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Until the 1930's, Antioch's remains were almost entirely literary; its physical glories had been obliterated by earthquakes, floods and invasions from the east.

Since then, however, as the study of history has focused as much on ordinary citizens as on their leaders, attention has shifted from throne rooms to dining rooms. Only 10 percent of Antioch's population was rich, according to the fourth-century pagan philosopher Libanios, and only 10 percent was poor. The remaining 80 percent lived remarkably well, and at its height, Antioch's population numbered more than 400,000 citizens and freedmen, not counting women, children and slaves.

The exhibition focuses on their dining rooms, or triclinia, in order to recreate the city's great middle-class era, and for middle-class America at the beginning of the third millennium, those ancient houses reveal a familiar ostentation.

Antioch: The Lost Ancient City'' reunites many of the artifacts and objects excavated by the expedition, including some of the most beautiful mosaics. During the five years of preparations for this show, scholars examined for the first time in decades some of the material from the excavations that had been in storage, and the show's catalog presents much of their new research.

Antioch marked the crossroads of trade routes between Persia and the Far East, Egypt and Rome.

During the centuries of the Roman peace, Antioch flourished; its baths and wide arcaded streets were theaters where strangers -- Romans, Syrians, Jews, Christians, Persians, Greeks -- mingled and learned from one another. Its dining rooms set a more intimate stage upon which to continue the dialogue.

The city's pivotal geography proved the source of both its vitality and its vulnerability. Persian emperors of the Sasanian dynasty coveted Antioch, sacked it twice -- in A.D. 256 and 540 -- and incorporated the phrase ''better than Antioch'' into the names of the cities they built closer to home. Sasanian stylized art, using birds and animals in patterned design -- a mosaic border of ram's heads, for instance -- found its way into Antioch's houses.

Probably they discussed religion. The Pax Romana, of course, has found its modern parallel in the Pax Americana, in the worldwide exportation of American culture. Ideas, art, politics and religions circulate, blend and clash. The yearning for a spiritual haven was perhaps even more urgent in Roman Antioch than it is today.

The expeditions of the 1930's dug up no pagan temples or synagogues, but they did uncover in Antioch's port remnants of a church whose ambulatory was paved with a mosaic of animals and birds. Elephants, flamingos, zebras, gazelles, peacocks, a lioness and her cubs: all creation circled the church in a docile parade.

In this floor, pagan entertainment translated into a vision from Genesis: the bloody staged hunt has been converted to a peaceable kingdom.

In earlier cultural epochs, many people derived their self-worth from their relationship with God, or from their ability to be a winner in the commercial marketplace

As Lasch wrote in his 1979 book, “The Culture of Narcissism,” such people are plagued by an insecurity that can be “overcome only by seeing his ‘grandiose self’ reflected in the attentions of others.”

“Plagued by anxiety, depression, vague discontents, a sense of inner emptiness, the ‘psychological man’ of the 20th century seeks neither individual self-aggrandizement nor spiritual transcendence but peace of mind, under conditions that increasingly militate against it.”

Fast forward a few decades, and the sense of lostness and insecurity, which Lasch and many others had seen in nascent form, had transmogrified into a roaring epidemic of psychic pain. By, say, 2010, it began to be clear that we were in the middle of a mental health crisis, with rising depression and suicide rates, an epidemic of hopelessness and despair among the young.

Before long, safetyism was on the march. This is the assumption that people are so fragile they need to be protected from social harm. Slate magazine proclaimed 2013 “the year of the trigger warning.” Concepts like “microaggression” and “safe spaces” couldn’t have lagged far behind.

Social media became a place where people went begging for attention, validation and affirmation — even if they often found rejection instead.

the elephantiasis of trauma

Once, the word “trauma” referred to brutal physical wounding one might endure in war or through abuse. But usage of the word spread so that it was applied across a range of upsetting experiences.

A mega-best-selling book about trauma, “The Body Keeps the Score,” by Bessel van der Kolk, became the defining cultural artifact of the era. Parul Sehgal wrote a perceptive piece in The New Yorker called “The Case Against the Trauma Plot,” noting how many characters in novels, memoirs and TV shows are trying to recover from psychological trauma — from Ted Lasso on down. In January 2022, Vox declared that “trauma” had become “the word of the decade,” noting that there were over 5,500 podcasts with the word in the title.

For many people, trauma became their source of identity. People began defining themselves by the way they had been hurt.

a culture war, and that’s what happened to the psychological crisis. In one camp, there were the coddlers.

They sought to alter behavior and reform institutions so that no one would feel emotionally unsafe

the first bad idea in “The Coddling of the American Mind.” It was the notion that “what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker,” inducing people to look at the wounds in their past and feel debilitated, not stronger.

the coddling approach turned out to be counterproductive. It was based on a series of false ideas that ended up hurting the people it was trying to help.

