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Archaeologists Map Centuries of History Beneath World’s Oldest Cathedral

posted by martyb on Saturday December 01 2018, @12:57AM   
from the that's-deep dept.

mrpg writes:

The Archbasilica of St. John Lateran doesn’t quite look its age. The basilica, where the Pope presides in his role as Archbishop of Rome, was already ancient when it was rebuilt in the 1650s. Its walls still hold some of the original material used to build the cathedral under Emperor Constantine in 312 CE. And beneath the modern church lies the original Roman foundation. Excavations since the 1700s have opened up a network of dark, cramped spaces called scavi beneath the four-hectare site of the cathedral.

Centuries of Roman history lie buried in the darkness in layers stretching down to 8.5 meters (27.89 feet) below the modern floor of the cathedral, and the subterranean archaeological sites are like a honeycomb through the city’s Caelian Hill. Now, using a combination of laser scanning and ground-penetrating radar, archeologists have made a complete map of the site.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/archaeologists-map-centuries-of-history-beneath-worlds-oldest-cathedral/

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Original Submission

• Re:Bishop of Rome (Score: 2, Interesting) by hellcat on Sunday December 02 2018, @02:35AM

  by hellcat (2832) on Sunday December 02 2018, @02:35AM (#768795) Homepage

  Fun thoughts... never considered Catholic with a small "c." From wikipedia:

  The word catholic (with lowercase c; derived via Late Latin catholicus, from the Greek adjective καθολικός (katholikos), meaning "universal")[1][2] comes from the Greek phrase καθόλου (katholou), meaning "on the whole", "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words κατά meaning "about" and ὅλος meaning "whole".[3][4] The term Catholic (usually written with uppercase C in English) was first used to describe the Christian Church in the early 2nd century to emphasize its universal scope.[according to whom?] In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages.

  FYI, Armenian "popes" are called Katholikos.

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