Archaeologists unearthed a pot of gold coins dating back to the 5th century AD under an abandoned theater near Milan, Italy.
The gold coins, about 300 of them, were found during archaeological excavations in the basement of the condemned Cressoni Theater in Como, a town located 30 miles (50 km) north of Milan. The theater, opened in 1870 and shuttered in 1997, will be knocked down after archaeologists finalize their investigations, according to The Local.
People have done some variation of "hiding your stuff in a buried container" for thousands and thousands of years. We see it in every culture, all the way back to the early stone age.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
People have done some variation of "hiding your stuff in a buried container" for thousands and thousands of years. We see it in every culture, all the way back to the early stone age.
Well a lot of it was due to societal change either violently or massive weather/ earth upheaval.
People have done some variation of "hiding your stuff in a buried container" for thousands and thousands of years. We see it in every culture, all the way back to the early stone age.
Its a big a boon for archaeology. Coin hoards not only preserve the coins themselves, but coins are decently easy to date and determine the origin of where they were minted, so you can often track upheavals, trade patterns, and other economic indicators through them.
People have done some variation of "hiding your stuff in a buried container" for thousands and thousands of years. We see it in every culture, all the way back to the early stone age.
Well a lot of it was due to societal change either violently or massive weather/ earth upheaval.
Well. Yeah. Earthquakes/Storms have a tendency to bury things. So that happens naturally, but not deliberately.
When it comes to deliberate burial it's usually because we don't want other people to get our stuff. So if your house is relatively safe, why would you bury it in the ground? It's inconvenient and there is always the chance that someone will randomly find it since it's no longer in our house (of course you can bury it beneath your house, but that's generally really inconvenient).
There are basicly two reasons why people deliberately bury their things.
1. It's a reserve. There is a chance that someone will get into your house and you're practicing the "don't put all your eggs in the same basket" theory, so even if a thief (or the government) ransacks your house you'll still have that stash to rebuild. Then the thief/government murders you and nobody ever found out where that stash went.
2. You have to flee. If you leave it, they will take it. If you're on the road, some fucker is most likely going to take it. So you bury it, waiting for the time when it's safe to come back and take it or rebuild. Then you never have that chance to come back to rebuild.
Practically every silver treasure found in my hometown has the same story:
1. The Swedish king comes around to sack/take Scania.
2. A danish merchant/nobleman/landowner gets nervous and decides to bury a significant part of his wealth since he's afraid of someone plundering his home.
3. He either flees to relatives in denmark and never get a chance to come back, or he's killed in the vicious guerilla warfare during the following occupation.
4. The silver is found at some point after 1850 because we were going to build something there. After 1850 because between 1600 and 1850 my town was an oversized fishing village (on the decline). Then they started to bring in improved ploughs and turned the watersick mud of Scania into the most fertile region of Sweden at the same time that England basicly ran out of farmland, we had one of the best ports on the Scanian west coast and "the great benefactors" got stinking rich trading in grain and synthetic fertilizer. So from 1850 and until 1900 the town basicly doubled in population every two decades, and then from 1900-1960 it trippled again. After that it's been a more modest growth until the mid 90s when some moron decided that it was a great idea to start to carpetbomb the countryside with suburban housing.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
People have done some variation of "hiding your stuff in a buried container" for thousands and thousands of years. We see it in every culture, all the way back to the early stone age.
Well a lot of it was due to societal change either violently or massive weather/ earth upheaval.
That or they just plain up and died without telling people where they hid the money. I mean we are talking about an age before antibiotics. One cut and you got an infection, boom, stone dead.
Its not like you can tell people or the point of burying it is lost.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
There are first hand accounts from fresh troops describing the discipline among the old vets that are pretty interesting. I'll see if I can find them later.
Pretty much any first hand accounts from the trenches are worth perusing/amazing.
You had individual trenches printing their own newspapers, sending trade requests to quartermasters of other trenches, even enemy ones (British tinned beef being pretty much the gold standard of field booty and/or currency in the German lines), strange superstitions/traditions (like one of the British trenches at the Somme having a cadaver's hand sticking out through a wall, guys heading to the firing line/no man's land would shake it for luck on their way by).
