📌 TOPINDIATOURS Hot ai: Two 4,000-year-old burnt fabrics reveal a lost Bronze Age

Excavations in Turkey have yielded two very small but very important pieces of fabric: the earliest evidence of a single-needle knitting technique known as nålbinding and of an indigo-dyed textile ever found in Bronze Age Anatolia.

Cuneiform tablets suggest the textile industry was highly sophisticated during the Bronze Age, the Old Assyrian Colony Period, and the Hittite Empire; however, physical traces rarely survive, as per a study.

However, miraculously, in 2016 and 2018, 4,000-year-old burnt textile fragments were discovered in Beycesultan Höyük, an ancient settlement in western Anatolia, providing archaeologists with an extremely rare window into this once thriving industry that all but disappeared.  

Finally, evidence of famous Turkish textile industry?

Archaeologists uncovered two burnt textiles inside Middle and Late Bronze Age structures that remain mysterious, whether they comprise a single building or a larger complex. Could this have been a factory of some kind?

Along the central courtyard wall, which features a square hearth, study authors found a variety of vessels, storage jars, and clay basins. They suspect the room where one of the textiles was found served as a workshop, as the remains of baskets made from branches were discovered nearby.

The second fragment of fabric (Tx2) lay in a large domestic house—also destroyed by fire—which contained six rooms lined with storage vessels and clay chests. Four postholes in the wall of an adjacent room might suggest the former presence of a loom.

Not only did archaeologists find a couple of precious pieces of textiles but also instruments and artifacts that could indicate a workshop, such as needles and a weaving sword, indicating that Beycesultan was a major textile-producing settlement during the Bronze Age.  

Radiocarbon dating placed Tx1, the oldest fragment, between approximately 1915 to 1745 BCE. Under a microscope, researchers observed that the fiber was sourced from hemp and the loops were formed using a single needle.

A textile settlement

They discovered, to their surprise, the oldest example of nålbinding, a technique that was historically known but had never before been seen in this context. Chemical analysis detected the compound responsible for blue dye, making Tx1 the earliest known example of indigo-dyed fabric from Bronze Age Anatolia. Typically, this shade appeared only in elite or royal garments.

Tx2, the second piece, dating from 1700 to 1595 BCE, was produced on a loom using a plain tabby weave, Archaeology Mag continues. This fragment points to the existence of a weighted loom at Beycesultan. Because both fragments were found in rooms filled with textile tools, archaeologists believe they have uncovered signs of large-scale, organized production.

The new finds, study authors concluded, present a “unique glimpse into the Middle and late Bronze Age textile industry, both at this particular site and in the region more broadly.”

“Tx1 and Tx2 indicate that Beycesultan was producing a range of textiles, including exotic and luxury fabrics, consistent with reconstructions of economic and social structure from other material finds.”

“No cuneiform texts have thus far been discovered at Beycesultan, so its ancient name remains unknown, yet the extraordinary textile finds and workshop remains indicate that Beycesultan must have been a regional capital.”

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Eksklusif ai: Eric Trump Pouring Funding Into “Low Cost-Per-Kill”

Somewhere in the long tradition of Trump family grifting, there’s a line between “nakedly corrupt” and “genuinely mortifying.” Eric Trump’s latest investment in an Israeli drone company that advertises a “low cost per kill” lands smack dab in the middle.

According to recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the young Trump is taking part in a $1.5 billion deal to take the drone company Xtend public.

Potential Xtend investors will be happy to know the company already comes with a multi-million contract with the Pentagon, and is part of the Defense Department’s “Drone Dominance Program,” an effort reform the weapons procurement process and rapidly produce swarms of low cost drones, Al Jazeera has reported.

Xtend isn’t some fly-by-night weapons company, either. Per reporting by The New Arab, Xtend’s drones have played a role in Israel’s war in Gaza, where they reportedly killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in 2024.

The company’s hand in the destruction of Palestine hasn’t gone unnoticed by activists in the US, where Xtend’s planted at least one facility with help from the Florida Israeli Business Accelerator, a taxpayer funded initiative operating in the state.

In sum, Xtend’s services are now being pitched to the same Pentagon Donald Trump controls, under direction from his son, aided by a US footprint funded by Florida taxpayers. In case the web wasn’t tangled enough, the WSJ notes that, Donald Trump Jr — another presidential scion — has separately thrown his name behind the military drone firm Unusual Machines, itself a strategic investor in the Xtend deal.

That marks a total of eleven companies joined by Don Jr and Eric Trump since their father’s election victory in 2024 — a clear sign that the Trump family has learned how to make the most of the presidency this time around.

More on drones: There’s Something So Embarrassing About Homeland Security’s New Drone Video That We’re Gonna Have to Sit Down for a Minute

The post Eric Trump Pouring Funding Into “Low Cost-Per-Kill” Drone Corporation appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com