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75% Positive

Analyzed from 247 words in the discussion.

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#things#may#don#quartz#ritual#thing#looks#spent#knapping#try

Discussion (7 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

vintermann•about 2 hours ago
I'm always suspicious of "it was religious" claims in archeology.
chrisco255•34 minutes ago
It is like the go to explanation for things they don't have an answer to. What if the quartz arrow head was just a status symbol or was traded as a luxury item?
defrost•about 2 hours ago
Neither the article nor the backing paper discussed made any such definite claim.

Many casual readers confuse statements such as

  "which *may* have had symbolic or ritual significance."
with meaning "this absolutely had to do with (a) religion" when no such thing is intended.

Attribution of potential cause of inferred behaviour to "ritual" is a long standing practice in archaeology; it's code for "we don't know" and covers all manner of things that may simply have developed as habit over years, may have unknown and non supernatural causes / motivations, etc.

mring33621•3 days ago
Because it looks cool!
AngryData•about 2 hours ago
This is what I would bet on. If you spent decades of your life knapping various "easy" and ideal stones for tools and getting quite skilled at it, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch for them to try knapping a "difficult" stone just because it looks cooler and you can show it off.
moscoe•about 2 hours ago
Exactly. Same reason kids and people today are drawn to it and gems in general. Even today, people imbue crystals with mystical properties.
lexicality•about 1 hour ago
Given I've spent the last few weeks teaching myself CAD and completely designing a custom 3d printed racking system for my consumer networking gear from scratch, I would like to think that "I decided to do this ostensibly stupid and pointlessly difficult thing for a minor aesthetic improvement even when a blatantly easier (and possibly better) option is available" is a valid reason for humans to do things.

Besides, that green quartz crystal is beautiful. If you can only afford to carry a limited number of objects then I personally would try to find a way to turn it into an object I can hold, use, and admire every day.