Ancient shipwreck points to sophisticated material supply chain 2,000 years ago

I’ve been having a little trouble figuring out what the scale of our overproduction problem is. I know it’s big, between food waste and planned obsolescence, but how big? Or, put another way, how much could we scale back on resource extraction and general production, if we were running things based on the needs of a post-capitalist, degrowth/steady-state society? To my knowledge, most of the metals and other such resources that were easy to access were consumed long ago, but if we account for the amount of stuff in dumps and landfills around the world, would there even be a need for supply chains anywhere near the current scale? My goal, ideally, is to have a state of material abundance for everyone, in the sense of “rather luxurious caves, with high-efficiency facilities“, but I’m not sure what that would actually require.

The reason I’m wondering, is that last month, some research was published about an ancient Mediterranean shipwreck that’s been a subject of study since the 1980s:

More than 2,000 years before the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean, another famous ship wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern shores of Uluburun — in present-day Turkey — carrying tons of rare metal. Since its discovery in 1982, scientists have been studying the contents of the Uluburun shipwreck to gain a better understanding of the people and political organizations that dominated the time period known as the Late

Now, a team of scientists, including Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, have uncovered a surprising finding: small communities of highland pastoralists living in present-day Uzbekistan in Central Asia produced and supplied roughly one-third of the tin found aboard the ship — tin that was en route to markets around the Mediterranean to be made into coveted bronze metal.

The research, published on November 30 in Science Advances, was made possible by advances in geochemical analyses that enabled researchers to determine with high-level certainty that some of the tin originated from a prehistoric mine in Uzbekistan, more than 2,000 miles from Haifa, where the ill-fated ship loaded its cargo.

But how could that be? During this period, the mining regions of Central Asia were occupied by small communities of highlander pastoralists — far from a major industrial center or empire. And the terrain between the two locations — which passes through Iran and Mesopotamia — was rugged, which would have made it extremely difficult to pass tons of heavy metal.

Frachetti and other archaeologists and historians were enlisted to help put the puzzle pieces together. Their findings unveiled a shockingly complex supply chain that involved multiple steps to get the tin from the small mining community to the Mediterranean marketplace.

“It appears these local miners had access to vast international networks and — through overland trade and other forms of connectivity — were able to pass this all-important commodity all the way to the Mediterranean,” Frachetti said.

“It’s quite amazing to learn that a culturally diverse, multiregional and multivector system of trade underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age.”

Adding to the mystique is the fact that the mining industry appears to have been run by small-scale local communities or free laborers who negotiated this marketplace outside of the control of kings, emperors or other political organizations, Frachetti said.

“To put it into perspective, this would be the trade equivalent of the entire United States sourcing its energy needs from small backyard oil rigs in central Kansas,” he said.

Interesting…

Very interesting. I’m assuming that the backyard oil rig metaphor is a bit of an exaggeration, but the reality is that I don’t know by how much. Even the scaled-back system I think we should be aiming for would still require a much more complex system, by the sheer diversity of resources required, right? At the same time, we’ve got tools available that they didn’t have 2,000 years ago, and honestly, we’ve had tools that could get the job done for decades. I can’t say anything for certain, but I feel like maybe the Kansas backyard oil rigs aren’t as hyperbolic as it first appeared.

I’m in the business of imagining what the world could look like, and this glimpse of what it did look like makes me wonder to what degree a supply chain like that could work in a more high-tech society.

For one example, if we continue on the current trend of finding ways to make all sorts of interesting carbon-based stuff out of processed plant material, would it be possible for a region to “make a living” with a few thousand small-scale operations that practice coppicing, or that grow and harvest hemp. It seems plausible that that would be more viable in a less growth-obsessed society. Maybe the biggest difference would be that instead of all those concentrated resources being used to power imperial expansion and the like, they’d be re-distributed back through the supply web.

The biggest commonality in all these great feats of the past, and the massive achievements of the present, is people working together. That’s how pretty much everything cool we’ve ever done has happened. Continent-spanning trade doesn’t require either the economic systems of the present, or the impressive technology we’ve developed. Having billions more people is a valid consideration, but that’s also billions more workers able to cooperate on creating and transporting stuff. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that this story from the deep past sparks just a little hope for the future.

Caturday come on Wednesday this week.

