That was a lot of fun! Great work, Milo, on the blue glass knuckle bone!! My favorite story comes from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. After about 100 years, they realized that a funny shaped rock in museum storage was the nose from one of the more famous pharonic statues in their collections. I suppose you could say that the find had the "smell of victory." What a great treat to see Dr. Hafford and you work together. I'm glad you did the film on the "Baghdad Battery" and he did the response video.
This is both very entertaining and very heartening? Sorry to be a little sappy, but a lot of the time newer generations on the internet take a very adversarial role to established academia, and established generations can take a defensive stance in response that does little to help. It's nice to see someone just getting started on his teaching career both listen and learn, but also bring his own observations that can improve how we understand even little things, and it's nice to see him listened to in turn. That's how it's all supposed to work, but the internet isn't usually the best place to see it.
In Spain we have a very old traditional game called Tabas, or Las tabas, where you play with sheep bones from the tarsus, exactly like you described. Tabas is also the name of the bones
I love how people who are actually interested in the process of science, like Milo & Dr. Hafford, are always interested in, rather than offended by, being corrected
It's not common that you get to see something being learned in a video. Typically, it's learning from what is already known. Good spot on Milo's part with the glass!
What a delight! I just finished watching miniminuteman's (Milo's) clip about the Baghdad Battery that featured your channel, featuring Milo's channel. lol I was so impressed with your assessment of Milo's clip. You presented yourself with obvious intelligence and complete respect to Milo. Milo suggests subscribing to your channel, and I happily followed his suggestion. Imagine my surprise to discovered your most recent clip, featuring Milo! I am so pleased to see you guys eventually hooked up in person! You're a match made in heaven, professionally speaking. lol You are both a credit to your field because you value facts and rational thought, while striving to maintain a professional standard. Most importantly, you both value a level respect and decency, which only helps raise your integrity, a quality that's rarer these days. After all, an insult does not prove a point, facts do. I'm certain you will both benefit from knowing each other, both professionally and socially, ESPECIALLY after a few Baghdad Battery drinks. 🤣 I know I am buying the ingredients when I next go shopping. Thanks for making my day! I look forward to watching your channel.
In Polish, for throwing the dice we say "rzucać kośćmi" which literally means "throwing the bones", there's no other way of saying that, so I presume that the fraze originated from a similar type of game in central Europe.
Would be amazing to see the two of you doing more collaborations in the future, really fun to see and listen to :) Perhaps you could find a way to get Dr Finkel involved as well!
This was AMAZING! Milo led me here on the Baghdad Battery and I was SO excited to see you both working together. Truly the best example of genuine archeology. As a major horse and ungulate nerd, I was already pretty familiar with the use of their bones in games like the ancient Mongolians using bone playing pieces. Also, as a taxidermist, I have actual buckets of deer knuckle bones that I sell to Wiccans and jewelers. I instantly knew that was reminiscent of a knuckle bone which sent me immediately to ancient boardgames. Stoked I was on the right track!
I was going to say the glass piece looks like it has a mold line on it. Though that's based on my experience with Warhammer minis, and not archeology. 😆
@@projectshirostudioswe also know that they were mass producing them. You want perfect versions for the king, but people seeking status will take imitation lapis and put up with mold lines. You also know they can heat up glass to a high enough temperature for molding to work.
I'm a little late to this, but your mention of astragalomancy made me quickly remind of Cowrie-shell divination (Known as jogo de búzios in Brazil) as both are very closely similar in format and meaning (both forms of divination consisting of "throwing" objects and doing the reading based on which side is facing up) and it's just so interesting how humans still have similar practices that can transcend people, places and ages
I’ve seen modern dice that were sided irregularly like that one. People remember to put one and zero across from each other because they usually represent 1- and 6+ in most dice games today (counting by number of games not by popularity). Because of that added infinity the one and six sides effectively have significantly greater value than the rest of the numbers.
