Archaeologists find intact medieval gauntlet

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2024/01/archaeologists-find-intact-medieval-gauntlet/150272

by bookofjoe • 3 years ago

85 51 3 years ago

stonewhite4• 3 years ago

I find it interesting to ponder about crafting something that can withstand 7 centuries, given what we currently craft (as a software engineer) not even lasting 10 years.

Even NASA was unable to establish contact with the IMAGE satellite after 18 years. I do see the false equivalence here, yet it is nonetheless thought provoking, alongside 100+ year old tea shops in Japan.

wewtyflakes2• 3 years ago

Isn't this article interesting because it is an outlier (an old preserved gauntlet)? If we want to compare outliers like this to what we build today, it seems impossible to do, since we would need to wait another 700 years to see if any of the things we currently craft last that long.

bookofjoe6• 3 years ago

See you in 2724

stonewhite4• 3 years ago

I do agree with you on principles, but given those gauntlets being a pinnacle of human achievement for that time, our current pinnacles doesn't seem to last that long and the means are lost as well. Probably for the better, but quite can't tell also.

Maybe it is a creeping anxiety about losing knowledge as we stride forward and forgetting the means of recreating the things we end up with. Kind of like the Dark age of technology in WH40K.

dekhn6• 3 years ago

There is a science of accelerated aging for testing products, which speeds up the process a bit at the expense of accuracy.

lazystar• 3 years ago

How many generations of humans improved the glove crafting process, prior to the generation that created this glove? Thousands?

How many generations of humans have been writing software? Three?

We're at the early stage of software engineering; brittle code is not surprising.

bookofjoe6• 3 years ago

With the oncoming tsunami of AI we may be in the twilight of human software engineering.

jl6• 3 years ago

One thought that we should not neglect to provoke is that we manufacture things “badly” by choice, in order to reduce cost, in order to make products accessible to more people. Sometimes that sucks and costs more in the long run, but sometimes it’s a rational choice not to overbuild something.

We absolutely could still make a fancy gauntlet that stood a good chance of lasting 700 years, but it would cost enough that only today’s wealthy knights would want to buy it.

vkou2• 3 years ago

And sometimes we manufacture things badly by design, in order to create planned obsolescence, and more revenue in the long term.

pelagicAustral• 3 years ago

Well I for one, bet my ass that, if we are still using mainframes in 700 years, those will still be running legacy COBOL, they will still publish the mandatory, by-annual "COBOL developer shortage" article iteration on HN.

deadbabe• 3 years ago

Software is like plants in a garden. Maybe the garden lasts, but the plants are born, live and die, and have to be tended to regularly to survive. It won’t be the same garden eventually.

bookofjoe6• 3 years ago

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

this is kind of survivorship bias, it's a uniquely preserved specimen... the only known of its kind

Scubabear68• 3 years ago

Part of the reason for the long lasting aspect is the over engineering of the products back then. See also Roman aqueducts. Slave labor or nearly free peons also probably contributed to this.

Today we have much tighter engineering tolerances for cost reasons.

vkou2• 3 years ago

See also Roman aqueducts. Slave labor or nearly free peons also probably contributed to this.

Surviving Roman infrastructure didn't just sit around for two thousand years, it has actively been maintained in that time.

You'll find that you can keep a lot of grandfather's axes around for as long as you want, as long as you keep them clean, and replace the handle and the blade regularly.

sumtechguy• 3 years ago

This may be survivorship bias. If you look back say to 1970. Pick any car of that era would you drive it today? Not much. It is not nearly as good or even that well built. But some of the cars of that era are very well preserved and taken care of and maybe even in better shape than when they left the factory floor.

Sometimes things are built well or kept around for whatever reason. But most of the time people slap it together and call it good enough. Then when they are done with that item it is discarded.

You can say 'look at all the stuff from the roman era that survived'. You can also say what about all the stuff that didnt? Probably most of it. But you do not see it because it is no longer there.

josefresco• 3 years ago

Even NASA was unable to establish contact with the IMAGE satellite after 18 years.

There's also Voyager, 46/7(?) years and counting.

berkes• 3 years ago

We have been "making" nuclear waste that will "last" for eons, though.

Hopefully the constructions (both technical and social) where we store it, in the hope of a future generation that can rid of it, will last centuries too.

I'm convinced everything surrounding nuclear waste is where humans are putting the most effort in thinking and planning for ages. Or, I hope it is.

That said, someone once told me that e.g. castles "back then" where built for centuries, not decades. People thought much more in family-lines, generations and long lasting tribes, than individual, or families' lives.

And there too, nuclear waste is where current society had to think of the grandchildren of the grandchildren, rather than 'before I die'.

hermitcrab3• 3 years ago

It is something I have also thought about. Most of the work I have done probably won't even outlast my retirement, let alone last 7 centuries.

https://successfulsoftware.net/2013/03/24/ephemeral/

Isamu• 3 years ago

In this case there is an example with articulated finger protection and a partial of the other hand

not to be confused with bracers, which cover the wrists and forearms but not the hands; bracers are common in medieval and fantasy cosplay.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(glove)

dekhn6• 3 years ago

I used to belong to a medieval recreation society and made an articulated vambrace (covers forearm, elbow, and connects to the gauntlet). We had modern steel, modern tools (scissors, modern ball peen hammer) but still pounded out all the shapes and cut holes for rivets and pounded the rivets it.

It was tremendously satisfying (I'm a Maker, although I don't think I realized it at the time). Actually much more interesting than swordmaking to me, or even running around hitting people on the (simulated) field of battle or attending the festival meals and talking like a viking.