I find Irish winters to be an interesting and novel experience. I’m further north here than pretty much the entire United States, but thanks to oceanic currents, it never gets as cold as the winters of my homeland. That said, the cold is still very much a problem. To begin with, the housing is designed for the average climate. That means that there’s basically no insulation. Worse, because these apartments were built with gas boilers, there are vents to the outside in every room. Add in the apparently lazy installation of the windows, and the result is a very drafty apartment that does not hold heat for long. Its natural resting temperature seems to be around 50°F/10°C, when the outdoor temperature is around freezing, and it gets there quite quickly. More than that, it’s always very humid here, and that really makes a difference. Recently, we got about half an inch of snow, and it’s been just cold enough to keep most of it around. At the same time, the humidity has been hovering around 100%. That means that it’s been feeling about ten degrees colder than it actually is.

I took the cat out into the snow when it was falling, to see his reaction. Initially, he just hid in the bushes, but when I actually carried him to a salad station, he was willing to eat some grass. He was, however, not happy about the snowflakes falling on his delicate fur.

His holiness was not thrilled about the cold, wet stuff on his toebeans. He also did not appreciate things falling on his back. The salad was good, though. The image, for those who can’t see, is of a chubby British shorthair cat, partially hidden by a tree trunk. His fur is mostly dark, but he’s got white on his face, neck, and paws that’s as pure as the falling snow. He’s sitting on snowy grass, watching flakes fall.

After that, he actually was willing to play a little. I tried, and failed to get a video of him chasing snowballs, but it was extremely cute. Then, he chased one into a more brightly lit area, and his tiny brain was short-circuited by the combination of big flakes falling, and big shadows falling with them. He started randomly chasing everything at once until he reached a car, and retreated into the blessed darkness underneath it.

In this somewhat blurry photo, you can see His Holiness huddled under my neighbor’s car. His dark fur blends in with the background, but you can see the white on his muzzle, forehead, cheeks, and neck, and you can see his stubby white paws poking out. He’s looking to the side, and his eye is glowing a little from the camera flash. A couple cat pawprints are visible in the snowy foreground.

Eventually, I managed to coax him out from under the car, and we went back inside.

I’ve been maintaining a livable temperature by running a space heater in my little workroom, where I already spend most of my time. It’s cheaper than running the boiler to heat the whole flat, and thankfully the Irish government has been handing out electricity credits to help people get through the winter.

A couple days later, we awoke to find ourselves shrouded in fog, so I decided to see if I could get some evocative pictures during the cat’s salad run. I still need to get a new charger for my camera, and I find it hard capture the feel of a foggy day anyway, but I tried my best. It felt cold enough that the mist should have been freezing out of the air, but instead it hung around to make everything feel colder.

His Holiness made his usual first stop, giving me a chance to grab this picture. Fog seems to hold on to smells, so the air was full of slightly stale wood smoke, that seemed to be diffusing through the water droplets more than blowing from any definable source The bare branches of the maple trees stand out against the white fog that seems to have consumed the world outside our little oasis of reality.

This weather was much more acceptable to His sensibilities, but he still wasn’t thrilled about the cold, wet, white stuff on the ground, so when it came time to move on from the first grass patch, he was careful to walk where it was safe.

 

His Holiness has dark fur – brown-gray on the sides, with black stripes that thicken into the black that runs along his spine. His tail is similarly striped with a black tip. He’s a chunky cat, with thick fur that makes him look chunkier. His white legs seem stubbier than they are poking out from other the imposing bulk of his torso. In the picture, you can see that he’s walking along a curb where the snow has melted, forming a clear path through the treacherous white landscape. There was too much snow by that stump for him to graze there.

 

He followed that trail around to an area that had gotten a little more solar radiation, and stopped for a blessedly snow-free bit of roughage.

His Holiness is sitting on the corner of the paved walkway, looking back towards the mist-shrouded house. You can see the green grass fading smoothly into white snow behind him, contrasted with the tree trunk that fills the center of the picture.

Shortly after taking this picture, I decided it was time for both of us to go back inside to where it was warm.