Thank you. I am really enjoying these episodes with you and Milo. Hope you continue to make them every now and then. It was great seeing science/history be revised due to another set of eyes looking at an artifact. I do have a question though. How did they make that glass knuckle. It blows my mind that they would make a bone shape instead of something easier.
Glad you enjoyed it! I have a few other short videos of objects Milo and I looked at together and will be releasing them soon. As for the glass knucklebone, they made a mold in two parts and put it together, then poured molten glass in through a hole at the end. They then separated the mold after the glass had cooled. The mold seam is visible on the side of the piece, that's how we know the process.
I grew up in New Jersey and my family would visit Philly at least once a year but we never visited the Penn Museum! I will have to rectify that as soon as possible :) Thank you for sharing so much cool stuff with us, Doctor!
Great seeing you two colabirating. Isn't it a great feeling when you contribute to a museums knowledge. I once correctrd the British Museum on one of it's Sri Lankan masks and they updated the information regarding it. Only happened once though.
If you all ever get to collab again I can imagine playing a game of ur with a replica could be a wonderful time and a great backdrop for a conversation and lesson about the ancient tradition of games and what examples exist within the archive
Historical/Archeological society of RUclips is getting just as good as the gun community in regards to cooperation episodes. Really looking forward to your future endeavors. All the best, gentlemen!
So cool that you’re at penn. I’m from around philly and went to school probably less than a mile from the Penn ancient history building. Always wanted to stop in, kinda regret that I didn’t now 😂
Thank you so much for the great videos, Dr. Hafford! A question that popped into my mind when seeing the six-sided die - do we know if this was a progenitor of sorts for the dice we use today, connected to them via a string of various other similar artifacts or is it an outlier, hinting at somebody someplace else independently coming up with an identical idea much later?
The Penn collection has many six-sided dice from Beth Shean ranging from the Middle Bronze Age to the Roman period, but it would be very hard to say that this Early Bronze Age one from Tepe Gawra started it all. I think the idea probably arose several times independently in different places, or at least the current evidence can't show otherwise. It is curious that the way the known examples show the numbers are all pretty similar, but I suppose there aren't that many different ways to put a specific number of dots on a square.
I wish you had subtitles or more info in the video description about the objects (like Tepe Gawra is hard to understand and even harder to write if one doesnt know already and the item numbers would be helpful for future reference).
In Mongolia, "knuckle bones" = шагай is something just everybody knows. We eat sheeps you know, hhaha. If that limb was part of the dinner, most father would simply clean it with knife, get rid of extra meat and tendons, then add to collection. Yeah you can divine, like rolling dices, you roll them, getting 4 different outcomes, or 4 same outcomes means luck. Something like that. But mostly, it is just a game. Try шагай, copy and paste it to youtube and scroll down you can find few games played with it. You can paint it too. When I saw mystery item I thought it was just bone painted with bluish color, not made from lapis.
You have a note in there on that first item that it's filed flat on one side. Given that it's also a version of a real, practical object in a flashier material than usual, I wonder if it could have been a decorative imitation, rather than a knucklebone meant to be used as such. Specifically, I'm reminded of the urim and thummim, divination tools that are also part of the regalia of the high priest in Exodus. Could the flattened side have been attached to something, perhaps an article of clothing?
It's possible that it was filed down to be inlaid into something, but to attach it to clothing it would probably need holes to thread through. Inlaying was done partly by making partial holes and then using a mastic of sorts, like bitumen, and that could have worked. It's definitely true that there could be other reasons for flattening. Always great to question the 'why' of anything!
We played with sheep knuckles back in the Seventies and eighties when i was a child in Baghdad i don't think it was used for divination by the ancients as liver was used for that purpose.. great video thanks for sharing.
I often go through my life and go "man what would archaeologists in the future think of _____" and insert some random bizarre thing. Like we have this very specific tool to open 5 gallon buckets. Or how would future archaeologists piece together information about our technology when the screens and computers and hard drives are all broken rusty and crusty. I can imagine an entire series of broken routers and modems on display with a sign talking about their ubiquity in 2000s era homes and suggesting at their purpose.
