Gold leaf is stupid cheap, but it still carries a "valuable" aura.
When Gualtiero Marchesi, the most influential Italian chef of last century, used gold leaf with saffron risotto he made it to play with colors and presentation, but most likely he also aimed at making it feel more "precious".
We're all creatures of irrationality.
That being said I doubt they had the technology back then, it might be thin but not µm thin
"5,000 years ago, Egyptian artisans recognized the extraordinary durability and malleability of gold and became the first goldbeaters and gilders. They pounded gold using a round stone to create the thinnest leaf possible. Except for the introduction of a cast-iron hammer and a few other innovations, the tools and techniques have remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years."
Well, not for a few decades anyway and they'll never trace it back to you...
Would warmly recommend joining local archeological and historical societies wherever you are.
> One of the reasons archaeologists believe this was a temple, besides the gold foil figures, is the absence of other finds that would be natural if people lived there, like cooking pots and whetstones.
> In Norway, findings of gold foil figures are rare. The 35 from the temple in Vingrom represent the largest collection we have found in this country.
> On the Danish island of Bornholm, over 2,500 gold foil figures were found in a field. Were there not so many gold foil figures in Norway at that time, or have we just not found them? “There must be more of them here,” Stene believes. But most archaeological excavations today are commissioned. “We dig when new roads and buildings are going to be built, this limits what we can investigate. It’s about being lucky and getting the opportunity. A lot of coincidences are involved here. They are so small, but they shine when you find them. There are probably more out there,” she says.
Oh. Coincidences. I bet coincidentally, Kathrine Stene will find them.
The Robbers' Tunnel in the Great Pyramid sounded well like a state funded archeological dig. Just that back in the day, humans didn't take care to not damage historical artifacts.
https://lejremuseum.dk/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2021/02/0...
https://bornholmsmuseum.dk/en/visit/bornholm-museum/permanen...
Ritualistic trope comment preventer:
"One of the reasons archaeologists believe this was a temple, besides the gold foil figures, is the absence of other finds that would be natural if people lived there, like cooking pots and whetstones. "
Other things I found interesting:
"Throughout the autumn and winter, C14 dating will finally determine if it is true that the temple has stood here since around the year 600 – and right up to the 11th century"
600 year old temple out of wood. That would be something.
Then: one of the foils found appears to be intentional crumbled. Which makes sense when it was meant to be a offering to the gods. Or this one was negated, whatever it meant. Since they always show a men and a women(on this site), they might have symbolized marriage (of rich people) and were placed on a special place for good luck and the one crumbled was a marriage not working out. But:
"In Norway, findings of gold foil figures are rare. The 35 from the temple in Vingrom represent the largest collection we have found in this country.
In a similar temple in Uppåkra in Sweden, archaeologists found 100 gold foil figures.
On the Danish island of Bornholm, over 2,500 gold foil figures were found in a field.
Were there not so many gold foil figures in Norway at that time, or have we just not found them?"
"There are also other regional differences: In Denmark, there are more individual figures, whereas in Norway and Sweden, it is mostly couples that are depicted."
So alltogether not much is know about this old custom.
But I think it is interesting and I like the simple art they are showing.
It’s the year 600, that would be 1400 years old. Japan has a bunch of those still standing, the oldest being 1300 years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hōryū-ji
I’ve only been to the Todaji temple in person, which is “just” 300 years old after reconstruction, but it’s a mind-boggling experience to see the scale of these buildings and the work/engineering that went into them. Absolutely worth a visit if you ever have the chance.
But, yes, it's not old for a wooden building that's being maintained.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-welsh-gold...
"Gold staters" vary in gold content a great deal:
The Durotriges issued a series of rapidly debased coins through this period probably starting around 50BC with a largely silver (80%) stater (British B) with a fairly small percentage of gold.
Verica's stater series weighed between 5.27g and 5.29g while the gold content varied between 42% and 44.5% The gold content appears to have remained stable over time with no sign of debasement.
Pure gold nuggets unearthed after many thousands of years under ground "look like gold" when given a good rinse to get the dirt off - they don't look tarnished like the "gold staters" in you photo.
Ancient Egyptians were known to do this around 5000 BC or so.
Cool to think of the journey of this technology to the northern kingdoms over many generations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Paleolithic_hoax
> The Japanese Paleolithic hoax (旧石器捏造事件, Kyū Sekki Netsuzō Jiken) consisted of a number of lower and middle paleolithic finds in Japan discovered by amateur archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura, which were later all discovered to have been faked. The incident became one of the biggest scandals in archaeological circles in Japan after the story was published by the Mainichi Shimbun on November 5, 2000.
> Hearing the rumour of fraud, journalists from Mainichi newspaper installed hidden cameras at a dig site where Fujimura was working and caught him planting artifacts. The newspaper later confronted Fujimura with the video, and he was forced to confess his fraud.
> It was also reported[by whom?] that prior to discovery of the hoax, Japan's paleolithic period was thought to have started earlier than anywhere else in Asia at around 700,000 BCE.
> It is clear that a number of the artifacts found by Fujimura are rather unnatural and do not make archaeological sense, such as those exhumed from pyroclastic flow strata, but nonetheless majority archaeological groups as well as local and government organisations which substantially benefited from his find ignored these inconsistencies.
Now let's focus on the discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun, Howard Carter. I will bring an alternate story, by merely quoting Wikipedia's page about this man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Carter
> Howard Carter was born in Kensington on 9 May 1874,[1] the youngest child (of eleven) of artist and illustrator Samuel John Carter and Martha Joyce Carter (née Sands). His father helped train and develop his artistic talents.[2]
> he showed talent as an artist. The nearby mansion of the Amherst family, Didlington Hall, contained a sizable collection of Egyptian antiques, which sparked Carter's interest in that subject. Lady Amherst was impressed by his artistic skills, and in 1891 she prompted the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) to send Carter to assist an Amherst family friend, Percy Newberry, in the excavation and recording of Middle Kingdom tombs at Beni Hasan.