Existence there was simply bat shit insane.
Soldiers and gallows humors go everywhere together
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
If you like vintage firearms circa the First World War, check out C&Rsenal. They do really informative videos about the history and engineering behind the weapons, and then live fire demonstrations! They even shoot a tankgewehr!
I was laying in a hammock and had the thought "What is the highest man-made acceleration?", and my Google search led me to the wiki of the Plumbbob Nuclear tests.. Copied from the wiki
During the Pascal-B nuclear test, a 900-kilogram (2,000 lb) steel plate cap (a piece of armor plate) was blasted off the top of a test shaft at a speed of more than 66 km/s (41 mi/s; 240,000 km/h; 150,000 mph). Before the test, experimental designer Robert Brownlee had estimated that the nuclear explosion, combined with the specific design of the shaft, would accelerate the plate to approximately six times Earth's escape velocity. The plate was never found, but Dr. Brownlee believes that the plate did not leave the atmosphere, as it may even have been vaporized by compression heating of the atmosphere due to its high speed. The calculated velocity was sufficiently interesting that the crew trained a high-speed camera on the plate, which unfortunately only appeared in one frame, but this nevertheless gave a very high lower bound for its speed. After the event, Dr. Brownlee described the best estimate of the cover's speed from the photographic evidence as "going like a bat!"
For reference, Earths escape velocity at the surface is 11.186 km/s (40,270 km/h), 6.951 mi/s (25,020 mph), while the Sun's from Earth is 42.1km/s (151,560 km/h), 26.160mi/s (94,175 mph). If any piece of the steel plate actually made it out of the atmosphere, then it beat Sputnik to space by 38 days, and is well out of the solar system if it didn't hit anything.
Cross posted to SE++'s history thread, too
Edit: found an article written by Dr. Brownlee partially talking about this
For Pascal B, my calculations were designed to calculate the time and specifics of the shock wave as it reached the cap. I used yields both expected and exaggerated in my calculations, but significant ones. When I described my results to Bill Ogle, the conversation went something like this.
Ogle: "What time does the shock arrive at the top of the pipe?"
RRB: "Thirty one milliseconds."
Ogle: "And what happens?"
RRB: "The shock reflects back down the hole, but the pressures and temperatures are such that the welded cap is bound to come off the hole."
Ogle: "How fast does it go?"
RRB: "My calculations are irrelevant on this point. They are only valid in speaking of the shock reflection."
Ogle: "How fast did it go?"
RRB: "Those numbers are meaningless. I have only a vacuum above the cap. No air, no gravity, no real material strengths in the iron cap. Effectively the cap is just loose, traveling through meaningless space."
Ogle: And how fast is it going?"
This last question was more of a shout. Bill liked to have a direct answer to each one of his questions.
RRB: "Six times the escape velocity from the earth."
Bill was quite delighted with the answer, for he had never before heard a velocity given in terms of the escape velocity from the earth!
I've seen comments about that passport being "fake" in that it's a modern layout that didn't exist in 1974. The "made a passport for a mummy" thing did actually happen though.
Seems weird to have to put your profession on your passport. What if you change jobs?
Lifetime careers used to be a normal thing in the 70s
Now, like mummified Pharaohs, they're museum relics and collectors items.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
You may know about how Houdini spent many years uncovering spirit mediums as frauds. You may not know that for many years after his death, his widow visited mediums and held many seances trying to contact his spirit.
Don't be disappointed; she did this because they had pre-arranged a passcode in the event of his death. If any of these mediums really, actually, genuinely could contact the souls of the dead, she would have confirmation via the medium telling her the secret phrase. Suffice to say, not a single one succeeded.
(One medium claimed that she got the message, but that was only after getting the code leaked to her and that very much does not count.)
I've been thinking about how unique the separation between the Medieval Sovereign and the Catholic Church was in history.