No. It's not; it's just blue glass, not imitation anything. But that's way more important. Because it shows glass-making, not just stone-carving as a way of working with in that society. And the clarity of the glass is overly fine, so yes, maybe divination, but also, yes, maybe the king's game piece. If it's a glass piece, where in the glass maker's business place? What a great find. Museums ... places where artefacts go to die *winks* until someone like Milo joins the chat. (not saying it's all Milo, but if it were not for the show-off of the piece, it woulda sat there in the dark with its little wee card saying, 'Lapislazuli knucklebone artefact; possible use, shamanic, maybe a game piece' Yes?)
I knew the first one couse my grandfathers played with those "bones" , in spanish "jugar a las tabas" , tabas were those bones from animals , kind of playing marbbles....(old peopke played this here in Basque Country, north of Spain and surely among the rest of Spain , anyway i havent research that one.)
Sommerville collected in the late 19th century and was interested in the objects mainly for their beauty, so we lost a lot of info as he typically didn't record where they came from. The collection as a whole ranges in date from around 600BCE to about 600CE, and I suspect this one dates in the earlier range, but it could be later. The more detailed pieces often have more info, and that's one reason they are more studied. These glass astragali are not well documented unfortunately.
@@artifactuallyspeaking Perhaps now you know it is glass rather than lapis lazuli, the spectroscopic properties could be used to determine which ancient types of blue glass are closest. Probably those boring Romans.
I found you through milo, then I had to stop following milo, I forget why, but I think it was either because of arrogance or just downright disrespect for the audience, the little guy has a long way to go Doesn't look like lapis, I've never ever heard of the stone being translucent before🙈 and I'm pretty big on my rocks! Does seem more like dirty glass
Gotta say it's EXTRA neat that you sniff out that it's actually glass during this video. The process of learning grinds ever on and on.
Seeing you two get together to enjoy archeology is such a delight. Really glad you were both able to find the time
Awwww!!! Y’all collabed!!! I came here via Milo’s video having glowing praise and it’s so nice that you took the time to work together with him.
fr!
This is a great tag team.
That was a lot of fun! Great work, Milo, on the blue glass knuckle bone!! My favorite story comes from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. After about 100 years, they realized that a funny shaped rock in museum storage was the nose from one of the more famous pharonic statues in their collections. I suppose you could say that the find had the "smell of victory." What a great treat to see Dr. Hafford and you work together. I'm glad you did the film on the "Baghdad Battery" and he did the response video.
This is both very entertaining and very heartening? Sorry to be a little sappy, but a lot of the time newer generations on the internet take a very adversarial role to established academia, and established generations can take a defensive stance in response that does little to help. It's nice to see someone just getting started on his teaching career both listen and learn, but also bring his own observations that can improve how we understand even little things, and it's nice to see him listened to in turn. That's how it's all supposed to work, but the internet isn't usually the best place to see it.
Feeling very smug that I recognised it was an imitation knucklebone straight away. This is a great idea for a format.
IKR?
In Spain we have a very old traditional game called Tabas, or Las tabas, where you play with sheep bones from the tarsus, exactly like you described. Tabas is also the name of the bones
Me vas a creer que en Patagonia, Aisén? se juega a las tabas? macho, hembra, jajaj, que locura.
I love how people who are actually interested in the process of science, like Milo & Dr. Hafford, are always interested in, rather than offended by, being corrected
It's not common that you get to see something being learned in a video. Typically, it's learning from what is already known. Good spot on Milo's part with the glass!
What a delight! I just finished watching miniminuteman's (Milo's) clip about the Baghdad Battery that featured your channel, featuring Milo's channel. lol I was so impressed with your assessment of Milo's clip. You presented yourself with obvious intelligence and complete respect to Milo. Milo suggests subscribing to your channel, and I happily followed his suggestion.
