What's your favorite artifact and why?

[Samson]

Looks more like a praying mantis!

I know what you mean. For my whole life I have heard them waxing lyrical about how the picture captures the essence of movement of the horse, but I have always wondered if they just had only heard of them or something and never seen a horse. It could have been a cargo cult, trying to get those horsebound traders back that their grandparents told them about.

 

[Lexicus]

I know what you mean. For my whole life I have heard them waxing lyrical about how the picture captures the essence of movement of the horse, but I have always wondered if they just had only heard of them or something and never seen a horse. It could have been a cargo cult, trying to get those horsebound traders back that their grandparents told them about..

The issue isn't that they never saw a horse, it's that they couldn't go up in a helicopter and look down on the glyph

 

[Samson]

The issue isn't that they never saw a horse, it's that they couldn't go up in a helicopter and look down on the glyph

But if that is true, how can it also be true that they perfectly captured the essence of movement of a running horse? That was the claim.

 

[Sarin]

Looks more like a praying mantis!

It's missing a few limbs for that, among other things.

 

[Lexicus]

But if that is true, how can it also be true that they perfectly captured the essence of movement of a running horse? That was the claim.

Aliens

 

[Broken_Erika]

Aliens

You forgot the image

 

[EvaDK]

Some of the Bernini sculptures in Villa Borghese, Rome. Most stunning artworks I have ever seen with my own eyes.
It's still unfathomable to me, how the man was able to create these masterpieces from marble.

I'm also deeply in love with Dutch paintings by Vermeer and Rembrandt. I have a large poster at home from a work by English painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti; I'll never grow tired of staring at it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Aliens

Alas @Berzerker is not around to explain it all.

 

[Angst]

i really don't understand the confusion about the horse. it's just like stylized & vaguely celtic to me

(maybe i'm not picking up on sarcasm here; i get the sarcasm in "aliens", but otherwise)

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

joe biden

 

[Kyriakos]

I know what you mean. For my whole life I have heard them waxing lyrical about how the picture captures the essence of movement of the horse, but I have always wondered if they just had only heard of them or something and never seen a horse. It could have been a cargo cult, trying to get those horsebound traders back that their grandparents told them about.

I wasn't aware that the phrase is so commonly used (as synekdoche) ^^
But certainly such beliefs must have been prevalent in the mist of prehistory.

 

[Perfection]

Does Statue of Liberty comes in the "Artifact" category ? It sure dues when the astronauts discover it in the movie "The Planet of the Apes". My favourite artifact('s) are the ancient Mesopotamian batteries A.K.A "Baghdad batteries" - It turnes out Benjamin Franklin was not a first man to came across the idea of the (as he called batteries - a "Laden Jar" )

Layden Jar's are capacitors and not batteries.

The distinction being that batteries* store chemical potential energy that is converted to electrical energy via electrochemical reactions. Capacitors store energy in an electric field. And while they have some definite similarities in that they both store energy they are quite distinct pieces of technology.

*I'm using the common parlance usage of the term battery. It gets a bit messy when we get into historical and technical usages. For instance Ben Franklin invented a type of capacitor (that wasn't Layden Jar) that he called an 'Electric Battery' and him calling it a battery is why we call batteries batteries today even if it fails that common parlance term.

The Baghdad Battery is speculated to be a proper battery (again in the common usage) whether it actually was or not is rather controversial. Fun one to think about, definitely something I'm not sure about.

 

[Kyriakos]

Easy to find bit of technology used to calculate the height of the great Pyramid.

 

[PhroX]

Layden Jar's are capacitors and not batteries.

The distinction being that batteries* store chemical potential energy that is converted to electrical energy via electrochemical reactions. Capacitors store energy in an electric field. And while they have some definite similarities in that they both store energy they are quite distinct pieces of technology.

*I'm using the common parlance usage of the term battery. It gets a bit messy when we get into historical and technical usages. For instance Ben Franklin invented a type of capacitor (that wasn't Layden Jar) that he called an 'Electric Battery' and him calling it a battery is why we call batteries batteries today even if it fails that common parlance term.

The Baghdad Battery is speculated to be a proper battery (again in the common usage) whether it actually was or not is rather controversial. Fun one to think about, definitely something I'm not sure about.

I was under the impression that it had been pretty solidly established that the "Baghdad Batteries" were just jars for storing scrolls. Is that not the case? Or is it another one of those "controversies" where the disagreement is between people who have a good knowledge of the subject and those who don't?

 

[Perfection]

I was under the impression that it had been pretty solidly established that the "Baghdad Batteries" were just jars for storing scrolls. Is that not the case? Or is it another one of those "controversies" where the disagreement is between people who have a good knowledge of the subject and those who don't?

I get the general impression that it's more of the latter but like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[MrCynical]

I know what you mean. For my whole life I have heard them waxing lyrical about how the picture captures the essence of movement of the horse, but I have always wondered if they just had only heard of them or something and never seen a horse. It could have been a cargo cult, trying to get those horsebound traders back that their grandparents told them about.

Horses were common domestic animals in pre-Roman Britain. There's plenty of evidence for them all the way back to the ice age. The ancient britons had cavalry and chariots, so they certainly knew what horses looked like.

The way it looks is probably a deliberate stylistic choice. There is I suppose there's also the issue that figure has needed to be cleaned and to some extent recut regularly for thousands of years. That could cause it to drift over time and exaggerate the style I guess.

 

[Perfection]

View attachment 662857

Easy to find bit of technology used to calculate the height of the great Pyramid.

 

[Kyriakos]

Probably also aimed to calculate heights around it.

 

[AdamCrock]

View attachment 662781

Its potential is astronomical.

It is Ar ... something mechanism !!! A computationial machine part drowned in the time of the Ancient times in the "Mare Greecium" - it's not an actutal name I've made it up , but it's a very real actual Artifact !

 

[AdamCrock]

Perfection