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"It shows ancient Assyrians using skins, presumably of goats, as swimming floats 3000 years ago Figure 2). Such bladders and inflated skins are known to have been used as swimming equipment in many parts of the world." Publication
So... he's not sucking air out to scuba dive, he's blowing air in to float.
And they demonstrated it without ai gen so why is ai gen needed here?
To push the absurd narrative that these were essentially scuba tanks for underwater swimming and not flotation devices.
Not going to get many clicks with a real image.
Yup It makes no sense from a materials perspective. How would they handcraft an air and water tight goat skin bag with a tube coming out of it? And what's the tube made of? And all this effort for what, 3 lungfuls of air.
Plus the ai version is wrong. Its a floatie not for breathing
And why did it make him look like a gnome?
Judging from the boats. Are we sure it represents being submerged, fully under?
Looks like a floaty to me.
Plus, have people never tried to push floaties or balloons underwater? It's not even a matter of strength, you can't really fight buoyancy. Even a large heavy adult would only be able to force a very small air bladder under long enough to actually swim.
Right!? I have experienced beach balls. This is complete nonsense.
Could be weighted with rocks. As long as you exhale back into the bag, it would maintain its buoyancy, and would give you 5-10 minutes of usable air.
That's not what they are doing here, of course, but it's certainly possible.
You can't breathe when you are too deep. The outside water pressure is too great for your diaphragm muscles to overcome. I remember a Bill Nye Science Guy video from middle school where he tried to use a garden hose as a snorkel. The further down you go, the less you can breathe.
Also, wouldn't a big-ass bag of air be crazy difficult to keep under water? Try keeping a beach ball under water...
The garden hose as a snorkel is completely different. The air pressure is at above sea-level pressure, while your lungs are compressed by the weight of the ocean - so depending on your depth.
These bags, as depicted, are also under pressure at roughly the same depth as your lungs. So you can easily breath. It's just that the volume of the air gets smaller as you press the bag under water.
To overcome the force pushing the bag upwards, you can use stones or lead, like scuba divers do. It might be less flexible as the volume of the bag changes with depth in contrary to modern scuba diving equipment. So surely depth will be limited, but it's not as bad as you depict it.
It is probably more surface diving.
Since it are soldiers, I suspect as a sort of stealthy approach to enemies. Which would only require a depth of 2m maximum.
No depth of 2m, at all. No enemies no approaching no stealth. It would be lovely if we all spend the 20sec to verify a tiny bit. I read a total phantom discussion trusting you guys :)
Yeah, it's not ancient specialised scuba marines, but ancient "ohno help me I can't swim"
Yes. It would be difficult to keep und water. But it is also pressurized by the water pressing on it so I would expect breathing to be doable.
Turns out the entire show has been uploarded to Youtube, upscaled to 4k
Can't work that way,you need a considerable amount of ballast in order to keep a bag filled with air underwater
Spot on. I guess that's one of those lead smurf hats.
Seems implausible, one breath takes close to 500 mililitres of air when resting, these bags even if they work as intended can prolong underwater stay for a minute or two at most.
And how hard would it be to take it under water?
Looks like a floating device for me, that you can refill and empty to take less space
But if you're trained it's different. I agree there was not enough air to last for long, but supposing they were trained divers it could have made a differwnce that was worth it to them.
But why wold assyrians need trained divers at all? They were landlocked and without access to the biggest rivers in the region.
Maybe for funsies. Maybe Mom said they could have friends over to their pool and they wanted tj have fun.
Why do you think 2 minutes isn't enough?
They were soldiers, not fishers. The point wasn't to catch fish or do anything that required to stay underwater for long.
I think that whole exercise is pointless, why would a polity 3000 years ago need an underwater insertion(?) training? Especially if they are lanlocked without any big bodies of water in vicinity. I don't think that most modern armies have more then a handful of people trained for such things and modern armies are infinitely better equipped, trained, and numerous.
Oh look at that guy coming out of the water, should we stab him now or let him get up and out of the water fully first?
Inhaling from the bag and exhaling to the atmosphere, yeah, just a couple minutes before the bag is empty.
Rebreathing the same air by exhaling back into the bag, you'd probably get 5-10 minutes of usable air.
Diving hat on point(y).
Bag full of air that does not float
It was prob before Archimedes decreed what floats & what doesn't.
The good olโ days
I love the underwater pointy hat.
"Don't bring your swords or axes or knives! Too heavy, they'll slow you down. Whoa, leave the helmet, soldier. Gotta look awesome!"
cantaloupes for calf muscles
Dudes were ripped too.
As they had no access to the sea (?) maybe someone dreamed this up thinking it could work (but never really tested it).
Count the number of bodies of water in this image: 
.
What?
They had access to plenty of rivers so they would have had places where they could try this out, is what I wanted to say.
Ah ok, yeah I'm just wildly guessing here.
Hmm, I wonder if it would work in practice