Imagine my surprise to discovered your most recent clip, featuring Milo! I am so pleased to see you guys eventually hooked up in person! You're a match made in heaven, professionally speaking. lol
You are both a credit to your field because you value facts and rational thought, while striving to maintain a professional standard. Most importantly, you both value a level respect and decency, which only helps raise your integrity, a quality that's rarer these days. After all, an insult does not prove a point, facts do. I'm certain you will both benefit from knowing each other, both professionally and socially, ESPECIALLY after a few Baghdad Battery drinks. 🤣 I know I am buying the ingredients when I next go shopping.
Thanks for making my day! I look forward to watching your channel.
In Polish, for throwing the dice we say "rzucać kośćmi" which literally means "throwing the bones", there's no other way of saying that, so I presume that the fraze originated from a similar type of game in central Europe.
Would be amazing to see the two of you doing more collaborations in the future, really fun to see and listen to :) Perhaps you could find a way to get Dr Finkel involved as well!
I've actually played a sheep's knucklebone game with a couple of people from Mongolia. I don't remember the rules, but I recall a LOT of giggling.
This was AMAZING! Milo led me here on the Baghdad Battery and I was SO excited to see you both working together. Truly the best example of genuine archeology. As a major horse and ungulate nerd, I was already pretty familiar with the use of their bones in games like the ancient Mongolians using bone playing pieces. Also, as a taxidermist, I have actual buckets of deer knuckle bones that I sell to Wiccans and jewelers. I instantly knew that was reminiscent of a knuckle bone which sent me immediately to ancient boardgames. Stoked I was on the right track!
07:10 "Come-on, baby, papa needs a new pyramid!"
I was going to say the glass piece looks like it has a mold line on it. Though that's based on my experience with Warhammer minis, and not archeology. 😆
It does have a mold line! I saw it clearly as I examined more closely.
@@artifactuallyspeaking that's so neat! So we know they were heating glass in addition to grinding it down.
@@projectshirostudioswe also know that they were mass producing them. You want perfect versions for the king, but people seeking status will take imitation lapis and put up with mold lines.
You also know they can heat up glass to a high enough temperature for molding to work.
I am absolutely blown away by that ancient die
The chance something special can be found when new people experience an artifact is incredible.
Recalling the reaction video tennis that undoubtedly led to this video makes the whole string strangely wholesome. Love it.
Yaaasss, glad to see you two collaborating again~
Great video! A question about the dice. Do we know when the sum of opposite sides start to add to seven?
I don't actually know that; I suspect there are people who have looked into the history of dice and now I want to go find out too!
Great video, thanks.
Plus I appreciated the mention of Dr. Irving Finkel.
I'm a little late to this, but your mention of astragalomancy made me quickly remind of Cowrie-shell divination (Known as jogo de búzios in Brazil) as both are very closely similar in format and meaning (both forms of divination consisting of "throwing" objects and doing the reading based on which side is facing up) and it's just so interesting how humans still have similar practices that can transcend people, places and ages
It makes me so happy that you guys making videos together, you should take Milo to a dig with you!
I’ve seen modern dice that were sided irregularly like that one. People remember to put one and zero across from each other because they usually represent 1- and 6+ in most dice games today (counting by number of games not by popularity). Because of that added infinity the one and six sides effectively have significantly greater value than the rest of the numbers.
Very fascinating, especially with the added context given after the parts seen on Milo's channel!
I hope we witness the creation of the first ever 'Archaeology Super-Group' 😄
Only Stefan missing 😉
I've loved the team-up between you guys!! More in the future, PLEASE!! ❤
Love Milo, this is a great crossover!!!
Thank you. I am really enjoying these episodes with you and Milo. Hope you continue to make them every now and then. It was great seeing science/history be revised due to another set of eyes looking at an artifact.
I do have a question though. How did they make that glass knuckle. It blows my mind that they would make a bone shape instead of something easier.
Glad you enjoyed it! I have a few other short videos of objects Milo and I looked at together and will be releasing them soon.
As for the glass knucklebone, they made a mold in two parts and put it together, then poured molten glass in through a hole at the end. They then separated the mold after the glass had cooled. The mold seam is visible on the side of the piece, that's how we know the process.