For those of you who’re wondering about the title, it’s a reference to a very old newspaper comic called Pogo, about the lives of various anthropomorphic swamp critters somewhere in Georgia. I don’t need to go into too much detail, but Churchill “Churchy” LaFemme is a turtle with an interesting perspective on the transitive property of days:

The image is a four panel comic strip. In panel one, Pogo Possum is scooping a bucket of water, while angrily saying,

If you want to help me feed His Holiness, that we might be spared his divine wrath, or you just want me to be able to do things like eat and have shelter, consider tossing me a little money at patreon.com/oceanoxia. It can be as little as a few cents a day, and for immigration reasons it’s my only form of income right now. See this as me passing around the hat at the end of a bit.

Irish study confirms: A four-day work week is better for everyone.

I don’t often take days off. Some days I’ll do the bare minimum, but I’m still doing at least a little work. Part of that is because I’m afraid that if I take time off, I won’t be able to start back up with daily posting. A lot of it is that if I hope to ever get to the point where I’m making even minimum wage, I need to post often, and have content that people might consider paying for (patreon.com/oceanoxia). Basically, I’m an internet busker, and if I’m not putting in the time, I can’t expect to make a living. Honestly, I don’t expect that even if I do put in the time, which is part of why I’m working on the novel I’ve mentioned before. All of this is to say that I basically have a 7 day work week, which pulls in very little money (though you could help change that!), which makes it just a little amusing to write about a resoundingly successful trial of a four-day work week that took place right here in Ireland!

The project, backed by Fórsa and carried out in partnership by Four-Day Week Ireland, University College Dublin (UCD), and Boston College, examined the financial, social, and environmental impact that a four-day working week would have on businesses and employees in Ireland.

Following the trial, 100 per cent of employees indicated they would like to continue a reduced work schedule. Nine of the 12 companies involved are committed to continuing with the four-day week, while the remaining three are planning to continue but have not made a long-term commitment.

Lead researcher Dr Orla Kelly said: “All participating organisations plan to continue the reduced work schedule. Productivity levels are up. We found significant improvements across a wide range of well-being metrics, including positive affect, work-family and work-life balance, and several domains of life satisfaction.

“Conversely, stress, burnout, fatigue, and work-family conflict significantly declined. Levels of sleep deprivation have also fallen dramatically. We observed an increase across three forms of pro-environmental behaviour.

“The trial was particularly successful for women. They reported a significantly greater improvement in life satisfaction, had larger gains in sleep time and reported feeling more secure in their employment. Our findings hold important lessons for the future of work in this country.”

I’m not surprised. I’m a huge advocate of people having as much control over their own time as possible, and every time I see research on it, the result seems to be the same – moving to fewer days on the job is better for everyone, even the bosses. The one way it’s not better, which the articles I read don’t mention, is that it means that bosses have less control over their workers’ lives. Personally, I don’t think that’s a “downside” worth considering, but I think it’s something that does need to be considered when thinking about the motivations of business owners. A disproportionate number of them seem to be some form of petty tyrant.

It’s somewhat irritating to me that “improves productivity for employers” always has to be a part of it, though:

“In today’s working world there’s a mismatch between the amount of time we spend working and the time we spend with our families and friends. The four-day week can be at the forefront of a new age of work, providing transformative social benefits without losing pay or productivity.”

In a just world, the fact that the companies can afford it, and that it makes the workers’ lives better, would be enough. Still, in this case it seems that the drive for “more productivity” lines up with the goal of more freedom for workers, since happy, healthy workers tend to be more competent as well.

Despite this research, I suspect that it will be a long, hard struggle to make a shorter work week the norm. Powerful people seem to have a deep horror of any movement away from the arrangement that gave them their power, so we have to make the world better despite them.

But the case can be made, and studies like this show how important it is to fight for this stuff. Another day off is a huge boon in a world where so much of our time is dictated by work, getting to and from work, and trying to find moments to live in between it all. Further, with overproduction driving this climate crisis, a lot of the work that’s being done now needs to stop being done, and it would be good, in my view, if that didn’t result in anyone losing their home or going hungry. Some of that work can be replaced with environmental cleanup and restoration work – there’s a lot to do – but this is a golden opportunity to start to undo some of the social damage that has been done over the last couple centuries, and start moving towards a world where the point of life isn’t working, but living.

