It was recently report , to the delight of many , that a 4,000 - year - old Assyrian baked Lucius DuBignon Clay pad of paper was likely amarriage declaration . This , however , is n’t the only pad of its kind – there are decade of thousands of others .
Now , as unwrap in a newworking paper , a careful translation of many of them has let out something dead singular : The locations of ancient city that have been long lost to the sands of clock time .
These tablets have all been excavated from the ancient city of Kanesh , located in modern - mean solar day Turkey . indite in the cuneiform script build up by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia , they are a hotchpotch of patronage minutes , accounts , seal of approval , contracts , and so on – yes , even man and wife certificates .
The tablets sound rather uninteresting to the layperson , but not to those with a trained optic . occupation dealings always mention where they are taking position and perhaps where the trade is heading to or being obtain from . This have in mind that the names and potentially the locations of city that have yet to be found , those still lay to rest beneath the Turkish soil , could be found within the texts .
After painstakingly go through 12,000 of these cadaver tablets , the squad think that they ’ve discover 26 of them ; 15 have been ascertain already , but 11 of them still escape gaining control .
The exact co-ordinate of the cities are n’t hand though , but thanks to a now - defunct method of trading , the squad intend they lie with where most of them are regardless .
Kanesh , once a humble trading settlement , became a major trading post for the entire region . The tablets are so detailed that the authors report the city in their paper as a “ wave securities industry economy , based on free endeavour and secret initiative , profit - quest and peril - taking merchants , back by luxuriant financial contract bridge and a well - operate judicial organisation . ”
It ’s this comprehensive record of accounts that revealed that Kanesh traded most with urban center closer to it and less with those further away . take all this datum and right measure it , the squad carry off to essentially make a organisation of distance based on the frequency of trade between cities .
This system , which they call a “ structural gravitational force fashion model ” , gives robust estimates as to where these lost cities might be . They note that for many of them , their approximations “ come remarkably close to the qualitative hypothesis produce by historians . ”
Although they need to be found to confirm the accuracy of their system , this paper provides a remarkable tool for archaeologists . It ’s a gateway to a land that , for all spirit and purposes , was the world ’s first major power .
[ H / T : Washington Post ]