Watching you both from the outside is an absolute joy and so informative too! Thank you!
I grew up in New Jersey and my family would visit Philly at least once a year but we never visited the Penn Museum! I will have to rectify that as soon as possible :) Thank you for sharing so much cool stuff with us, Doctor!
Tank you for sharing that dice with us, it´s spectacular!!!
Haha yes! I was hoping for a video with you two on this channel too!
I'm so excited I got the sheep knuckle dice on first glance
That is great that a review of s previously logged item has been corrected
YES!!! they are so great together!!!
That’s a really good thumbnail and I adore Milo 😊 Glad your collab sent me to your channel!
Great seeing you two colabirating.
Isn't it a great feeling when you contribute to a museums knowledge. I once correctrd the British Museum on one of it's Sri Lankan masks and they updated the information regarding it. Only happened once though.
awesome collab! you two are fun together. love the imitation lapus discovery too!
I love seeing the way you both approach thinking about the artifacts, and hope to learn from that as well as I watch this series. :)
Hooray! 🥳
Just watched the episode of Milo reacting to the Baghdad Battery reaction with his fangirling. Love this. Brings it round full circle!
If you all ever get to collab again I can imagine playing a game of ur with a replica could be a wonderful time and a great backdrop for a conversation and lesson about the ancient tradition of games and what examples exist within the archive
Historical/Archeological society of RUclips is getting just as good as the gun community in regards to cooperation episodes. Really looking forward to your future endeavors. All the best, gentlemen!
this was fun! looking forward to more neat artifacts!
This should not be how i learned the opposite sides on dice add to 7 but this is how i learned the opposite sides on dice add to 7
WHOA I didn't know Dice were so old!!
Milo! Finally! Was waiting for this type of video since Bagdad battery things
You guys are having too much fun!
Love seeing you two collaborate! Also love that there's always more to learn ❤
So cool that you’re at penn. I’m from around philly and went to school probably less than a mile from the Penn ancient history building. Always wanted to stop in, kinda regret that I didn’t now 😂
That's a fossilised gummi bear
Thank you so much for the great videos, Dr. Hafford! A question that popped into my mind when seeing the six-sided die - do we know if this was a progenitor of sorts for the dice we use today, connected to them via a string of various other similar artifacts or is it an outlier, hinting at somebody someplace else independently coming up with an identical idea much later?
The Penn collection has many six-sided dice from Beth Shean ranging from the Middle Bronze Age to the Roman period, but it would be very hard to say that this Early Bronze Age one from Tepe Gawra started it all. I think the idea probably arose several times independently in different places, or at least the current evidence can't show otherwise. It is curious that the way the known examples show the numbers are all pretty similar, but I suppose there aren't that many different ways to put a specific number of dots on a square.
Short and sweet bit of interesting content from two legends in the making
I wish you had subtitles or more info in the video description about the objects (like Tepe Gawra is hard to understand and even harder to write if one doesnt know already and the item numbers would be helpful for future reference).
In Mongolia, "knuckle bones" = шагай is something just everybody knows. We eat sheeps you know, hhaha. If that limb was part of the dinner, most father would simply clean it with knife, get rid of extra meat and tendons, then add to collection. Yeah you can divine, like rolling dices, you roll them, getting 4 different outcomes, or 4 same outcomes means luck. Something like that. But mostly, it is just a game. Try шагай, copy and paste it to youtube and scroll down you can find few games played with it. You can paint it too. When I saw mystery item I thought it was just bone painted with bluish color, not made from lapis.
Also, it’s not ancient. Traditional for sure. I play with my nephew sometimes.
You have a note in there on that first item that it's filed flat on one side. Given that it's also a version of a real, practical object in a flashier material than usual, I wonder if it could have been a decorative imitation, rather than a knucklebone meant to be used as such. Specifically, I'm reminded of the urim and thummim, divination tools that are also part of the regalia of the high priest in Exodus. Could the flattened side have been attached to something, perhaps an article of clothing?
