products.

You need to understand that archaeologists are never working in the dark. We
reason through an abductive process, like adding brushstrokes to a never-
quite-complete painting (also similar to medical diagnosis). We'll never
actually understand how people lived in the past, since it is impossible to
verify any such claim. But we can come up with a reasonable understanding by
slotting different streams of complementary evidence together.

~~~
nl
> This is definitely now how archaeologists think

I think this is a typo and should be "definitely _not_ how"

------
Ericson2314
*mislabeled at a Venetian monastery's museum, which was full of stuff from (various definitions of Armenia).

------
Hokusai
> Two years worth of research confirmed the sword is among the most ancient
> ones ever found, dating as far back as 5,000 years ago.

Two years? But, I have seen Hollywood movies that they just need a magnifying
glass and 5 minutes to get a conclusion.

There goes another myth. Science and history are complicated and require more
effort and time that movies are willing to concede.

~~~
kaybe
I always laugh when stealing research data of ongoing work is an import plot
point. Making sense of it can be hard for the person who wrote it, let alone a
close colleague, but a stranger? Haha, good luck.

------
btrettel
How does one get better at noticing that something is "off" like this sword
not matching its claimed origin? To me, it took more than student being an
expert here. Experts often miss things like this in my experience if they're
not paying attention for it. I'm assuming that the student was the a tour not
in her capacity as a Bronze age weapons specialist, so if that's true then
this wasn't necessarily something she would be paying attention for.

When I notice that something is off, it's usually a fleeting thought that
quickly passes. Sometimes when I notice that something is off a second time,
I'll realize that I didn't "catch" the thought the first time. I think I've
been getting better at catching those thoughts and writing them down. I'm also
confident that there are methods to increase the frequency by which one
catches these things, though I'm not certain how.

~~~
brailsafe
It seems like in this case, there was a vague description that didn't align
with her acute knowledge of a very specific/esoteric subject. Her father was
an archival researcher at the monastery. So to get better at this, a good path
would probably be to develop general critical observation skills, as well as a
deep understanding of particular subjects that you'd be exposed to.

~~~
ForHackernews
I think you may be misreading the term "father" in this context. It's not that
the grad student's literal biological father is a researcher at the monastery.
One of the priests/monks, who carry the honorific title Father[0], is an
archival researcher in the monastery.

[0]
[https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/d003rpHowToAddre...](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/d003rpHowToAddressClergy.html)

~~~
brailsafe
Woops, looks like you're right about that.

------
cull
I know that this is more of an announcement of the recognition of the
misattribution of an artifact in the museum’s collection, but I am more
curious of it’s provenance; specifically, how it made its way into the
museum’s collection. And what its original archaeological context was.

~~~
redis_mlc
The article says a former student, a civil engineer, donated it. Read TFA to
see all the details.

~~~
cull
Ah yes. And now I see the read more button. Thanks.

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SimeVidas
Looks like a sword from Zelda 1.

~~~
aidenn0
Way higher resolution though...

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shahbaby
Looks more like a dagger tbh

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Causality1
Fascinating that there's so much metal used in the handle rather than using a
tang inside a wooden handle.

~~~
rsynnott
If it's a device for showing off rather than an actual weapon, as seems likely
given the age, then more bronze equals more important king!

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z3t4
Whats even cooler is that this sword/dagger might have been made from
meteorite. Eg. It could be alien.

~~~
varjag
Doubt there are bronze meteorites known to humanity.

Either way, copper, the major component of bronze, is a product of exploding
supernovas. That's cool enough.

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duxup
It's in great shape.

