I love this story because just imagine the setup.
All the top world archaeologists are in the biggest archaeology summit trying to figure this out. The queer son of the most famous archaeologist was visiting because his dad was trying to make him a real man and follow science instead of fashion. He takes a look at the poorly design slides being project and makes a snarky remark. “they’re definitely sewed 💀😭💅”. But everyone made fun of him so he took it personally. The next day he came back with an exact replica of the hair style sewed on his bestie’s hair. In awe, everyone got up and clapped. The kid’s name? Albert fucking Einstein.
Not sure whether you meant to express disbelief or just to be silly, but you did make me wonder if this meme was legit or not. It is!
Yes, but also:
And the journals quickly recognized her expertise.
So no crying historians in that story. She researched, proposed an article and the community said: “Good idea!” The whole “Oh, all those fine scientists laughed about the average joe/jane!” is just a common tale in those stories.
It’s a common conservative thing to own the libs.
Also wasn’t so fast:
Through trial and error she found that she could achieve the hairstyle by sewing the braids and bits together, using a needle. She dug deeper into art and fashion history books, looking for references to stitching.
In 2005, she had a breakthrough. Studying translations of Roman literature, Ms. Stephens says, she realized the Latin term “acus” was probably being misunderstood in the context of hairdressing. Acus has several meanings including a “single-prong hairpin” or “needle and thread,” she says. Translators generally went with “hairpin.”
Wow, that’s some serious anthropology, that’s awesome!
Thanks to you and @Ophioparma@feddit.de both for pointing those things out. I was only checking the part about the hairstyle being made through sewing, and didn’t think to check for dramatization, so I may have retold or personally internalized the story that goes with the sewing fact exactly as told in the meme. Or onlookers might have.
If “acus” means that, then i wonder, how does “abacus” mean a thing you count with? Etymology is fascinating :)
Definitely just being silly. Thank you do much for the link. I just disliked how dramatized the meme version sounded and doubled down on it.
Imagine asking a subject matter expert. What a concept!
Same vibes as this video with Adam Savage. Apparently this piece of armour was a big mystery with tons of different drawings etc trying to place it as horse armour when Adam almost immediately correctly identifies it when first looking at it.
This is the power of diverse experience where experts can have a blind spot that’s easily solved by others that have a different perspective.
Tldw crotch protector, and the historians did know that.
Well it took them 50 years to figure out, whereas Adam guessed it immediately.
Didn’t they confirm it after 50 years? They had suspicions in different directions, including crotch armor?
Yeah historians and archeologists generally have about a dozen ideas and wont discount or accept them till enough data has been collected. A prime example are those weird Roman dodecahedrons, where it could be everthing from a knitting instrument to a niche tool to something as simple as a nick nack. Though I think the knitting example is actually discounted because the type of knitting that was done with it was either not common enough to justify a specialized tool or not invented yet.
Anyways archeology is fun cause you can sometimes find new ways an artifact was used, like for example a helmet can be used as a helmet, a pisspot, or a bowl. This means we sometiems have no clue what an artifact was used for, unless they say fertility ritual then we know exactly what it was used for.
“Historical hairdressing tutorials based on archaeological research and primary sources.”
https://www.youtube.com/@jntvstp
Janet Stephens; that’s her. i knew i kept that yt subscription for a reason
This is why you go to subject matter experts.
/Software development rant
/fucking everything rant. Scholars and management alike are terrible at this
As others replies have said, it seems that her expertise was welcomed in the community.
Having spent my fair share of time in grad school, my experience with the arrogant scholar trope is…not exactly what this meme suggests. Academics certainly can have strongly held beliefs, but often are very good at gauging their own certainty. If a professor is lamenting that data taken around 3:17pm always looks bad, and the janitor says “well the electric tram goes by around then” — well, I have never met a professor or postdoc who wouldn’t take that very seriously.
In software development you have contractors and product owners who forge ahead and do things without consulting subject matter experts. This often leads to spaghetti code and rushed garbage when things ultimately need to be patched.
GLAM = Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums
I’d trust a hairdresser when it comes to hair questions… EDIT: Turns out in real life, they did trust the hairdresser, the fact about sewing is true but the overall story is dramatized.
Bad at styling my long hair but I have definitely tried and from what I did in the few hair tutorials I followed, and from knitting, I absolutely believe that making these complicated, pretty, structured knots/loops was done by sewing.
Aren’t weaves basically sewn in?
I guess there had to be a way to have fake-ass hair extensions before plastic was invented.
I read that as “Ass-hair extensions”
Xkcd is always and forever relevant
Thanks to that XKCD I have been doing this for years.
Admit it: You didn’t even have to follow the link did you?
100% correct. I did not.
I have gotten some weird looks because of it.
I asked my brother once “what is an ass-kite” after he said “wow that is a big-ass kite”
Dammit.
This is what made me finally get a stable diffusion account.
The results were dissapointing.
I mean how bad could it be
How do you sew hair?
Haven’t black women been doing this forever? My coworkers talk about sew-in weaves and shit all the time.
loops
That sounds incredibly tedious for anyone with hair shorter than “eligible to be donated to replace a horse tail”
I can’t imagine a human being doing something tedious for style, I mean can you imagine.
Ever time I see someone wearing their pants almost around their knees, I reminded myself about this fact.
…am I missing something? These are stone. They’re carved. How did they know these were real styles used with people, and not fantastical for the statues?
Wouldn’t fit with the artistical trends of the times… It’s not a bad hypothesis, but if that was a trend the hair is not the only feature that could be imagined.
Now I can’t stop picturing archeologists unearthing an anime bust.
Future archeologists digging up statues of 2B -
She also has a YouTube channel!
Why werent they consulting hairdresser in the first place? They can’t be experts because they’re not academics? is that the reasoning?
It’s made up, like facebook clickbait. Archeologists are not idiots.
Honestly I’m swallowing this wholesale if it happened until like the early 90s or something. Maybe even later. To think of roman hairdressing styles as entirely an archeological question and never one where you might ask a hairdresser seems pretty par for the course for academia
If it happened in 1940 maybe.
I mean, tons of archaeologists have historically been idiots and loved white-male-splaining (among other 'splainings) things to indigenous cultures and discounting their works because no way could these black/indian/female/whatever people possibly be able to conceive of such a thing as this! Some of it could even have arguably spawned the ancient aliens bullshit because it must have been some kind of intelligent race and certainly not the ancient people of this land. Old antiquarians were often even worse.
Not in this case though.
Correct. I just didnt want people to have the impression that there aren’t problementic archaeologists.
You post this and let us wonder how this might actually work without any pictures of the replicas??? :O
ETA: here are some examples in the video, unfortunately not the one in the meme…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324900204578286272195339456
Cross disciplinary skills for the win yo!