It's possible that it was filed down to be inlaid into something, but to attach it to clothing it would probably need holes to thread through. Inlaying was done partly by making partial holes and then using a mastic of sorts, like bitumen, and that could have worked.
It's definitely true that there could be other reasons for flattening. Always great to question the 'why' of anything!
@@artifactuallyspeaking Very interesting!
Fascinating video!
I want Milo to roll the ancient die as badly as he clearly wants to. 😢
We played with sheep knuckles back in the Seventies and eighties when i was a child in Baghdad i don't think it was used for divination by the ancients as liver was used for that purpose.. great video thanks for sharing.
I’ve only heard of knucklebones from cult of the lamb lol. Thank you for the entertainment
Someone who loves being a student talking to someone else who loves being a student from a different generation rules
Ohhhh yeah the baghdad battery bois!
Drinking Game: every time Milo says something like "it looks like" or something similar.
More people need to watch these videos.
Great!
Milo!!!! Looking forward to this.
And now I am picturing Enki with a pair of lapis lazuli knuckle bones dangling from his cart rearview mirror...
I often go through my life and go "man what would archaeologists in the future think of _____" and insert some random bizarre thing. Like we have this very specific tool to open 5 gallon buckets. Or how would future archaeologists piece together information about our technology when the screens and computers and hard drives are all broken rusty and crusty. I can imagine an entire series of broken routers and modems on display with a sign talking about their ubiquity in 2000s era homes and suggesting at their purpose.
"Can I roll it?" 🤣
No. It's not; it's just blue glass, not imitation anything.
But that's way more important. Because it shows glass-making, not just stone-carving as a way of working with in that society. And the clarity of the glass is overly fine, so yes, maybe divination, but also, yes, maybe the king's game piece.
If it's a glass piece, where in the glass maker's business place? What a great find.
Museums ... places where artefacts go to die *winks* until someone like Milo joins the chat.
(not saying it's all Milo, but if it were not for the show-off of the piece, it woulda sat there in the dark with its little wee card saying, 'Lapislazuli knucklebone artefact; possible use, shamanic, maybe a game piece' Yes?)
Actual scientific progress made in this video! 🧐 (no matter how small 😉)
Thinking of an old song, roll those bones!
Glad to see you taking Milo under your wing lol.
This is amazing!
In polish its a little bit easier to make bones - dice connection because its the same word in plural - "kości"
the world's greatest team up
Mystery objects!
That die is weighted. Since significant amount of material is removed compared to modern dice the six hole side is lighter than the one hole side.
Your content is awesome! Love your videos. You are a superb educator, researcher and archaeologist. Carpe Diem!
Sweet
I knew the first one couse my grandfathers played with those "bones" , in spanish "jugar a las tabas" , tabas were those bones from animals , kind of playing marbbles....(old peopke played this here in Basque Country, north of Spain and surely among the rest of Spain , anyway i havent research that one.)
I really wish you would increase the size of your texts for the notes that you put up on screen. You're not making it easy on Old eyes
Never believe anything someone else has put in a database. I have learnt that at every database job I have had. How old was that astragalus?
Sommerville collected in the late 19th century and was interested in the objects mainly for their beauty, so we lost a lot of info as he typically didn't record where they came from. The collection as a whole ranges in date from around 600BCE to about 600CE, and I suspect this one dates in the earlier range, but it could be later. The more detailed pieces often have more info, and that's one reason they are more studied. These glass astragali are not well documented unfortunately.
@@artifactuallyspeaking Perhaps now you know it is glass rather than lapis lazuli, the spectroscopic properties could be used to determine which ancient types of blue glass are closest. Probably those boring Romans.
Let me guess
It was Milo😂
Update: IT WAS MILO
Nice 😁👍
NO FUCKING WAY DUDE
Algorithm comment 🏕️
I found you through milo, then I had to stop following milo, I forget why, but I think it was either because of arrogance or just downright disrespect for the audience, the little guy has a long way to go
Doesn't look like lapis, I've never ever heard of the stone being translucent before🙈 and I'm pretty big on my rocks! Does seem more like dirty glass