https://www.sciencenews.org/article/canaanite-comb-lice-israel-alphabet
Engraved into the side of a nearly 4,000-year-old ivory comb is a simple wish: Get these lice out of my hair.
This faint inscription, written in the early language of the ancient Canaanites, represents the earliest known instance of a complete sentence written using a phonetic alphabet, says archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The writing system of the Canaanites, who lived in a region in the eastern Mediterranean called the Levant until around 2,000 years ago, later served as a major basis for many modern alphabets. That makes the comb "the most important object I've ever found during an excavation," says Garfinkel. The research was published November 9 in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.
[...] The comb was the unearthed in 2016 among the ruins of the ancient city of Lachish in present-day Israel. Years later, when the comb was sent to a lab to search for traces of lice, someone noticed faint symbols etched on the side. A closer look revealed that the symbols spelled out the sentence, "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard," Garfinkel and colleagues report November 9 in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.
[...] The plea against lice is "so human," says Garfinkel, who notes that other writings from the time tend to center around royal accomplishments or religion. It also appears that the comb was able to fulfill its purpose, at least somewhat. Between the teeth, the researchers found the ancient remains of a louse.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 15 2022, @04:18PM (8 children)
- In Pompeii, the found graffiti in the lavatories that was the equivalent of bathroom graffiti today, along the lines of "For a good time, see so-and-so on such-and-such street".
- Sling bullets have been found with messages that translate to "Take that!" and "Nya-nya!" Imagine dying with that bruised on your forehead forever.
- The first currently known recipe is for beer. All available evidence is that most people have generally liked being sloshed forever and been happy to find new ways to do it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tekk on Tuesday November 15 2022, @04:35PM (2 children)
One of my favorite archaeological hypotheses is that beer specifically is what kicked off farming. It takes a fair amount of infrastructure, societally, to make bread, but to get beer going all you really need is to be able to throw some grains into jars of water.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 15 2022, @05:50PM
I mean, there's lots of reasons to think farming was a discovery that occurred several times in a bunch of different places, because it's so incredibly useful and makes a lot of sense. "Wait, instead of running around hoping to be lucky enough to find food, I do a bit of work and know there's a pretty-close-to-guaranteed meal right here? That seems really convenient!"
Probably the first booze discovered was wine, because it's easier to make than beer. So easy, in fact, that they probably didn't bother writing down a recipe the way they did for beer. It's what happens if you leave grapes out a bit too long before eating them, and then you try to do it on purpose.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday November 16 2022, @05:16PM
We've known since before I was born* that the egg came before the chicken; dinosaurs laid eggs. But which came first, bread or beer? Beer is often called "liquid bread". Was bread discovered by someone who screwed up trying to brew beer, who thought "screw it, maybe if I bake this mess it will be edible?" or was beer discovered by an incompetent baker?
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.
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* I was a beta tester for dirt.
We never did get all the bugs out.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday November 15 2022, @04:46PM (3 children)
I mean, I think the big difference here is daily showers and available anti-louse medication.
Though maybe we're going to get closer again with the CDC arbitrarily declaring that lice are no longer considered a communicable disease that should keep kids out of school.
(Score: 3, Funny) by number11 on Tuesday November 15 2022, @07:14PM (2 children)
Back to the days of my youth, when kids got sent to the school nurse and came back smelling of kerosene?
(Score: 2) by number11 on Tuesday November 15 2022, @07:24PM (1 child)
Odd, my time zone seems to have been switched to Wake Island or maybe Marshall Islands! Yet I feel no different.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday November 15 2022, @10:07PM
It's just a latent effect of the kero. It'll pass. :-}
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2022, @04:58PM
The lice got larger?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr3wH4u4xus [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by gawdonblue on Tuesday November 15 2022, @07:58PM
This [guim.co.uk] is the last time I saw them together doing some archeological detectoring
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday November 16 2022, @01:23PM
I've been running with the convenient round number of 1000 B.C. as the very rough approximate date when the idea of a small alphabet representing sounds was invented. I really didn't know. But this pushes it back to at least 1700 B.C.