Since they say the tech is innovative, I guess they used a modern boat that is old enough to be affected by sitting in water, but which any mistakes in lifting it wouldn’t matter.

Better to start unproven methods with something relatively inconsequential than a real ancient wreck.

Highly likely a translation error. I'd be curious to know what the original phrase was and what shades of meaning it had originally

How is this ancient, innovative or a big ship?

They found a moderately sized, somewhat old boat, and raised it.

Early Late-modern period shipwreck is more appropriate.

Probably a translation error.

Some good stuff there!

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Actually if I’m reading it right they wrote it’s about 150 years old, so more in the timeframe of Ancient US President Abraham Lincoln

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250 years old is not really that ancient. Especially for a culture that is several thousand years old.

Edit: 150 because I can't both math and type at the same time.

I have often wondered this very thing when reading some of the population numbers in the Bible. For instance, the enslaved Hebrew Exodus population was supposedly 600,000 men plus their families. This takes the number upwards of over a million and a half people to almost 2 million people. It's been estimated that Egypt's population was around 5 million people (I can't remember where I read this, sorry) so this means that the population of the slaves was around 1/3 of the population.

There is zero evidence of the Exodus, it's a national foundation myth written centuries later but the number of people the Bible alledges were killed in battles or living in cities seems to be highly embellished. Population studies are hard to come by when trying to compare these old stories to realistic population numbers.

"On Monday, as a shipwreck was slowly pulled out of the water from the bottom of a riverbed where it had been laying for more than a century and a half, Chinese archaeology witnessed a new breakthrough in the field of underwater archaeology. The salvage operation took nearly three hours to remove the shipwreck along with a large caisson, a watertight chamber that had been built specially for the wreck's removal. 

In a few days, the ancient shipwreck is expected to be shipped to the former site of the Shanghai Shipyard, where further research and preservation efforts will be carried out. 

The shipwreck, dubbed the Yangtze River Estuary No.2, is one of the largest and best-preserved ancient wooden shipwrecks ever discovered in China and even the world. The ship was filled with a diverse array of cultural relics that are sure to prove valuable for research into the ships of the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The excellent condition of the ship and the rich cultural relics on board are of great significance for research into the history of shipbuilding, the shipping industry and ceramic production in China and the world, a spokesperson from the China National Cultural Heritage Administration told the Global Times on Monday.

The technology used to salvage the ancient shipwreck is also significant, as it marks the first use of a creative technical solution specifically designed to transfer the ship in its entirety."

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Prussian soldiers used glas canteens, and i think the waterskins would max out by 20 or 50 litres in my estimation

and yes afaik they used pottery to transport water, wine and olive oil over large distances

Ah yes, pottery. So durable and capable of being used to transport large volumes of water over rocky terrain and primitive roads without breaking, very plausible. And at any large volume (over 500L) wineskins would leak a ton.

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>Also....the whole reason for the failure of American attempts to overthrow Castro such as the Bay of Pigs was due to popular support that Castro had.

Gee, I thought it might have had something to do with Soviet military assistance.

yes

they did pottery and wineskins

America's economic embargo of Cuba didn't prevent $billions in annual Soviet aid to Cuba throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it didn't prevent the billions that came from Venezuala in the 90s and early 2000s, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the systemic political repression that has defined the Communist regime in Cuba since its inception.

> the modern form on "numbers" we use doesn't even exist yet.

This is interesting. You've stated this at least twice. What does it mean? I understand the symbols would be different and the base-10 system might not be used. I'd think people would be very familiar with counting things. I thought writing was thought to have started with tallying counts of things.

I know some numbers can be a statement rather than a count (specifically thinking the Book of Revelation but I suspect it's elsewhere as well). Given that, wouldn't "10" people be 10 it whatever system is being used as long as "10" doesn't actually mean "all"? Thanks.

Did mesopotamian cultures have the technology to create large watertight containers?

Does anyone know of any articles or books that translate some of these Maya writings, I would like to read some please.

I believe contemporary Middle or New Kingdom Egypt had a population of 2-3 million at the time?

As a rule of thumb, urban population in those days usually represent about 5-10% of a local regions total population, so you can calculate a rough estimate of the total pop by multiplying combined population of city centers by a factor of 10 to 20.

More accurate estimates will require at minimal assessing the food production capacity of the area in question, ideally paired with records from the locale (which the city-states of Mesopotamia made plenty of in the form of cuneiform clay tablets recording taxes and temple contributions). I'll see if I can dig up something..

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Quipu have nothing to do with Maya.

Maya glyphs are a full language, capable of replicating the sound of any word in the language phonetically. Those thousands of codices were almost certainly similar to the written records of every other civilization: myths, histories, genealogies, administrative records.

We know full well that Maya Codices went well beyond purely administrative records, with the handful of surviving pieces offering tantalising glimpses into otherwise entirely lost traditions of literature. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they wouldn't have written their own treatises on Law, History, Philosophy and the like: the written language they had developed was fully capable of transmitting such information.

Quipu did primarily record numerical data for administrative purposes as you say, but even though they continued to be used after the Spanish Conquest (indeed, the Spanish promoted their use at several points) they aren't an entirely deciphered system, and compelling arguments have been made that, at least at one point, they represented a hybrid system that was being adapted to include other information. It is perhaps notable that, if Quipu had for their entire history of use remained a purely numerical device, they would be by far the longest-lived writing system to have done so, having been in continuous use for as much as 4000 years.