> Although only 17, Carter was innovative in improving the methods of copying tomb decoration.
> In 1899, Carter was appointed Inspector of Monuments for Upper Egypt in the Egyptian Antiquities Service (EAS).[8] Based at Luxor, he oversaw a number of excavations and restorations at nearby Thebes
> In 1907, he began work for Lord Carnarvon, who employed him to supervise the excavation of nobles' tombs in Deir el-Bahri, near Thebes.
> In 1914, Lord Carnarvon received the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings.[17] Carter led the work, undertaking a systematic search for any tombs missed by previous expeditions, in particular that of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun. However, excavations were soon interrupted by the First World War
> By 1922, Lord Carnarvon had become dissatisfied with the lack of results after several years of finding little. After considering withdrawing his funding, Carnarvon agreed, after a discussion with Carter, that he would fund one more season of work in the Valley of the Kings.[18]
> Carter returned to the Valley of Kings, and investigated a line of huts that he had abandoned a few seasons earlier. The crew cleared the huts and rock debris beneath
> Carter returned to the Valley of Kings, and investigated a line of huts that he had abandoned a few seasons earlier. The crew cleared the huts and rock debris beneath. On 4 November 1922, their young water boy accidentally stumbled on a stone that turned out to be the top of a flight of steps cut into the bedrock
> In spite of evidence of break-ins in ancient times, the tomb was virtually intact, and would ultimately be found to contain over 5,000 items.
> Towards the end of February 1923, a rift between Lord Carnarvon and Carter, probably caused by a disagreement on how to manage the supervising Egyptian authorities, temporarily halted the excavation. Work recommenced in early March after Lord Carnarvon apologised to Carter.[35] Later that month Lord Carnarvon contracted blood poisoning while staying in Luxor near the tomb site
> Harold Plenderleith, a former associate of Carter's at the British Museum, was quoted as saying that he knew "something about Carter that was not fit to disclose"
TL;DR
Carter had the skills necessary to fake the artifacts he discovered, which is what he did in the huts he had set up above the tomb's emplacement, as the funds that were allotted to the expedition were drying up. He attributed the discovery of to their young water boy accidentally stumbling on a stone to give the discovery the touch of innocence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_the_tomb_of_Tutan...
> The unexpectedly rich burial consisted of more than five thousand objects
It just sounds too good to be true.
The same reflexion can be applied to:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/feb/research-stonehenge-firs...
> Professor Mike Parker Pearson (UCL Institute of Archaeology) discusses his research which has found a dismantled stone circle in west Wales which was moved to Salisbury Plain and rebuilt as Stonehenge.
The same pattern of a last successful dig can be noticed:
> Yet after having no luck with other circular monuments in the area, we returned to Waun Mawn for a final speculative dig. To everyone’s delight, our dig supervisor Dave Shaw discovered two empty stoneholes, one on each end of the arc of stones, where missing stones had once stood.
Today there is procedure, as dull as that sounds, that makes it very difficult to plant evidence and get away with it (as evidenced by your linked story).
The majority of significant digs are proposed and planned some months, years even, in advance. The sites are photographed, scanned with geophysical instruments, and the stakeholders are many - land councils, archeological councils, the actual teams with feet on the ground, etc.
As trenches are dug photographs are taken, when 'something' pokes up a bit it's immediately photographed up close and measurements are taken before being carefully removed.
To stage a find would generally take more than one person and they'd have to operate in a sea of oversight.
I wouldn't claim that this is impossible, I would say that's its very hard to pull off and even harder to keep a secret for many years without someone being suspicious.
Significant artifacts get a great deal of scrutiny .. so one would have to be created that had no trace of modern tools, materials, post atomic age isotopes, etc.
And yet the japanese hoax happened. I've seen whole teams of people engage into online vote cheating in my workplace. And knowing the game is rigged is the best incentive to cheat, along with career-advancement stakes.
As for faking carbon-dating, you only need a nuclear reactor. ChatGPT brings up the following:
> The Vinland Map came to light in the 1960s, but its authenticity has been a subject of intense debate ever since. One controversial aspect of the map was a Carbon-14 dating conducted in the early 2000s, suggesting that the parchment dated back to the 15th century. However, scientists also found a modern form of ink known as an anatase titanium dioxide on the map. This particular type of ink was developed in the 20th century, causing some speculation that the map could be a forgery.
Are we suggesting that he used 1.2 tons of gold to make over 5000 items, which he buried and left for a while so he could dig them up later?
Carbon dating?
(in this case the dating is still in process and of course they date the material of the soil directly around the find)
Originally the point was to annoy christians - Norway had a state church and laws against blasphemy and they regularly tried, but consistently failed, to get charged for it (last time those laws had much of an effect was when Life of Brian was originally refused a rating out of concern it broke the law).
As a Norwegian, I wouldn't hesitate to call myself a heathen.
During the 90s, it was embraced as a common denomer for the anti-religious movement.
But honestly, at this point, we've had 30 years of largely positive press for neopagans; I don't see how the word could be considered pejorative.
E.g. we refer to Greek or Roman temples rather than Pagan ones. We also say Apollo's Temple, or Solomon's temple. I guess "pagan" is a fallback for lack of more precise names.
(I didn't notice it in the title at all until GP's comment, I just realized now this is an interesting oddity)