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▲Drought in Iraq reveals tombs created 2,300 years agosmithsonianmag.com
78 points by pseudolus 6 hours ago | 10 comments
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alsetmusic 4 hours ago [-]
I hope it's not considered inappropriate to mention the Fall of Civilizations podcast ep about Assyria here. I'm not affiliated. I just love history and this podcast is deeply researched and highly entertaining to a history nerd.

https://soundcloud.com/fallofcivilizations/13-the-assyrians-...

the_arun 2 hours ago [-]
Link to that episode on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpAphcaVJIs
jtwaleson 2 hours ago [-]
It's an incredible podcast. A great combination of research, history, and nostalgia. The versions with accompanying video on YouTube are good too.
adolph 3 hours ago [-]
They are thought to be more than 2,300 years old, likely from the Hellenistic period, when Iraq was under the rule of the Seleucid empire.

So similar territory and genetic people but well after the Assyrians.

  Assyrian city-state: 2100 - 1400 BC
  Assyrian empire: 1400 - 700 BC (thru the Bronze age collapse circa 1200 BC)
  Seleucid empire: 312 - 63 BC
(rough dates from wikipedia)

expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC to the 7th century BC

kwk1 2 hours ago [-]
Tangentially but somewhat interestingly, I was reading the other day that the field of "Assyriology" goes all the way up to the Islamic conquest, about a thousand years after the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire mentioned above.
staplers 4 hours ago [-]
It might be inappropriate to advertise it without explaining why it's relevant to the subject..
boringg 3 hours ago [-]
The Assyrians were an ancient civilization in the area about the same time...
3 hours ago [-]
ChrisArchitect 2 hours ago [-]
Related:

How the restoration of ancient Babylon is drawing tourists back to Iraq

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45236473

hydrogen7800 2 hours ago [-]
Was this site known before the Mosul dam was built? It's only been about 40 years.
zamadatix 2 hours ago [-]
It seems they knew there were hundreds of sites to be inundated and there was an effort to investigate as many as they could before the damn was built https://www.jstor.org/stable/25182504