It also helped me appreciate that blacksmiths and shoe cobblers were absolutely critical in a growing town.

mentos• 3 years ago

As a game developer I'm curious to know if there are any games with crafting you've played that you enjoyed? (For example, blacksmithing in Ultima Online is pretty simple but was fun because of the MMO/community aspect. I wonder if there are any games with more involved steps you appreciate?)

dekhn6• 3 years ago

No, I don't get any satisfaction crafting things in games (and that goes back to Ultima III which I was playing around the same time I started making armor).

For example right now I'm playing Diablo IV wandering around finding stuff to make more powerful weapons, and it does nothing for me. It's entirely about the physical details of making a thing with my hands.

Which is funny because I hated to play D&D with people "by hand" while I loved when the computer was the DM.

supertimor• 3 years ago

Not OP, but as a person who likes to make stuff with my hands and also enjoys video games, these are a few games with crafting mechanics I think are pretty decent:

For mobile: Stardew Valley crafting is very good. It’s simple and satisfying but still complicated enough not to be boring. Ocean is Home is a less popular game, but also has pretty good crafting although the amount of resources needed can sometimes make it a bit grind-y. But you can build a lot of stuff through crafting including walls, roof sections, etc to build a house, as well as make weapons, backpacks, and a huge myriad of other items. It’s almost like a more realistic Minecraft.

For VR: Song in the smoke has a physically realistic crafting mechanism that is both simple and satisfying. It’s very immersive without it being too labor intensive. Township Tale is also a game with realistic physical crafting mechanisms but can be a bit tedious at times (although I’ve only tried out the game a few times, so my impression could be off).

For console games: While not the typical type of crafting, I think Elder Scrolls Oblivion has a very cool method for crafting potions, enchanted items and spells. It is very customizable, and the way it is designed makes you want to play around with coming up with the best potions and spells, etc. It’s on the more complicated side of things and there is a bit of a learning curve, but the amount of possible new spells, potions and enchanted items you can craft is basically endless.

These are just examples I could think off the top of my head, but hope this gives you a bit of insight.

ethbr1• 3 years ago

For articulated armor, is it made-to-measure? I'd assume it would have to be?

Expect there's enough person-to-person variance in measurements to make one-size-fits-most unlikely with metal.

dekhn6• 3 years ago

yes, I measured my arm (we also did clothesmaking so we had all the ingredients) although when I left the SCA I gave it to somebody similar sized. Note that the vambrace is lined with fur and leather, which allows for some adjustment for forearm thickness. It has adjustable leather straps (like a belt). You can also disassemble the piece by removing rivets, and making new rivet holes if you need to change the length/size of pieces. The rivets actually act as bearing rods to allow the elbow to articulate, it's really an impressive piece of work.

Herre's the closest example I can find, https://www.ebay.com/itm/313682162596 only $123!

hermitcrab3• 3 years ago

If you were rich it was made to measure. If you were a poor foot soldier, then much less so.

In the Royal Navy they used to joke that the ratings' uniforms only came in 2 sizes, too big and too small.

See also:

"Before he crunched his numbers, the consensus among his fellow air force researchers was that the vast majority of pilots would be within the average range on most dimensions. After all, these pilots had already been pre-selected because they appeared to be average sized. (If you were, say, six foot seven, you would never have been recruited in the first place.) The scientists also expected that a sizable number of pilots would be within the average range on all 10 dimensions. But even Daniels was stunned when he tabulated the actual number.

Zero." https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-disc...

spacecadet• 3 years ago

Im with you! My brother and I grew up around a blacksmith father and made a few very very crude pieces of plate and reinforced hide haha, good times.

yyyfb• 3 years ago

The intact gauntlet is a four-fold finger glove worn on the right hand, which has individual iron plates stacked like scales and linked together through side rivets.

How did this not rust over so many centuries?!

hutzlibu2• 3 years ago

It did rust. But apparently it was preserved under good conditions (without much oxygen) so it is still in quite good condition.

dekhn6• 3 years ago

I have not been able to find the original publication with details on the preservation. My guess is that it would have been somehow stored in a place that was completely lacking moisture and oxygen, like maybe a tightly sealed box buried deep in teh ground?

SquibblesRedux• 3 years ago

When I saw the picture of the gauntlet, I immediately thought of the ressurection gauntlet from Torchwood. [0]

[0] https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Resurrection_gauntlet

sdsaga122• 3 years ago

What are "bullet points" as named in this article? It's difficult to find anything on Google not referring to the typographical symbol of the same name.

Context: "Archaeologists also found a hammer, tweezers, pliers, keys, knives, bullet points, and a completely preserved 14th century gauntlet, in addition to fragments of its counterpart worn on the other hand."

evtothedev• 3 years ago

It could very well be referring to bullets in the "pew! pew! pew!" sense.

I'd recommend The Military Revolution by Geoffrey Parker[1] if you're curious to know more about the transition from knights to guns and all the strategic ramifications.

[1]https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-military-revolution-geoffre...

sdsaga122• 2 years ago

Ah, I'd been thinking it must be a device somehow related to manufacturing bullets (but how? was the question) -- it hadn't occurred to me that it could mean the pointy tips of bullets themselves. And thank you for the book recommendation.

bookofjoe6• 3 years ago

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/roman...

hermitcrab3• 3 years ago

If you are interested in medieval armour, then I strongly recommend a visit to Leeds Armoury (in Leeds) or The Wallace Collection (in London) in the UK. They both have amazing collections.

wonderwonder• 3 years ago

Its always amazing to me to think that we used to just dress up in metal armor (if we were lucky) and then just charge into each other and hack someone to pieces in the mud. All because some dude born to another dude with a crown told us to. With zero anti biotics. Some dirt poor guy just trying to grow carrots to feed his family gets forced conscripted and sent off to die for something he has nothing to do with.

Incredible that today besides having antibiotics we are essentially still doing the same thing.

Archaeologists find intact medieval gauntlet

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