People on all sides genuinely come to believe they are powerless, unwilling to assume any responsibility for their plight — another classic symptom of immaturity.

The third bad idea is, “If I keep you safe, you will be strong.”

But overprotective parenting and overprotective school administration don’t produce more resilient children; they produce less resilient ones.

The counterreaction to the coddlers came from what you might call the anti-fragile coalition. This was led by Jordan Peterson and thousands of his lesser imitators

they merely represented the flip side of the fragile victim mind-set.

The right-wing victimologists feel beset by hidden forces trying to oppress them, by a culture that conspires to unman them, dark shadowy conspiracies all around

recent right-wing narratives, even J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” often follow the trauma formula: “Take the lamentations about atrophying manhood and falling sperm counts. Call it what you want, but the core idea is always shaped like trauma. Once, we were whole, but now we’re not; now we suffer from a sickness we struggle to grasp or name.”

The instability of the self has created an immature public culture — impulsive, dramatic, erratic and cruel. In institution after institution, from churches to schools to nonprofits, the least mature voices dominate and hurl accusations, while the most mature lie low, trying to get through the day.

They are considerate to and gracious toward others because they can see situations from multiple perspectives

The founders of the therapeutic ethos thought they were creating autonomous individualists who would feel good about themselves. But, as Lasch forecast: “The narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an admiring audience. His apparent freedom from family ties and institutional constraints does not free him to stand alone or to glory in his individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity.”

Maturity, now as ever, is understanding that you’re not the center of the universe. The world isn’t a giant story about me.

In a nontherapeutic ethos, people don’t build secure identities on their own. They weave their stable selves out of their commitments to and attachments with others. Their identities are forged as they fulfill their responsibilities as friends, family members, employees, neighbors and citizens. The process is social and other-absorbed; not therapeutic.

Maturity in this alternative ethos is achieved by getting out of your own selfish point of view and developing the ability to absorb, understand and inhabit the views of others.

Mature people are calm amid the storm because their perception lets them see the present challenges from a long-term vantage.

The second false idea was, “I am a thing to whom things happen.” The traumatized person is cast as a passive victim unable to control his own life. He is defined by suffering and

They can withstand the setbacks because they have pointed their life toward some concrete moral goal.

“one of the greatest indicators of our own spiritual maturity is revealed in how we respond to the weaknesses, the inexperience and the potentially offensive actions of others.”

a sign of maturity is the ability to respond with understanding when other people have done something stupid and given you the opportunity to feel superior.

thinking about the history of the Americas, Hansen said. The lidar findings have unveiled “a whole volume of human history that we’ve never known” because of the scarcity of artifacts from that period, which were probably buried by later construction by the Maya and then covered by jungle.

When scientists digitally removed ceiba and sapodilla trees that cloak the area, the lidar images revealed ancient dams, reservoirs, pyramids and ball courts. El Mirador has long been considered the “cradle of the Maya civilization,” but the proof of a complex society already being in place circa 1,000 B.C. suggests “a whole volume of human history that we’ve never known before,”

Excavations around Balamnal in 2009 “failed to recognize the incredible sophistication and size of the city, all of which was immediately evident with lidar technology,” Hansen says. Lidar showed the site to be among the largest in El Mirador, with causeways “radiating to other smaller sites suggest[ing] its administrative, economic and political importance in the Preclassic periods.”

He says that once the area is fully revealed, it could be potentially as significant a marker in human history as the pyramids in Egypt, the oldest of which dates circa 2,700 B.C

the research “sheds light on how the ancient Maya significantly modified their local environment, and it enhances our understanding of how social complexity arose.”

Among the multistory temples, buildings and roads, images of Balamnal, one of the Preclassic civilization’s crucial hubs, were revealed for the first time. It dates back to 1,000 or possibly 2,000 years before the most famous, and well-excavated, Maya site of Chichen Itza in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which was constructed in the early A.D. 400s.

Before the lidar study, archaeologists, biologists and historians had identified about 50 sites of importance in a decade. “Now there are more than 900 [settlements]. … We [couldn’t] see that before. It was impossible.”

The lidar images raise questions about how “one society living in a tropical jungle in Central America became one of the greatest ancient civilizations in the world [while] another society living in Borneo is still hunting and gathering in the exact same environment,”

About 40 miles south of Petén is Tikal, ruins of the largest city of the Maya civilization’s later “Classic” period (A.D. 200 to 900). Now a national park, Tikal was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. It could serve as a possible blueprint for El Mirador.

“It could be something great,” Hernández says of El Mirador’s potential transformation into a significant tourist site. “But only if the government, archaeological organizations and locals work together. Then a decision can be taken as to whether it should become a national monument, an area of returned, modern-day Mayans and other Indigenous Guatemalans (who make up about 40 percent of the population in the country) or a tourist hub.

