4 HN users recommended this lecture5 months2021–2025score 6.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN recommends it as a funny, fascinating talk on cuneiform tablets and the ancient world by an engaging curator.
Irving Finkel of the British Museum tells how a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet came to him for examination. It revealed the oldest known account of Noah's Ark and led to a book and a documentary.
“equal parts fascinating and hilarious” (HN, 2023)
This lecture by Dr Finkel on how he discovered the original Babylonian version of the Noah's Ark story is equal parts fascinating and hilarious: [this video]
Finkel on discovering the Babylonian Noah's Ark tablet
Not to mention his book, about when he found an Cuneiform tablet circa 1800BC telling the story of Noah and the flood, which included more detailed instructions on how to build an ark than the biblical accounts and so he went and built it. Nice article: [link] Excellent lecture: [this video]
Lecture on the cuneiform Noah's flood tablet and ark-building
If you are interesting anything related to cuneiform writing or ancient Mesopotamian culture , Irving Finkel, a British Museum curator, is a treasure. Here he is teaching how to write cuneiform: [link] Here is a hilarious talk he gave at Chicago's Oriental Institute on Noah's Ark: [this video]
Hilarious talk on Noah's Ark by a British Museum curator
Great talk for those interested in clay tablets and technology: [this video] In my opinion, I would bet that those old civilizations had more technology that we give them credit for. The only thing they lacked was to have a long lasting medium to share that knowledge. Whimsical stories or songs could've been a way to share advances. We're lucky to have one civilization picking clay tablets as a medium and luckier that those survived (some even by accident - fires destroying houses but cooking those tablets and burying them), who knows maybe we were writing on leather for centuries before that have all disintegrated by now (we hunted, we had access to paint, we naturally don't want to waste scarce resources).
Somewhat related, since we're talking about cuneiform: Dr. Irving Finkel of the British Museum telling the surprisingly amusing story of how he discovered the oldest known version of the Noah's Ark story: [this video]
Amusing story of finding the oldest Noah's Ark version
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
5 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Read more