All that glitters is not gold – emulating luxury in the ancient Greek world

https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/all-glitters-not-gold-emulating-luxury-ancient-greek-world

by diodorus • 3 years ago

76 21 3 years ago

rwmj• 3 years ago

Remarkable that a ceramic pot could have survived for 2,500 years. I break cups all the time.

There's a permanent display of Eastern ceramics at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (UK) which has some incredibly old pieces. Worth visiting even if you know nothing about pottery. https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/about-us/collections/arts-of-as...

marktani• 3 years ago

That a specific ceramic pot survives is very unlikely, but some surviving it of a huge group less so. I guess you also have some cups left in your cupboard!

This of course is the statistical view point. On another level, seeing artifacts survive for thousands of years is fascinating and awe-inspiring.

goeiedaggoeie• 3 years ago

This is the statistical long tail indeed. I would also expect that a lot of these vases were buried in soil or on the sea floor where they were undisturbed for many years.

ericmcer• 3 years ago

I was fighting with someone about this exact concept for hours.

They kept exclaiming how amazing it was that we (as specific people) were born and how infinitesimal the odds were.

dan-robertson• 3 years ago

That museum as a whole is great. It’s got a bit of loads of different things but it is a much more manageable size than the big museums in capital cities / New York.

gilleain• 3 years ago

Interesting quote:

Athens' prolific potters looked for new ways of manufacturing vessels in affordable clay to imitate metal wares – a process known as skeuomorphism ... [ jugs] even has discs on the handle to mimic rivets necessary for metal attachments but serving no purpose in clay.

Not just icons on applications, then.

kemayo• 3 years ago

Yeah, I'm so used to seeing skeuomorphism used in terms of UI design that this felt a bit jarring to read.

Makes perfect sense, of course. The word just means imitating the design of something made of a different material.

jareklupinski• 3 years ago

mimic rivets necessary for metal attachments but serving no purpose in clay

where is the line between cargo-cult and skeuomorphism

NoboruWataya• 3 years ago

If anyone is ever in Santorini in Greece, check out the Museum of Prehistoric Thera. They have some stuff from around 2,000 BC. Just mindblowing to think how different things were when those pieces were manufactured.

blitz_skull• 3 years ago

It’s a testament to his prolific writing that without questioning I had assumed this was an acoup.blog article.

jjtheblunt4• 3 years ago

"all that glitters is not gold" != "not all that glitters is gold".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Morgan%27s_laws#Extension_t...

I feel like one ever present takeaway from logic courses is that universal quantifiers and negation don't commute, DeMorgan's various rules, and so on.

pxc3• 3 years ago

In natural language, usage is prior to grammar, and in this case, actual usage doesn't reflect the apparent rule.

If you want to look up research on this particular rule and its observance (or not) the term is 'scopal isomorphism', where the isomorphism is between the scopes of the quantifiers in the surface structure and those in the logical form.

That said, this is a pet peeve for me, too. Strikes my ear as wrong every single time I hear it, and drives me nuts.

jjtheblunt4• 3 years ago

i'd never seen the term "scopal isomorphism" : thanks! and yeah, i hear it all the time and it is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

It’s a poetry reference:

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Riddle_of_Strider

shard• 3 years ago

Is that poem where the saying is from? It seems to be a 3rd category, separate from the two in the parent comment.

Saying: For the set of all things that glitter, none of it is gold.

Implied meaning: For the set of all things that glitter, not all of it is gold.

Poem: For the set of all gold, none of it glitters.

mayd• 3 years ago

“All that glisters is not gold” - William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice."

All that glitters is not gold – emulating luxury in the ancient Greek world

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