“I don’t want my kids to say, ‘oh, I remember the Mirador, it was a nice place, jaguars were living there’ — like a legend,” Hernández says. “We can save it now. This is the right moment to do it.”

Faced with the example of Notre Dame, and the realization that something similar could happen to an Irish national treasure, the government pledged €25 million, with the college and private donors adding €65 million more.

In the meantime, visitors are still coming in droves to the library, Dublin’s second most popular attraction for overseas tourists (the Guinness brewery is first). Among the treasures on view is the Book of Kells — an exquisitely crafted ninth-century gospel that is the greatest surviving relic of Ireland’s early Christian golden age.

Ms. Shenton said she had twice hosted Joseph R. Biden Jr. at the library, the first time when he was vice president (“he came in 20 big black cars with Secret Service people”) and a second when he was a private citizen again (“he just walked down here by himself”).

“Back in the 18th century, Trinity was the university of the Irish Enlightenment,” he said, an alma mater to writers and thinkers like Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith and Jonathan Swift.

When the books are all gone, specialists will go to work on the Long Room, upgrading visitor facilities, repairing damage and shoring up defenses against four age-old enemies: time, damp, pollution and, most pressing, fire.

A contractor is being sought to build a “burn room” — an exact model of the Long Room and its contents — to be ignited so specialists can study the best way to hold back the flames.

To slow the inevitable long decay of the books, and to protect them from dust and acidic particles seeping in from city traffic, new microthin clear covers, or “slip cases,” are being designed for each volume.

“I’m a conservator. Librarians are our enemy. We say, ‘Don’t touch that old book!’ and they want to let people open it and read it!”

To preserve the tourist experience for as long as possible — a key source of college income — the shelves most visible to visitors will be the last to be cleared. The Book of Kells and other precious artifacts will be temporarily displayed in the college’s 18th-century Printing House until an enhanced exhibition space is ready under the upgraded Long Room.

“Because we live in the past when we are online,” Sacasas suggests, “we will find ourselves fighting over the past.”

my hunch is that people feel stuck or move on because online, these events feel like things that have happened, rather than something that is happening.

“What we’re focused on is not the particular event or movement before us, but the one right behind us,”

“As we layer on these events, it becomes difficult for anything to break through. You’re trying to enter the information environment and the debate, and you find layer upon layer of abstraction over the initial point of conflict. You find yourself talking about what people are saying about the thing, instead of talking about the thing. We’re caking layers of commentary over the event itself and the event fades.” This is, if you ask me, a decent description of the last five years of news cycles.

So, what’s changed? Why do we feel more stuck now?

“I think it also has to do with the proportion of one’s daily experience to dispatches from the past,” Sacasas said. Pre-internet, “the totality of my day wasn't enclosed by this experience of media artifacts coming to me.”

the smartphone-bound, reasonably-but-not-terminally online people—the amount they spend engaged with the recent past has increased considerably, to the point that some are enclosed in this online world and develop a disordered relationship to time.

Constantly absorbing and commenting on things that have just happened sounds to me like a recipe for feeling powerless.

“That feeling of helplessness comes out of the fact that all our agency is being channeled through these media,” he said. “We have these events that are ponderously large, like climate change or gun control, and to view them only through the lens of what happened or the abstraction of what people are saying strips away the notion of our agency and makes it all feel so futile.”

the social-media platforms we live on push us toward contribution, and they make it feel necessary. Yet what is the sum total of these contributions? “If I'm cynical,” Sacasas said, “what I think it generates is something akin to influencer culture. It creates people who will make money off of channeling that attention—for better or for ill. Everyone else is stuck watching the show, feeling like we’re unable to effectively change the channel or change our circumstances.”

ubiquitous connectivity and our media environments naturally lend themselves toward an influencer-and-fandom dynamic. If the system is built to inspire more and more layers of commentary, then that system will privilege and reward people who feed it

On an internet that democratizes publishing, what this might mean is that all media takes on the meta-commentary characteristics of political or sports talk radio.

When the Depp-Heard trial began gaining traction online in April, Internet users around the world recognized a fresh opportunity to seize and monetize the attention. Christopher Orec, a 20-year-old content creator in Los Angeles, has posted a dozen videos about the trial to his more than 1.4 million followers on Instagram across several pages. “Personally, what I’ve gained from it is money as well as exposure from how well the videos do,” he said. You can “go from being a kid in high school and, if you hop on it early, it can basically change your life,” Orec said. “You can use those views and likes and shares that you get from it, to monetize and build your account and make more money from it, meet more people and network.”

if you were going to design a nightmare scenario, it might look a bit like what is described in this Washington Post story from last Thursday:

Like the Depp-Heard coverage, the forces that Sacasas describes can be deeply cynical and destructive. They’re also almost always exhausting for those of us consuming them

Examining and discussing and understanding the past is important, and our technologies are enormously helpful in this respect.

