Three prevalent themes in the discussion
- Sand as a possible ancient sleeping surface
- “I had one of the best sleeps of my life on a bed of soft sand, in the curve of a dry creek…” – delichon
- “Sand is a pretty good heat conductor. It’d probably be ok on hot nights, but not so much in winter.” – mr_toad
- “You need more insulation than you'd expect. The coldest campsites I've ever had have all been on sand.” – AlotOfReading
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“Accounts by westerners enslaved by nomadic tribes … often talk about looking for sand to sleep on … so I’d wager humans have been sleeping on sand for a very long time.” – throwup238
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Preservation bias caused by material durability
- “The Egyptians built using stone but wrote day to day on papyrus. The Sumerians built with mud and wrote on clay tablets. This is why we have lots of Egyptians buildings but not much of their writing and the opposite with the Sumerians.” – alexpotato
- “Papyrus was amazing material for the time, but it was also a curse on future archeologists … we have some remaining papyrus archives, but those are exceptions, not the rule.” – Tuna‑Fish
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“UV and oxygen are plenty strong enough to deteriorate paper over time even without water.” – chrisco255
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Ancient technology and craftsmanship (rope‑making, perforated batons, Antikythera mechanism)
- “Rope is one thing that I wonder how to make from scratch if you'd be dropped somewhere in nature.” – Aardwolf
- “It’s the trick where people would take two phone books and if you interleave every page you can literally have two cars going each direction and can’t rip them apart. Ropes are this on a smaller scale.” – wincy
- “Typically called a 'perforated baton' in English. The theory of rope twisting is also not widely accepted…” – tootie
- “If you've never watched Clickspring's Youtube videos you're in for a treat…. He has a long-running series where he works to make a new Antikythera mechanism using ancient (bronze age) technologies.” – MengerSponge
- “One really interesting aspect of his Antikythera mechanism videos is that … he is using the physical details of the recovered artifact to make educated guesses about what sorts of workshop technology were available…” – JuniperMesos