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Comment by VortexDream | Hacker News Reader

It is a confusing title. It took me a good 30 seconds to recognize what was actually meant. I'm not sure how else it could've been expressed though. I think it just took a while to connect "people in present day Austria" with "this person lived in the area that is now known as Austria, but wasn't back then".

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"Present-day X" is a common stock phrase in English to talk about a place in the past while identifying it, for convenience, with today's political borders.

"Julius Caesar ruled over territory in present-day Italy, Tunisia, Spain, Turkey, (...etc)" is a perfectly normal sentence.

I know, but your sentence has additional context

1) ruled is in past tense

2) "over territory in" establishing geographical context

The title starts with "People in present-day Austria" (implies the people there now) then switches to past tense and adds 2700 years ago.

> The title starts with "People in present-day Austria" (implies the people there now)

No, I don't think it implies this. That would just be "people in Austria"; or if you want to make the presentness explicit, "people in Austria now".

> then switches to past tense

It's not a switch. "People in present-day Austria" doesn't have any tense (there are no verbs).

It implies present tense with "People in present-day". At least that's what confused me.

Honestly, I don't care what you think. It confused me. What more do you want from me?

I didn't realize the title was confusing until I saw some of the comments in here. I suppose the title could say "People in the region of present-day Austria" to clear things up to those confused by it.

It is confusing to you, and more. It's not confusing to me, and more.

I find that interesting.

It is interesting, yeah. I had to laugh when I finally "got" it. Sort of makes you think about how our experiences, expectations, etc shape how we interpret even simple things like this.

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