Sacasas compared the way our media ecosystem works—and all these feedback loops—to a novelty finger trap. “Almost every action generates more difficult conditions—to struggle is to feed the thing that’s keeping you bogged down.”

As politicians—especially those on the far right—transition into full time influencers, they no longer need to govern even reasonably effectively to gain power. They don’t need to show what they’ve done for their constituents. Simply culture warring—posting—is enough. The worse the post, the more attention it gets, and the more power they accrue.

There's a reason Marjorie Taylor Greene raised $9 million and Sarah Palin has only raised $600,000. MTG has recognized something Palin used to know. Her job is to say something terrible every day so we do all her viral marketing for her.

One outcome of elected officials adopting the influencer model is a politics that is obsessed with, and stuck in, the past. I don’t just mean a focus on making America “great again,” but a politics that is obsessed with relitigating its recent past.

we are forever talking about Hillary’s emails or Hunter Biden’s laptop or Merrick Garland’s thwarted Supreme Court seat or the legitimacy of the previous election.

How do we break the cycle? Is silence our best weapon to starve the attention? That feels wrong. I don’t have answers, but Sacasas has given me a valuable guiding question: How do we train our attention on our present and future, when so much of our life is spent ensconced in dispatches from the recent past?

The study’s conclusions need to be tempered by the idea that these 300 ancient genomes may not be wholly representative of the region’s overall population

Many of the genomes used in the new analysis were collected from individuals uncovered in burial grounds, grave fields and churchyards. But some samples came from people who died in unusual circumstances—including sailors from a Swedish warship that sank off the country’s southeastern coast in 1676, and inhabitants of a settlement known as Sandby borg who were likely massacred during an organized attack in the fifth century.

“There is a question of how much you can call it population genomics as opposed to kind of lots of little vignettes,

“devastating” because the hardship of rural Americans is real, “terrifying” because the political backlash to this hardship poses a clear and present danger to our democracy, and “baffling” because at some level I still don’t get the politics.

Technology is the main driver of rural decline, Schaller and Waldman argue. Indeed, American farms produce more than five times as much as they did 75 years ago, but the agricultural work force declined by about two-thirds over the same period, thanks to machinery, improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides

Coal production has been falling recently, but thanks partly to technologies like mountaintop removal, coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago, with the number of miners falling 80 percent even as production roughly doubled.

The decline of small-town manufacturing is a more complicated story, and imports play a role, but it’s also mainly about technological change that favors metropolitan areas with large numbers of highly educated workers.

Technology, then, has made America as a whole richer, but it has reduced economic opportunities in rural areas. So why don’t rural workers go where the jobs are? Some have

But some cities have become unaffordable, in part because of restrictive zoning — one thing blue states get wrong — while many workers are also reluctant to leave their families and communities.

So shouldn’t we aid these communities? We do. Federal programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and more — are available to all Americans, but are disproportionately financed from taxes paid by affluent urban areas. As a result there are huge de facto transfers of money from rich, urban states like New Jersey to poor, relatively rural states like West Virginia.

While these transfers somewhat mitigate the hardship facing rural America, they don’t restore the sense of dignity that has been lost along with rural jobs.

And maybe that loss of dignity explains both white rural rage and why that rage is so misdirected — why it’s pretty clear that this November a majority of rural white Americans will again vote against Joe Biden, who as president has been trying to bring jobs to their communities, and for Donald Trump, a huckster from Queens who offers little other than validation for their resentment.

This feeling of a loss of dignity may be worsened because some rural Americans have long seen themselves as more industrious, more patriotic and maybe even morally superior to the denizens of big cities — an attitude still expressed in cultural artifacts like Jason Al

In the crudest sense, rural and small-town America is supposed to be filled with hard-working people who adhere to traditional values, not like those degenerate urbanites on welfare, but the economic and social reality doesn’t match this self-image.

Prime working-age men outside metropolitan areas are substantially less likely than their metropolitan counterparts to be employed — not because they’re lazy, but because the jobs just aren’t there.

Quite a few rural states also have high rates of homicide, suicide and births to single mothers — again, not because rural Americans are bad people, but because social disorder is, as the sociologist William Julius Wilson argued long ago about urban problems, what happens when work disappears.

Draw attention to some of these realities and you’ll be accused of being a snooty urban elitist

The result — which at some level I still find hard to understand — is that many white rural voters support politicians who tell them lies they want to hear. It helps explain why the MAGA narrative casts relatively safe cities like New York as crime-ridden hellscapes while rural America is the victim not of technology but of illegal immigrants, wokeness and the deep state.

while white rural rage is arguably the single greatest threat facing American democracy, I have no good ideas about how to fight it.