“Burned House” Mystery: Why Did This Ancient Culture Torch Its Own Homes Every 60 Years? - JSTOR Daily

Comments

• Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Spiders?

  Or more likely could it be when the occupants die, instead of someone new moving in they torch the place and start over?

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  • imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah, spiders seemed like the obvious answer to me. I would have also accepted centipedes.

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• AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Huh. I was expecting they did it to destroy contagion, but that’s not in the article

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• AdalwinAmillion@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Clearly it’s insurance fraud

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• JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Interestingly, Japan does this now. They tear down and rebuild wooden houses about every 20 years and concrete every 30. But the cause for Japan is earthquakes which I don’t think would apply much here.

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• Whirlgirl9@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Lice, mites, fleas? we were gross back then.

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  • elbarto777@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Heh. “Were.”

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• bleistift2@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  […T]hey have discovered evidence of numerous ancient civilizations on the planet, all destroyed by fire, with the collapses occurring about 2,000 years apart. […E]arlier civilizations on Lagash were destroyed by people who went insane during previous [solar] eclipses and, desperate for any light source, started large fires that destroyed cities.

  – Extract from the plot summary of “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov.

  [1] en.wikipedia.org/…/Nightfall_(Asimov_novelette_an…

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