Re: Stump the Meteorologist

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 9:08 pm

I never said the Mayans understood magnetism- I said they built observatories and observed the solar cycle- you can do that yourself with a simple lense and a sheet of paper and observe sun spot activity- as its the main marker for the solar cycle this is most likely how they worked it out- you dont need even need a good lense- and they had the technology to make glass beads, ornaments and decorations, which happen to also work as primitive lenses. We know they had the observatories to do it in, because some of them are till there. It oes not require technology or understanding not already available to their culture.
There was an excellent piece I read several years ago on glass beads asking the question if some of those currently in museums had in fact been misclassified as jewellery when they were in fact lenses.

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 9:16 pm

The oldest lens artifact is the Nimrud lens, dating back 2700 years to ancient Assyria.
Another early reference to magnification dates back to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 8th century BC, which depict "simple glass meniscal lenses".
The earliest written records of lenses date to Ancient Greece, with Aristophanes' play The Clouds (424 BC) mentioning a burning-glass (a biconvex lens used to focus the sun's rays to produce fire). Some scholars argue that the archeological evidence indicates that there was widespread use of lenses in antiquity, spanning several millennia.[7] Such lenses were used by artisans for fine work, and for authenticating seal impressions.

The Nimrud lens or Layard lens is a 3000-year old piece of rock crystal, which was unearthed by Austen Henry Layard at the Assyrian palace of Nimrud, in modern-day Iraq.

The Nimrud lens, currently in the British Museum-

Stump the Meteorologist - Page 6 673px-Nimrud_lens_British_Museum_zpsb3cdd084

Stump the Meteorologist - Page 6 673px-Nimrud_lens_British_Museum_zpsb3cdd084

Excavations at the Viking harbour town of Fröjel, Gotland, Sweden discovered in 1999 the rock crystal Visby lenses, produced by turning on pole lathes at Fröjel in the 11th to 12th century, with an imaging quality comparable to that of 1950s aspheric lenses.

by Mrs Figg Wed Aug 07, 2013 9:43 pm

I do find it odd though that humans essentially with our brains have lived for maybe 40 thousand years and were in the Stone Age for most of it, and only in the last 2 thousand years we got really going with progress as such, and only since 100 years or so we became technical and industrial. There seems to have been quite a quick leap into the modern world relatively.

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 9:48 pm

What I find particularly odd is that apparently nobody thought for the better part of 40,000 years about trying to grow stuff instead of just gathering it- then apparently suddenly, between 10,000 and 8000 years ago people in the Mid-east, China and at least 3 separate parts of Africa all hit on the idea and according to official archeology did so independently of each other.
That just seems very, very odd.

by Ally Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:26 pm

Mrs Figg wrote:I agree that a lot of knowledge has been lost and refound, the Romans had under floor heating and plumbing, but that was all lost during the Dark Ages, when you compare the realism of the frescos in Pompeii and Rome to a stiff primitive looking medieval icon I wonder how in a thousand years that ability had been lost. I sometimes wonder about the great libraries that were burnt what ancient knowledge has been lost forever.

Incorrect. Roman style baths and indoor plumbing carried on in Islamic territories throughout the Middle Ages and the later Renaissance periods. Islamic scribes actually translated a ton of ancient scrolls and most of our Western translations are actually translated from their translations.

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:44 pm

Pettytyrant101 wrote:What I find particularly odd is that apparently nobody thought for the better part of 40,000 years about trying to grow stuff instead of just gathering it- then apparently suddenly, between 10,000 and 8000 years ago people in the Mid-east, China and at least 3 separate parts of Africa all hit on the idea and according to official archeology did so independently of each other.
That just seems very, very odd.

Simple answer, the population wasn't high enough to sustain permanent human settlements to grow food. The complexities of living off domesticated food, such as planting it, growing it, collecting it and then storing it, and the risks involved such as floods or droughts made it impractical. Only when large communities form as the population grows do demands for political leadership to efficiently control the food supply emerge. Then, after a while, the advantages to settling in one place are seen- lower infant morality and improved life expectancy- and more and more groups of people decide to settle down.

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:47 pm

Yes but why all at once, all over the global without apparent communication between them?

Surely people had noticed in the preeceding 40,000 years of gathering that if you drop seeds plants grow?
Surely when your on your yearly migration you notice places that appear to have abundant food all year round and might be a good place to try staying put?
Tribal numbers were roughly comparable to bronze age village populations so I dont see the human numbers factor being crucial.