Monarchs since the beginning of agricultural states usually styled themselves as either living gods, like the Emperors of Rome, China, and Japan, or as head priests like the Pharoh of Egypt.
When the Germanic hordes invaded the Roman Empire and styled themselves as Catholic Kings, crowned by the Pope, they created a separation between the head of state and the head of religion, and the governance structures of the feudal state and the church. Simultaneously, you can see in the Eastern Roman Empire the Roman Emperor still holding dominance over the patriarch of Constantinople and still holding significant theological sway.
I'm not sure if I'm making an incorrect thesis though, anyone want to weigh in?
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I've been thinking about how unique the separation between the Medieval Sovereign and the Catholic Church was in history.
Monarchs since the beginning of agricultural states usually styled themselves as either living gods, like the Emperors of Rome, China, and Japan, or as head priests like the Pharoh of Egypt.
When the Germanic hordes invaded the Roman Empire and styled themselves as Catholic Kings, crowned by the Pope, they created a separation between the head of state and the head of religion, and the governance structures of the feudal state and the church. Simultaneously, you can see in the Eastern Roman Empire the Roman Emperor still holding dominance over the patriarch of Constantinople and still holding significant theological sway.
I'm not sure if I'm making an incorrect thesis though, anyone want to weigh in?
For a long time the successor states in the italian peninsula claimed fealty - at least publicly - to the ERE so there was a limit to what they could do as a viceroy. The ERE also reconquered a chunk of the italian peninsula in the 530s destroying much of the gothic kingdoms and establishing the Duchy of Rome as part of the ERE. As the Church's independence (from the ERE's inability to assert dominance at its extremities) and power (from its land holdings) grew and the ERE was losing to the Lombards the church negotiated borders with the Lombards and the Papal States were born in the late 700s
I've been thinking about how unique the separation between the Medieval Sovereign and the Catholic Church was in history.
Monarchs since the beginning of agricultural states usually styled themselves as either living gods, like the Emperors of Rome, China, and Japan, or as head priests like the Pharoh of Egypt.
When the Germanic hordes invaded the Roman Empire and styled themselves as Catholic Kings, crowned by the Pope, they created a separation between the head of state and the head of religion, and the governance structures of the feudal state and the church. Simultaneously, you can see in the Eastern Roman Empire the Roman Emperor still holding dominance over the patriarch of Constantinople and still holding significant theological sway.
I'm not sure if I'm making an incorrect thesis though, anyone want to weigh in?
For a long time the successor states in the italian peninsula claimed fealty - at least publicly - to the ERE so there was a limit to what they could do as a viceroy. The ERE also reconquered a chunk of the italian peninsula in the 530s destroying much of the gothic kingdoms and establishing the Duchy of Rome as part of the ERE. As the Church's independence (from the ERE's inability to assert dominance at its extremities) and power (from its land holdings) grew and the ERE was losing to the Lombards the church negotiated borders with the Lombards and the Papal States were born in the late 700s
Dark Ages/Medieval Italian history is frankly crazy. And horrifying. And amazing.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I've been thinking about how unique the separation between the Medieval Sovereign and the Catholic Church was in history.
Monarchs since the beginning of agricultural states usually styled themselves as either living gods, like the Emperors of Rome, China, and Japan, or as head priests like the Pharoh of Egypt.
When the Germanic hordes invaded the Roman Empire and styled themselves as Catholic Kings, crowned by the Pope, they created a separation between the head of state and the head of religion, and the governance structures of the feudal state and the church. Simultaneously, you can see in the Eastern Roman Empire the Roman Emperor still holding dominance over the patriarch of Constantinople and still holding significant theological sway.
I'm not sure if I'm making an incorrect thesis though, anyone want to weigh in?
The separation of the Church(or Temple) and Head of State was actually started (and by started, I mean, the basis for how the European politic developed. Other city states etc had done this before) by Rome, although they were intertwined(Pontifex Maximus is an old title, held by the likes of Julius Caesar). They had their own political identity and power, and one of the reasons why European powers and Arabian powers developed so differently is because there was an autonomous political entity that was powerful, independent, and also common among the Europeans.
