So many lifetimes and stories associated with each one of those little shards of object; these are just the ones discarded and found in this one small place.
The magnitude of all the human lifetimes and endeavors that are now all but non-existent makes my head spin. The depth of history is staggering.
If you're into this kind of work, I suggest spending an hour or so reading/looking through "Here" by Richard McGuire. It's a fascinating conceptual graphic novel that really gave me a new way of thinking about time. Even now, years after reading it, I find myself appreciating the history of physical spaces, even spending time to research buildings and different places I visit each day.
What the. I thought I recognized that book instantly upon seeing that preview of it and skimming the article, but the fact that it had been released only a few years ago made no sense to me--I was sure I'd seen previews of it something like 15 years ago, and then I suddenly remembered, vividly, how eerie it had seemed at the time, and I remembered being in this same house I'm in right now, looking at it online and feeling weirded out. But just now, after more reading, I found out the book is based on some earlier and similar black and white pages he'd drawn back in 1989 for Raw magazine, which must've been what I saw online 15 years ago.
So basically the last 10 minutes of my life have been super weird and totally appropriate in the context of that dude's work. Gaaah. Thanks for the link, and the bizarre meta experience I just had.
"The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time; and whilst we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much further reason may sometimes go than imagination may venture to follow"
This was Thomas Playfair commenting on the works of his friend James Hutton. Of course they were talking about deep geological time rather than human history, but the same sense of wonder is there.
NB I actually became interested in geology pretty much because it is history at an epic scale.
I get that vertigo personally when going thru any large city. Rows and rows of large habitations with thousands, hundreds of thousands of individuals makes me feel very humble at how difficult it is to grasp that degree of complexity when we just refer to it as "society".
Not really, sonder is the realization that every other person alive today is living a life "as complex as one's own". The gp is about the number of lives in one spot through time.
They're sort of vertical slices vs. horizontal slices of the same concept.
The one that has hit me the hardest is imagining the Beringia tribes that moved to the americas in 15,000-11,000 BC. Living thousands of years in relative isolation from the world while living the same pattern of life from generation to generation.
I forget where I saw the story, but I once heard of a native tribe whose members made some money by making baskets to sell to tourists. The tourists would buy the baskets with the belief that this basket represented how the people of the tribe had lived thousands of years ago, the same pattern of living continuing over the whole time.
But the person who told the story talked to the basket makers, who were all trying to create new and distinct patterns of basket weaving, different and better than their teachers and their contemporaries.
The "same pattern of life" can be distinctly different, depending on the scale at which you look.
If that amount of time doesn't bedazzle you, then imagine that each person in the past could have taken different actions, leading to a tree of different possible realities. A huge tree.
For those who may not find it like I did initially: The whole thing has faceted navigation and filtering when clicking on the search icon in the lower left. You can then filter by time range, material, and use.
It's fascinating how you can see hints of the city's history through these items. E.g. from the "golden age" (16-1700s) there are tons of items from the bustling cloth and textile trade. It's also interesting to see how the apparent quality of items has gone down over the centuries - even though there's probably some survivorship bias, most recent items are just paper and plastic, and probably wouldn't have lasted very long.
Yeah it's basically that simple. All you need is a rope and a good neodymium magnet. If you search for magnet fishing on amazon you can get set up for pretty cheap.
There's tons of videos on youtube about it and there's also a subreddit that looks pretty helpful: /r/magnetfishing/
I inferred the items were mostly dredged up from the Amstel riverbed, rather than a canal. Either way, as an Amsterdam resident this is a fascinating deep dive into the city's history (and its international visitors).
From the 19th to 20th centuries, artifacts from around the world were increasingly gathered in European museums and curio shops. When painters and sculpters discovered things like sub-saharan african masks, mesoamerican temples, oceanic tiki sculptures, ancient cycladic figurines, japanese woodblock prints, and islamic geometric designs, it had a huge impact on them. Artists like Maurice de Vlaminck and Pablo Picasso would go on to riff on these as Cubism and other forms. Modernist artists and designers such as Mondrian were really just re-discovering forms of art that other cultures had established.