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:03 pm

Don't see the point about communications. It's just a practical thing to do. If you wait in one place for your plants to grow & the crop fail people will die. The groups were hunter gatherers for the simply reason that it was simpler and it was safer. If you're constantly on the move you are guaranteed to stumble upon food somewhere or other. In places that appear to have abundant food all year round you would obviously find human settlements but the food supply would diminish. What would you do, try and grow some plants with no guarantee (espeically with small populations so they can't plant a ton to try and reduce the risk) of a sustainable output to live on or move on to find more food? I know what I would do.

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:03 pm

Rigby wrote:Don't see the point about communications. It's just a practical thing to do. Anyway, if you wait in one place for your plants to grow & the crop fail people will die. The groups were hunter gatherers for the simply reason that it was simpler and it was safer. If you're constantly on the move you are guaranteed to stumble upon food somewhere or other. In places that appear to have abundant food all year round you would obviously find human settlements but the food supply would diminish. What would you do, try and grow some plants with no guarantee (espeically with small populations so they can't plant a ton to try and reduce the risk) of a sustainable output to live on or move on to find more food? I know what I would do.

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:06 pm

So why would you suddenly change your mind- in several countries on different contintents- at once and try it if it the were all true?
Surely it would be more likely to expect agriculture to be discovered independently at different times in modern humans 40,000 year history- not all at once in a time window of less than a thousand years?

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:07 pm

Pettytyrant101 wrote: Tribal numbers were roughly comparable to bronze age village populations so I dont see the human numbers factor being crucial.

Perhaps true of the Early Bronze Age, certainly not true of the Middle Bronze Age.

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:11 pm

Point is even early bronze age people were settling.
So the question becomes what made groups of humans, at different places on the planet all come up with the same idea at more or less the same time? And not at all before in the preceding 40,000 years?
Numbers are apart of it but does not to me explain it.

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:12 pm

Pettytyrant101 wrote:So why would you suddenly change your mind- in several countries on different contintents- at once and try it if it the were all true?
Surely it would be more likely to expect agriculture to be discovered independently at different times in modern humans 40,000 year history- not all at once in a time window of less than a thousand years?

The origins are shady, but between 9000 to 6000 B.C we see many permanent human settlements in Egypt and Ancient Western Asia. Agriculture is a development of this, it's pretty much the only thing you can do. It's not a change of mind, it's just the development of human settlements. A hunter-gatherer technique obviously would not work.

by Mrs Figg Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:15 pm

Ally wrote:
Mrs Figg wrote:I agree that a lot of knowledge has been lost and refound, the Romans had under floor heating and plumbing, but that was all lost during the Dark Ages, when you compare the realism of the frescos in Pompeii and Rome to a stiff primitive looking medieval icon I wonder how in a thousand years that ability had been lost. I sometimes wonder about the great libraries that were burnt what ancient knowledge has been lost forever.

Incorrect. Roman style baths and indoor plumbing carried on in Islamic territories throughout the Middle Ages and the later Renaissance periods. Islamic scribes actually translated a ton of ancient scrolls and most of our Western translations are actually translated from their translations.

I didnt say they had invented under floor heating, just that they used it.

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:16 pm

Mrs Figg wrote:
Ally wrote:
Mrs Figg wrote:I agree that a lot of knowledge has been lost and refound, the Romans had under floor heating and plumbing, but that was all lost during the Dark Ages, when you compare the realism of the frescos in Pompeii and Rome to a stiff primitive looking medieval icon I wonder how in a thousand years that ability had been lost. I sometimes wonder about the great libraries that were burnt what ancient knowledge has been lost forever.

Incorrect. Roman style baths and indoor plumbing carried on in Islamic territories throughout the Middle Ages and the later Renaissance periods. Islamic scribes actually translated a ton of ancient scrolls and most of our Western translations are actually translated from their translations.

I didnt say they had invented under floor heating, just that they used it.

What?

by Mrs Figg Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:19 pm

what do you mean what?

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:21 pm

but between 9000 to 6000 B.C we see many permanent human settlements in Egypt and Ancient Western Asia. - Rigby

Yes and in several parts of Africa and China- still leaves the question if there was no communication of ideas between them why they all started settling at the same time independently when any one group could have done so at any point in the preceding 30, 000 years.