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Advances in avian culinary technology open new front in The Toad Wars

One of my favorite “tropes” in modern environmentalism is the idea of solving human problems by improving, amplifying, or adjusting ecosystem services. This covers all sorts of things, but I think the first example I ever heard of was using predatory insects – ladybugs – to control agricultural pests. That was my first example, but not my favorite. My favorite, as I mentioned recently, is the story of cane toads in Australia. It’s an example of an almost-clever idea that has had horrible, and sometimes hilarious results. If nothing else, it has given us this gem of a nature documentary, which you can watch with your family while you eat Thanksgiving dinner!

That’s high art, if ever there was such a thing. Truly a masterpiece of cinema.

Now, why do I bring this up, other than the fact that it lets me write about something easy while my mind is elsewhere? Well, a new front has been opened in the Cane Toad Wars, and it comes to us thanks to the very latest in avian innovation. May I present to you, the Ibis-devised “stress-and-wash” technique for cane toad cuisine?

Ibis are often seen feeding on food dumped by humans, but citizen scientists are increasingly reporting the native species is dining out on toxic cane toads.

Gold Coast coordinator of Watergum’s Cane Toads program Emily Vincent said the “stress and wash” method had been viewed numerous times by citizen scientists.

“It’s quite amusing to watch and it’s quite different from other native species and their methods of eating them,” she said.

“The ibis will pick up cane toads and they will flick them about and stress out the toads.

“What this does is it makes the cane toads release toxins from the parotoid gland at the back of their neck, which is their defence mechanism when they’re faced with predators.

“Then they’ll take them down to the creek and wash them.”
Ms Vincent said it was encouraging to see the ibis capitalising on the food source, which was first introduced into Australia in 1935 to control cane beetles in Queensland’s sugarcane crops.

The cane toad has since spread into New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

“We have lots and lots of ibis in Australia,” she said.

“This is a learned behaviour and it’s been observed in multiple different regions.

“I think it will have an impact, especially as more species tag along and copy the behaviour.”

The article has some other useful information, including the fact that while the toad’s poison is apparently unpleasant for birds, it doesn’t actually do a whole lot to them. They mainly avoid it because of the flavor. I do feel bad for the toads (as I feel bad for some shown in the video above), but Australia’s ecosystem could really use a break, so it’s nice to see this.

Maybe this will finally bring peace between the Australians and the Ibis. I certainly hope so, given that country’s record when it comes to fighting birds, but it’s hard to say. In the meantime, here’s the current state of things as I understand it:

Small blog update, and a video

For the rest of November, I’m going to be doing low-effort posts for the most part. I’m behind on my novel, and the sad truth is that if I want to be able to keep writing, I need more sources of income. As wonderful as my patrons are, they form a pretty small crowd that hasn’t grown much over the last year, so I think it would be foolish to assume that that will change after another year or two.

I intend to keep posting daily, but for the rest of this month, and probably periodically going forward, I’ll be taking time for other work. I doubt it’s just me, but I find it hard to remind myself that yes, writing a novel is work that I actually have a responsibility to keep doing in my current situation, and it’s sometimes discouraging to work on something that only has a possibility of paying off months or years down the line.

Anyway, for a change of tone, here’s a two-parter on U.S. policing, and how it interacts with U.S. culture – television in particular. There are content warnings in the videos, but if you know anything about our “justice” system, you already know this is gonna get dark.

Video: How The Good Place Redefines the Sitcom

I’ve bee having a gloomy sort of day, for various reasons, and I don’t have much of anything to post, so here’s this instead. It’s a nice overview of one of the best shows I’ve ever watched, and a look into at least part of why it’s so good. Watching this won’t spoil the show for you in any meaningful capacity, and obviously I highly recommend that if you haven’t seen The Good Place, you should change that.

Caturday: Cardboard Box Edition

His Holiness Saint Ray The Cat leads a life of both excitement and boredom. He and I now have a morning routine of stepping outside to take the air. I contemplate life, catch up on social media and the like, and he wanders around eating grass and sniffing things (catching up on social media and the like). Then we go back inside, and he either begs for catnip, or goes to sleep. I want to be clear – he does not get catnip when he begs. I can’t get around giving him food when he’s been howling for the hour before feeding time, but I’ll be damned if I train my cat to expect drugs as a reward for tapping on my elbow every two minutes.