I'm no art historian, but according to the website, that fragment is a tin-glaze patchwork mosaic on the inside of a plate or bowl. Since it's 16th century this is probably an Italian Majolica plate, whose origins are an area of Sicily known for a Moorish method of glazing pottery. These designs were inspired by Islamic art from Andalusia (http://www.islamicspain.tv/Arts-and-Science/The-Culture-of-A...) and adapted over time to European imagery and patterns (though patchwork mosaics in general are about 5,000 years old)
Maybe life doesn't suck. Today: canal trash is credits cards, cell phones and Megaman. The past: fishing hooks, spear heads, a nazi coin and nothing more fun than tobacco pipes and dice.
beautiful website, well beyond its functional requirements.
I wonder if any other cool stuff gets found when the canals are fished for bikes (another interesting thing about NL canals I heard about on HN[1]), or if that happens in mostly the same areas, making them more likely to be over-fished.
There aren't that many canals outside of Amsterdam's center. The ones outside of the center tend to be cleaner as well, because, well, less people around them at all times, and more logically separated from the population (think: parks around them, not houses and bike parking spots right next to the canal).
I didn't put a lot of effort in finding the exact location of this excavation, but there are some mentions of Damrak on the site, which is as center Amsterdam as it can get.
There's a philips c12 (iirc) there, I had one circa 2000, really liked that phone. Maybe it was more by association though. My contract allowed one free number and I set that to a landline access number of a discount telecoms provider so i was able to make calls to everywhere really cheaply for the time.
Readit News
So many lifetimes and stories associated with each one of those little shards of object; these are just the ones discarded and found in this one small place.
The magnitude of all the human lifetimes and endeavors that are now all but non-existent makes my head spin. The depth of history is staggering.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/books/review/richard-m...
So basically the last 10 minutes of my life have been super weird and totally appropriate in the context of that dude's work. Gaaah. Thanks for the link, and the bizarre meta experience I just had.
Not quite the same thing, but scratches a similar itch to "Here", I think.
"The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time; and whilst we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much further reason may sometimes go than imagination may venture to follow"
This was Thomas Playfair commenting on the works of his friend James Hutton. Of course they were talking about deep geological time rather than human history, but the same sense of wonder is there.
NB I actually became interested in geology pretty much because it is history at an epic scale.
Deleted Comment
https://xkcd.com/2013/
They're sort of vertical slices vs. horizontal slices of the same concept.
But the person who told the story talked to the basket makers, who were all trying to create new and distinct patterns of basket weaving, different and better than their teachers and their contemporaries.
The "same pattern of life" can be distinctly different, depending on the scale at which you look.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
[0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/magnetfishing/
There's tons of videos on youtube about it and there's also a subreddit that looks pretty helpful: /r/magnetfishing/
Amazingly Mondrian even.
https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00092CER059...
From the 19th to 20th centuries, artifacts from around the world were increasingly gathered in European museums and curio shops. When painters and sculpters discovered things like sub-saharan african masks, mesoamerican temples, oceanic tiki sculptures, ancient cycladic figurines, japanese woodblock prints, and islamic geometric designs, it had a huge impact on them. Artists like Maurice de Vlaminck and Pablo Picasso would go on to riff on these as Cubism and other forms. Modernist artists and designers such as Mondrian were really just re-discovering forms of art that other cultures had established.
I'm no art historian, but according to the website, that fragment is a tin-glaze patchwork mosaic on the inside of a plate or bowl. Since it's 16th century this is probably an Italian Majolica plate, whose origins are an area of Sicily known for a Moorish method of glazing pottery. These designs were inspired by Islamic art from Andalusia (http://www.islamicspain.tv/Arts-and-Science/The-Culture-of-A...) and adapted over time to European imagery and patterns (though patchwork mosaics in general are about 5,000 years old)
https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00620MTL039...
I wonder if any other cool stuff gets found when the canals are fished for bikes (another interesting thing about NL canals I heard about on HN[1]), or if that happens in mostly the same areas, making them more likely to be over-fished.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFAIzp9MCkg
There aren't that many canals outside of Amsterdam's center. The ones outside of the center tend to be cleaner as well, because, well, less people around them at all times, and more logically separated from the population (think: parks around them, not houses and bike parking spots right next to the canal).
I didn't put a lot of effort in finding the exact location of this excavation, but there are some mentions of Damrak on the site, which is as center Amsterdam as it can get.