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:22 pm

Mrs Figg wrote:what do you mean what?

I didn't understand your point!

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:27 pm

Pettytyrant101 wrote:but between 9000 to 6000 B.C we see many permanent human settlements in Egypt and Ancient Western Asia. - Rigby

Yes and in several parts of Africa and China- still leaves the question if there was no communication of ideas between them why they all started settling at the same time independently when any one group could have done so at any point in the preceding 30, 000 years.

1000 years isn't such a short period time that you give it credit for. Obviously the reason that permanent human settlements sprang up quickly and all over the place is that the agreeable factors were found in a multitude of places. The benefits were easy to spot. Some people say there was a drastic change in the climate which made agricultural methods even more agreeable which kinda fast-forwarded the whole process.

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:37 pm

The climate factor I think holds some weight- but like the numbers argument it doesnt explain it fully.
There were parts of the world throughout the ice age were nevertheless ideal for settlement and growing with abundant food sources and settled climates- and yet it never occured to anyone there to try it- then lots of places do it all closely together in time- and in a scale of at least 40,000 years a thousand or even 2 thousand year window is suspicious.

I personally think we underestimate communication of ideas in the distant past.
By the early bronze age you have jewelry in the uk inset with stones form the middle east and Africa.
I think these links are much, much older than we currently think and probably go back at least as far as the middle stone age.

Nor do I think we can discount entirely what these groups seem o have believed themselves- Egypt, Sumer before it, the Mayans in South America and the Chinese all tell a variety of the same story- that survivors of a global disaster of some sort taught those left much knowledge that had been lost.
I am not proposing aliens here- but given a 40,000 time scale I have no problem with the idea a small section of the population was alot more advanced than we think and that they suffered a a disaster and the remains of their knowledge was the basis for the reemergence of those ideas in our own recorded history.

That is after all more or less what happened to the Minoans. And Troy, the Minoans and much else were all considered purely myth up until the late 1800's/early 1900's when they actually found them.

by Rigby Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:48 pm

Throughout that Ice Age the population was so tiny that even if there were any permanent human settlements for any period of time they would be pretty hard to trace. It's not suspicious, it's fact, and we know the growth of civilizations was very rapid in regards to the timespan of humanity.

No doubting the spread of migration from the end of Old Stone Age; as you say there's plenty of proof on that. I also happen to think that many groups of ancient people were very advanced. There's enough proof.

by Pettytyrant101 Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:58 pm

if there were any permanent human settlements for any period of time they would be pretty hard to trace.- Rigby

I entirely agree there- they estimate it would take less than one thousand years for the majority of evidence of our own civilization to vanish and be reclaimed by nature.
And thats kind of what Im getting at- that there is both the room in the time frame of human history and the hints in the mythology that there were indeed groups who appeared, reaching varying different levels of innovation and advancement and then disappeared entirely- either through their own making or through natural disaster.

Humans were firing ceramic figurines at least as early as 29,000bc (venus of Dolni Vestonice) among many other innovations that seem to be have been discovered, lost and rediscovered probably several times over.

Numbers were small yes, but depending if you believe the short term bottleneck theory or the long scale bottle neck theory of humans depends on how small and when it was that small and for how long.

by Rigby Thu Aug 08, 2013 12:10 am

If we say humans have been around for 240,000 years, there's the time for a few super advanced civilizations to rise and fall without alien involvement. St. Augustine pointed out that more recent, although ancient, innovations did exist- in his case the Temple Light of Isis- and although as you say a lot of evidence is missing it is something that I think about with an open mind.

by Pettytyrant101 Thu Aug 08, 2013 12:22 am

On that we entirely agree Rigby.

by Eldorion Thu Aug 08, 2013 12:41 am

The timeline for the Neolithic Revolution is way more than a thousand years. Also, the development of agriculture occurred at different rates in different areas and probably for different reasons. As you point out, people undoubtedly realized how to plant seeds. The issue was whether or not they saw any need to. Keep in mind that early agriculturalists were actually less healthy and shorter-lived compared to hunter-gatherers at the same time. However, agriculture does make it easier to support a higher population so as the number of humans in different ares increased (at different rates, but all generally going up) people decide that it was better to stay in one area and grow their own crops.