Anyway, one of my innovations for keeping him entertained during the day, is a length of candle wick hanging from my study door’s handle. It originally had a cork tied to the end, but after that was rabbit-kicked away, we both discovered that he loves just a bit of string with a knot at the end. Finally, after all these years, I found a toy that he’ll play with by himself.

In many ways, His Holiness is a perfect cat for us. He’s extremely tolerant of everything we do, to the point where we joke about him being aware of our harassment as the price for being saved from starvation on the street. He loves cuddling, has few objections to being picked up and snuggled, and the most objection I get to trimming his claws is that he shifts his weight so that he could roll off my lap if I let him.

My one complaint – and that’s too strong of a word for it – is that he doesn’t sit in things very much. I’ve tried to get him to hang out in a box next to me and stuff, but he prefers a more luxurious environment. He tends to hang out on the bed, or the couch, or in laundry. He’ll hang out on my lap sometimes, and on the rug by the heater next to me when the heat is on, but boxes, bags, and things of that nature are primarily ways for him to make noise when he wants our attention.

I recently had a package delivered, and on a whim, I decided to put a little catnip in the empty box. It was a given that he would be in the box until he’d consumed all of it, but he decided to just… hang out, afterwards.

His Holiness is a British Shorthair of solid build, with gray-black brindled fur on his back, sides, head, and tail. His legs, belly, and throat are snowy white, and plush-soft. His face and muzzle form triangle of white fur that peaks on his forehead, and crosses his cheeks, blending with the throat fur. In this picture, he’s on his side, partly curled in a cardboard box, and looking up at the camera, with his face slightly smushed on one side by the box.

This was, as you can see, extremely cute. I had put the box between the legs of a chair , which held the sides up so they didn’t bend out when subjected to his bulk. I think he likes the way the box holds him. Naturally, I had to grab his string.

His Holiness is curled rather like the Golden Spiral, as he attempts to catch the blurred string between his mitten-like paws.

One thing he likes to do with the string (and if I get enough *⇒patrons⇐* I’ll post a video of it), is to grab the knot at the end between his tiny little front teeth, and pull. If there’s not enough tension, he’ll step on the string. I have no idea why he does this, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the developmental weirdness of his canines.

His Holiness is the bane of all that moves within easy reach of wherever he happens to be sitting. Playing with him usually takes more effort from me than he’s willing to expend. He’s often content to just watch something, rather than chase or pounce on it, unless it’s actually in his face. In this picture he’s got a fragile grip on the string between his paw, right in front of his snoot.

I played with him till he stopped reacting to the string bumping against his face, and he apparently decided that he was in a great place for his midday nap.

Eventually, His Holiness got tired, so he curled up and just went to sleep in the box. He spent most of the rest of the day there.

He ended up spending most of the rest of the day there, and I was hopeful that this would become a regular thing, but since then it seems that he’s only really going to interact with the box when he’s either begging for catnip, or has just been given some. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not willing to train him to harass me for drugs, so box time will probably end up being an infrequent occurrence. Regardless, I’m glad I got these pictures to share with all of you.

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Video: Exploring Oregon’s hidden lava caves

I’ve been doing housework and research for my novel today, so I’m sharing a video I found about lava caves. For a bonus, we have a glimpse into the work life of a cave explorer, which appears to be one of the most terrifying jobs in existence. I don’t consider myself claustrophobic, and I’ve been in a few caves – including some that got pretty tight.

But those caves had had people go through them many, many times before, and there was no way I would have been in them had they not been safe. Exploring unknown caves, and wedging myself through a passage that could just keep getting smaller? No thank you. It would terrify me even if I hadn’t read Junji Ito’s horror comic The Enigma of Amigara Fault. Personal discomfort aside, I’m glad that professional cavers like Ken can show us these places I’m too afraid to explore, and get fulfilment from doing it.

 

Video: How plate tectonics gave us seahorses

It’s a question that haunts all of us. It creeps into our minds as we try to fall asleep. It lingers in our minds, sapping attention away from life-changing events.

Whence seahorses?

How did such creatures come to be, and why do they seem to exist everywhere? Are seahorses the proof of supernatural creation that we’ve been looking for all this time? Will I have to give up my atheism for them? Only time will tell, but for now, here’s a video on seahorse evolution, and how it was influenced by the movement of the continents.