Fencingsax on
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
I've been thinking about how unique the separation between the Medieval Sovereign and the Catholic Church was in history.
Monarchs since the beginning of agricultural states usually styled themselves as either living gods, like the Emperors of Rome, China, and Japan, or as head priests like the Pharoh of Egypt.
When the Germanic hordes invaded the Roman Empire and styled themselves as Catholic Kings, crowned by the Pope, they created a separation between the head of state and the head of religion, and the governance structures of the feudal state and the church. Simultaneously, you can see in the Eastern Roman Empire the Roman Emperor still holding dominance over the patriarch of Constantinople and still holding significant theological sway.
I'm not sure if I'm making an incorrect thesis though, anyone want to weigh in?
For a long time the successor states in the italian peninsula claimed fealty - at least publicly - to the ERE so there was a limit to what they could do as a viceroy. The ERE also reconquered a chunk of the italian peninsula in the 530s destroying much of the gothic kingdoms and establishing the Duchy of Rome as part of the ERE. As the Church's independence (from the ERE's inability to assert dominance at its extremities) and power (from its land holdings) grew and the ERE was losing to the Lombards the church negotiated borders with the Lombards and the Papal States were born in the late 700s
Dark Ages/Medieval Italian history is frankly crazy. And horrifying. And amazing.
My favorite 'what if?' is that after they'd gotten kicked around by him a bunch of times the goths asked the Roman general Belisarius to be their king. He declined but I like to wonder what history would be like with the best general of that era setting up as the new Western Emperor of Rome.
Man, you want to read about an incredibly solid dude getting treated like shit at every possible opportunity but still remaining an incredibly solid dude, read about Belisarius
Hobnail on
Broke as fuck in the style of the times. Gratitude is all that can return on your generosity.
What would the world be like, if instead of Christian, eastern Rome went Jewish?
Well those iron ages Jews liked them some smiting and slaying as much as anyone else, but being the established religion of a hegemonic power tends to a norm. So maybe not that different?
Well, it’s doubtful that the more orthodox forms of Judaism at the time could have taken hold on such a wide scale as they were more ethnocentric and focused on the region of Israel and Jerusalem specifically. So to really take hold on a wide scale with you would need a modified version of Judaism with a much greater focus on being a universal religion appropriate to Jews and Gentiles alike, perhaps with some looser restrictions on laws and a lot less focus on the Temple, and by that time you basically have something that would not be much different than Christianity or Islam.
My favourite alternate world is a world where Sol Invictus becomes the national religion. The line between Sol Invictus and Christianity always seemed a bit blurry even if they were separate things (It used to be Christian custom to bow towards the Sun on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica, until the Vatican was like "hey, cut it out"). Some people take the similarities of the two too far but I love the debates around Sol Invictus and Christianity, who was stealing or copying who. My favourite is the Christmas argument, where there's enough confusion that you can argue either way as to who was copying whose religious holiday.
Very glad Manichaeism died off. The divide between the elite priests and and the commoners rubs me the wrong way*. Although it was popular in some areas it never seemed to have wider appeal and Christianity was pretty dug in at that point.
Re;Judaism, yeah, a Jewish belief that could become the religion of Rome is exactly what Christianity was.
*re:modern day ancient beliefs, I highly recommend the book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms which is about modern day survivals of various religious groups in the Middle East. It covers the Mandeans (who are sort of an off shoot of Manichaeism (maybe vice versa? I don't recall)), the Yezidis, Chaldean Christians, Zoroastrians, Druze and Samaritans. Fascinating stuff. The author touches on but doesn't go too in depth on the extinction of pagan beliefs in Europe and how it compares to the survival of these beliefs in the Middle East. I'm just going off memory here but the main points were that these beliefs survived because of the Jizya. They are also all monotheistic (or appear to be). Islam made space for Jews and Christians, the "people of the book", but regular old pagans didn't have that protection and so haven't survived (although the book does take a look at a pagan/animist group in a village in Pakistan). In recent years, especially with Isis, there is not so much tolerance and these groups, which were never numerous to begin with, are shrinking.
