0xabad1dea
@0xabad1dea

an anecdote about how not everything about history is as dire as it may seem at first glance:

when the Minoan palace of Knossos was dug up in the early 1900s, archaeologist Arthur Evans looked at tablets that showed man, woman, and child symbols with accounting symbols, and came to the conclusion that they represented a bustling slave trade - whole families being pawned off on the regular. (Scripta Minoa, volume 2).

Eventually, Linear B was fully deciphered, and it turned out these tablets were accounting for how much food was needed for each household – based on standard portions for men, women and children.


Turfster
@Turfster

You'll never believe who brought their own bias to the party again

It's A British Dude In The Run-Up To The Height Of Empire!


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in reply to @0xabad1dea's post:

Arthur Evans did a lot of important work and also was wrong a lot, both through the hazard of being first with incomplete information, and through staggering patriarchal and racist assumptions. An excellent example of how all scholarship must be approached with an eye towards understanding the biases involved, and its historical context.