5000-Year-Old Tablets Can Now Be Decoded by Artificial Intelligence, New Research Reveals::Researchers in Germany have unveiled an AI system capable of deciphering ancient cuneiform texts with excellent accuracy.
Here’s to hoping it’s more complaints regarding the inferior copper quality of everyone’s favorite con artist Ea-Nasir
Be… sure… to… drink – Oh, for fuck’s sake.
A crummy commercial?
Ea-Nasir has got to be one of my favourite internet phenomena
Explainer link for people who are blessed enough to be hearing of this for the first time: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/who-is-ea-nasir-and-why-are-people-complaining-about-his-copper-the-viral-complaint-tablet-meme-explained
First timer here, thanks!
All I can think of right now is how pissed those people had to be about the copper quality to carve their grievances onto a complaint tablet.
This is incredibly awesome and a great use for AI. They have hundreds of thousands of these tablets that haven’t been deciphered yet. I know most are just inventory lists, but what if there are stories hidden in some of them? Very cool.
duuuude so much can be learned just from boring lists. exciting!
Serious question, like what?
a list, especially bulk lists, would belie frequencies and cadences of objects and services.
patterns emerge on usage, trade, priorities… possibly down to personal preferences of individual humans at the time.I guess that would be cool to compare our lives with ancient lives.
On the top of my head, the exact ingredients used for roman concrete would be a nice list.
Its stronger then today’s concrete and were still not sure wether they did or did not use blood as an ingredient.
Just in general we can learn about resources used and how these might be valued, we might already know if some of those were locally present, if not that indicates trading, which indicates diplomatic relations.
If we know how some stuff were valued we might learn about the status and wealth of the list owner.
We can learn about people diet, writing, differences in dialect compared to 3 towns over, peoples names, wether people are a commodity (slaves),… i keep finding more really.
If you have an office job you may release how much important data we keep in spreadsheets everywhere. Spreadsheets are the digital equivalent of boring lists.
On the top of my head, the exact ingredients used for roman concrete would be a nice list.
They know that now, they used volcanic ash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete
But all of your points are well taken.
A lot of what we know about the construction of the Egyptian pyramids came from what are essentially ancient spreadsheets.
deleted by creator
What they have eaten/cultivated on their fields, their organization structure, trading networks, stuff like that. Most what we know of Babylonian culture is from such lists (they were notorious for such lists).
I highly suggest looking up Irving Finkel if you want to learn more about Cuneiform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THA1Ez_kw0g is one of my favorites but he’s extremely entertaining in everything he does.
His video with Tom Scott and Game of Ur is awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZskjLq040IHere is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=WZskjLq040I
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=THA1Ez_kw0g
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
“ Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”
Archeologists: fascinating, it’s a grocery list!
AI researcher: dangit this letter keeps demolishing my roc curve…
Drink your ovaltine
And the old book with some drawing, idk it’s name
Vöøyniytschz Manuscript. For sure the guaranteed correct spelling.
I’m fairly certain that was written and illustrated by an insane person, a kid, or a grifter. Still cool, tho
Definitely not a kid, there’s too much skill and perseverance for that. But yeah, a mentally off person back in the day, or a very, very good con man later on, that we can agree on.
deleted by creator
Mainz baby!