The Druze are especially interesting and the Manichee's were what reminded me of this. They have high priests/patriarchs who have the secret knowlege. It's an esoteric religion based on the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Legit neo-Platonists in the 21st Century! The Druze are also interesting because they (like a lot of these older religions) are less about faith and religion than they are about tradition. Most of those who "are Druze" know nothing about the Druze religious beliefs as those belong to the leaders. They are Druze, but it is strange from a modern perspective because they literally can't believe in Druze beliefs as they are for the most part hidden from the lay people. Instead their belief is in the Druze priest/leaders who do things on their behalf. (I am definitely not remembering all this exactly.)
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-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Well a lot of it was due to societal change either violently or massive weather/ earth upheaval.
Its a big a boon for archaeology. Coin hoards not only preserve the coins themselves, but coins are decently easy to date and determine the origin of where they were minted, so you can often track upheavals, trade patterns, and other economic indicators through them.
Well. Yeah. Earthquakes/Storms have a tendency to bury things. So that happens naturally, but not deliberately.
When it comes to deliberate burial it's usually because we don't want other people to get our stuff. So if your house is relatively safe, why would you bury it in the ground? It's inconvenient and there is always the chance that someone will randomly find it since it's no longer in our house (of course you can bury it beneath your house, but that's generally really inconvenient).
There are basicly two reasons why people deliberately bury their things.
1. It's a reserve. There is a chance that someone will get into your house and you're practicing the "don't put all your eggs in the same basket" theory, so even if a thief (or the government) ransacks your house you'll still have that stash to rebuild. Then the thief/government murders you and nobody ever found out where that stash went.
2. You have to flee. If you leave it, they will take it. If you're on the road, some fucker is most likely going to take it. So you bury it, waiting for the time when it's safe to come back and take it or rebuild. Then you never have that chance to come back to rebuild.
Practically every silver treasure found in my hometown has the same story:
1. The Swedish king comes around to sack/take Scania.
2. A danish merchant/nobleman/landowner gets nervous and decides to bury a significant part of his wealth since he's afraid of someone plundering his home.
3. He either flees to relatives in denmark and never get a chance to come back, or he's killed in the vicious guerilla warfare during the following occupation.
4. The silver is found at some point after 1850 because we were going to build something there. After 1850 because between 1600 and 1850 my town was an oversized fishing village (on the decline). Then they started to bring in improved ploughs and turned the watersick mud of Scania into the most fertile region of Sweden at the same time that England basicly ran out of farmland, we had one of the best ports on the Scanian west coast and "the great benefactors" got stinking rich trading in grain and synthetic fertilizer. So from 1850 and until 1900 the town basicly doubled in population every two decades, and then from 1900-1960 it trippled again. After that it's been a more modest growth until the mid 90s when some moron decided that it was a great idea to start to carpetbomb the countryside with suburban housing.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
That or they just plain up and died without telling people where they hid the money. I mean we are talking about an age before antibiotics. One cut and you got an infection, boom, stone dead.
Its not like you can tell people or the point of burying it is lost.
Quoting myself to add picture.
Soldiers and gallows humors go everywhere together
BBC News is the UK’s public broadcast news service.
Crash Course
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
For reference, Earths escape velocity at the surface is 11.186 km/s (40,270 km/h), 6.951 mi/s (25,020 mph), while the Sun's from Earth is 42.1km/s (151,560 km/h), 26.160mi/s (94,175 mph). If any piece of the steel plate actually made it out of the atmosphere, then it beat Sputnik to space by 38 days, and is well out of the solar system if it didn't hit anything.
Cross posted to SE++'s history thread, too
Edit: found an article written by Dr. Brownlee partially talking about this
https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Brownlee.html
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Except I have better skin.
Lifetime careers used to be a normal thing in the 70s
Now, like mummified Pharaohs, they're museum relics and collectors items.
Don't be disappointed; she did this because they had pre-arranged a passcode in the event of his death. If any of these mediums really, actually, genuinely could contact the souls of the dead, she would have confirmation via the medium telling her the secret phrase. Suffice to say, not a single one succeeded.
