The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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caltrek
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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Typing Time
by Hyung-Eun Kim

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/446- ... ing-blocks


Entire Article (Less Photos):
(Archaeology.org) About 1,600 blocks of metal movable type from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have been discovered inside an earthenware pot underneath Jongno, one of Seoul’s busiest tourist districts. This is the largest collection of movable type blocks from the period ever discovered in Korea. Six hundred of the pieces use hangul, the Korean alphabet, which was created in 1433 and gradually replaced Chinese characters.

The earliest known examples of hangul metal movable type are 30 pieces held by the National Museum of Korea, dating to 1455, that were used by Korean royalty. Researchers believe the new finds date from around the same time. The blocks were found with other metal objects that commoners would normally not have had access to, including artillery and parts of an astronomical clock and a water clock—both of which are described in royal documents.

During the Joseon period (1392–1910), the Jongno area of Seoul was one of the city’s most prosperous financial and commercial districts, as well as home to government officials and wealthy merchants. Archaeologists believe the site where the type blocks were found was likely a house’s storage room, and that the blocks were buried with the intention of reusing them later. This may have been a response to an unexpected event, such as the Japanese invasion known as the Imjin War (1592–1598).
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caltrek
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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Cave Fit for a King
by Daniel Weiss

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/453- ... ermit-cave

Entire Article (Less Photographs):
(Archaeology.org) A cave carved by human hands out of a sandstone cliff above a tributary of the River Trent in Derbyshire, England, may have been occupied as early as the seventh century A.D. Edmund Simons, an archaeologist at the Royal Agricultural University, recently led a team that found that the Romanesque doors of the three-room cave are very similar to those found in other medieval buildings. Moreover, a rock-cut pillar in the cave is of a style found in many Anglo-Saxon structures, including a seventh-century A.D. crypt in nearby Repton. This raises the possibility that the cave may have been built to imitate the crypt, or possibly even by the same architect.

Legend holds the cave was once inhabited by a ninth-century A.D. saint named Hardulph, who has been identified with Eardwulf, a deposed king of Northumbria who lived out his final years exiled in the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia, where the cave is located. Likewise, its name, Anchor Church, which dates to at least the thirteenth century, suggests the cave was home to anchorites, or religious hermits. “Saint Hardulph has a cell in a cliff a little from the Trent,” reports a fragment of a medieval book preserved in a 1545 volume. “Anchor Church is the only real contender because there aren’t any other caves by the Trent that are like it in that area,” says Simons. The cave went on to be used in the eighteenth century by inhabitants of the nearby manor house, Foremarke Hall, as an entertainment venue. Archaeologists have found evidence that the gentlefolk knocked out some of the cave’s walls to provide an airier space with better views of the valley below.
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caltrek
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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The Secrets of Ancient Japanese Tombs Revealed Thanks to Satellite Images
January 19, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/940596

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) A research group at the Politecnico di Milano analysed the orientation of ancient Japanese tombs – the so-called Kofun. This study has never been carried out before, due to the very large number of monuments and the fact that access to these areas is usually forbidden. For these reasons, high-res satellite imagery was used. The results show that these tombs are oriented towards the arc of the rising sun, the Goddess Amaterasu that the Japanese emperors linked to the mythical origin of their dynasty.

The Japanese islands are dotted with hundreds of ancient burial mounds, the largest of which are in the typical shape of a keyhole and are called Kofun. Built between the third and the seventh centuries AD, the most imposing are attributed to the semi-legendary first emperors, while the smaller ones probably belong to court officers and to members of the royal family. Among these, the so-called Daisen Kofun is one of the largest monuments ever built on Earth: it measures 486 meters in length and about 36 in height. It is traditionally attributed to Emperor Nintoku, the sixteenth emperor of Japan. The Daisen Kofun belongs to a group of tombs recently inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

There are no written sources on these tombs, and excavations are rare and limited to the smaller ones, since the largest are considered the tombs of the first semi-legendary emperors and, as such, are strictly protected by law. Protection also extends to the outside: many monuments are fenced, and it is not allowed to enter the perimeter. For these reasons, it is impossible to obtain accurate measurements of size, height and orientation. Furthermore, their number discourages any on field investigation. It is therefore natural to study them using high-resolution satellite images, which furnish simple but very powerful tools for remote sensing investigations.

