I’m willing to bet there will be a follow up article about how scholars have made a startling discovery that the gold was used for crafts and the craft people of the world will just be like “…..Really?”
I love how they just kind of leap to “A PRIEST KING MUST HAVE WORN THIS SHINY GOLD STUFF!”
“Everything is mysterious! We have no idea! It, uh… it was for a ritual, yes.” “…don’t you say everything is for a ritual?” “Shhh, ancient peoples liked rituals.” “But there’s a giant painting on this wall showing how this was used, and modern crafters you could ask.” “SHHH. RITUALS.”
I have a very strong urge to email that researcher.
This keeps happening, you know.
For decades we thought water or oil was poured onto the rocks being used to build Egyptian pyramids for “ritual purposes”. Turns out if you ask people who have worked on sand they can tell you that wet sand is A LOT EASIER TO DRAG ROCKS ACROSS.
We spent centuries unable to figure out how the hair styles of ancient civilisations were constructed, typically going with “all the women wore wigs” (seriously. That was literally the solution) until a hairdresser with an interest in the hairstyles she saw in classical art turned her hand to them and BLEW THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY AWAY with her incredibly accurate recreations of hairstyles using tools available to the original peoples.
Academia has this real, huge problem where you’ve got a whole bunch of insulated people who know a lot about history and research and academia but shit-all about anything else. And who, when presented with something they can’t figure out, they turn to other academics rather than to people who might have some practical experience with similar stuff.
And it spreads into popular culture in a really unhealthy way. Because there is so much stuff that academia leaves as “ritual purposes” or “we don’t yet know how X was done”, which becomes “it’s a mystery!!!1!” in popular science shows and magazines. Which winds up fuelling the fires of people who would rather believe that ALIENS BUILD THE FUCKING PYRAMIDS than that the Egyptian people might actually have been competent at this thing they did.
Yep. Interesting thing about the hairstylist: there was a word that kept being used in documents about hairstyles that could translate as two different things, one of which was something like “sewing needle”. Academics ruled out that translation of the word, because “lol, sewing hairstyles. That’s ridiculous.” The hairstylist who recreated them… looked at that word, at the available tools of the time, and tried a sewing technique with needles to keep hair in place. AND IT WORKED.
The silo effect in academia is a major problem.
Side note: IDK if this is the same lady or not (it probably is) but there’s an entire youtube channel devoted to not only period-correct hairstyles from ancient greece/rome and egypt all the way up to the napoleonic and civil war eras but also a few needle/fiber/cloth crafts like beading, dyeing, etc.
The ones that bug me are always the textiles stuff – naturally, as I do that myself. Like the vase paintings of ancient Greeks and Romans and their warp-weighted looms. Archeologists kept saying shit like, “No, that must be an artistic rendering, that couldn’t possibly work like that,” and meanwhile people in Scandinavia are still using nearly identical looms today. Because nobody ever thought to ask actual weavers. The nitwits looking at women preparing wool and spinning on vases, and coming up with completely ridiculous explanations for this shit, and any spinner could glance at it and go, “Um, no.” Just. Argh.
this formatting is making me uncomfortable but I have to tell you something / ask you something that is vital to my career as a student.
I re-read and edited that sentence for an hour, but you’ll probably just glance over it for half a second.
thanks!
– [name]
k
-professor
I have a stock format and structure I use.
Dear Person I am Writing To:
This is an optional sentence introducing who I am and work for, included if the addressee has never corresponded with me before. The second optional sentence reminds the person where we met, if relevant. This sentence states the purpose of the email.
This optional paragraph describes in more detail what’s needed. This sentence discusses relevant information like how soon an answer is needed, what kind of an answer is needed, and any information that the other person might find useful. If there’s a lot of information, it’s a good idea to separate this paragraph into two or three paragraphs to avoid having a Wall of Text.
If a description paragraph was used, close with a restatement of the initial request, in case the addressee ignored the opening paragraph.
This sentence is just a platitude (usually thanking them for their time) because people think I’m standoffish, unreasonably demanding, or cold if it’s not included.
Closing salutation,
Signature.
People always ask me how I can fire off work emails so quickly. Nobody has figured out yet that it’s the same email with the details changed as needed.
YUP, THAT’S WHY. CATS ARE BIG DUMMIES AND OFTEN SEE NO REASON WHY TWO DIFFERENT DOORS SHOULD LEAD TO THE SAME PLACE, SO THEY FIGURE THEY’LL CHECK IF IT’S ALSO RAINING IN THE OTHER OUTSIDE BEHIND THE OTHER DOOR.
WHEN THE PROPRIETOR OF THIS BLOG WAS A CHILD, THE KITCHEN LED INTO THE DINING ROOM, WHICH LED INTO THE LIVING ROOM, WHICH LEAD INTO THE FRONT HALLWAY, WHICH LED BACK INTO THE KITCHEN, SO WHEN THE CATS WERE HUNGRY, THEY WOULD CHECK THEIR BOWLS, SEE THAT THEY WERE EMPTY, AND WALK ALL THE WAY AROUND THE HOUSE TO SEE IF THE OTHER BOWLS IN THE OTHER KITCHEN WERE ALSO EMPTY.
why is everyone screaming
FOR AN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION, I ADVISE YOU TO LOOK AT THE TITLE OF THIS BLOG.
So Frozen get’s a cafe but Tiana doesn’t even though the fans have been asking for a Tiana restaurant for the longest?
Having a Tiana cafe makes sense because a huge focus in her movie is food. We see her cooking gumbo at the beginning, we see her working at a cafe, we hear her talk about how awesome her restaurant is going to be, she even gets a resturant in the end of the movie.
But Frozen gets a cafe instead.
This makes no sense
Blah
Not to mention Tiana is from one of the culinary capitals of the world. You could have gumbo and jambalaya and beignets and etouffee and crawfish and I could go on.
theluminouscosmos 