(One medium claimed that she got the message, but that was only after getting the code leaked to her and that very much does not count.)
Monarchs since the beginning of agricultural states usually styled themselves as either living gods, like the Emperors of Rome, China, and Japan, or as head priests like the Pharoh of Egypt.
When the Germanic hordes invaded the Roman Empire and styled themselves as Catholic Kings, crowned by the Pope, they created a separation between the head of state and the head of religion, and the governance structures of the feudal state and the church. Simultaneously, you can see in the Eastern Roman Empire the Roman Emperor still holding dominance over the patriarch of Constantinople and still holding significant theological sway.
I'm not sure if I'm making an incorrect thesis though, anyone want to weigh in?
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
For a long time the successor states in the italian peninsula claimed fealty - at least publicly - to the ERE so there was a limit to what they could do as a viceroy. The ERE also reconquered a chunk of the italian peninsula in the 530s destroying much of the gothic kingdoms and establishing the Duchy of Rome as part of the ERE. As the Church's independence (from the ERE's inability to assert dominance at its extremities) and power (from its land holdings) grew and the ERE was losing to the Lombards the church negotiated borders with the Lombards and the Papal States were born in the late 700s
Dark Ages/Medieval Italian history is frankly crazy. And horrifying. And amazing.
The separation of the Church(or Temple) and Head of State was actually started (and by started, I mean, the basis for how the European politic developed. Other city states etc had done this before) by Rome, although they were intertwined(Pontifex Maximus is an old title, held by the likes of Julius Caesar). They had their own political identity and power, and one of the reasons why European powers and Arabian powers developed so differently is because there was an autonomous political entity that was powerful, independent, and also common among the Europeans.
My favorite 'what if?' is that after they'd gotten kicked around by him a bunch of times the goths asked the Roman general Belisarius to be their king. He declined but I like to wonder what history would be like with the best general of that era setting up as the new Western Emperor of Rome.
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Well those iron ages Jews liked them some smiting and slaying as much as anyone else, but being the established religion of a hegemonic power tends to a norm. So maybe not that different?
Given how much of that area got some Turkish influence, I'd argue that the main difference would be no shellfish.
Very glad Manichaeism died off. The divide between the elite priests and and the commoners rubs me the wrong way*. Although it was popular in some areas it never seemed to have wider appeal and Christianity was pretty dug in at that point.
Re;Judaism, yeah, a Jewish belief that could become the religion of Rome is exactly what Christianity was.
*re:modern day ancient beliefs, I highly recommend the book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms which is about modern day survivals of various religious groups in the Middle East. It covers the Mandeans (who are sort of an off shoot of Manichaeism (maybe vice versa? I don't recall)), the Yezidis, Chaldean Christians, Zoroastrians, Druze and Samaritans. Fascinating stuff. The author touches on but doesn't go too in depth on the extinction of pagan beliefs in Europe and how it compares to the survival of these beliefs in the Middle East. I'm just going off memory here but the main points were that these beliefs survived because of the Jizya. They are also all monotheistic (or appear to be). Islam made space for Jews and Christians, the "people of the book", but regular old pagans didn't have that protection and so haven't survived (although the book does take a look at a pagan/animist group in a village in Pakistan). In recent years, especially with Isis, there is not so much tolerance and these groups, which were never numerous to begin with, are shrinking.
The Druze are especially interesting and the Manichee's were what reminded me of this. They have high priests/patriarchs who have the secret knowlege. It's an esoteric religion based on the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Legit neo-Platonists in the 21st Century! The Druze are also interesting because they (like a lot of these older religions) are less about faith and religion than they are about tradition. Most of those who "are Druze" know nothing about the Druze religious beliefs as those belong to the leaders. They are Druze, but it is strange from a modern perspective because they literally can't believe in Druze beliefs as they are for the most part hidden from the lay people. Instead their belief is in the Druze priest/leaders who do things on their behalf. (I am definitely not remembering all this exactly.)