This is what Norma Baratta, Arianna Picotti and Giulio Magli of the Politecnico di Milano did, with the aim of deepening the knowledge of the relationships between these fascinating monuments with the landscape and, in particular, with the sky. The team measured the orientation of more than 100 Kofuns and came to interesting conclusions.

The results - just published in the scientific journal "Remote Sensing"
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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90% of medieval chivalry and heroism manuscripts have been lost
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-medieval- ... -lost.html
by University of Oxford
New research released today finds that while the Knights of the Round Table have won global fame, most medieval English heroic or chivalric stories have been lost. Meanwhile, more than three quarters of medieval stories in Icelandic and Irish survive to the present, in an unusual pattern suggesting island "ecosystems" helped preserve culture.

The findings come from an international research team, including Oxford experts, which has applied statistical models used in ecology to estimate the loss and survival of precious artifacts and narratives from different parts of Europe. This ecological approach offers a new perspective on the loss of cultural heritage, complementing past research. Their findings are published in the journal Science, with Mike Kestemont (University of Antwerp) and Folgert Karsdorp (KNAW Meertens Institute) as the main authors.

Dr. Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, an Old Norse philologist and Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford, says, "By using statistical methods borrowed from ecology, we were able to add to previous scholarship.

"We estimate that more than 90 percent of medieval manuscripts preserving chivalric and heroic narratives have been lost. This corresponds roughly to the scale of loss that book historians had estimated using different approaches. Moreover, we were able to estimate that some 32 percent of chivalric and heroic works from the Middle Ages have been lost over the centuries."
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
Tadasuke
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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I can only imagine that it would be awfully bland, boring and unstimulating for the likes of me.
Global economy doubles in product every 15-20 years. Computer performance at a constant price doubles nowadays every 4 years on average. Livestock-as-food will globally stop being a thing by ~2050 (precision fermentation and more). Human stupidity, pride and depravity are the biggest problems of our world.
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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Tadasuke wrote: Fri Feb 25, 2022 12:57 pm I can only imagine that it would be awfully bland, boring and unstimulating for the likes of me.
I'm not so sure about that (in my case), but it would be awfully dangerous
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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Lurking wrote: Fri Feb 25, 2022 9:17 pm
Tadasuke wrote: Fri Feb 25, 2022 12:57 pm I can only imagine that it would be awfully bland, boring and unstimulating for the likes of me.
I'm not so sure about that (in my case), but it would be awfully dangerous
If I were to accidentally stop in the middle ages when my time machine breaks, I'll be putting a lot of effort to acquiring the tools and wares just to be able to boil water. :?
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Tadasuke
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

Post by Tadasuke »

This video shows clearly how backbreaking, unpleasant, boring and undesirable medieval peasant's life was. Truly nothing worth experiencing. Usually they didn't even have things like metal tools, glass or horses. And they had to obey their lords. Most of people in the Middle Ages Europe lived like that and life later before the XIX century wasn't much different either. Time travelers wouldn't be entertained. It's enough to watch a 30 minute documentary to know what is worth knowing. 😞

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Global economy doubles in product every 15-20 years. Computer performance at a constant price doubles nowadays every 4 years on average. Livestock-as-food will globally stop being a thing by ~2050 (precision fermentation and more). Human stupidity, pride and depravity are the biggest problems of our world.
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caltrek
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Re: The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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^^^It is true that there was very limited wealth for most people in the Middle Ages. However, some have argued that it was also an era in which there was a comparatively great amount of leisure time. The calendar for the year was filled with all manner of festive holidays. Presumably, people had to rely upon their own devices for entertainment during these festivities.
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